Your Fixed Ops Questions Answered: Surviving Bad Bosses, Broken Systems & Service Drive Problems

Welcome to the big show. What we talk about today is what to do with the terrible boss. We recap our favorite parts of the Top Dog event that just ended and much, much more. Coming up on this edition of Service Drive Revolution.

What's my favorite new band?

Okay, so it is possible that you just said the name of the band.

You don't know.

Just say you know now three minutes ago. And it is tragic warfare.

No, you're making a band names.

Yeah.

Yeah, I did. So we just came off of our annual Top Dog event, which is pretty fun. You. If you saw last week's episode. We had a round table with the coaches, which was great.

Always fun.

We ran out of time. We wanted to record a bunch of those, but we just ran out of time.

Did we just do one?

Yeah. Oh, you don't remember? Like, we always think, like, we have the coaches in town, we can do all this stuff, and then we.

We schedule 78 days worth of stuff into two days. Yeah, that's Top Dog week is a blur to me. All right, what's the name of the band? I forgot already.

Oh, forget it. Like, it's not your favorite band, so what does it matter? What. Let's talk about favorite stuff. What was your favorite part of Top Dog? Your. Your. Your thing was so good. So Christian. I don't even know how to describe his talk.

Except that it was performance art. The message was incredible. And it was. I was laughing so hard, and then I thought it was over, and then it wasn't over, and it was even more funny. We have to put that up in on demand.

Do you think it'll catch the end part? Because that was my favorite part of.

The performance art for sure. Okay, we have to put that in there. Also, for the first time, we. We just. For coaching clients, we sent them a link and we let people watch, which was something we were a little nervous about. We thought about charging for it, but we didn't.

But we did get some feedback from the people that said I couldn't make it this year. I appreciate it so much that I was able to watch.

Yeah. And I don't know if we'll. We'll do that or not, but we learned that we can broadcast from the library. And it looks really cool. The boys did such a good job.

There was.

It was like almost our. Our version of tv, live tv.

That's exactly what it was. So that. That's what I was going to say is that, like, when we film these episodes of sdr, it goes. It needs edited. There's a lot of stuff that happens in order for it to be like, ready for the public. These guys did all the stuff that normally would take three, four, five days. They did it during the event. It felt literally like, like a, a sporting event almost.

Right?

Like they switched cameras. The audio was, you know, they kind of, they kept fixing things all throughout. But I thought it was super cool.

As a dynamic. We've never had a top dog before.

So it's, it's also funny that every year we try to get big names as a headliner and we pay a ungodly amount of money for a couple speakers to be like, you know, headliners. And so every year the headliner is the person that we pay the most money to is the least liked person in the survey. After this year, they almost hated the person who was the headliner. We did a podcast with them and it was, it pissed me off so much, we didn't even put it out.

It will. It's lost in the archives forever.

Lost forever. Also, we told the guy, I don't know how many times, like you went out of your way to tell him that these are service people like that, it's parts and service managers in the room. And he kept referring to everybody as.

Car sales and talking about car sales.

Yeah, yeah. No matter how many times we told him.

And that's happened before, but it was, it was more.

I guess it was just more painful because he was such a jerk.

Yeah, it was crazy. And then he wouldn't take pictures with.

Anybody, wouldn't talk to anybody. The guy thinks he's like some huge celebrity when, I mean, nobody really. I mean, he's got a best selling book, but nobody really knows who the guy is.

Yeah.

Yeah, there was some pretty interesting comments. I thought that.

About him, right?

Yeah, about him. And then some of the other speakers.

I thought comments about you.

Oh, they.

People put jokes in the survey.

So. So one person said, Christians should keep telling jokes. And then you put in parentheses, that's kind of a joke. I thought that was wonderful. I thought that some of the other speakers stepped up where that speaker didn't necessarily perform to our level. Like there was a guy that just kind of opted in to, to help us out with some book signings and stuff like that. I also thought that the guy that spoke to start the event was probably one of the more exciting ones that I've, I've seen. I liked him a lot. And it was a drummer. So that's kind of like, you know, there's a little bit of, you in that. And he was just like, the sweetest.

