PMI or Die w/ The Rack Attack King Charlie Zlatkos

What's up, players? This is episode, I think, 11, maybe, of Master Tech to Millionaire. I'm Joe Adams with Adams Automotive, the number one shop in America. Like I said, this is Master Tech to Millionaire presented by Autoshop Answers, where we talk about the transition from technician to business owner CEO.

We are here with none other than, it's actually his second appearance on the podcast, the GOAT, PMI or Die, immediate impact on sales, Charlie Zalakos. Charlie, how are you doing today? What's up, Joe? The goat, huh?

Oh, the goat of PMI. Absolutely. So, hey, man, how's the store doing? How's the dream team doing today?

Oh my God. They're on fire right now. It's a 339 local, so it's almost five o'clock Eastern. What are they at today?

Over 35,000 right now. 35,000. Okay. So let's back up a little bit. When you started with Todd, what was your monthly revenue number?

Well, I used to do between 20 and 30,000 a month. So now you're doing 20, 30,000 a day. Absolutely. Every day.

Man, how do you do that? What if there was, maybe if there was like a system and a process that you just follow every time, like it's clockwork, man, maybe you could do 35K all the time. Is that kind of how you run your store? That is exactly how we run the store.

I mean, you know that there's a systematic approach, the way we inspect the cars, but I should probably tell you a little story you might not even know, but before I started my own business and before Todd Hayes days. The places I used to work for before never inspected anything. We really just used to fix broke cars. So if a car came in broken, obviously we had to fix that.

Car came in for an oil change, he got an oil change and he left the shop. I used to kind of naturally sell some work. I didn't even know that I was selling at the time, but I would see something wrong and I would tell the customer, hey, your brakes are worn. Or I used to sell a lot of timing belt jobs. if I saw 100,000 miles or whatever the case was because I just didn't want it to break and now they end up with a valve job.

And that was the whole sales process. There was no sales process and it wasn't good for the shop. It wasn't good for the customer. Obviously, you're letting broke cars leave your shop if you don't do that.

Yeah. So most people get into the business because they love fixing cars. The classic e-myth, they're the technician. There's three people, the technician, the entrepreneur, and the manager.

And they don't actually realize that this is a sales job. Nothing happens unless something is sold. I don't care how good of a technician somebody is. Charlie, you can probably take a transmission in and out of a car in a couple of hours.

You're a master certified hammer technician, but nothing happens unless something is sold. Something we talk about in training all the time is speed of service, speed of sales, predictability of customers, predictability of cars. We're actually going to talk more today about just some literal training. We're going to literally just train on rack attack from the master himself, the PMI process.

Typically, we get on here and tell stories about shop owners' histories, et cetera, and their journey. But today is just going to be straight pipe training from the master himself on how to PMI cars faster. So to me, as a salesperson, the number one bottleneck in any auto repair shop is getting the, numbers out of the car. I got to know what numbers working with.

So Charlie is the absolute master. And I'm going to walk through some stories later at getting through the inspections as fast as possible so that the front of the house can do their job to feed the back of the house. So Charlie, let's say you were walking into a shop anywhere USA and they were doing, they hadn't realized that life is predictable and they didn't have an inspection process. They're not looking over cars and they want to implement rack attack.

What are like the fastest two or three things? What are the first couple of things that you would do to set up the rack attack process in that job? So obviously right now, especially in all the shops in Houston, we have speed racks and stuff, which make the process faster. Can you explain what a speed rack is?

So a speed rack, all it is, it's a two post lift, but instead of having the four legs on the lift, it basically, it's a platform. The car drives over it. You put some rubber blocks underneath the car, and then the moto is also much faster than a regular lift, so it goes up twice the speed. It flies.

So it definitely makes the process faster. But in Boston stores, I don't have a speed rack. I have just regular two-pulse lifts, so you can still do it with a regular lift. The process is very simple.

How about I just give you some basics on the process? Yeah, yeah. Number one thing, actually, before you do anything, before you even inspect a car, you need to notify the customer of what you're going to do. You're going to tell them that.

Good point. Let's say the car comes in for an oil change. You need to tell them, hey, during our oil change service, we're going to inspect your vehicle to make sure that everything is in tip-top shape. Because the last thing you want, you don't want the car to be on the lift, the wheels are off, the calipers are flipped open, and now the customer is like, what's going on with my car?

What did you do? Yes, you're exactly right. Can't breeze past that. And I'm always going to assume that the customer is going to allow me to do this.

And the way that I'm going to do that is with a new customer introduction. If you haven't been to training, please quick shout out to auto shop answers. Please come down to Houston, see how we do it. You can do a VIP day, work in our stores, work in Charlie's store, but at the front counter, smile.

It's free. We're going to smile more. We're going to do a strong meet and greet as Todd says, and we're going to become best friends with the customer as fast as possible. build a relationship, be kind, smile. And I'm going to tell them at the end of that interaction, hey, while the vehicle's in here, I'm just going to do a quick once over for any safety related items.

If your wheel's about to fall off your car, I'll be sure to let you know. Does that sound good? And I've never, I'm telling you, if you're nice, they don't tell you no. They just, they go, oh, okay.

I didn't know you did that. And once in a blue moon, man. Maybe somebody will hesitate, but I'm telling you, it's all in the presentation. So first things first, I got to get permission to inspect the car, like Charlie says, but I'm going to do it with confidence and I'm going to assume that they're going to let me inspect their car.

I'm going to tell them what I'm going to do. So what happens next? Yep. And actually one last point on that.

You don't ask them if they want you to inspect the car, you tell them. You tell them. The doctor doesn't ask you, do you want me to check your blood pressure? He just puts the thing on and tests it.

So you have to direct them because you have to understand we're in the industry all the time. We're in cars all the time. They are not, they don't know, they don't even have an idea what it's supposed to look like. So we just basically hold their hand and we guide them throughout the process.

Now, on the inspection process, very, very basic. We take the car, let's say it's just an oil change now, not a broke car. Okay. Okay.

So if it's just an oil change, I take it up and down the street, just around the block, whatever your road test conditions are, but you don't need to go on a 10-minute test drive. Really, a two-minute test drive up and down the street because you'll be able to see if the alignment pulls, if there's any warning lights on, if there's any road noise, rattling noises, knocking noises, stuff like that. Wheel bearings? Wheel bearings.

We're in New England, obviously, up in Boston. We work in a ton of Subarus. We do so many wheel bearings, and it takes us just about 30 seconds or a minute to identify that. Wait, are you saying that the cars are predictable?

The wheel bearings break on Subarus all the time? All the time. Every car is predictable, pretty much. Okay, so I'm getting the car right in the inspection base.

