Integrity Under the Hood: Doing the Right Thing is Always the Right Thing

What's up, players? Glenn Piccolo here with Autoshop Answers, bringing you an episode of Master Tech to Millionaire. I am here with a special guest today, Charlie Zlatkos, straight out of Boston, Massachusetts. He is here for Key to Key Training Weekend, and man, we're just going to do a pod together, so how's it going, man?

Yeah, we have a great subject to talk about today, Mike. Man, let's do it right now. It's so important to talk about this. Yeah, yeah.

So today, we're going to talk about integrity. So we had a Take 5 Zoom call. How long ago was that? The Take 5, that was probably about two weeks ago or three weeks ago the situation happened.

And, you know, let's talk about it. I mean, you can start getting into it because, again, your leadership, I think, and the way you handled the situation was so phenomenal. And I think it needs to get out there just as an example. Yeah, yeah.

So, man, we're doing a quality check on a car. And every time a technician's done with the car, they turn in the paperwork. And we do a final quality check. Do you guys do that at your shop?

Yeah. So it's an opportunity, you know, Todd always says, treat every car like you treat a family member's car. And, you know, would you test drive your family member's car if you're about to return it to them? Right.

Let's say that was your mother's car or your aunt's car. You wouldn't just return it, right? Right. You wouldn't drive it.

You would open the hood, make sure everything is good. You take it around the block, make sure it drives nice, smooth. There's no warning lights, all the basics before you return the car, right? Yep.

Yep. And, you know, now don't get this confused because we don't have people, what Todd calls Houdini-ing, which is disappearing for, man, where's that guy? He's been gone for 45 minutes. We don't have that.

Our technicians do test drive the cars. And so it's an hour per mile or a mile per hour is kind of our standard. If it's a five hour ticket, like a five hour test drive or 10 hour ticket, 10 hour test drive. And then we do a final check.

So that's going to be us just driving the car down the block, just double checking it, bring it back, pop the hood, make sure, man, everything's in order. And man, we have one, this was probably like three weeks ago. And, you know, we get done with the car and we, we pull it, we actually pulled in to do a quality check. And every so often we'll do kind of like a, like a random spot check.

And so we lifted that vehicle back up in the air. And when we, when we lift that vehicle back up in the air, we're looking at it and this is a timing cover job. That's a big job. Okay.

And we get the vehicle up in the air and Kobe superstar looks at it and he goes, man, Glenn, I don't think that timing cover was done. Oh boy. What? What?

Are you serious right now? So, you know, we, we, you know, we grabbed some people, we come over and we're just going to kind of look at this vehicle together. And man, sure enough, we see the, the silicone, like the old silicone was, you know, still there. And man, it wasn't done.

And so, man, obviously, and it's like red flags go off, right? I mean, timing cover, big job. So I've got to go down, you know, approach this employee. And, you know, I'm like, before I approach an employee to call them out on an integrity issue, man, you better be right.

Yeah. I mean, it's a big accusation, right? If you're pointing figures at somebody, you want to make sure 100% you have all your ducks in a row, all your data, real information. This is a made belief.

Hey, this is what I see here, is this what happened? I can't get this wrong. Like you can't, you can't go back and undo that. Okay.

And so that's somebody that's, that's somebody's integrity that's on the line. So after we get to the, you know, the conclusion that like, it wasn't done, it's like, first of all, there's no pass go for us. I mean, it's like integrity, 100%. If you miss the mark on that, you take advantage of a customer or the company for that matter, period.

You're gone. No hesitation. Like there's no question. I don't care who you are.

I don't care what it, I mean, it's, that's done. And so, you know, so, so of course I had to, you know, approach the employee and I did, and it was quite obvious that it wasn't done after I talked to him and there was an excuse made or whatever. I won't get into the details on that, but it was immediate termination. It was like, Hey, go ahead and pack your things.

We're done. That's just, that's just not us. And so, you know, I typically don't put that out there, like in terms of people being terminated and reasons why. And one of my guys came up to me because I posted this story on our group thread.

And one of my guys came up to me and he said, Hey, Glenn, you know, like if somebody leaves the company, typically, like you don't ever like post anything about why. Well, well, in a lot of cases, you know, there's different reasons why people leave. It's not very often that people even do leave our company. But if we terminate somebody, you know, there's there's reasons that we really aren't anybody's business.

This particular situation, in my opinion, was everybody's business. Everybody needed to understand and know that that is a non-negotiable for us and it was an immediate termination. So you know it was it was it was heard around the company you know like immediately. I remember it so vividly because it happened on a Sunday and I think I was working in the Watertown shop I'm not sure.

I think I was in the Watertown shop that day. The minute I saw your text that you put out there in the chat I shared it with the rest of the team just in case anybody missed it. And then I say, this is a no passcode if it ever happens. I wanted to make sure my team know.

I've never personally had that, or at least that I know of, right? You may have passed one, I don't know. But I need to send a message to Azalera in the team up north in Boston that, hey, guys, this is happening. It happened, not it's happening.

This has happened. I need you on my side to keep an eye if we ever see anything like this. And I've had a lot of my team members now. They've been with me for many years.

And I trust them. I believe in them that they will do the right thing. Obviously, the only way that you can build trust, I had a conversation the other day. I have a bunch of young kids, GSs, that are really, really good right now in the Boston market.

And I talk to them every day. My son is probably, Dimitri, is like the leader of the PMI group, let's say. And I tell them, I say, Dimitri, they all have to listen and respect you. You have to set the example.

So I talk to them about that. I'm like, there's only one way in life that you can build trust. And that way is time. You have to prove yourself time over and over and over and over.

So if you miss that mark, something in between happens and you ruin it, it's very hard to get that trust again. Sure. So I believe some of my team, my current team, they've been with me for years. Obviously, I personally work with them every day.

Inspect what you expect. That's one of the things that Todd has taught us, and I have very good people behind me to keep an eye and protect the company and the name and the reputation, right? So I sent that out there, and I looked at it. First of all, I want to publicly acknowledge and congratulate you for being able to do that immediate decision as a leader of the company to cut this person off.