He had everybody in the room playing drums. It's hard to describe his thing without. I don't know. I don't want to ruin it because we'll put it up on. On demand and you can watch it.

Yeah.

But it was such a great team building lesson, and the way he. He put everybody together was so great. I'm a drummer, so I was. I was, you know, for a couple days after I wanted a drum set.

Oh, I believe that.

But now I'm back to one of our.

One of our employees broke their drum that they were drumming with. I thought that was so cool, but he was really awesome.

I always think that internally, like, you know, Coach Cliff and coach Hoagie did a really, really good job. And every year, I'm usually looking forward to kind of like your keynote because you kind of tap into whatever's going on in the industry at that time. You didn't do that this year, which I thought was even cooler.

Do you know?

No, because it seems like I want to talk about different stuff than everybody else. Like, there's. There's always this element of, oh, I love when Chris talks, but.

Like, it's over my head kind of a thing.

I think that's fair.

Yeah. And so my idea was instead of trying to figure out what people wanted to talk about, let's just do a Q and A. And so we had everybody write out questions. So they wrote them on a card and then you would collect them throughout the day. And then by the end, I had a huge stack of questions. You know, a lot of the questions overlapped, but I think it gave me an idea, you know, and then I had a couple hours to prepare, so I went and I kind of, like, organized them and tried to prepare how to address what I thought was the commonality between them, in a sense.

Yeah.

I felt like it met them where they were instead of me trying to impose something on the room. And also, like, the thing that we've been doing for a couple years is I do it at night, so I talk at night. So they've had a couple margaritas and tacos, and the atmosphere is a little more fun.

Yeah. I thought that it was very entertaining.

The.

The ratings were what. What I thought they would be, but it was a little bit of a gamble and to put yourself in it a little bit.

It's funny that we have people rate me at my event.

Totally.

Like.

Would.

Would the ratings not be good?

Right.

I don't think it's fair like, how.

Anonymous is it really? Like the mafia shows up at someone's house? Hey, we saw what you put about Chris, but I thought it was good. You did get to share a little bit of yourself. My favorite was, like, this lesson that at the end of the day, I think it went. It didn't hit like, I think it could have, but there was a lot that asked, what's your favorite this or what's your favorite that? And you had this beautiful thing, and I'll probably butcher it, but I'm gonna try it. But where essentially, like, you don't want to denote something you're as your favorite, because then you kind of pass judgment, and then you rule out anything else new that might come along later. So instead of saying, I have a favorite, there's just some stuff that I'm either listening to now or some stuff that I like. When it comes to music, I like that. I think that you were asked, what's your favor Christian joke? And what's your least favorite Christian joke? Like, both of those got hit. But you're trying to do the lesson of, like. Of. I. I took it as don't judge. And I think that's where you're headed with that. And just be open to try new things and all that stuff and then maybe talk about what happened at the end when it was time for everybody to leave. No.

Okay, we'll talk about that in a second. That was the funniest part of the whole thing.

Okay, so not judging is a. Is a part of it. And. But the reason why not judging.

Is an element is when you judge, then it's final. Right? So, like, let's say.

You know, let's. Let's just say that somebody cuts you off in traffic and they have a, you know, Kamala Harris sticker on their car, and then the person driving is like, oh, yeah, they're, you know, whatever liberals or whatever it is, they would say at that moment, you actually get rewarded with dopamine for judging because it's to. It's to make us more efficient.

You put them in a box on.

A shelf, and the quicker you judge, the more efficient you are and the more energy you save. And that's something that was really important thousands of years ago, but isn't now. Because we have Red Bull and we have sugar before sugar, it was important to conserve energy. And so that dopamine hit of judging, making it final and then moving on to something else served us. It isn't a tool that, you know, the biology doesn't serve us Anymore. And so the judgment is a part of it. Because the thing with our industry is we're very judgmental in. We either like it or we don't. But most of the time, the conversations that we have in the conversations that are the most frustrating for me are the ones where we're weighing something on whether we like it or not, not whether it's effective. So, for example, there's people out there that'll say, oh, Chris Collins doesn't like video inspections. I've never said that.