Speed of sales, right? Like it's going right away? Or do I park it? Walk people through that process.

Yeah, so we take the car for a test drive. The car comes in. I do like an ideal team. It's two people inspecting the vehicle.

All day. So seven days a week, we're open. You have two people rack attacking at all times. Rack attacking at all times.

The ideal scenario is one GS and one service advisor on the car. Okay, so the seller and somebody helping to move the cars in and out. Got it? Yeah.

So let's say the GS takes the car for a test drive. Then the car comes in. Now the service advisor is outside the car. We do a very quick light check.

Check the front light. Check the rear lights. Check wiper blades. That takes really about 30 seconds.

Very, very fast. You can also see if the state inspection is expired, right? Imagine if a car came in for service. Now you did a service and they left and the state inspection sticker is expired.

And you taught me this. Always PMI for the oil change. Like people forget to check that it'll be in for a state inspection or it'll be in for an alignment. And PMI the oil change.

Make sure and look for it. Yeah, I mean, imagine if a car came in for a brake noise check engine light. Let's say a check engine light, right? And you take care of the check engine light.

You found some worn out brakes and you sold all that work. And then they pick up the car two days later. And now the oil change is overdue. Now they have to bring the car back to you.

That's a bad deal. So sometimes the oil change is actually the additional concern. Or our call center will call them and get them back, you know, to remind them of their oil change. It's like, man, my car was just in there.

It doesn't look pro. It's just not a good scenario for the customer. So keep going. So a car comes in, we open the, we check the lights and then what do we do?

Check the lights. Then we open the hood. The next thing before the engine shuts off, we check motor mounts. So the GS that's in the car stays in it, puts the vehicle in drive.

Then we check if there's any movement in the motor mounts in drive. If there's any movement in the motor mounts in reverse, then we shut the engine off. I got a question for you. So how do you, what are you looking for in a good general service technician, like a good person for this hypothetical role, if somebody's trying to implement it?

Like what, is it their speed? Is it knowledge? Is it their experience? What are you looking for?

So actually, first things first, I like in the shop, not I like, I mean, it's a must now, our service advisors and our GSs have to be the first ones in the shop. And we have a certain time, the shop opens at seven, every service advisor has to be there by 645, because we're on our take five, every GS has to be there by seven. The technicians, we don't mind because of the way we run the process. They can come in later because once I sell the job and I get the parts in, they can fix the car at any time.

But the service advisors and GSs have to be there. That's number one priority because when I get the first wave of cars, I need to be able to service that customer with speed. Now, next thing on Egeos, obviously, we teach them some basic technical items, right? We teach them how to scan codes.

We teach them how to test the batteries. We teach them how good brakes and bad brakes look like. Very basic information. We teach them how to torque wheels.

All the basic stuff that we need. Now, one of the things that you really need to be good at when you're inspecting cars is to have very good observation of what's going on. Because that will come so handy down the road. So you're talking about predictability.

Every car pretty much of the same make, same model, brakes the exact same way. So they come off the factory floor. I'm going to tell you guys a story, okay? We are at Barker Cypress, okay?

And we are, you remember what car I'm about to bring up? Yeah, yeah. It's a Lexus. So pop quiz before I keep going.

Charlie, what brakes on a Lexus? Water pump control lamps. That's about it. Pretty much everything else is rock solid.

Valve covers don't leak like they do in other cars. Maybe they do once in a while, but man, if a car comes in with a coolant leak, what has it got a 99% chance of being? That would be a pop quiz water pump. It's a water pump.

It was a water pump on the last one, so it's probably a water pump on this one. So anyway, I'm going to tell you the story. So Charlie, talk about immediate impact on sales. We talk about in training all the time, A players will change your life.

Charlie is the ultimate A player. He gets up at two in the morning Boston time, works out, goes to the airplane, gets on the airplane, lands in Houston. It's like a four hour flight. A rental car gets to the Barker Cypress location.

This is last year. The store is about a year old at this point. I think we were already crushing through a pretty good day at that point. There was like an engine or something, but he gets there at noon and immediate impact on sales.

I'm talking the shop is buzzing. Everybody knows what that shop feels like when you're buzzing and it's just got major momentum. Carr comes in on the hook. By the way, he said, Joe, my entire job is to stare at the hook.

I'm like a saw. I'm like a buzzsaw. Like, show me the hook. And when there is nothing on the hook, I'm like a dog.

I'm like itching for something on the hook. When there is a car on the hook, when there is a ticket on the hook, I go nuts. So he gets a car on the hook. It was a Lexus in for a coolant leak.

And he goes, Chaz, ride it up for a water pump. Build the estimate right now. I want you to sell this in the next five minutes. And he opens up the hood, puts the scope camera.

Somebody bring me the car in, please. Give me the, yeah. And then he said, bring the car in. He opens up the hood, puts the boroscope camera right down into it and points it to just puking coolant right where it always breaks the exact same way.

And guess what? that estimate was sold, you know, I mean, before the car was even done being expected. Do you want to walk us through the rest of that story? Yeah. I mean, that car, we brought it in, took the video, sent it to the customer.

Obviously, Charles had already built the estimate because we assumed it's the water pump. And guess what? I was right. Yeah.

And that job was sold, I think, within three minutes of touching the ticket. Literally in three minutes. So I'm going to get into, well, no, let's get into it right now. I got, we've got data that when you are calling an automotive repair shop or you're calling any business to book an appointment for something, did you know that your close ratio on booking that appointment gets cut in half by the time the phone rings the second time?

Wow. That is mind blowing. So that is, yes. And so when you are presenting work to a customer, it's the same thing.

Every minute that goes by, you are literally, your close ratio is going off a cliff. and after 15 minutes of that car being there, they are ready to go, especially if it's an oil change or if it's a state inspection. Speed of service is the number one thing in our business, and it just comes from intensity. So I have to get the number into the customer's brain as fast as possible to make sure that I have as high as possible of a close ratio on that ticket so that I can get our technicians unlimited hours and do all the amazing things we get to do with our business. But.

I can't do that if I have to do what, Charlie? If I have to physically build the estimate and source the parts for every single job in the industry. So what happens in the industry is there's a 50-50 close ratio on whether or not I'm getting that water pump. But for us, we're going to go ahead and just get the number because we've sold it a million times before.