I know it's not easy, you're cutting somebody's job off, but it has to be done. Nothing is more important than that. Now, I look at it because I started the business, obviously, I think most of you know my story. I started from zero, a little company, Pleasant Car Care.

So, at the time when I started the company, this is what came to mind. I had put all my years of hard work, all my life savings, my family's livelihood on the line to start this business. Imagine if you allow somebody to come in and do that. Now, my name is on the line, Pleasant Carcass name, Adam Autocass, Adam's Automotive, whatever the company's name is, that guy puts that all on the line.

Would you want that one person to put your family's reputation on the line? No, nobody would want that, right? So, there's a lot of things that we need to talk about in here, but to me, I take these things very seriously and we know what we teach in here is reputation and trust is the biggest, most important thing that we teach. And, again, I really just want to publicly acknowledge that your decision was so spot on, so fast, zero hesitation, because you care for this company and what it represents.

Yeah, I mean, it's like I think about, well, you just finished your deal with TechMetric. If anybody, you know, if you haven't seen that yet, you have to have to watch that Charlie story. It's a great documentary. But just not too long ago was Perry and Patty's.

And so when you watch that, it's like watching Perry and Patty starting, you know, back from 1980. I was born in 1980. It's like there he's he's putting everything on the line like and I'm and I'm I'm born. Right.

It's like that's how long ago that goes. And so like that legacy. Right. Like how could somebody, you know, just put that on the line?

And it's actually a very easy decision. Like I didn't have to think at all. And that's the best part about it. It's like when you're operating with integrity, doing the right thing is always the right thing.

And so if it's an integrity issue, it is just a 100% no brainer. It's immediate. I don't even have to think about that. And I love that.

I'm not worried about the staff. I'm not worried about anything because there's nothing more important than your team understanding and knowing that the person that is in charge of it all stands behind what most of our team. And I mean, you. Feels that way.

This particular guy didn't, you know, or, or whatever, for whatever reasons, you know, I don't know that why somebody could do that, but Hey, at the end of the day, you know, it's, it's, it's handled. And, and, and my team thanked me for that. And so they know that they can come to me. And that's another thing.

It's like, our team has no fear of bringing something. Okay. Look, we have, man, we have a big operation. We have a lot of people.

We do, you know, just a ton of cars that come through. And every so often, there's going to be somebody inside of your company that will take advantage of that. And we've, you know, Todd has the rule, the 10% will always steal from you. 10% will never steal from you. And then 80% of people, given the right circumstance, will steal from you.

Okay? They call it if they find... This is actually an FBI stat. Todd didn't make that up.

FBI statistics, yeah, 10% will always try and steal from you. 10% never will. The 80% is the worst because given the opportunity and justification, they will do it. And that's where he falls in, that 80%, that person, right? Yeah.

And we're tight. We are tight on our process. We inspect every car, right? So a lot of shops out there are giving the vehicle to the technician.

And the technician writes up what needs to be done in the vehicle. And then it's, you know, it's, you know, given to the advisors electronically through an inspector report or wherever the case may be. And there's nothing wrong with transferring information that way, but it is, you know, it is the most important thing that the advisor goes out and puts their eyes on that vehicle before they sell that job and then double checks it after it's done, because that's their integrity on the line. See, this technician that took advantage of a customer, If that comes to light with the customer, then who's the crook here?

Well, it's Perry and Patty Adams. That's what I said. Took his name to the customer. Charlie.

Your name is on the line. Your name is on the building. And so- So, yeah, so it's really good to know that we have a company that is about integrity and that we don't have to think twice or get permission to make that decision when it's time to make it. If it happens, it doesn't happen very often, but when it does, we're on top of that.

And go ahead. I'll let you go ahead. So a few things to talk about here that I had in mind is one of the things that I learned over the years, because being so many years in business, I've had fraud happen. And I haven't had this situation happen, but different things, right?

How people steal money from the cash drawer. I had people, I mean, you name it, all kinds of fraud happens in this industry. And what I learned is even if you see the smallest thing, you have to cut it right there because then over time, it's just going to grow and infect and it's going to get worse and worse. So let's say you see something small, you think it's not a big deal and you let it slide.

Now the other, let's say employees get to see it and now they can start doing it. So now it trickles, it spreads like cancer. Sure. So unfortunately you have to carry right away.

And the point, you had a great point that I really want to hit home tier two is a lot of people don't like our system that we make the service advisors go inspect the cars in advance and sell the jobs. I love it. I couldn't live without that system now because the service advisor, it's almost like a second security guy, right? So if you give a vehicle to a technician to write something up, he could write up whatever he wants.

Like I said, they're sitting in an office, they sell the job. Now, does that advisor ever get to see the car at the end like you guys did? Kobe grabbed his car and he wanted to inspect the job before he delivered to the customer because see, Kobe now takes it personally. I looked at the car, I sold this job, I need to make sure it's done right before I call the customer.

In most places out there, this doesn't happen. Right. Right? So this will never be cut.

Right, right. And it's not Kobe's fault. It's not management's fault. It's not Perry's fault.

But ultimately, it is. Yeah. I mean, we see it all the time. Okay.

So a perfect example. There are advisors out there that are taking advantage of customers, and they don't even know they're taking advantage of customers. Perfect example. We have a car comes in.

Hey, I need to get my brakes done. My brakes were recommended at the dealership. They bring an estimate in. They even show us a, you know, an inspection report and a picture.

And so we get the vehicle in, we rack attack the car, which is our inspection process with our management and our leadership in the trenches. And then we find out, we pull the wheels off, and guess what? It doesn't need brakes. How often does that happen?

I had this happen this week. Happens all the time. I really had that happen on a Subaru this week, two days ago. I believe it because it happens all the time.

