From Pig Roasts to $1.5M/Month: The Bartel's Auto Clinic Journey

What's up, players? It's Joe Adams with Adams Automotive and Auto Shop Answers. This is Master Tech to Millionaire episode something, maybe eight or so. We haven't been on here in a month. We're busy. August, man. We were slammed. We had a record August. It was one of our top months of all time. Man, record numbers. We had Barker Cypress at over 500,000. The Woodlands did like 580. Now Auto Care did 500. We are just rocking and rolling in the Houston market. All of HBP did an incredible job in August as well. That leads me to my next topic, which is our guests of honor today on the podcast. We've got representing the North Department of the Midwest. I'll call it the Midwest Department of Houston-Boston Partnership. We've got the Bartel family. I'm going to let them tell you a little bit about the history of their company. But today we've got Amy and Adam Bartel. What's up, you amazing freaking superstars? Say hi to the...

Hello. What's up, Joe? What is up? We're so excited. This is awesome. We're so excited to be here. Okay, well, so for the audience, pretend I'm five. Explain to me just a little bit about y'all's company. How many stores do y'all have? Where are you located? What kind of revenue are you doing? And then we'll get into it. Yeah, we're located basically just west of downtown Chicago. So we're in suburbia. We got a store in Carroll Stream, Illinois, straight west to Chicago, a store in Oswego, Illinois, and a store down in Plainfield, Illinois. So we're kind of west to southwest suburbs of Chicago. Yep, and we keep pretty busy amongst the three. I would say we've got some monthly revenue. We're averaging about $450,000 a month out of the three locations, each location, and just continue to grow. Wow. Tracking that $1.5 million is what we're trying to get to for $1.5 million a month. Let's go. We're going to crush through that. I know you got two stores that did $500,000. I know Carroll Stream's got like 1,000 bays, so that's an $800,000 store for sure. I know you guys have been in there.

Exactly. But I've visited the stores. You guys have an incredible brand. I love the colors. I love it. It feels so family-owned and operated. Incredible brand. Incredible community. They're super clean. You guys are outrageously clean, just like we are. So you guys have such an incredible operation, and you've done such a great job, and you have such a close relationship with Todd, which we'll get into, that you guys are part of the squad now. You're part of Houston-Boston Partnerships. So congratulations again. So can I get a brief overview of the history of the business? Y'all have been in Chicago for like a million years, right? Are y'all second generation or third? Third generation. Okay. Third generation. Well, you should do that. Grandpa Bob started it back when it was the old Standard Oil days, before Amoco Oil took over. In 1958, he had a Standard Oil station in Villa Park, Illinois. And basically, he was the one that set the groundwork for where we are today. I mean, back then, it was all about service. It was full-service gasoline, full-service mom-and-pop shop.

And basically, I feel like we've totally come roundabout. You know what I mean, Joe? It's still got that service feel to it. You know what I mean? Without gasoline. I mean, granted, we got rid of the gas stations and just stuck to auto repair, but that's basically what we do best is servicing the customer and so forth. Do you guys have any memories of your grandpa working at the original service? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I remember when we had our Carol Stream, our first Carol Stream location, not the current location where it's at right now, but like right over on North Avenue. Are you talking about the pig roast? Yeah, the pig roast. He's got pig roasts. I remember when we used to set up and have all the employees all, you know, bring their families and roast a pig on the weekends. I mean, you know, that was my earliest memory. I believe that was probably, I don't know, maybe when we were in kindergarten, elementary school.

Yeah, elementary school, easily. Yeah, we'd go by for pig roasts. It was a yearly, the yearly, you know, employee appreciation was the big pig roast. And it was literally like a pig on the stick turning. And I just remember being like, what is this? But yeah. And then there was also we had, when the Carol Stream location moved to like an industrial park, it was in the middle of nowhere. And dad had these like go-karts. And we used to go to the shop and just drive around these go-karts at the shop. And again, these are like elementary school years and grandpa helping us on the go-karts and letting us, you know, run ragged all over the industrial park at Carol Stream on Sundays when we weren't open. So that's, you know, a lot has changed. A lot has changed since then. I remember being a kid running around this place. I used to throw tennis balls at customers from the rafters. So I got in trouble for that one a bunch of times.