I've heard it a lot that you don't.

Never said that. But that's people's judgment. Like, they. They need to. They need finality in something. Because what I'm focused on is the outcome. What we want is we want better inspections to have higher sales per customer. And my point is, if you can't do with paper, you usually can't do it with video. And so I would start with paper and get good at that, because the system in the process end up being the difference between having high hours per ro and not. Not. There's no magic in a video inspection. It actually complicates it, because now you're. Now the customer is seeing how messy the stall is. Tonality, believability. Like, there's a whole nother element. Yeah.

There's at least.

That you got to learn in practice.

At least two more pitfalls in the choreography.

And if you don't have a system to build on, that makes it harder, not easier. Right. And so that's my frustration is when I'm trying to have those conversations with people, they want me to just go, do you like it or not? And I'm. I'm trying to say what I'm. What I want for you, who's asking the question is, I want you to have higher sales per customer. And so we. We. It's not as simple as whether I like it or not. What we're trying to talk about is what is the most effective path.

Right.

Does that make sense?

I love it. And I couldn't agree more. I think that the people pass judgment on what things they like or don't like. They also pass judgment on themselves of whether or not they've kind of arrived or not. Like, we're like, oh, I'm the best, but they might be just over region average in csi.

And then another part of that that I talked about at the elite day that we had with our elite clients was the duality of things. Like, we really want things to be black and white. We want miracle Pills. We want it to be easy. We want yes or no. But things are more complicated than that. And in the world we live in today, as fast as things are changing, you don't want to judge and have this, like, mentality of singularity. What we need to do is embrace what the possibilities are. And the only way you do that is by training your mind not to have favorites, not to have a bias, because our biases are the, you know, the most dangerous thing in a. You know, in a world where it's constantly changing. You get left behind pretty quick if your bias doesn't fit into whatever it is that makes success happen today. So that was my other point I was trying to make with that.

I thought it was a beautiful lesson. Several different questions, like, oh, yeah, that's a great lesson. Like, the questions you told them what they needed to hear and the questions they asked.

And then one thing that they wanted is they wanted to hear vinyl in here, right? So if you haven't been to the library, we have a nutty stereo system here with, I think there's only two pairs of these speakers in the state of California, the Jubilees.

And keep in mind, who lives in California.

And by the way, these speakers, you couldn't put in your living room. Like, they're humongous. They're like church speakers, but each one.

Weighs as much as a Chevelle.

And then we have Macintosh equipment, which, for this room, Macintosh works really well because it just gets out of the way. And then we have these vtl, phono, preamp. And then our. Our turntable in here is made by a guy who makes, like, two of these a month that he used to make carbon fiber for F1. Incredible.

And, like, there's a video, really fancy, right?

Video, somewhere of us going through it.

I've seen it before.

The needle, the.

Yeah, it's a. I didn't even know that needles were fancy.

They're fancy. They came, and so people wanted to hear some vinyl. And so.

What a treat.

The one of the questions was, what is your favorite vinyl? And I would say, like, what are we trying to do? Are we making babies? Are we partying? Are we drinking tequila? Are we writing a book? Like, what is it we're doing? Because that would have an effect. Like, my favorite vinyl depends on the mood and the circumstance, in a sense. But the thing that sounds the best. Well, I wouldn't say it's the best, but our party trick is there's a Led Zeppelin album that we can put on, and everybody in the room just Starts staring in the space.

You have to stop doing what you're doing. Yeah. And just pay attention. The stuff you hear, the levels, the way it bounces back and forth. Like, I don't. I'm not an audiophile, but I can tell you that's some pretty. Pretty impressive stuff.

So we played that. Then they wanted to hear more, which I was kind of surprised by. They wanted to hear more music. And so then I took them on a little journey and I played stuff that I knew they wouldn't have heard. Most of the room wouldn't have heard, but would blow them away, sort of. Well, at the end. But before that, what did I. I played. I played a national song.

You did. You played the Beatles. You played.

Oh, so, yeah, the Beatles. That's another one. And the thing about the Beatles is, like, people have heard that song, but they've never heard it in here.