We utilize RepairPal all the time for gravy jobs. We're not talking about even more complex stuff, which actually, I'll let you tell the timing chain story here in a minute however i've sold a water pump a million times i know i have history i know how much it should cost on a 2016 lexus rx whatever so why can't i get the the estimate together while we're inspecting the car and then present it with speed to to ensure that the customer gets the best service and so charlie is just the best in the world at getting that information out of the car so let me back up charlie we got sidetracked during the oh yeah jump in. It's not even just important for us only, because now you'll be able to control the flow of your shop and the rest of your day and all that. I believe it's super important for the customer.

Yeah. Now, let's say you are a customer, you're a waiting customer. You came in for an oil change, okay? And you go and you sit down, you have a cup of coffee, you play on your phone, maybe you read your emails, you go on social media, whatever you do.

I believe 10 minutes into it or 15 minutes may feel like an hour. Oh yeah. If you've been sitting there for 15 minutes, you feel like you've been sitting there for an hour. So your close ratio, just like you said, goes down.

And I also believe if I identify the problem that fast, why don't I tell you what's going on? Let me find you a solution, even if that's a loaner car, or let me get you a ride home or whatever that is, or let me get you to work, so we'll take care of the car while you're working, because I think it's unfair to have them waste their time here, knowing that I have a broken item on the car, and they don't have that information here. Absolutely. And it doesn't, especially on the oil changes, because you don't need the price yet to present the leaking, you know, the oil out of their vehicle or the metal to metal brakes that you inspected with your PMI process with Charlie, who's super fast or you're super fast.

Yes, I just need to get the information into the customer's head that it's no longer a waiter oil change. Now my car has something wrong with it Let me get some more information from you Or let me get some more information and i'll get you that estimate here just as quickly as I can the point is. How to identify a really talented front of the house salesperson And how to identify one that's not one that's not is somebody who is afraid to go and talk to the customer and they go into The computer I see it all the time and they go and type up the estimate and they get it together I'm, like no We know how much it is It's like there is a canned job for brakes on, you know, a Porsche or on whatever car is in the shop because we've done it a million times before. We're not talking about like ultra specific, you know, custom or not custom.

That's not the right word. But you guys get the idea of what I'm saying. We're talking about the 80 percent jobs, gravy jobs that have been in your shop a million times before. Techmetric has a great tool called canned jobs.

Just take a day and build out a bunch of canned jobs. Charlie, you're going to say something. Yeah, also on that, so obviously we use Techmetric, it's a cloud-based software. I love Techmetric, by the way.

It makes my life so easy. I can work on the road, I can touch stuff anywhere I am. But a few months ago, I think maybe this story might go back eight or nine months ago, the... Cloud-based side wasn't working, like the server, something had happened to the service, and it wasn't working in the morning.

Obviously, with Eastern Time, we're ahead of you, so we open in the morning, we don't have Techmetric access, couldn't build estimates. I said to the guys, they're like, oh, how are we going to do this? I'm like, easy. We're going to repair it, pal, we see what the price is, and we sell it.

So first car, I'll never forget, Curtis is working at the neutral location then before he moved to the water down location. I remember he's right next to me. It's an Acura MDX. It was stowed in the night before.

We bring it in. We're identifying it's an alternator. Alternator has failed. We're going to repair power, whatever that estimate was.

Let's call it. I think it was about $1,100. Calls the customer and he tells them the following. Mr.

Customer, we were able to identify exactly what's going on with your car. The alternator has failed. I'll be able to take care of this later for you today. Later on today, my software is currently out.

I can't use it, but I know from experience, this job is around $1,100. So I am going to go ahead and get started on this and give you a call later on with an update. Let me guess. What did they say?

Please take care of it. Yeah. This would be the best phone number. It's like they brought you a broken car.

You've done it a million times before. It costs $1,100 to do it. It's like brakes, man. It's like your fluids, it's, it's an alignment.

It's an axle, it's tires. Like you, when you've done it for as long as Charlie, I mean, Charlie, you've been doing this 30 years, correct? Like you have to operate with massive speed. I want to talk about your Watertown location.

Mm-hmm. Two bays, correct? Yes. Four lifts.

You actually technically have a fifth lift, but it's like kind of around the back. We have a fifth lift. It's 50 square feet. It's literally like there's one bathroom.

There's 15 parking spots max, and you got a bunch of employees there. There's probably six customer parking spots, correct? You have to lease out the neighbor's driveway. What are you going to do in revenue out of that store this year?

So right now, anywhere between four, maybe even we'll try to push for 5 million. Okay. So you're telling me, what's the all-time record? I think it was like two months ago, right?

Yeah, we did 412,000. 412,000. So the industry's got all these funky KPIs about bay efficiency and effective labor rate and your actual technician productivity per bay. He's doing a million dollars a year per bay. That's pretty productive.

That would be like if my family shop did 50 million out of one location. That would be so sick one day. That'd be like 150K days every day. But a million dollars per bay, because you don't actually have to fix the cars.

We talk about say yes at any time of the day. If a car comes in at 530 on the phone, hey, I got to check engine light. Can you guys check that out for me? I'm going to say the following.

Absolutely. Is now a good time to bring in the vehicle? And then I'm going to give Charlie a ticket on the hook. It's going to be on the hook and I'm going to plug the scanner into it.

And it's going to be a misfire, and I'm going to get a technician to confirm exactly what I need to put on the vehicle, and I'm going to sell the job for $1,000 or whatever it is. And then guess when I get to fix it? Later. This job is very hard in the afternoons if you're not closing deals in the morning when the customers are coming in.

If you're saying yes on the phone constantly to oil changes and broke cars, and you're not converting them to safety concerns or revenues coming into the shop, you will be running around your shop like a crazy person at about three o'clock and you can't say yes on the phone at the end of the day and you actually have to get these cars out. It sucks. But if you can be really, really fast on checking it in the front end, get them a price super, super, super, super fast. It's all, the work is sold.

There's nothing else to do. I've been in your shop on a $22,000 day and your team's got the picnic table out and they're eating lunch at about two o'clock. And I'm like, what, I'm like, what are you, what are you guys doing? There's 20,000 sold.

And they're like, it's all either done or we're waiting on parts. Exactly how. You could do more. You, it's like one of my dad's phone rules is an early answer keeps the phone from ringing.

If you are updating customers, giving them an answer early, the phone will not be ringing in the afternoon and the technicians can be getting to work. It's fire. Anyway. So there's a little more to it for the people that don't know our process, right?

So we bring the car in, we inspect the car really fast, we sell the job to the customer, we get them home. Now that car is in the parking lot. We also, the way we run it here is we do what we call the breakdown of the cell. So we do the isolated consent.

That is basically what they came in for. The water pump on the Lexus earlier. The water pump, that's an isolated consent. Then we inspect the car.