One time I was getting, you know, I was supposed to get a ride to school from one of the service advisors. That was like, and so I showed up like five minutes before the bell rang. And I just sat in the shotgun in my Suburban. And I was so pissed that he was like, didn't come take me right away. And I'm like, in hindsight, I'm like, wow, the owner's kid is like, take me to school, man. Take me to school. And you're trying to like pay his family's bills and like produce revenue. It's so funny. Okay, so your dad gets into the business. Did your dad like do it right away when he came out of college? Or what's the story? No, he was a gearhead, man. He was a tinker. He kind of reminds me like a lot of your dad, a lot of Perry. Because he was so into cars like from day one. Like in high school, he was doing the automotive programs. He had a 69 old 442 that he used to tinker around with and race it. And I mean, he was a gearhead straight out of high school.

And I think his story that he's always told us how he got into the business is after college, he came back home. And basically, grandpa needed help with one of the stores, probably the Lombard store. Yeah, Lombard. Isn't it? I think it was Lombard. Yeah. And because grandpa, he's like, man, I need help. I need a break. He's like, why don't you? Here, he just threw him the keys to the store. He's like, hey, you run this thing for a month. I'm going to Hawaii. And my dad's like, oh, okay. Yeah. So, you know, and then that was kind of awakening for him. And yeah, everything, you know, kind of went from there. He and my grandfather partnered up. They opened another location. They had the Villa Park location, the Carroll Stream location, and the Lombard location, I think, by the time we started. I mean, oh, and then we went to the gas business. He bought a gas station right down the street from us here in Wheaton.

It was just strictly gasoline. We had, I want to say it was 15 pumps. Yeah, something like that. It was a monster gas station at the time. Like, this is back in the 90s. And so this is when we were growing up. And that's how kind of we got our work ethic and so forth is because my dad wouldn't let us sit around the house and do nothing when we were in high school. He's like, hey, come up and, you know, you can bag ice. You can stock coolers. You can, you know, run the cash register. You know, I mean, that's kind of how we got into a little bit of it. But I never really had any, and Amy, this is, I think, is the same way, but we never really were underneath cars. You know what I mean? Like, growing up, I didn't have any desire. I didn't know how to change my own oil. You know what I mean? Like, I never really had the desire to do it until I got out of college, you know, and then I saw, you know, the scope of the business and what it could be.

Yeah, but dad made us, I mean, I remember Tuesdays were stocking days at the convenience store. So we'd go up and stock chips and stock the coolers and stock the Twinkies. And so all the gum, it was, I mean, it was quite a, or Tuesdays you were expected up at the convenience store to help stock. And then Adam and I, yeah, ran cash registers out of the Lombard, the Lombard gas station slash at that time. It had a bit of a, it had, what, two bays in there? Yeah. So we ran the cash register over there, ran the cash register here at the convenience store in Wheaton. And yeah, we had a shift, you know, we pulled shifts there. But never really in the back of the shop? No. Never really underneath cars, you know what I mean? No, just the stores. Okay, so you got Grandpa Bob. He starts it like a million years ago. He's a stud. He gets into the gas business. He goes to Hawaii. He's gone to, no, I'm kidding. He probably came back.

But he throws the keys. He was a snowbird quite a while there. He throws the keys at Pat, which is your dad. And this is probably what, the 80s, the 90s? Yeah. Back in the 80s. Okay. Yeah. So it sounds like Pat is similar to most people in automotive repair or most entrepreneurs. Honestly, it's kind of like my dad, you know, school of hard knocks. It's like, my parents didn't go to, you know, Harvard Business School for how to run an automotive repair operation. And it's kind of the same thing. I remember growing up stocking the fridge. That was my first job. Yeah. Like stocking the Coke Zeros in the fridge. That was my job. And so we're going to get into Todd and how he's been able to kind of like train you guys on this automotive hospitality model that we run, that we all run as part of HPP. But we'll get into that in a minute. I want to hear, so how long have you guys both been in the business? Because I think it's, I think, Adam, you started first and then Amy or walk me through that.