The layers that exist in that. So great.

And then at the very end, after me telling everybody, see, I should get an F on my. On my score for my thing, after telling everybody not to judge, after telling everybody to be open minded, like, do embrace duality. That you got to train your mind not to get addicted to that. Dopamine hit of judgment.

Complete.

I put on a Kendrick. Kendrick Lamar song in the room cleared out in a second. Like, literally, I put that on the room cleared out. And then I was like, okay, let's have a recap meeting with the team. Everybody's gone.

They left la. Like, I'm pretty sure they chartered flights and got out of the city. But that was.

Judgment was still there.

That was so hilarious. I loved it. But it was a really, really good way.

That Kendrick Lamar album's amazing. Like, I don't understand.

He's doing.

People are just like, I don't like rap. And then it's like, it's not. It's art before it's rap.

It is art before it's rap. I'm not a Kendrick Lamar fan, but I am an appreciator of Kendrick Lamar.

Same thing with, like, all these people talking about Bad Bunny in the Super Bowl. If you listen to the last Bad Bunny album, I don't care if you speak Spanish or not. It's. It's pretty great.

Yeah.

Like, it's. That was in high rotation when it first came out at our house.

Oh, yeah. Missy's crazy Bad Bunny, right?

She likes Bad Bunny. Yeah, a lot. And that's the first album that I was like, oh, okay. This is different. This is special.

Yeah, I probably listen to it More than my wife does. I've got a little bit of a flavor for reggaeton.

Little. Anyways, Top Dog was a blast.

How many comments are going to get that? All they do is just sit there and talk. I feel like we're gonna get that on the YouTube comment on this episode, but it's really car related.

But I think there's a lesson in there about judgment.

Yeah, they like to judge.

We're very judgy. And the people writing that in the comments are very judgy.

All right, don't judge, just comment.

For the most part, our comments are positive, aren't they?

Yeah, I just never look, I've just noticed a couple of like, God, these guys talk for so long. And then I always make like a conscious habit. I'm like, when we're about to film, like, okay, we're gonna get to the point a little faster. But then it just naturally unra to fun.

I think we're just hanging out with the audience.

So that's what I've got. Probably for every one comment that says, I hope they get to the point, there's 20 people that tell me that they identify with the podcast because we're just hanging out.

Yeah.

It's an overwhelming ratio. The other direction.

I mean, I. I think that as hard as it is to.

Be a parts or service manager and learn, like, the one thing that we do is create a safe place. And you only create a safe place by hanging out and talking to people like humans and not. We're not pretending to be something better or, you know, I don't know. And I think that that's a part of our success, is that we.

We're human.

Yeah. We're just as fallible as everybody. It's just.

That's one thing when I first started doing videos and I told you this too, is like, just talk to the camera. Like you're hanging out with them in a bar. Yeah. Like that. They're friends. And then you'll make friends.

I don't really.

If you talk to people like they're your friend, you'll make friends.

That's right. And I don't notice. I don't really notice cameras anymore. Like, for the longest time, my office had one streaming into the production office 24 7, the Christian reality show.

That was. The other thing with the drum guy is that I totally regretted, like, as I was kind of introing him or something like that. And I should have known, but I didn't. But I feel like he's a deeply religious man and I Said words that were un religious.

Oh, was he religious?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, I didn't know that I should have caught it, but I didn't catch it early enough. And he turned a little bit pale when I said some of the stuff that I was saying. I got to consider my audience a little bit better.

All right, cool.

What should we do today?

What's in the news?

Oh, my gosh.

So I really like how this whole little interaction thing goes between us where. And I think both you and I kind of grew up the same way. Like, I learned to drive on an old Ford truck that was a three on the tree. And you very similar.

Right.

Did you learn stick first before you learn how to drive automatic?

Yeah, it was three. It was a Toyota Land Cruiser.

Also three on the tree. Right.

And it's like have very fond memories of that.

Even the perfect place for it.

Yeah. It was easy to shift other than I just remember the clutch being so hard to push.

So my grandfathers had a Olympia beer tap knob on it.