And so just a day ago or two days ago, some service advisor recommended that repair to a customer, gave them an estimate on it. The customer said no. If the customer said yes, then they would have done that repair at the dealership and that service advisor would have never known because they're going off of a picture that a technician sent them. How do we know that that technician didn't take that picture off of a different car and upload it onto that inspector for?

How do we know that that technician isn't, you know, you know, using that brake tool at an angle to where it looks like the brake pad is lower than it actually is? That's very easy for someone to manipulate that and make it look like. Absolutely. It's very simple.

Now, an advisor on the other end is like, wow, Mr. Customer, you need X, Y, Z. And they just communicate the information, but they don't realize that they're actually taking advantage of customers. So it's happening and they don't even know it's happening.

That's why it's so important that we inspect these vehicles. And it, you know, here's another great integrity issue. If you have three technicians and you give all three technicians one car to inspect and they take turns inspecting that car, what's that write up going to look like? So, I actually was training a company recently and I was teaching him the system, how we're going to build a team to inspect your cars.

And he says, oh, my technicians are not going to like it. He says, how about if these kids miss something? And then the technician comes to me and says, I miss something. And I say, okay, take that car and give it to five of your technicians in different times, and you're going to give me the paperwork and then let's challenge it.

And I asked the same exact question you're asking me. So if you gave a car to three different technicians, you're going to get three different write-ups, unfortunately. Yeah. Right?

Because it depends on multiple things. The industry, I mean, most of these technicians work flat rate. That's how they get paid. So is the technician missing some hours?

He wants to make more hours for the week. That could be one. Now, is the technician have a lot of hours? Now, let's talk about a different problem.

There you go. Does the technician already filled his belly for this week? The family is fed. Christmas gifts are done.

And does he feel like, man, I don't want to do this rack and pay you on because it's a difficult job today. Now, is that an integrity issue? because now you're letting an unsafe vehicle leave your bay. Yeah. See, that's also an integrity issue.

Yeah. Joe has a story, and this was like years ago, and it was a technician. He told me the story. I don't know where it was or when it was, but it was a technician, and he was inspecting a vehicle, and he was still kind of new in the business, and he's inspecting this vehicle, and there's a leak on this vehicle, and Joe grabs a technician, and he says, hey, man, is this a leak?

And the guy goes... Five o'clock on a Friday, that's a seat. Now, I don't know if that's... That's also an integrity problem.

It's like, what? Oh, my gosh. It's like, that's so crazy. So, yes, we have to inspect every car objectively.

We have to... And you're right about that. It's like, if I give it to technician A, who loves doing front-end work, and he loves doing steering suspension, there's technicians that just love doing that more. You've got some guys that just love fixing leaks more.

Or engine. Hesitations, misfires, whatever, right? Yeah. So if they're inspecting the car, they have to inspect it exactly the same way.

And so a lot of people miss that. Another thing that's important is it eliminates decision fatigue when you're inspecting the car the same way every single time. We just had a car in here just five minutes ago and it was here for a. Not a trip check, but a winter checkup.

Now it's a 2026. Oh, wow. And it has 1,495 miles on it. What?

Okay. Yeah, it just came in. Brand new. Brand new.

Okay. She bought it in, I think it was August. We checked Carfax. It was bought in August.

So I was like, I'm wondering if maybe the oil change is due or something, right? Because there's no sticker. So she bought it in August and it's here, 1,465 miles for a trip check or not trip check, but a winter check. Now, how do we PMI that car?

The same way as you PMI every other car. Same exact way. The car comes in. We check it.

We check the lights. We check the wipers. We check engine mounts. We take it all the way up, right?

We do a mid-rise, under hood, mid-rise, full-rise. We do it exactly the same way. Now, what are we going to find on that car? Probably nothing.

Probably nothing. And there was nothing. It was beautiful, okay? There was nothing wrong with it.

We check filters, check battery. We lift it up. But there could be a car that has an axle. There could be a car that has an axle torn with 1,000 miles on the car.

They hit something in the road. There could be a screw in her tire, right? Now, we did take it over to check the alignment because most people don't realize that, man, I don't care if it's got 100 miles, 1,000 miles, 10,000. I will check the alignment on it because they come off the showroom floor.

They get strapped down. They get transferred. They get test-driven. All these different things that happen.

And nine times out of 10, we'll find out that the alignment is out of specs right off the factory line. Right off the factory, yep. Yep. And it was.

And we got the alignment sold. There you go. She waited on it. Hey, we're going to protect those tires, right?

So that's a good thing for us to do that. We check the tires. They look good. Let's keep them good.

They're brand new. Your vehicle's out of alignment. She approved it. I'm going to keep talking about this.

We heard any of the other podcasts I've done. We run it like a hospital. So imagine going to the doctor for a physical and he says, oh, you're 20 years old. I don't need to look at you.

Now, are there any 20-year-olds out there that have illnesses? So how about if a doctor said that, and now next day there is a big illness or cancer or a heart attack or whatever, that could have been prevented. So the doctor doesn't take that chance. The hospital doesn't take that chance, right?

Their name is on the line. We have a process. Every patient goes through this process. They call it the triage.

So that's what you did with this vehicle. You have to have a process, and you have to go through the process from a person that, what do you say, objectively, it really doesn't matter if it's good or bad. I just need to transfer this information over, no matter what it is. Yeah.

I mean, it's our professional obligation. We had a car that came into our Woodlands location. This is probably, I don't know, probably two, three years ago. And the customer came in, and it needed tires.

And so the tires had to be ordered in and the customer wanted to take the vehicle They were going to come back the next day to get the tires installed. No problem. We ordered the tires customer made a prepayment or whatever Customers coming back the next day to get the tires now car shows up and. What do you do in that situation?

Do you pull it over and get the tires put on? What do we do or do what most people do? Exactly. What do most people do?

A hundred percent, they're sending that car back to the technician to probably put the tires on the car. We just checked this car yesterday. Yes. There's no way it needs anything else.

It was just here yesterday. And so Todd happened to be there at that moment, right? It was a perfect opportunity. Todd's there.

He's like, well, where's that car going? Okay. So they're like, well, we just sold the tires yesterday. It's back for the tires.