Yeah. So basically, I was down at TCU down in Fort Worth for college. Roll frogs. And then I didn't have a job. I mean, I graduated, Joe, and I was looking at, you know, going into the corporate world. I was looking at like, you know, like Cintas or like, you know, all these different corporate jobs. And I really didn't see anything that I liked. And then my dad called or I called my dad one day. I was like, Dad, I'm, you know, I don't know what to do with myself. He's like, well, you're out of money and, you know, you don't have a job. So you need to come back home. And so I ended up driving back. But before I, before I came back to Chicago, he said, hey, why don't you go check out this, this program called Auto Shop Answers with Todd Hayes. And so basically I flew from Fort Worth, Texas to Daytona Beach, Florida, and did basically a Auto Shop Answers training class with Todd. And like, oh gosh, that was 2004.

So yeah, a little over 20 years ago. I can't even imagine the energy in that room. He's, he's, well, he used to, he used to carry a baseball bat and it scared the crap on me because he could swing that thing around. And if you had so much energy, I mean, he still does, granted. I mean, you know, him, you know, him as well as I do. The man qualifies for Medicare and he basically scares the crap out of people in that room with the level of intensity. He's sorry, Todd. I can't go 10 minutes without slipping an old joke in there. No, I mean, I'm ready to run through a brick wall when that guy runs a take five. You know, obviously he's kind of the horsepower behind our business, but walk me through. Yeah. So he's carrying a baseball bat around. He's swinging a baseball bat in this tiny little room with like 12 chairs in it. And there's, you know, I think this is probably right about when Bill Broussard pulled him out of retirement.

You know what I mean? Cause he had his two Daytona beach stores. Uh, they, um, uh, what do they call them? Uh, repair one. What's the name of it? Repair one. Thank you. Repair ones. Yeah. So, I mean, I think this is right before, like right in his word started where he started back up again, you know, coming out of retirement and so forth. But I just remember the energy was crazy and I was like, Whoa, this guy, this guy knows what he's talking about. So, yeah, nobody, one thing Bill told me is he went to a training a long time ago and, you know, he was doing 50,000 and he asked Todd the famous question, like, you think I'll ever do 80,000? And, uh, you know, Todd laughed at him and then he went to the training and, uh, Todd's up there talking about like, change the trajectory of your family's life forever. I'm going to make you rich generation. Oh, well, brah. And it's like, Oh, it's like, wow. I'm a shop owner.

I've never heard, I've never heard anyone say like, this'll, you can get extremely wealthy doing this and you can change people's lives. And so it's like, I imagine it had the same impact. So, Amy, I want to hear your story, but Adam, so you, you, that was 2004. Yeah. And then you just kind of hit the ground running and like, just, you know, where, yeah, put your hands in the pie and help wherever you can. Yeah. They just threw me into the, into the mix up here in Carol stream. We had a great, uh, general manager at the time that was kind of like a brother to my dad. So I didn't have to work right underneath my dad, which was probably a blessing in disguise. I mean, love you dad, but you know, I get it. Uh, father said, I'm, you know, working on it, you know, so yeah, he just threw me in and as a service writer and we just hit the ground running. And yeah, that was, uh, that was back in the flip video days where we were taking the digital pictures with the flip video.

I remember I saw Charlie had one that he found in his, he was cleaning out his desk or something. In the trenches, selling service, slinging hat. Yeah. Okay. That's up to 2004. Todd never, Todd never knows what day of the week it is. So I ask him when these dates are and he just doesn't, he's like, dude, I don't, I don't know what time it is. How am I supposed to put it a year? Um, and then Amy, you came into the business later. Is that right? You want to walk me through your journey? Yeah, I did. I, um, after the years of being put to work and working a cash register at the convenience store, I told dad, see around. I'm going to go, you know, live my own dream, work my own path. And I didn't come back into the business until 2010. So, um, was it 2010? Yeah, I think so. No, 2015. It was 2015. You're just, yeah, it was 2015. I am, I'm horrible with years. I can do dates, but not years. Um, so yeah, it was 2015 because it's 10 years ago now.