That's hilarious.

Yeah.

He drank a lot of beer.

Had some leftover stuff.

But it was from a time where you could drive with a beer in your lap.

Like the cops drove with beer in their lap.

But you came across an article that you sent me talking about the fact that there is a diminishing, heavily diminishing number of manual transmission cars to buy.

And my. My buddy.

So the.

On Sundays sometimes we take out his Ferrari.

It's not like I. I don't understand how you make a Ferrari that's automatic. Like, I don't get that.

So. So in a manual transferrari. Not endless. Doesn't exist on a new car. Think about other supercars that should have a manual that don't Corvette. Corvette actually is working on one, but it's not available right now.

Yeah, but does it sense a Corvette?

What else?

Well, an F150 for sure.

Like a truck.

One of the fun.

Yeah. With a manual ever.

That wasn't mine but was in the family and I drove it all the time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I had a buddy that had a 250dually in a manual. And I love driving that thing. You felt like you're.

Yeah. So a truck, a sports car. Yep.

But like a Lamborghini doesn't have a manual transmission. So many of these cars don't. But.

And nobody knows how to drive them.

Yeah, that's. That's the one way to like keep your kid away from your car is to have a manual.

Yeah. What made me think of this is When I was pulling my boats out this year and I borrowed my mom's Jeep, that's a manual. And it was so fun.

Yeah. And actually also, I think better for pulling something out of water, for sure. Easy, easy, easy peasy.

So, I mean, there's just something fun about the clutch slip in. Like.

Like if it's a good clutch, it's not as much fun.

It's very interactive.

Okay.

There's like a. There's like a joy to driving.

There is. So I want to go to the list of some of the things that are available.

So there. There's only four cars available. Right. That you can order.

So there's.

None of them are a car you'd want.

Yeah. So they're different versions. Like, there might be more models, but it's all kind of like the same. It's the same at the end of the day. So Acura has one. Do you know what the name of that model would be?

No.

An Integra, kind of like that little sports thing. It's. I would say it's kind of like the Acura version of a Honda Civic. So that one. Okay.

Not the car that I would want in a manual.

Now one that I do think made sense that's still available is a BMW. If you had to guess, what would you say?

M2, M3. Yep.

M2, M3, M4. So like the M series, you can get a manual transmission. So good job there. See, you're good at these games. So fun. I'm gonna skip. But Aston Martin, you can get one.

I used to have a Z4 that was manual.

You can still get a Z4.

That was a fun car. The Z4 is an oddly fun car. Y. But they're. They're just a.

Two seats and a steering wheel.

Okay. Yeah. There's not much.

You couldn't even go grocery shopping in it.

Well, the other thing I liked about manuals is they were cheap.

Yeah. Not anymore. That I don't think.

I don't think so. I think it's the upgrade.

Yeah.

Yep. Okay. So Chevy doesn't have a Corvette, but they do have a.

See something.

Something Camaro.

Camaro.

And then a buddy of that would be that Cadillac, believe it or not, has one.

Oh. If Camaro has a manual, then Ford has to have one with their car.

Which Mustang? Which version it is.

You have to get it in the V8 version, but you can get it in Cooper convertible. You can't get a four or six cylinder Mustang with a manual trans.

That's a fun car. The Camaro is a fun car too.

I had a manual transmission Mustang. I liked it. I actually it was a six speed. Pretty fun to drive for sure. Although I was in Chicago and I almost killed myself the first time it snowed.

Oh, I bet.

Yeah. Rear wheel drive, too much power.

It was just torque.

Not a good car for Christian. And then if you have the accurate.

List of good cars for Christian, that's a shorter list than this.

But. But my last car that everyone.

One that's wrapp pillows.

Or bubble wrap would be better than pillows. But pillows is a statement. Pillows and duct tape.

I still want to do a service and parts manager challenge with a Corvette and you drive one of them for a year.

You know, all four corners.

And the last one that they're lining up for. And I don't mean to pick on this brand, but I just would never be like, you know what? I want a stick shift and it better be a Kia Forte.

Yeah.