If it is, let's say, a safety concern, let's say the brakes are lower, the struts are leaking, or the bulge is bad, that is your next cell. So we break down the cell, we have the isolated consent, which was our water pump. Let's say the brakes are worn out. Now we're going to call them and sell the brakes.

That car is still in the parking lot. And then the last stage is the maintenance items. Any maintenance items that may be due on the vehicle. We always check Carfax.

We check the history of the vehicle. And we check manufacturing recommendations. Okay. Now we make the last call.

We talk to them about maintenance. Let's assume all the job is sold. Now we have on the water pump, those Lexus water pumps are very time consuming. Some of them are six or seven hours.

Then we'll have brakes for maybe front brakes, rear brakes, and a brake fluid exchange, another three or four hours. Now we're at 11. Let's say we have another three hours of fluid exchanges. And filters.

That is a 14 or 15 hour ticket. Gravy. On that same car. Now that car is still in the parking lot.

Obviously, we have made arrangements with a customer for a loaner car or whatever they need to get around because as long as we solve that problem for them, we're fine to keep the car overnight and fix it tomorrow. Now, once all the parts arrive, what do I do? I take that ticket, I take the parts, I go to a technician, and I give him a 14-hour ticket. Any great technician, and I said great technician.

Matt Doak. Right? Somebody, you want your technicians to do quality work that doesn't come back. Any great technician will be able to do that job in one-third of the book time.

For sure. Okay. So now he gets to make a lot of money. The customer is getting the car fully serviced, back on the road, and the shop is very happy and it doesn't get bogged down.

So by running this process, you are able to say yes on the phone on that 5 or 5.30 oil change call. If you don't run this process and the shop is backed up, you can do that. The car, so let's walk you through typical industry workflow dispatch process. So let's call it 8 a.m.

The car comes in at 8 a.m. For check brakes. It goes straight to a technician and it gets on the lift straight up, check the brakes, yep, it needs brakes. They're gonna sell them the brakes, okay? 50-50 if they get the brakes anyway, let's say they get the brakes, time's ticking.

Now they wait on the brakes to show up, 45 minutes go by. How often do you get parts to show up? They're not the right parts. Oh, all the time is all over.

Right. Okay. While that's happening, the technician is inspecting the car on the rack, the brakes show up. Let's say they're right.

And he gets to work on the car. Now the service advisor has to go back in there and call the customer and maybe get additionals if that. And let's say, let's say he does get them. Then they have to order the parts again.

Then okay where's the car still on the rack now it's like 10 o'clock in the morning and that's assuming you get the sale and you get the right brake parts on the first time let's say he does get the additional repair or the additional parts order the parts they show up later in the afternoon let's say they get there around one o'clock two o'clock technician can you know he was working on another car that was on another lift and now he comes back to this one he's working on it that might be brakes let's say he gets all those 14 hours that car is sitting on the lift basically the whole day, like the entire day. It never moved. For us, it's sitting on the bay for, on the lift for 15 minutes. We inspect the entire car, take pictures of everything, put them in TechMetric, amazing, put motor visuals on there.

And like Charlie says, the car goes to the parking lot and then I get permission to inspect the rest of the car and sell the rest of the work. So I sell 14 hours of work on the car, roll a cart full of parts to a technician and then he bangs it out in one third book time and it's only on there for a few hours versus 14 hours. I mean, like the entire day, if you're lucky to even sell it in the first place because your speed was so slow. So then that's our advantage.

That also leads to another problem. Probably we shouldn't go into this podcast. That's a different podcast, but that leads to a problem that shops have with shortage of technicians. See, if you run a shop with this kind of efficiency, my technicians are super happy for many, many reasons.

So like I said, when I started, I used to work for shops who were waiting for broke cars. Those are very difficult. They're slow, man. Right?

Yeah. So they're hard to work. Obviously, you're going to get your easy ones, your alternators, your misfires, those are easy. But overall, a broke car is very difficult.

Also, by not running this process, you're putting your customer in a situation that the car will break versus being proactive here. And now on the technician side, we call this gravy work. Yeah. Because it is so predictable.

It's common. You're going to get good quality parts. And like I say, you're going to have a good quality technician do it. The cam by rate is so little.

Versus we had a conversation earlier on today, me and you and Todd about transmissions, remember? Yeah. And that might be one of the worst business to be in. It's very difficult because the comeback rate is 50% on transmission rebuild shops.

It's a very hard business. TNG, totally not gravy. It's a very difficult business. What we do on those cars, we still fix them.

I will buy a factory direct remanufactured unit. it. It will come with a 100,000 mile warranty. If I put it on, they will pay my labor to replace it. Everybody's covered.

I will not take it apart and try to rebuild it. Yes. Okay. So I want to go to another thing that I forgot to talk about, which is the technician should not be inspecting the car because they're going to write up the vehicle for what they are biased to work on.

We inspect the car in the front with the assistance of technicians to confirm because we're not technicians, we're salespeople. So we got to be careful. I have to get a technician to confirm it. But if I dispatch 15 tickets to five different technicians, I'm going to get a different write-up on every single car, because guess what?

It's subjective. People have opinions. Technician A loves working on electrical diagnostics and suspension components. And Technician B, he only wants to work on oil leaks and gravy breaks and et cetera, easy stuff.

They have different opinions. I've been under a car before with a technician, and you know what he said to me? There was an oil pan that was borderline seep slash leak. And I asked him his opinion.

He said, four o'clock Friday afternoon, that's a seep. I'll see you on Monday. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. That was when it locked it in my mind.

Like, oh, wow, we have to be in control of the pictures and videos. So it's all documented and written up the same way every time. Man, Joe, I'm so glad you brought that up. I have so many stories on that.

So I'll tell you one story. Again, it's a Friday afternoon. This is way before we started utilizing this process, right? And it was a wheel bearing.

I think it was a Buick Oldsmobile, something like this. This is years ago. So Technici gets the wheel bearing installed. It's a front wheel bearing hub assembly.

Puts the car together, brings it down, takes it for a ride, gives me the keys. And what does he say? He says, oh, by the way, this guy needs brakes that worn out. After the car is done.

After it's done. Now, I said, let me get this straight. So you had, in order to do the bearing, you had to take the brakes off the car. You can't do it without it.

And you chose to put it back together, to hand me the keys, and to tell me that it needs breaks because you want to go home because it's a Friday afternoon. I think that was the day I changed the whole process. Yes. Look, it is a hard job.

Running a business will dang near, it'll add more stress to your life. Like, you know, it's hard to implement a process in a business. You know what else is hard? Fixing cars.