Todd's like, nope, that's not what we do. Let's get it in. we're going to rack attack that car. You never know. And it's our professional obligation.

It eliminates decision fatigue. We're checking that car. They get that car up and guess what? CV axle completely blown out.

Okay. Now they just checked this car yesterday. They go to the lady and they're like, Hey, did you, did something happen between today and yesterday? We found your axle is completely gone, torn.

And she's like, Oh my gosh, yes. I ran over a curb last night and yeah, I didn't realize it did anything. Yeah. It completely damaged it.

Take the lady outside and there you go. And the axle is replaced. Now, if that car comes in, we put tires on the car and that car leaves and there's an issue with that axle. Do you think that that customer is going to.

Is going to assume that when her car left our shop, that it was safe. Of course it will. 100%. Yeah, that's what they expect. Once they come in, or a state inspection, right?

Yep. They come in, they get a state inspection. They think because they passed state inspection, everything is good on the car. 100%. And it's really not the truth because the state only cares for certain things.

Like you're in Texas right now. I think you guys took away safety, right? Yeah, emissions only. So emissions only.

But how many of the drivers know that? They don't know. They don't know. Remember, the customer doesn't know anything about their car.

The industry, our industry assumes that the customer understands everything that we understand. We do this every single day. The customer, they want to put gas in their car. They want to drive it.

And they are scared of their car. They're actually scared of their car because all they see on the news is the bad things that happen with cars. They don't see all the good things. And so they, I always say this in training, it's like, how many of you do state inspection, all the hands go up.

How many, how many customers do you think leave the shop with a passing state inspection safety inspection certificate and think their car safe? A hundred percent of them. A hundred percent of them. And how many of those cars have leaking rack and pinions, bad ball joints?

I mean, you name it. I've seen a car here last time I was in town, because in Massachusetts we still have a pretty strong safety check to pass state inspection. But I was here, and you guys were doing a state inspection on a car, and the tires were absolutely bold. And that car gets a pass according to the state.

Now, you obviously recommend the tires to the customer because it's your professional obligation. But if you went out there to most shops, they really just put the sticker on and let it go, and the customer thinks they're safe. Now, there's something else I wanted to talk about before we get carried away, and I forgot about this. And it has to do on the decision that you made that day, how fast and efficient it was.

And what I want to talk about is how many shop owners, because I've been there. So how many shop owners are in a situation that they're running very lean and they're being held hostage from their current employees? That is because they don't have a recruiting system. That is because they're waiting until, you know, it's a really emergency situation to go out and find somebody.

And now because they're held hostage, they can't make that decision so fast. So even though they see something as bad as this situation was, and they know it's wrong, and they want to cut the person deep inside, they're thinking, I cannot fire this guy because who's going to fix my cars tomorrow? Right. Yeah.

So I want you guys to really think about that. If you are still running a shop that's feeling that kind of pain. And it's not like we have no heart, but we have to protect our guests. Again, the biggest problem with this industry is trust.

We have to build an industry with the help of us and everybody out there that that will never be the situation again. Why do certain industries have more respect than we get? Like, I feel like there's a lot of good people out there. I've met the last couple of years with Arosop Answers.

I've met so many, so many great people, right? So there's a lot of great people, a lot of great owners, but we need to get a better systems in place that were never going to be against the wall because an employee does the right thing and will allow it to go on. But now you as a leader in this company were able to make that cut because you know you have a full staff shop. Nothing is going to change tomorrow morning.

Operations is as good as normal. You have a recruiting team, Brian Rhodes and Autoshop Recruiting, that constantly recruit. We call it ABR, always be recruiting. And that way, at any moment, if there is a situation like this, you don't have to worry because you can replace that person.

Sure. Also, what happens is because the rest of your team knows that you're always recruiting, they actually behave better. Yeah. I mean, you're one of the most important things I think as an owner is it's obviously recruiting, right?

You have to be a great recruiter, but you have to also have an amazing culture and an amazing shop and you have to deliver the goods because it's, it's easy to actually recruit the people, but can you keep the people? That's, that's a big part of it, right? You have to be able to attract the right people and then you have to be able to, you know, to be able to retain them. But your team has to know and understand that you're very, very good at recruiting or they will hold you hostage.

I mean, there's plenty of shops out there that have that, you know, that great technician. He's a master technician. He's been there forever and they can't lose him, right? Everybody on my team understands and knows that I want all of them.

I love them all. But at any given time, they will never hold me hostage. And that's back of the house or front of the house. I won't be held hostage by an employee.

It just can't happen because that's the tail wagging the dog. And we just don't deal with it. We just don't, we don't deal with that. But you know, man, integrity, it's like.

Auto shop answers, key to key to callbacks. We're about to do a program tomorrow. We've got some guys here today, VIP Rack Attack Training, which man, if you haven't been able to come do that yet, get with Todd Westerlin. VIP Rack Attack Training is so fun.

You're in the trenches with us. We did a take five this morning, 645. It was fire. It was awesome.

Gets our day started. And then we've been rack attacking cars, PMI on cars. I think we've got five guys out there today having a great time. They're in the trenches with us.

They're watching our strategies. They're watching us check these cars exactly like we're talking on this podcast here to see that concept in action. But they're going to go through key to key this weekend. And key to key is going to teach people how to double their car count.

It's going to teach people how to double the revenue. I mean, we literally see it month to month to month. What happens is a lot of shops out there, they don't, it's like, okay, you have technicians that are out there right now working in shops that don't have a concept. They're saying no on the phone.

Man, they're too busy to get to the customer. It's inconvenient for the customer to bring their car in. They don't have a sales strategy. They don't have all of the ingredients that we have to be able to be successful.

Well, what happens when that car comes in and they're low on hours? See, that's what drives integrity issues in a lot of shops is they don't know how to honestly make the money because they're in a shop with no system. Typically, the owner is absentee. He's not there.