So. So out of that list, what were there? There was no trucks like you said. But maybe were there two cars that you might want? It wasn't a long list.

So that was in the news.

I mean, I think if I, if I was gonna do a manual, I'd want a Corvette, a porsche.

I've had Z4s. I don't think I'd want a Z4. Yeah. Or a pickup. It's funny though.

Did you. Were you comfortable in the Z4?

Yeah. There's no room. I mean it's just a sports car.

I think about you in width. Like you get broad shoulders kind of thing.

It was okay.

But. Yeah. There's another article that says that they're looking for a stick shift for the C8. It might happen. There were actually, I think I, I zapped the list. But there were a couple of Porsches on there. Like a 911. I think you could get in a six speed. But there was a. That was a short, short list. But I don't know. I'm with you.

We missed the manual. Okay, let's. Should we get to the questions?

I think we should get.

So we. We've had this line open where people ask questions and I guess we didn't know what. What was the number? I forget. I used to say all the time.

8, 3, 3, 3, ask SDR.

So people have asked questions on there and so we thought we would answer them.

There's a pile.

Yeah. This will be fun. And hopefully, you know, this, this is something maybe you. You're thinking about because that's usually what happens if People are asking it, other people are thinking about it.

Do you think anybody asked about diagnosis on the questions?

The.

The question that keeps on giving. It's my favorite repair authorization.

It never gets old.

Okay, let's. Can we hear the first question?

Hi, my name is Savannah. I'm the service advisor for dealership. I have a question. I have a service manager who likes to blame everybody for everything else, but you know, himself in aspects of. He is stating that as we need to handle customers that are calling in on our point. They're calling in weeks on weeks on weeks because their car hasn't gotten in the shop. And my manager is blaming us, saying that we're not keeping in contact with a customer at one point. How long can you keep saying the same thing to a customer before they're pissed because their car didn't get fixed? So I'm just saying how to handle that situation a little better on my end and see if I can point to my other fellow advisors in the right direction. Thank you.

I have a lot of experience with this because I used to work for a manager that for some reason, like we would bring in 75 appointments every day. And then by one o' clock, you were calling everybody telling them that their car wasn't going to even see the shop.

We were booked out weeks. So people waited weeks for their appointment.

And.

You know, you would call them and they would be like, well, why did, why did, why did I make an appointment two weeks ago if you're not going to get to my car? And as a human, you would. Like that makes total sense. But this place is so mismanaged. That's how we do it. And then I get paid to call you and try to make you feel better about something that's terrible. Like, you know, what I learned to do is tell them up front.

I remember you saying that during the write up you would tell him it's probably not going to go in or even when they made an appointment, were you doing that too?

The funniest thing. So you know Homer. Yeah. So he was telling me. So he's got this Dodge Charger and he was telling me that he took the. Because it had a. Some sort of light on. It wasn't the check engine light, it was something else. He took it to the dealer here locally. He took it to the dealer, left it there. And then they called him and said, we don't have a tech to work on this car. And he's like, okay, well I'll leave it till tomorrow. And they go, no, we don't have a tech at all. It was like, oh, I meant to tell you, we should call them. They need our help. They don't have a car to. They don't have a tech to check. He's like light.

Whatever light it is.

How uncomfortable is that called?

This is a dodge. Like it's, there's nothing complicated. You could check the codes with the laptop. Like, it's not hard.

Like, they can't even do that.

No. And this is a dealership. And he's like, they're the dealer. He wants me to explain to them to him how this happens.

Hilarious. Yeah, yeah. Imagine being an advisor there and that.

Poor guy and homer is just one of 30 calls that you're going to make telling him the same exact thing.

Yeah. So the question is, what do we do when we have a manager that doesn't have an internal locus of control, that doesn't assume responsibility for the job they're doing? Maybe a Christmas gift, all you could pitch in or I don't know. We have your number. I'll tell you what we will do. We have the number, right?

We do.

I will send a I am leader book to your manager on the house. The first part of that book is all about personal responsibility. If he will read a book, that would be something.

It's called locus of control. It's life changing. Your life changes once you stop blaming outside forces and you take responsibility for yourself. So we can do that. The second thing is.