Yep. And, um, but I was, I mean, I had a totally different career path and trajectory. I mean, I, I went to grad school, got a degree in forensic psych, wanted to work in the criminal justice system, which I did for a bit. And, you know, again, I think that my background in psychology has helped me greatly, even, you know, in the business world. So it definitely helps with recruiting. It helps with all sorts of things and managing people. So I do think that I was on the right path for a reason. I think that's why, you know, I can bring some solid, you know, education to the table now. Um, but yeah, I had no idea that I would end up here. I, uh, I was actually living in Hawaii when, um, and working for a snorkel cruise company, managing and selling snorkel cruises. It was, it was wonderful. Um, and dad, dad came to me and said, so do you want to come back into the family business? I could really use your assistance.

And, um, I had no idea what I was stepping into, but when I got back here, we were in the red and it wasn't looking good. And I basically said to dad, I didn't realize you were asking me to jump on a sinking ship. And I was flabbergasted by what I came into, but I also, I hit the ground running and that's when I met Todd. And, um, I mean, he just, yeah, he changed the trajectory of everything. He changed our life. He changed the way I looked at business and I never realized how fun business is and, you know, working with people. And again, I had had many jobs, random jobs in my life, but this is by far something that I never thought I would have the passion for. And it is just every day, every day is fun. I don't know what day of the week it is either. Cause it's just, I love it. I love what I do. I love the people I work with. I love the customers that we take care of. It is just full circle. So yeah, it's awesome.

You didn't spend a single second talking about the car because it doesn't matter. It's like, it's literally, I know nothing about cars. It's a psychology job. It's like the, the, the amount of passion that I have for our business is crazy. Like I never thought this would happen either. Very similar story. I'm actually getting married to a psychologist. It's a, so that's, that's been a very helpful part of my career. Yeah, it is. Absolutely. But you know, it's like you said, it's so fun. The highs are super high. The lows are way lower, but that's kind of like the, what makes it so fun. You know, the variety of, of man, it's like your family's legacy. You get to really influence people's lives. You get to really help customers in the community. I love feeling connected to the labor. You know, it's like the customer comes in, you fix their car, they give you money. They're happy. You know, it's not like a, you know, you're sitting and staring at spreadsheets all day

and I'm working for some big corporation. I know a lot of my friends are doing that. So, and what's wild is, is like, I always thought about like the reason I became a caseworker and a therapist is I loved helping people solve problems, right? That's what we do every day. The customer comes with us with a problem and all we have to do is solve the problem. You know, you can't get your car fixed because you need a car. Let me get you a car while we fix your car. What, you know, price is an objection. No problem. I've got financing options. I've got flexible payment plans for you. We're just solving people's problems. So again, you know, I, did I ever think I'd be in this realm? No, but I'm doing exactly what I always wanted to do, which was to help people. So it's just, it's really cool how it just became full circle for me. And again, something that I can be so passionate about because I'm doing exactly what I always

wanted to do. Help people. It's awesome. That's fire. Okay. So walk, so let's keep going on the, on the timeline. So Todd about circa 2015 comes in and you said it was, you said it was a sinking ship. I've heard the story from his perspective. Uh, there were some red nutlers floating around and it was about a six month turnaround. You want to just walk me through the, the, what, what, what's it like? I know what it's like meeting Todd for the first time, but just, uh, you know, I, I've heard from his perspective. Basically, I want to hear y'all's perspective. Kind of that era of Bartell. Yeah. Well, I think when I first met Todd, my jaw hit the ground and I was just like, who is this man? And he was like mentally exhausting and draining. And I was like, holy buckets. I feel like I just took a crash course in business and people and everything. And my mind was just blown and I was exhausted. And I was like, this guy, he is something.