And they don't know how to recruit great people. and so they end up in an industry and our industry just has such a bad name for it it's like known for taking advantage of customers how crazy is that yeah and even if the owner is there this is what happens I mean it happened to me early on you get, too busy, you're in the weeds, you're trying to fix cars, you're trying to answer calls, you're trying to pay bills. See, I don't do most of that anymore. So I don't pay bills. There's a bookkeeping department for that.

I mean, I may answer the call here and there very randomly. We have a full team that does that. So you're almost like the maestro. You're controlling the team versus actually doing the work.

So earlier on, when you're trying to do everything, you're too busy in the weeds and your eyes don't even see a lot of these mishaps that shouldn't be happening, right? And then you don't have time to go recruit. You don't have time to see a talent that maybe walked in the door. Maybe you have a customer that walks in the door that could be your next hire.

You really don't know that. Maybe you could have a potential, okay, Andrew, you know Andrew. Andrew was my customer. Yep.

Andrew came, I used to fix his car. Then I became his customer. Andrew used to sell cell phone service for Verizon. He was there for, I don't even know, 17 years, I think.

So he was my customer. Then I became his customer. We now work together. Yeah, he's a stud.

And yesterday he made an amazing post about the video, the TechMetric video, and being able to leave that industry and come in here, what it was like. So he's a perfect example of me having my eyes open and recognizing that, man, this guy's got talent and he's a customer of mine and now we work together. Yeah. But if you're too far in the weeds, you never see that.

Yeah, 100%. No, I agree. Man, so back on our integrity, man, I really, I just love talking about this because it's so, so important. Matter of fact.

Man, let me tell you a story that happened. This has happened a couple of weeks ago. And man, it's so great because to be able to take such amazing care of a customer is going to just, man, just win that customer over for life. And it's the right thing to do.

I mean, doing the right thing is always the right thing. I love that saying because it is. It's just so easy. No decision fatigue.

But one of our great customers came in and they had a noise coming from their vehicle, you know, while driving. And so we get it in, we diagnose. The noise is coming out of the transfer case. Clear, obvious, like it was a kind of an easy diagnosis, right?

Just lift it up in the air. Sure enough, it's coming out of the transfer case. And so we estimate the transfer case and we call the customer up and we get that job sold. Very easy.

Customer loves us. Customer trusts us. it's a big repair on a lexus like six thousand dollar repair okay so we order the parts and we're getting ready to get started on it a day later technician comes up to me in the morning and he's like hey glenn i need to show you something so i'm like all right what you got he's like i need you to look at this and he's got this bucket and he says the transfer case this is what came out of it and it was a very very little fluid very little fluid and it was like black. And so I'm like, wow, man, that's crazy. Is it leaking?

Is it, you know, did it burn up? I don't know. Like, you know, I'm not a technician. I'm not a technician.

I'm like, did it burn up? It's like, look at me like, who are you? No. So I'm like, what happened?

Did it leak? What's going on? Right. And he's like, no, he goes, I don't, I think there, I think fluid wasn't put in.

And I was like, wow, really? He's like, yeah, there was, I think, and I've seen this. He said, I've seen it before. It happens.

It's, it's an accident. And he didn't know who He doesn't know anything. He just knows that. There's no fluid there's no fluid that's all he knows so immediately i'm like wow okay let me do some research let me check carfax did somebody else look at this vehicle recently was the oil change somewhere else i mean you know i'm just i gotta make sure once again before i call you know the you know the next move here like that i know exactly what's going on so i go on carfax and hasn't been anywhere else it's only been here okay so i go back 15 000 miles ago we did it we did a transfer case service on the vehicle.

And so I'm like, man, could, could 15, I mean, could it drive 15,000 miles with, you know, with no fluid? Are we sure we did that? I'm just making sure. Right.

And so I get with a couple of texts, I bring them over. I'm like, Hey man, what do you, what do you guys think? He's like, Oh yeah. He goes, I mean, you could have a little bit of fluid in there.

It'll go 15,000 miles. I mean, with, you know, it's got enough lubrication in there for it to, you know, to not make any noise and, you know, obviously it'll get worse. And I said, so we didn't put fluid in it. That's what you're telling me.

And they're like, yeah, we didn't put fluid in it. I'm like, perfect, easy. We're going to fix it for free. It's no, I mean, like great news, Mr.

Customer. Hey, the differential that you approved because you love us so much. Transfer case. What's that?

Transfer case, no differential, right? Oh, transfer case, transfer case, transfer case. Yeah. And transfer case.

And it's, and they trust us and they love us. And that's a no brainer for us to call the customer up and just to tell them, hey, we actually made a mistake. 15,000 miles ago, we service your fluid and we didn't put fluid back in it. And we, and we caused this problem. No brainer.

They know to grab me. They know they get paid off of gross profit and they understand that they're about to lose money. Because it's the right thing to do. It's like no question.

Go ahead. So on that, and this is what happens here with that example, right? First of all, customer is super happy. Second of all, your employees or teammates are watching your moves.

So you could have easily closed your eyes, turn around and say, put the transfiguration on and you bill out the customer. And I think, I don't have data to back this up, but I think a lot of shops out there would do that. Now, the team watching you do that, it gives them permission to do something of their own that maybe you won't know. So I was going to talk about this, Eddie, and good thing you said this story right now.

By the way, I knew about it. I think, I don't know if I watched it on a take five or you wrote this up on Moneyball or something, but I knew about that car. But what I was thinking about earlier is as I'm, you know, I started the business and I'm growing a company, now my son is working in the company. And I always say, what kind of example am I setting for him to learn from?

There's going to be some day that I won't give it up, right? Hang it up, retire, whatever the case is. What he needs to carry on, what example am I setting? Perry was working here and now Joy's pretty much taking over someday, right?

What example did Perry set for Joe? Sure. It's the same thing with your teammates. What example are you setting as a leader for the rest of your team?

If they see you take advantage of a customer, then guess what? They will also take advantage of a customer. Sure. Or they'll leave.