They're two completely different skill sets. I am the least handy person on planet earth. I cannot do a single thing to fix stuff around the house. I'm like completely useless.

I'm completely useless, but it's because my brain functions differently than a technician's on average, a technician, it's, it's either in that situation, it might've been like a laziness issue or something like that, but it's like, Hey man, I got the direction to fix the wheel bearing. Maybe he didn't, maybe he just was zoned out. He was thinking about fantasy football or something, and he just didn't put, you know, he wasn't, he doesn't think about the process and the business like every day, nonstop, like you did, you know, but what do you think? The technicians cannot think, and I'm a technician, right?

A stud technician. But I obviously had to learn the business side and how to deal with the customers. So if we take that kind of story I told you, how fair is that to my customer or to the shop? See, they're both losing.

The customer now either have to keep the car overnight and try to sell the job because I can't let them go without telling them. And the shop could have been revenue generated right in the front if we knew it, right? So none of those things happened. And that's why I said, so you have to learn the business side.

So if you allow your technicians to do your DVIs, it's a big disservice. And it's the other thing too that you said. Certain technicians like to do certain things. So let's say I have an F-250 in the shop and the ball joints are falling apart.

And this technician is not a fan of doing ball joints on those tracks. That means I will never know that truck has bad bulgeyes. And now I'm putting my customer on the road with a car with bad bulgeyes because this guy is too lazy or doesn't like to do that. Not in my watch.

That is unfair to the customer. Yes, they're literally biased internally to like the safety of the customer is in the hands of each and every individual technician's basically mood for the day. And we love our technicians. Oh my gosh, I love our tech.

I could not live without our technicians. But the second I was underneath the car and they said, man, Friday afternoon at four o'clock, that's a seat. Why should that matter? I have to tell the customer no matter what I got to document it.

What if it springs a leak tomorrow? And that's something we say in training, by the way, is if it could happen tomorrow, it could happen tomorrow. I, you know, it's like if a ball joint has play in it, I've heard people say, well, it might have six more months. It could, but what could it go out tomorrow, if there's a 1% chance that something could be wildly unsafe, like a ball joint on a customer's car, I have to treat it like it's a safety concern.

My favorite thing is, they used to have a safety inspection here in Texas. They got rid of it, which is crazy. It's just emissions now. And as long as the car would stop, it passed for the brake inspection.

How mind-blowing is that? So if it has one millimeter or it's basically metal to metal and I'm not going to see them for 12 months for their next state inspection, it's still passed. That's the most mind blowing thing ever. So now in Boston, they still safety inspections, which is great.

Great. But. The brakes, like you said, could be one millimeter and it will still pass. Now, in the customers, again, I want you guys to start thinking like a customer, not like a technician.

For us, it's very easy to fix our cars anytime I want to bring my car in the shop and I repair it. Now, if a customer comes in and they get a stain inspection and they pass, in their mind, they feel like their car is safe. Correct. They're like, oh, I just passed stain inspection, so it must be good.

They don't know any better. It's literally our professional obligation to inform them. They don't have to do it. That is their choice.

But it's my job as a professional to inform you. I tell everyone in training, I want you to think that you are the doctor. When you go to a doctor for a physical, or let's say you go to a doctor for a broken arm, you broke your arm, and they find during their test process that there's something wrong with your heart. Wouldn't you want to know?

I don't think they're going to skip it. They will tell you. Yeah. It's if they don't tell you and you go home and you have a heart attack, they're in big trouble, right?

Yeah. They have to tell you. So it's our job to inform our customers the condition of the vehicle because they don't know. And here's a great script for overcoming objections.

If you ever get a customer who says, man, every time I bring my car into you guys to Pleasant Car Care, you guys try to sell me something and I'm just not feeling it today. Here's what you say. I totally understand, Mr. Customer.

You are not obligated to buy from us, but it is our professional obligation to look over your car, let you know how it is. The worst phone call I can get is two weeks from now, you're on a road trip with your kids and you're broken down on the side of the freeway or you got oil leaking on your brand new driveway. That's the worst call we can get. So we're always going to look it over here at Pleasant Car Care.

You don't have to do business with us, but I am obligated to let you know. And I have never, ever, and then I walk them through the rest of the process. I have never had a customer hear that and be like, and just blow me up at the counter. It's like, oh, wow.

Yeah, I actually don't. I know it hurts to spend money, but I actually don't want to be broken down in the heat with my kids in the back of the truck. I have a great story for that. I have a top, top, top tier customer.

His name is Jeff. I'm not going to say his last name. Top tier customer. We'll take care of all his family's vehicles they have five cars brings in the kids car i think this is uh i don't remember now when a few months ago and we just serviced the wife's car serviced jeff's personal car and this is the son's car and i think we're doing tires on it came in for tires and he actually said jokingly he's like he talked to eddie in the front he's like eddie don't call me about anything else and he's like, no problem, Jeff, but you know, I'm going to take a look.

I'm going to do my job. So I have the car on the lift and it is pouring. Transfer case fluid out. I mean, pouring.

This was not a little leak. The whole bottom of the car, it's covered on fluid. So I'm like, Eddie, we have to take a video and we have to send it to Jeff. I cannot not tell him because as you guys know, the transfer cases don't hold too much fluid.

If he keeps driving, the son is about to take the car and go to Vermont. I think they have a house in Vermont. The son is about to take the car after we do the tires and drive to Vermont. And guess what?

That transfer case is going to seize on the way. So Andy sends the inspection report to Jeff, and then he calls him. But Jeff was driving, and he never saw the video. Andy's trying to sell the job, and he's like, man, very weird.

Jeff didn't do it. I'm like, what do you mean Jeff didn't do it? Like, he was very odd. One of your best customers says, I don't want to do it.

I say, did he watch the video? Did he watch the video? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, did he watch the video?

He's like, no, he said he's driving. He doesn't have time to watch the video. I said, Eddie, make him watch the video. Pull over.

Your son is going to be in this vehicle. Okay, keep going. So actually, Eddie just shooting a message. He's like, Jeff, this is very important.

When you have a minute, please watch the video. Guess what? Five minutes later, Jeff calls. And he's like, oh my God, I had no idea it's that bad.

How fast can you take care of it? Yep. We had one last week. It was a Volvo puking oil. and, you know, I'm watching Donovan sell it.

It's like $2,400. And, you know, he didn't really go through the script or anything. He just kind of clicked the authorized button like in the first 10 seconds of being on the call. And so I asked him afterward.

I'm like, man, what happened there? That was quick. And he goes, oh, he watched the video and he goes, oh my God, yeah, fix it. Like first words out of his mouth.