But, um, yeah, he was awesome. He came in and we basically revamped the entire Osmigo store at that time. And the Plainfield store shortly after that. I think we're building. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think he like hired a whole, whole new staff within how many days? Uh, a week. It was like a week. It was insane. Just hired and fired. Hired and fired. People. Yeah. In one week. It was, it was crazy. I mean, there was, yeah, that was, it was such a bad circumstance. Joe was like, there was theft. There was, uh, you know, guys that were just industry guys. And, you know, I mean, Todd would come in there and try and do a rack attack. He'd be underneath the car and say, you know, you put the estimate together. You, you know, you call the customer, get it sold, get them home, get it, you know, trying to do any kind of speed of service. And, and we just didn't have the right people in place. You know, it was, it was, uh, so he and I, yeah, he and I did a lot of hands-on recruiting.

We went and stole a couple of guys from just tired on the street. There were like fantastic GS kids that were busting their humps and, you know, and, and then we, we basically did, you know, we revamped the entire Plainfield store. And, uh, you know, I mean, it's, it's all about people is really what it boils down to. And we saw an immediate impact on sales. Yeah. That sounds like a whirlwind. Talk about a, something I want to do a tangent on is the, you mentioned fraud. There was fraud. People were stealing. Oh yeah. Uh, you want to walk me through that? Like if you were an owner and you were listening to this podcast, um, or you were yourself 10 plus years ago, um, what's something maybe you should be looking out for if you, and by the way, if you don't think your people are stealing from you, get this way. You need to at least take a look. You know, our job is to keep honest people. Honest is what Todd says.

And it's like, look, I'm not going to point the finger and assume people are stealing from you. Our people are great. They're amazing. I love our people. I love our team members, my coworkers, you know, like our friends, they are, they are part of the family. However, if you think about, let's take Bartel's auto clinic. Okay. So let's say you guys are going to do like somewhere between 15 to 18 million this year. You got a 15 to $18 million of revenue. And the, what the, and that budget he likes to use is the metaphor. He's like, look, think about 15 million bucks. You're putting it in the middle of the waiting room. You know what I mean? Like if you're not, if you're not watching that money, if you're not counting that money, somebody else is, if you're putting that money in the middle of the fricking lobby, somebody is going to take it. Like if you're just leaving the door to the vault wide open. So it's something like, it's something we say in our accounting first program, 90% or

what is it? It's like 10% of people are going to steal from you no matter what we can weed them out in the interview. 80% or wait, no, let me start over. 10% will steal no matter what. 10% will never steal no matter what. 80% of people given the right justification will, or will think about stealing from you. And justification means, oh, the owner's making so much money. Oh, you know, the owner was taking money out of the cash register. Oh, the owner was, he's charging the customers too much anyway. Oh, the owner's stealing from customers, stealing from us. He didn't pay me on time, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I know that's a tangent here, but the industry has such a bad rap for low integrity, for getting stolen from, and for due reason. It's full of horrible, you know, like 1% of the industry is just, they're bad people. They're bad people. And they give the rest of us a bad name. So I'll get off my soapbox here.

But if you were yourself 10 years ago, where would you look? You know, how did you guys get stolen from? Oh, man, I've got so many different stories, but I mean, how long do we have, Joe? I mean, it is insane. We've had multiple situations in multiple locations. Yeah. You put somebody in jail, right? Well, that was the- That was our biggest one. I gotta hear it. The people gotta hear it. I gotta hear it. That was back in the convenience store day in the 90s when basically it was a lot of cash. It was a cash business. You know what I mean? I mean, people came in and they paid cash. So she was taking deposits and she was our controller and she had a gambling addiction. And we didn't find out about it until we went to go sell the convenience store to buy our Oswego location in 2006. So we had a cash flow issue. It was like, wait a second. Wait a second. The numbers aren't lining up here. Well, something's wrong. So we did a forensic audit and found basically about $250,000.

Yeah. I believe it was something like that. $250,000 overall span. We only went back like maybe 10 years, I want to say. I don't even know if we went back that far. Exactly. What's wild about the whole thing though, Joe, that I think is important to know is this woman worked for us for so long. She was family. She used to take me out to lunch. She used to take me out to lunch when I was busy with on my Tuesday stocking days or bag and ice. She would take me out to lunch. I mean, she was literally family. So the whole point in this is, you know, you just don't know. And if you're not holding your people accountable, doing the checks and balances. Yeah, selling your money. Somebody else is. I mean, here was a woman we all viewed as family and it happened. So again, you just, you got to be mindful. You've got to do your checks and balances. You've got to be, have your hands on your money because somebody else will.