Or they'll leave. Or they're going to leave, right. Because, man, trust me, people that are high-caliber people with integrity aren't going to stay in a shop. I interview people all the time, okay, and they tell me.

Integrity is an issue at the shop I'm at. I don't feel comfortable with what the owner's doing. I don't feel comfortable with the manager's doing. And a lot of times it's, I love the owner, but I don't like the manager.

I don't like what the manager's doing. And so to, to be in charge and to have everybody on the same page and understand that it's a non-negotiable and it actually costs them money. I mean, it makes them a lot of money, right. In the long run, but it costs money in that moment.

They didn't have to tell me that. Like they didn't have to grab me and say, right. Like they could have kept kept it moving you know i had a i mean it's very similar situation this was probably four years ago and michael felix kitty kitty big cat superstar shout out superstar love him he's awesome but anyway so we have this we have a subaru and it's a it's the same situation so uh mike he i mean he had just started with us and he wasn't i mean he wasn't with us that long and we saw a differential on a subaru it's like i think it's like 2500 bucks three thousand dollars It's like you just buy a little. Yeah, the little pumpkin.

Yeah, a little pumpkin. It's real easy to do. And so we sell it on the car. It's got a roaring noise in the rear.

And, you know, we sell the differential. And we put it in. And guess what? Noise is still there.

He comes up to me. He goes, man, dude, what are we going to do? We got a situation. I'm like, what's going on?

He's like, we put the differential in that car. It's still making the exact same noise. He goes, it needs a wheel bearing. What do we do?

And I go, simple. Call the customer up. Tell them great news. They don't need a differential.

All right. They need a wheel bearing. It's going to be way less. They're going to love you.

And he's like, that's why I love this company. Right? Because, see, he had seen stuff out there with, because, man, you also got to remember from integrity. Okay.

This is important. This is important. Now, Kitty is a high integrity guy, big cat. Okay.

But a lot of people that are out there are in situations where they're trying to feed their family and they are actually putting up with shops that have integrity issues. Yep. Okay. And they'll actually be in that environment because they have to, because they don't know their next move or they maybe, you know, they, they can't find another opportunity or whatever.

They're, they're kind of handcuffed into, into that job. And so they'll see things. And a lot of times they get to a point where they just, you know, they just kind of like, get, you know, like, like I'm done with this. I have to leave that company.

I've seen that with plenty of people. I've been watching it going on for too long or whatever, but there's a lot of people that are in their environment. And so in that moment, it's like, what do I do in this situation? Right.

I don't have to even think like. It would never even cross my mind. See, here's what a lot of shops out there would do. I know this.

They put a wheel bearing on the car, and they charge the customer for a differential, and they eat the wheel bearing. Yeah, because they're like, hey, I buy a bearing. It's $120, whatever. I'm making it up.

You put it on, and then you sip the car. Right. No one would ever know. Right.

No one would ever know. Right. But also, let's go back to either of these situations, right? What allows you as a manager, or you're actually a partner in this company, as a partner or an owner to be able to make those right decisions?

Because again, it's very simple to do what's right. We all know what's right or wrong. You don't need to go to school for that. Your gut just tells you.

But as a business owner, to be able to make those decisions, to eat the cost for a customer on a mistake that you made or however it worked itself out, is you have to run a company that's profitable. Sure. And that's where we come at play like Auto Shop Answers. We teach you how to run a high-integrity, high-profit business.

That way, when those situations arise, you're able to take care of the customer and they love you for it. We actually call the customers before the warranty expires in all repairs and we want that car back to inspect it and make sure it's all good before the warranty expires. I have seen shops that the car is in, let's say, for an oil change, or let's say it's in for a brake service. And they see the shock absorber is leaking.

Okay, while you're doing the brakes. But because they did the shock absorbers before and it's still under warranty coverage, they won't say anything. They just close their eyes. See, that is also an integrity issue.

But the way they look at that is like, well, I don't want to take the cost because it's going to hit me. Well, that's because they're not making enough money. So run a high integrity, high profit margin business. People are like, you're expensive. of us say our price is very fair for the service that we provide heck yeah i mean imagine being a customer that you get a phone call and it's going to be six thousand dollars to fix your car and then you get a call back the next day and say hey we actually made a mistake it's free because we messed it up and we didn't have to make that phone call we have to make the phone call right because that's what we do and that's built within us but i'm just saying a lot of shops just let that go what is that worth you know what is that worth and so man we just had one out here a minute ago So, you know, Hollywood, if you guys know David, David Ginn, Hollywood, he was on the podcast with Joe not too long ago.

Amazing podcast, by the way. Overcoming objections. He loves the situation when you have the warranty item that we find. So just a minute ago, we were PMI in a car and it's in for a state inspection and the rear shock is completely blown out.

Now I see it's a KYB shock and it looks, you know, it's obviously been replaced before. And so I'm like, check the history on this shock. We just did it two years ago. It's still under warranty.

Pulled the drums off, find out the wheel cylinders are leaking, never been done before or at least with us. Man, this is great news. Shock's under warranty. This is a perfect opportunity for the customer to be able to see what our warranty is all about, right?

He loves those deals. And so do I. It's like, man, hey, Mr. Customer, look, let me show you this.

This is your shock. it's leaking we did it two years ago great news is it's under warranty you don't have to pay anything for it we're going to get it taken care of for you and we did find another concern and we'll we'll bring that up to him as well and we'll get that that that job sold but we don't have to tell him about the shock a lot of people wipe it off or don't and they just send it out and they catch it when it comes back and it's out of warranty which is which is absolutely crazy but i wanted i wanted to bring up one more point which is when it comes to how we're able to operate with integrity and making the right decisions is you should never, ever, ever make a decision, right? You know, make a decision based on how much revenue you have or how much money you have in the bank. And a lot of people do that. They're in a situation where their back is up against a wall and they have to make the wrong decision because they can't afford to make the right decision.

So if you slam your car or your shop with cars, you run high revenue by charging the right prices. You have A players that do it. It allows you to be able to operate with the freedom of doing what's right every single time. It doesn't matter.