You can tell on a Rilla call, shout out Rilla, they're great partners. Listen to your phone calls, coach your team. Anyway, you can tell on a Rilla call if they've seen the video or not. And I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever.

Ever sell a job without having the customer see the video. Cause I don't care how good you are at sales. The video is just better than you are at. I mean, it's a picture or a, in a video of their car that, and it's puking oil.

I don't need to know anything about cars to know that, you know, transfer case fluid coming out of the car is not good. So while we're on the topic, do you want to talk about, you know, during that PMI process, how do you take videos? I know a lot of people take 57 pictures or they do a whole DVI and they can't get it underneath 45 minutes for the process. You want to walk them through how we do our process, how we take our videos?

Absolutely. I have actually seen those DVI inspection reports and they do look good. But again, I want you to think that the customer doesn't know anything. So if you took 50 pictures and even if 45 of the 50 are great and you send it to my wife, per se, she won't even look at them.

Correct, 100%. It is overwhelming to them. Even if you write notes or your air filter is in great shape, your tire is in great shape, it doesn't matter. It is overwhelming.

So this is how we do our inspections. We only take 100% of the time we take pictures of the battery test. Okay, because I want to know the condition of the body. I want to make sure my team is actually inspecting that.

Now, anything else? Again, I think we've gone away from the pictures almost all together. We'll take pictures of air filters and cabin filters maybe. It's just like when you go to the doctor, it's like they take your blood pressure, they get you on the scale, they make you go, ah, and they listen to your heartbeat.

It's like kind of the battery, the filters, some very basic stuff like the belt. I'm going to take a picture of those. I won't even take pictures of good filters, but I'm talking just the actual pictures. I think we've shifted pretty much everything to videos now.

I mean, a video is just so much more powerful, so much better for the customer to see. So now we inspect the car, we will only take videos of what's bad and that's it. Correct. Yes.

Preach. Because first of all, it makes our process very fast and this is how our efficiency is high. this is how the car is in the parking lot. This is how we transfer that information to the customer immediately. And even if the customer is aware, let me give you guys a little tip.

Still, let's say if a customer is aware, I will bring them out, I'll personally going to show them on the car, because that is the best way to present that job. They're going to see what's going on. They're going to take a ride home and they're gone. I still record a video and I put it in the file with AI, Exactly.

So fast. And I send it to them for their records and for my records. If there's ever a question down the road, let's say there's a woman that came in with her kids this morning for an oil change and we sold the brakes. Now, could it be a possibility that the husband may want to get some more information and question that $1,500 that she spent today?

So how about the husband calls me and says, oh, you guys took advantage of my wife because I drove the car last night to go to the supermarket. I didn't feel anything wrong with the brakes. Now, I need to have that information presented to him. Down pat, yep.

So no car leaves the bay without taking that video. And it's very, very fast, right? So that is a very important. And it takes away decision fatigue.

It's like, I don't have to think as long as it's a certainty that every single time that's happening. It's like I watched Todd, we were at an airport Chili's, I think, and they carted him. And Todd is, you know, he's in his 60s and he's got gray hair. And it's like we laughed at him, but it's a great exercise.

It's like, man, that gentleman is carting every single person so that the GM of that store knows nobody's going to slip through the cracks. And, you know, I love that. It's like decision fatigue. Just take the video every single time.

Just take the video. You'll never know when you're going to need it, right? It's just great practice. And then we send that video to the customer.

We sell the job. And again, the reason we do this, it's because it's fast. Now, imagine if I sat underneath the car and I took a video of the tires, I took a video of the brakes, I took a video of the struts, I took a video of the control arms, I took a video of the exhaust, I took a video of the radiator. How long am I going to be with the car?

It's going to take me an hour. So I don't need to take all these videos because I'm assuming most of the cars that come in the shop, they only need a couple of items. Correct. They don't have a hundred things broken with them.

So, why am I wasting all this time to take a bunch of pictures or videos that are not useful to me or the customer? It's exactly like the doctor. It's like, if I go in, they're going to make me do ah, and they're going to check my heart rate, et cetera. And then they're going to check the thing that I came in for, which in this case is a broken wrist.

They're going to take an x-ray of my wrist. They're going to tell me they're taking an x-ray, by the way. And then they're going to order the repair. They're going to order the, like, they're not going to tell me, hey, you need an MRI and a brain scan and a CT scan, and we need to do an EKG, and we need to take your x-ray of your left foot.

It's like, they just fix what you came in for, and they check the basics. We do the exact same thing. You know, I heard recently that a doctor can order 155 different blood tests. Yeah.

So imagine if you went to the doctor and he sent you for blood work and they had to take so many vials to run 150 tests. I mean, there'd be no blood left in you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But can you imagine that?

That's never going to happen. So why are we doing all the rest of the work? A doctor is not doing it. If he sees, let's say your cholesterol is high or whatever the number is, he will order a specific test for you to go in and take that just one test or maybe two tests.

He's not going to order 155 tests. I see all these debates online on whether or not technicians should get paid for DVIs. And I'm like, the technician should not be doing DVIs. Like I'm going to inspect the car with my master technician at the front of the shop in 15 minutes.

And I'm just going to take pictures on an iPhone of the easy stuff, like of the broken stuff. Like, look, let's talk about this. There is data. If I do the tech metric inspection process and I do the 57 point multi-point inspection and I show a customer 55 green items on their car and two red ones.

Yes. I. You have extremely average people who hate talking to customers and you're texting estimates. You're not selling jobs.

You're just texting estimates. Yes, there is a high close ratio, but at what cost? You got to pay the technician for the DVI. I'd rather just pay them with like, we get three hours on average per ticket, oil change, state inspection, what have you.

I'd rather just pay them gravy hours really fast and just not even have a DVI. We don't even have a DVI. We just take the pictures of the broken stuff in 15 minutes. It's called a rack attack.

So I know you have thoughts on this? I mean, even before the Techmetric days, we just used to use an iPhone, right? Yeah. We had an iPhone in the shop, and then eventually we got a bunch of iPhones in the shop, and we used to have different color cases so we know whose is what.

And we'd really just go around, take a picture or a video, and text it to the customer. So it doesn't even need to be fancy. That still worked just as good. So that brings up another good topic.

Charlie, But do you pay your technicians for Diag? I pay them whatever they like. Okay. So let's say a car comes in and you need them to pressurize a cooling system.

Can you walk me through that process? Let's say you need a technician to pressurize a cooling system. Are you going to pay that guy? I'll pay him again, whatever he wants, because my job is to sell the job.

Correct. You want to walk us through that process? Yeah, absolutely. First of all, we're really at a point right now.