And I want to highlight something here. Okay. It's a sickness. She had what? What did I say? She had justification, AKA she was in a gambling addiction. You know, it's like, that's a story I've heard far too many times. It's like, and if you have a reason, you know, which is, oh my God, I'm gonna lose everything. I'm gonna lose my house because I have a gambling addiction. Then, you know, you have plenty of justification to take a little money out of the pot. And especially in a cash business, man, I've, I've seen so many examples of fraud in this business. Cash is so easy to steal. I could think of 15 different ways. You know, a good way to catch people from stealing from you, get really good at stealing money from yourself. Hypothetically. I, we, I think of all the ways I could possibly steal money out of the business. And, um, you know, we put locks on so many different things. We're, we're, we're actually going to go completely away from cash.

It's like, I'd rather just pay the merchant fee to, uh, to, to have total security that nobody's, you know, there's just no cash in the business because it's the easiest way to steal. One time I was at one of our locations and somebody paid 6,800 bucks or something all in cash. Oh, we've seen it. It would be to put a manager discount on there for 300 bucks and just slip a couple Benjis in your pocket. It's like, Oh, wow. Yeah. $6,500 ticket cashed out today. All cash. Sweet. And the manager. Well, we had a GM in Oswego that did that back in the day, didn't it? Or was it Plainfield? Yeah. We had a GM in Plainfield that was doing it. He zeroed it out, took the 3,000 cash on a trans jab or something and put it in his pocket. So crazy. Yeah, man. The customer said, no, customer has no money, dude. It's so crazy. Oh, my God. That was crazy. So anyway, I know that's a tangent, but if you're out there listening to this, please

don't bury your head in the sand. You know, keep honest people honest. Train your team on accountability. Train them on the P&L. You know, I'm not a freaking, we're not a police state here, but we try to train our team members how to be business owners and it's a real thing. You think every, so many companies are just getting robbed blind and not just in auto repair. You know, we really look up to Tommy Mello and his business. You know, he's in the home services world and he's like, man, my toilet paper, was getting stolen. We had technicians putting gas on the company car in their trucks. You know, like, you know, like everybody, everybody steals from companies if you're not keeping an eye on it. So I will continue on. Oh, man. What was my next topic? Okay. So a couple more Todd stories. You said Todd recruited an entire store for playing field in a week. Amy, I know you've been, quote, kicked out of better juke joints than, uh, you know,

the story I'm telling you take the mile. Tell this story. All right. So it was the first time that Todd ever took me hands on recruiting. Adam, I think was out of town for some reason that weekend. Cause normally when Todd would come in town, Adam would spend the majority of his time with Todd. They would do all the hands on recruiting. So Todd was like, all right, Adam's not here. I'm going to take you hands on recruiting. So I'm all, you know, new to this full of excitement. Can't wait to see how this is going to go. First stop. We go to a and we had already taken a lead technician out of this shop. And I think I did even a service advisor. So we've taken a couple guys out of the shop before. So I am not even kidding you. We get out of the car. Todd literally, I think Todd opens the door for me. I walk through the door. Todd was right behind me. As soon as the manager there sees Todd behind me goes, Oh no, you get the hell out of my

store. You are not coming in my store. And I'm literally a deer in headlights. Like, wait, what is going on? What just happened? I'm getting kicked out of here. I just walked in. I don't even, I had no idea what was when. So Todd just starts chuckling and goes, Oh, okay. Okay. And Todd turns around and walks out and he starts dying laughing. And I go, what was that about it? He goes, Oh, I've already taken a couple of his guys. He doesn't want me in there. And you know, it was like Todd smugness. It was actually really funny, but I was like, this is my first time I've ever done this. And this is what's happening. So, um, needless to say, we made another stop and I was a little apprehensive to get out of the car and go into that shop. But, um, no, he just really taught from, from the get go. The bottom line is, you know, your people won't leave you if you give them an excellent place to work and you treat them right.