I personally, just like with that other job that I had, I left and went, yeah, that's fair.

I think that I, maybe I thought about it different way, but.

The one thing I know that if that's the climate is that probably that person wouldn't be there very long. So it might be an opportunity for someone to step up and take over and then just please, for the love of all that's holy, learn the lessons from what that person did. Because way too often we do the tribal knowledge thing where we just like try to do the thing that the person before us did. And guess what? It's not effective.

So there's an opportunity for an advancement there. Like, I mean, 50% of service managers are turning over and he's, he or she is probably in that 50% soon because. Because the owner only needs so many calls where they're, they're not having it anymore. You know, the advisors are there, they have to take a hundred calls, but only one or two need to get to the owner before something happens. And I always think about that, like when I'm talking to dealers. One of their biggest fears is running into somebody that has a service beef.

Okay, I don't. Do you know this part of the story? When I was an advisor, all the other advisors got together and drafted a letter.

I don't.

I've never told you the story.

I don't think so. I can't wait.

So the manager, it was so bad, and everybody was just like, they were. They were over it because that. We literally had a dispatcher that was drunk all the time that would throw your arrows in the alley. Like he was out of his mind and he wanted to argue with us. Like, we would go back there and just like. So imagine.

Dispatch office where half the cars you wrote aren't going to see the shop that day. Now imagine if you sell work on a car from yesterday. Where's that car go in the Friday? So you go in there and you're like, hey, when can I get this done? And he basically will would just say, like, well, it'll get done when it gets done. And you're like, well, I got to tell the customer something. And you have to. Your job is to have a general sense of, is it two weeks, is it three days? Like, what is it? Right. And he would want to fight with you and. And argue in the whole thing. So the, The. You know, I was a kid, right? So the more veteran advisers had drafted this letter to the owner about how this manager was basically ruining the place or whatever. And it came down. There was only one person that hadn't signed the letter. Guess who that was?

You.

And they cornered me and they were like, you have to sign it. Because I was like, oh, yeah, you.

Had the biggest number. So the biggest poll, probably. And.

Did you sign it?

I did. And guess what happened?

Nothing.

We got called up to the owner's office and he said he read the letter, and then the manager got called up there. Nothing changed and nothing happened.

I mean, the.

You.

You have to make a connection that the owner was as much of a buffoon as the manager. Right? Because you attract like, who you like.

If the whole department sends a letter and you do nothing about it, they even the.

I remember the advisors even went to the gsm, who was very influential, and he didn't do anything either. Yeah.

I mean, I think he sympathized, but he was like, that's not my thing.

I got to sell cars.

Yeah, I got to sell cars. He didn't care to save us either. It was a mess.

Yeah, that's a tough one.

So we're sorry, that sucks.

Yeah.

But I think the key is that if someone's not going to take responsibility, they're hard to fix, sometimes impossible.

If you want to put a little levity in it, what would happen is like, let's say that that dealer wanted to fix the situation. He's like, hey, maybe we should get some outside help. Maybe we should get a fresh set of eyes on this situation. Let's call up the Chris Collins gang. And what they, what that dealer would say when he called us is you would say, I need advisor training.

If I could just get my advisors to sell.

And we would look at the numbers and we'd say, no, what you need is tax. You need more tax. And they'd be like, nope, I need my advisors. Don't call people back. And it's like, well, there's a limit to the human.

Capacity.

Yeah, it's pretty simple.

Your. Your supply and demand is. Is mixed up.

I remember for a little while on strategy session, I was doing a demand curve. Do you know what that looks like?

No.

So it's like, it's like this 90 degree angle and then you have supply and demand and essentially where you're like trying to meet that middle part, right? Nope.

Yeah, it's so funny. No, we need, we need advisor training. It's like.

It'S funny that the advisor training is the least beneficial when you have the systems and the math, the people math. Right.