All we do, again, if you break down our process, we are servants to our technicians. Yes. Because I have a pit crew that all they do all day is identify jobs and sell jobs, and then they feed that to my technicians. Yep.

We're really at a point in my shop right now that my technicians don't even ask me for that. They just know that I'm going to take care of them because we sell a job and they get a lot of gravy work, easy work all day long, right? You made a great point. We are servants.

It's like we just recruited a superstar technician for our Siena location. Shout out, Zade. You're a beast. Anyway, he said at his old shop, they had him doing everything.

They had him ordering parts, doing DVIs, writing estimates. It's like, and fixing the cars. and he was flagging big hours. It's like, wow, all I want you to do is what? Fix the cars.

Fix cars. Hey, Charlie, you're a master technician. What do you like doing? Oh, man, technicians love fixing cars.

Fixing cars. Do you like- They love cleaning up the valve cover. Yeah. Putting silicone in the corners, taking the corrosion off the bolts.

It's just satisfying. Yeah. That's what they like to do. Do you think that guy wants to sit in the computer and try to make arrows around a picture or whatever else you ask them to do, that is not their game.

Think about a high-end restaurant. That's like asking the master chef. You know, hey, can you like order the meat as well? And can you talk to the customers?

And can you set the pricing on the menu every night? You know, like they want to just create the art, which is that beautiful filet, medium rare. They just want to deliver their product on a silver platter. So, man, our technicians know in our process, yes, I will pay you a .5 to pressurize the cooling system or whatever.

I don't even know what it costs. I'll pay it to you if I can get the information in 10 minutes. It takes you 10 minutes to pressurize the cooling system. Just help me do this so that I can go sell a $1,000 repair.

And that's just the ISO. You know, that's just the water pump. Reminder, if I get this, it's an extremely high likelihood that I'm also going to convert the rest of the ticket. So our technicians, because guess what?

We have Glenn Piccolo, we have Charlie, Jose, Cupine, Chaz, all these amazing, Victor, like we work in the shop. The general manager works in the shop, in the trenches with the wrenches, and our technicians know that we are crushing it. We are crushing ourselves, PMI in these cars, moving these customers in and out of the bases, in and out of the waiting room as fast as possible so that we can produce them ours, so we can serve them parts on a silver platter. And so what happens is they just live around the speed bay.

They know like, hey, open for business or close for business. Are you open for hours or are you close? And if they need hours, they just came, come hang out for our technician at the speed rack. Charlie, I got a question for you.

Can you run a shop on a Sunday with no technicians? I have a great story. I'm ready for it. Tell the people.

So last year we started being open on holidays too. So it was 4th of July, we're in the Watertown shop and it was myself, Ed, and one more service advisor there. That was the whole crew for the day. Yeah.

We actually ran a 4th of July holiday. We sold $20,000 of repairs. We held every single car that came in that day, didn't leave the shop. And the next day, the technicians walked in and they had a bunch of work, a bunch of hours ready to go.

So yes, you can run it without a technician. All I did all day is bring the car in. I acted like I was a GS and Ed and the service advisor were really taking pictures and videos and selling jobs. and I didn't even change oil, like nothing. Wow, that's sick.

I did not touch any wrenches other than maybe 14 or whatever it is to flip a car and inspect the brakes or an air gun to take the wheels off. Those are the only tools I touched all day. So we really brought every car in. We did our underhood, mid-rise, full-rise inspection.

We identified the problems they had and I want you to think again, most of the cars that we work on, They don't have 5,000 or 10,000 miles because most of those go to the dealer, right? Yeah. So most of the cars we work on have 30,000 miles or more. The sweet spot is anywhere between 60,000 and 100,000 miles.

They have either worn-out brakes, worn-out tightroids, strats are leaking, whatever that is. So all I have to do is identify what's going on, give them that information really fast. I want you to consider that is a holiday. Somebody woke up in the morning.

He saw that we're open because we advertised it. He's like, oh, let me go and get my oil changed. They come in and I'm like, wow, your strats are leaking. Unfortunately, I can't get this price today.

Let me keep your car for tomorrow. Can I give you a ride home? That is by the book, how you're actually right. We had a Sunday, me and Glenn, like six weeks ago, no text, 32,000. 32,000 on a Sunday, no text.

What's the problem? It's like, you know, and that doesn't even include all the work that we couldn't actually diagnose because we had, you know, we had one superstar megastar customer, first time visit, brand new. I mean, it was a beautiful Bronco and it needed some weird complex brake repair in the back. And that ended up being 1500 the next day.

We couldn't get it. We sold it on Monday. You know, it's like they, we came in, we, the customers came in and they saw happy people on a Sunday first time where the only game in town who's open and we PMI the car and it's like, Hey, it's not a break issue that we can just easily diagnose. So let's just buy time.

Hey, Mr. I won't say their name. I'll say, Hey, Mr. Jones, I actually need a little bit more time with it.

One of our master technicians is coming in tomorrow. We'll get you some information as soon as possible. Can I get you a ride home? And guess what?

They say yes, because no one else is open in town. We had 32,000 approved and reminder, that's gravy. It's like, it's so easy for me to identify a broken axle. It's so easy for me to identify fluid leaking out of a transfer case.

I have done it a million times so I can sell that job. And once you sell the job, the job gets easy because now it's a $2,800 repair and their car is in the shop. It's not a 15 minute waiter oil change on a Sunday where I'm trying to get my car back. Does that make sense to you?

So I can do all that work. We did, it was 68.8 hours. It was 68.8 hours that we were able to just, you know, disperse to technicians on a Monday and they're slammed. What happens in the industry is Monday through Friday, and you don't have to be Monday through Sunday.

You know, we think it works. We get a ton of business on Sunday, but most shops are Monday through Friday and you don't even get started till about 11 o'clock on Monday because it takes a while to rev that thing up. Technicians show up, no work has been sold. You guys get the gist.

Friday, we're counting down to college football and NFL red zone. You are shutting down. You're saying no on the phone right about one o'clock on a Sunday or on a Friday. So you got four days.

You straight up got four days to crank. And I know there's Monday through Friday shops who crank. Like Saturday is a bare minimum. I mean, Saturday is game day, dual income with kids.

They're off on the weekends. They fix their cars. Oh, okay. We have a, uh, we have a notification here from Charlie.

What do we have for the day? So it's 5 31 PM 40 burger. What's the GP on that gravy 68%. So adjusted on the PNL, that'll be like 64.

So 40,000 in a day. And you used to do 20,000. That is just sick. 20,000 in a month. You show up to work, you run around with a chicken, like a chicken with your head cut off, and you're just reacting to the broke cars that come in your shop versus a system and a process.