Todd says, man, if we upset the customer, we'll give them their money back. Even if we fix their car, we'll give them their money back. You just write a check. And I love the saying, you always say it all the time, which is, man, if you have a problem and money can solve that problem, you don't have a problem anymore.

And so I, you know, I always talk to the guys about, man, we got a high-end steakhouse. We run a steakhouse and every single month we're going to sell a lot of steaks, but you know what else we're going to do? We're going to burn some steaks and we're going to drop some steaks on the floor. And that's just part of it because we're going to have to give some steaks away, but I got to be able to charge the right price for everybody else to be able to operate with integrity every single time, whereas most shops are doing it backwards.

They're trying to go for taking advantage of the customer on almost everything they possibly can. And then in the meantime, they're saying no to good potential customers on the other end line because they're too busy, air quotes, to get the customer in. No, it's amazing. So glad we spoke about that.

I'm trying to think if there's anything else I'd like to add. I think I covered most of it. It's a subject that hits home for me. It was very important that we talk about it.

A lot of examples to give out there. One of the things that we run as a company, as part of Autoshop Answers, is it will never, ever, ever be us. Meaning the leadership team of this company will never be. We have the best interest of the guest in mind, we have the best interest of every teammate in mind, because again, every move that a person makes affects everybody else.

Again, we were at Woodlands yesterday with Toh, had a little discussion with the front of the house team there. And we talked about it, you know. I said, guys, I want you to feel so confident that between Todd and myself and Bill and Joe, this leadership team will do the right thing. Because we understand that every move we make affects everybody.

And it will never be us. I'm not here just to pump us up. But the point here is run a company with this level of integrity. Everybody's watching from your clients, from your vendors, from your teammates, anybody around you.

You'll be able to attract better talent. So you lost a talent, right? But that move will be able to get you more talent. Because now the word is out there that Glenn runs the most honest shop in the area that I've seen.

This guy is phenomenal. If somebody is looking for a job as a technician per se, they're going to be calling you. So even though you lose a talent, it's for the moment because you'll be able to replace that with potentially better talent. You don't want that kind of talent around you.

Man, you know, you had mentioned it earlier, like, hey, you know, we're human and we have hearts and we care about people and we do. Sometimes you don't have to let people go and they didn't do anything wrong or they don't, you know, it's not an integrity issue. It's just maybe a performance issue or whatever the case may be. And those are hard, you know, those are harder.

Right? Because it's like, you know, them, you know, their family, you know, you know, it's like good people. They're good people. Right.

But you have to let them go. When it comes to integrity, I have zero feeling about that. Like, I don't feel anything bad about that. I like I feel zero feeling about letting somebody go.

That is actual that is that is actually. Putting our entire, like we work really, really hard, right? We've been doing, we've been on this, this carnival ride, as Todd calls it for the past five years growing right to this massive deal. And, and somebody is going to jeopardize that by trying to cut a job short or whatever.

I have no feeling about that. Like I, there's, you know, I, I sleep perfectly fine. It didn't even hit my page. It was done.

It was over. And I was able to send that message out to the entire company, you know, really quick. And so, yeah, nobody's going to compromise our integrity. And, you know, one other thing I was going to talk about was, I've seen this before with customer that actually tried to get us to compromise our integrity to benefit them.

You ever seen that happen before? Explain. Yeah. They're like, hey, I've got this extended warranty.

Can you tell them this or that? I see where you're going. Hey, I'm going to do an insurance claim. Can you tell them this or that?

And it's like, no, we can't do that. Absolutely not. We would never do anything like that because what does that tell? First of all, remember, doing the right thing is always the right thing.

You don't have to think about it. If you don't have to think about it, that sure makes it easy. It's very, very simple. and you know it's like no we wouldn't do it because that just tells them like if you're willing to do that what does that what does that say it's the same thing what's the there's a phrase out there if you never lie you don't have to remember anything yeah right oh yeah it's the same thing you just do the right thing and then if you need to go back and back like for whatever reason you know what the normal steps are versus you don't have to think about it but it's crazy to me yeah if i have a customer that came in and asked me to do that for the warranty i wouldn't even work on their car, because I know what's going to happen next. They're probably going to try to find something to point fingers at me.

Or if that's their own customer, this is not how we operate. This is not who we want to operate with. It doesn't make any sense to me. Yeah.

I mean, look, integrity is integrity, and people have ways of justifying things in their own mind as far as what integrity is. And so they say, oh, well, if it's an insurance company, right, or it's an extended warranty company, well, I'm not taking money from the customer. But, man, food's coming off somebody's table. So, actually, that just came to mind.

I remember this now. Now, we had a warranty job, extended warranty job a few months ago, and I wish Tim was here because he dealt with it. He might remember the story better than me. And what happened is he calls the warranty, they're on approval, they say you have to wait, and then we get an email from the manager of the company.

I forget the warranty company's name. It's kind of irrelevant. So Tim gets on the phone. He's like, what's going on?

Now, this will freak you out. I really didn't even think about it till now. So he says, hey, listen, we had a car in your shop like two years ago. You guys tried to sell X, Y, Z.

You didn't follow the process. And he wasn't right. Basically, it was an integrity issue. Now, I had no idea about it.

Tim had no idea about it. This is what happened. We had a service advisor that we hired at the time. And it's funny because I had Tim and Sean used to work with us at the time.

And they both told me, man, I don't have a good feeling for this guy. That's okay. Keep an eye on him. Okay.

The guy could talk. He was a talker. So, you know, very easy to talk to people. So I'm like, oh, maybe he's just too much for them.

Let's see how this goes. But we ended up keeping that guy in the business for one month. I went back and I tracked his record. It was exactly 30 days from the day he started to the day that we let him go because he did something else, an integrity issue that I ended up catching.

And when I caught that next morning, I had to let him go. But in between, he did this other problem with the warranty company. And now Pleasant Carcass reputation was on the line with this warranty company. And then what we end up doing, we found all his pay stubs, the write-up, the day that we had to cut him.