It's just an easy thing to poke at. And I say this all the time too. If you give me an advisor that's been on the job for three months and I were to quiz them on what's supposed to happen, they get it right very regularly. They can go through the cadence of how a customer visit should go. And then you watch them and they don't do it for whatever reason. Either they can't or they won't. But it's way more doing than knowing. And everybody thinks, oh, they just don't know. Oh, they know. Yeah, my kid knows when he's being good or being bad.

I'm sorry. Okay, let's go to the next question.

Hey, guys. So I had a question.

First of all, I've been listening to you guys for roughly a month now. I listen to you guys there and back from work about an hour, drive both ways. And just helping or just listening to you guys has helped me tremendously in my service department.

I do have a question though. So at my dealership, we're kind of a small power sports dealership, but we have three different locations as well. And at my location specifically, you guys always talk about how there's a service writer, a service advisor and a service manager. And for us, I'm trying to figure out where I lie in all of that. So that way I'm not stepping on any boundaries or on anybody's toast. Because at my dealership, the chain of command for service goes my standard gm, who is also the coo, the agm, and then me, and then my technician. So am I wearing three different hats, doing three different jobs for a service writer's pay, or am I just at. Am I just a service writer? And that's it. I appreciate you guys once again. Have a great day.

So when you're smaller like that, you are the manager, you are the advisor. And so whether you're paid as a manager or an advisor, it's kind of one and the same.

Like, you're.

Really, like, you have to get to where you have a couple advisors at least in about six techs at a minimum. But really the comfortable spot to have a dedicated manager is three advisors and nine techs.

So your, your pay is one in the same. Yeah, you're carrying many hats. You might also.

You know, fix a sink every once in a while or.

Yeah, you might be the dispatcher, the warranty person. All that stuff might have to fall under your purview.

So I think what I would say is, is that the other way to look at that is that you're gaining an invaluable amount of experience because you'll be a better. If you just go into, if you go somewhere else to be a service advisor, you'll have a different understanding of the whole job and how it, how workflows and everything like that. That'.

And also you'll miss it because there's a certain beauty to, to that sort of intimacy, like having that relationship with the text, that relationship with the customers. It's not super, super busy where you're running around with your, you know, tail between your legs.

And I still perceive power sports as a place that customers like to co go. Like, it's cool for them to talk about their jet skis and all the new stuff that's coming out and everything like that. So power sports, the most important thing with that is the building the customer relationship and like celebrating the fun part because they're way more emotionally attached to that thing they're bringing you than their daily driver to work. It's an opportunity to connect on a deeper level, which will serve you later in your career. Another thing we Talk about or have been talking about lately is that I don't think that people should. As business goes on, don't you think they should get less caught up on titles and job responsibilities? And it's more about what do you do to affect the business a little bit? Like this person.

We were just, we were just talking that. We were just talking about that on Monday in our meeting.

Yeah. It's funny how stuff like that, it's changing, comes around. So. So not pigeoning, pigeonholing yourself into being. Oh, I'm just an advisor. I'm just this. No, you're. You're an important part of the business.

Yeah.

So that's cool.

It's great. Can I ask a question back? Yeah.

Oh, do you want me to be the guy?

This is an AI.

No.

I want to figure out how before next summer, I can improve the.

Loudness in my Jet Ski stereo. I need it to go louder.

Like, because you're here all the time. So you can hear it when it's playing?

No, when I'm on the water, it's not loud enough.

Okay.

So both times, like, they'll be like one of those half a million dollar boats with the stereo that goes by and I can't hear my stereo over. Like if you're. If you're going 60, you can barely hear it.

The jet ski stereo has no business.

No, I know there's people that they add an amp in there somehow.

Where, where would you put it?

Oh, but somebody knows. I want, I want to figure that out.

8333 Ask SDR if you know how to comment. I didn't amp on a jet ski.

Well, that was fun. Thanks, everybody for the. The questions. Maybe we'll do more questions next time. And thanks for hanging out with us. We'll see you next time on Service Drive Revolution. Thanks so much for watching this episode of Service Job Revolution. We're uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so you don't miss out. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 8333-ASK SDR and we'll answer your question on the show. That's 8333 Ask SDR. For special deals on our books and training, head over to offers.chriscollinsinc.com that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins and I'll see you in the next video.