I inspect every car to maximize the work that's on the inspection. We sell like crazy with a great presentation, great people, and you can do $40,000 a day. And our customers love it. And the customer service is through the roof because you got more revenue coming in so you can afford to pay for amazing superstar people.

Give it up for you, Charlie, man. That's so sick. $40,000. Give it up for the dream team. Give it up for the process.

The freaking dream team. Todd, for teaching us this. That's so great. We got a couple minutes left here.

What do you want to talk about, Charlie? So you talked about gravy earlier. What does that mean? Like, what kind of work are you focusing on to do 40,000 in a day?

Like, you're not doing timing chains, are you? Oh, what kind of work I'm focusing on? That is a great point. So early on in the career, I never liked all those parts vendors that used to come around and they say, oh, Monroe has a special this month.

You're going to get $20 back on every strat that you sell. Or Ray Bestos has a special that you're going to get $20 back on every set of brake pads that you sell. Because what happens when those shops sign up for those programs, and the program is fine. I don't have a problem with the program.

But unfortunately, every technique sending that shop or advisor, whoever is getting that money, guess what? Every car that comes to the shop that month needs struts. Every car that comes to the shop needs brakes. I sell what the car needs.

Yeah. The car will tell me what it needs. I don't need to worry. Total integrity.

I don't need to worry what the car needs. Now, I know what the car needs because if I have a specific vehicle, if I have a Jeep that pulls in, I know the oil filter housing. It's either been replaced or it's leaking. 3.6. One of the two, right?

If I have a Chevy Tahoe coming in, those motor mounts are either broken or they've been replaced. The transmission lines are either broken or they've been replaced. When do you know that it's a car that you maybe don't want to work on? Or like, is there a tipping point when the car is not worth the investment?

Is it four broken things, 10 broken things on it? Just walk me through your thought process. So that depends. I mean, I'm in New England.

We do get a lot of rusty vehicles. Rust, yeah. So if the car is. Like recently we had a Cadillac Escalade and the guy really wanted to fix it.

He had like this vehicle had sentimental value on it and he wanted me to do all the repairs. My guys actually wrote the whole estimate and I said, we are not working on this car. Yeah. I just can't honestly take somebody's $8,000 or $9,000.

It was a big estimate. You need a lot of repairs. Knowing that even after the repairs, that car is still rusty. The frame is really falling out of the car.

I can't do that. So I have to be very honest with the customer and inform them. Okay. Also, I can't decide.

So let's say a car comes in and it's $5,000. Has anybody heard, oh, my God, this car is only worth $5,000. Oh, yeah. I'm not going to put the money in it.

Well, maybe that's the value of the car if you sold it. But what is the replacement value? That means how much money does the customer need to spend to replace that car that they can fix right now that's paid off, it's been in the family for 10 years, and they can fix it for $5,000 and drive it for another three years. See, to me, that car makes sense to put the money in.

So we're going to have an honest conversation with the customer. I understand $5,000 is a lot of money, but if you replaced it, you're not going to need $5,000 down payment. And you're going to need to pay excise taxes, sales taxes, registration fees. Then you have depreciation of that car the minute it comes off the parking lot.

A monthly note, you know, payments. It's depreciating even more. Yep. And I also heard a statistic recently that I forgot now what the percentage is, so I'm not going to say, but how many car buyers extend the loans over 72 months, which is imagine by the time 72 months that car is paid off, it's time almost for a new car sometimes.

That's like a mortgage basically. And yeah, you're paying a $50,000 new car. It's actually like 65 grand. You paid 65K over six years for it.

Gosh, Charlie, you got me fired. Don't get me talking about replacement value of new cars. We'll get Glenn Piccolo in here and he'll really go nuts. Man, that's how I know, Charlie, as we wrap up, that you have officially made the transition from master tech to millionaire.

You're thinking like a salesperson, man. You're thinking like a salesperson. It's not even a salesperson. It is my job.

It is my job to present this to the customer. Now, they make the decision, but I make sure I give them a lot of information to make an educated decision on what to do. Because at the end of the day, we're looking for long-term customers, not people that just drive in once and don't come back. That is how we build these businesses that are multimillion dollars right now because people keep coming back and then we advertise and we get new customers.

Absolutely. And everybody knows deep down that buying new cars is a total scam. Buying used cars. Rich people drive...

Used cars that they continue to maintain. My parents live in a nice neighborhood. I'll never forget. I was walking one day and it's just this jumbo house, you know, and guess what's in the driveway and on the front curb.

I can hold that car. Three RAV4s back to back to back, like 15, 20 year old RAV4s that were just mint. They were well taken care of, well maintained. They were clean.

That's a really good indicator for me for a good customer. If it's their first time, if that car is clean, they are, it's their baby. They take care of that car. It's funny you say that.

So, my mother does alterations in Western Massachusetts, which is the wealthiest areas in Massachusetts. Jumbo. So, when she started the business, I said, are you sure you're going to Western? Because I figured those people are not fixing their clothes.

They're just going to buy new clothes. Yeah. And guess what? She's so busy because what they do, they do buy very high-end expensive clothes, but they will repair them.

If it's ripped, they'll fix it. If they lose weight, they gain weight, they go in, they adjust it. She's so busy so the wealthy people don't just buy new clothes. They actually maintain their existing clothes.

That's how they got there. They're frugal. You know, rich dad, poor dad. You know, have you read this book?

It's like- Yes. It's like- Robert Kiyosaki. Yeah, the right- I mean, once you learn the concepts in that book, you know to buy assets and people that actually improve your life rather than just trying to impress your neighbors and buy new clothes, fix your old ones, fix your old car. Anyway, you amazing superstars.

I think we're up on the hour. This has been, I'm Joe Adams with Charlie Zlatkos and Adams Automotive and the Houston-Boston partnership. This has been Master Tech to Millionaire presented by Autoshop Answers, where we talk about the transition from technician to business owner, CEO. I really had a great time, Charlie.

I will see you next time. When's our next event? Where can they find you? So our next event is actually in Houston next month.

We just finished yesterday, the September class. so next month I think is the 16th or 17th it's the middle 17th and 18th it's the middle weekend of October whatever that is and then can they find you on LinkedIn or where can they find you I'm on LinkedIn actually on LinkedIn I'm under Kyriakos Zlatko is my Greek name because LinkedIn wouldn't verify me without my Greek name but man you're putting a lot of amazing content out there please follow us on LinkedIn find us in Houston Texas come work a day in our shops we will see you guys next time can I get a boom Charlie 1, 2, 3 boom boom.