We sent that back to the manager of the warranty company. He reinstated us. He says, thank you for actually taking the time to do this. You guys are good.

Repair is approved. Go on. But unless we saw that email and be like, what's going on here? This isn't normal.

We would have never found out. Because you could have got an email and be like, okay, they didn't approve this job. I don't know. I can help you ship the car.

Yeah. But we're like, what do you mean? Like, we send you all the data, all the information on the vehicle, the mileage, everything is by the book here. Why are you not approving this job?

So I wanted an answer. And they gave me the answer. And that was on us, 100%. And as an owner, obviously, ultimately, it's my responsibility.

Maybe I should have never hired that guy. See, my two other guys could see that there's something wrong with this guy. And that's why you also need good people in your corner. Because sometimes we'll have blind spots, right?

So I need, like you have David on your corner. If you can't see something, I'm expecting if David to come to you and say, Glenn, this is what's going on. Just like Kobe did on this situation. So, Kobe, Glenn, there is something wrong with this car.

Before we release it, we need to find out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody on our team knows that, you know, and after that meeting happened or that termination happened, I brought everybody in individually and I talked to everybody individually. And I explained to them that, that it's the number one priority in our company is that we have integrity with our customers and our, and our, and our team members, period.

If you ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever see anything that you feel is an integrity issue, you bring it right to me. Nobody gets in trouble for that. Nobody loses their job for that. I will make the right decision.

And if you're coming to me with something, one, be sure you know what you're talking about, because I don't ever want to accuse somebody of something. If it's not accurate, I don't want hearsay. I want, and you know, this doesn't happen often, but when it does happen, I need for everybody to understand. There are people that are fearful of blowing a whistle because it could jeopardize their career.

They, they, they could lose their, they feel like they could lose their job. We have a culture here where they understand 100% that is not the case. And, you know, we're all about. You get praise for telling me.

Not lose your career. Like I praise you. See how many times we brought up Kobe's name today. Sure.

Because you get praised for that. Thank you for letting me know. Yeah, thank you for letting me know, man. Our company is on the line.

Our integrity is on the line. Our name is on the line. And we would never, ever, ever, ever take advantage. But, you know, back to the extended warranty deal is like, that's still a customer, right?

I mean, that is a customer that... I mean, they're paying, and if they're paying, they're a customer. We have one in here right now, and it's an extended warranty-approved job. When we got to actually take it apart, so it's an AC line, and it's covered in like, it actually looked like it's leaking.

Okay. It looks like it's leaking. We were doing some other work on the vehicle that it came in for, and we saw this line leak in, and we told the extended warranty about it, and they approved it. Okay?

It's covered in like- Yeah, that oily residue. Right. So now we say, hey, look, before we actually do anything on this, we get Scott. He's going to go ahead and pressure test or he's going to evacuate, recharge it or take the pressures first.

Turns out pressures were perfectly fine. It turned out there's no leak. Really? Yeah, there's no leak.

It looked like it was leaking. Yeah. Because of that, all that residue around there. But when he cleaned it up and he looked at it, I don't know what it was, but it wasn't leaking.

And so it's like, well, perfect. We're going to tell the warranty company and we're just going to take that off the repair. I mean, the parts here already, we ordered the part, assuming it's done, parts going back, it's coming off the ticket. It's like a no brainer, simple decision.

Man, there's people out there that will actually do this stuff. Somebody was telling me this and I was like, what? This is crazy. I mean, I've seen and heard of all kinds of crazy stuff, but squirting transmission fluid on shocks and then driving it down a dusty road.

Yeah. Crazy stuff like that. It's like, man, did you know if you just say yes to customers and you're nice and you hire a players and they will just line up on your drive and you PMI the car, like you take care of your family member, take care of, right. It's like, you will just have an abundance, right.

And you just do the right thing. And so, man, we encourage everybody to come down to, to key to key. Man, it's so fire. And now this weekend, we have something new, which is Courtside over at the Woodlands.

You going to be over there? It actually starts next month. Oh, next month. So Courtside starts in January.

Oh, January. I know you guys were getting set up for it. This is the last key-to-key of the year. It's going to be phenomenal.

Sunday's coming in. Got some gifts. It's going to be great. I got a surprise I can't talk about, too.

But as we're getting close to the end, I wanted to talk about this quote from Warren Buffett. So Warren Buffett, I don't even know his management style, obviously the guy is a legend, he owns I don't even know how many companies, but the way he manages all these companies, he sends out a letter, and that letter could go once a year or once even a couple of years. That's how much he manages. And you can go on YouTube and find this video, you can type in Warren Buffett and what he said on that particular letter.

What's the name of his company? Berkshire Hathaway. Berkshire Hathaway. As a company, we have a lot of money.

We can afford to lose a lot of money. We cannot afford to lose a thread of reputation. Yeah. I mean, talk about integrity.

What level of integrity does that guy keep his team accountable to? Sure. But look what he's been able to build because of it. So would you like to work with Warren Buffett knowing that, man, this guy keeps everybody accountable.

He says, I'm willing to lose money versus my reputation. Yeah. That is powerful. Yeah, it's powerful, man.

He's obviously, that guy's got it figured out. What a stud. But yeah, man, integrity. It's so important.

We just really, really encourage everybody to come and check out what we do. It's a lot of fun getting in the trenches with our team, learning how to operate Todd's perfected business model, Auto Hospitality, Key2Key this weekend, Courtside next weekend. Reach out to Todd Westerlin. Man, it's a blast.

And we just hope everybody can come and join and check us out, follow us on LinkedIn and just see what we've got. I know there's just a lot of cool stuff coming up in the future. So anything else, Charlie, you want to add? No, super excited.

I'm glad we got to talk about this subject. Very important. Hope to see you at Key2Key. Have a great weekend.

Hey, thank you guys. That's Master Tech to Millionaire from Autoshop Answers, man. We look forward to seeing you guys soon. Thank you so much.

Have a great day.