You have nothing to worry about. So come on in our store, you know? So it was really funny, but it was a little traumatizing at the same time. So it made me a little apprehensive to hands on recruit from there on after, but it was pretty funny. He's something. He is something. Nothing like a little bit of trauma to really, uh, educate you. Oh man. Exactly. I have a very similar story. I won't tell the, I won't say which company it was from, but it was here in Houston. And, um, you know, we were recruiting this guy and we've been talking to him for a while. And, uh, you know, one of our other superstars like, man, you gotta get this guy. You gotta get this guy. He's a superstar. And so we've been talking to him and he was like buying a house or having a baby or something. And, um, a couple of months go by and I think baby's healthy, et cetera. So we find out, you know, he's working a certain day at the store that he was working at.

And so me and Todd were like, let's just drive over there. And so Todd tried, we drive over there. We walk in the store and it's like, you know, I know this is just the audio, but think in your mind of like, uh, you know, countertop at a shop. Okay. There's three people there on either side are the managers and in the middle is the guy we're going after. And Todd was being himself walks in and he goes, hi everybody. Hi. How are you guys doing? Hey, I'll just say his name. Hey Jay. How are you Jay? Hey man, when are you going to come work for me, man? We got great opportunity. Man, you're going to love it. How's that baby? You got, you get in that house yet? And just like puts his hands on his head. She starts talking to him. And the two man, it's, you know, on either side are just like, I'm over in the corner, read magazines or going to the bathroom or something. I was totally not at this level yet. And, uh, you know, Jay's frozen too or something.

Anyway. Anyway, so Todd gets his phone number right in front of the managers and he goes, all right, well, I'm going to give you a call, man. Hey, you and you, you guys have a blessed day. Uh, man, you guys keep rocking and rolling. Okay. And then he just walks out just like that. And it's like, wow. You're really going to walk into another store in front of the boss and just, just be, dude, that's so crazy. And guess, and Jay's a superstar for us now. It's like, and he can work for, and it works for our family now. And he's an absolute stud, but here's what I'll say. I will never feel bad for poaching people. I used to feel so bad about this, but it's like, dude, oh my gosh, I will never feel bad about offering somebody an opportunity that could possibly change their life and their family's life because we actually offer that. And if they tell me hell no, then I'm fine. Great. If they tell me hell no, then great.

You're taking care of your family. And if you come into our store and you try to take our people, great. Because if they, if they leave, then I suck. I do a horrible, like if they leave, I'm not taking care of them. So, um, man, if I can't provide you an excellent environment where you're, you know, can take care of your family, you can learn after one year, you have so much training that you'll you're untouchable in any shop in America, then I'm not doing my job. So anyway, before we change subjects, you got any more thoughts on that about, you know, you guys recruiting structure, your, your training culture. Um, I know recruiting, you said was a big part of kind of a lot of things Todd did at the beginning. Yeah. Oh yeah. He taught us how to recruit for sure. I mean, I think we've gotten some of our best people from hands on recruiting too. Yeah. We chased, we chased our current general manager and Carol stream is Jeremy and we chased

him for a year and a half. Yeah. A year and a half. Working down the street at a shop, literally like a mile away. And whenever Todd was in town, we're like, Oh, let's go see Jeremy. And so we'd pop in and, you know, say, Hey dude, how's things going? They make you general manager yet? You know, you know, cause they promised him the world and you know, none of it happened. If he finally came over to us, now he's got, he bought a house. He's got two beautiful kids. He's, he's extremely successful here at our Carol stream location. And, uh, you know, I mean, we, we delivered on what we promised. Absolutely. Yeah. So you guys use the word hands on recruiting for those of you that are not informed, hands on recruiting means physically going into the store. That means like, you know, kind of just, just going right to the fire. If you want to know who's a player, just go sit in a freaking store and watch for five

minutes and you can, and you can tell who's moving and grooving and making it happen. And you can tell who's sitting on the stool and honestly sucks. So, um, you know, it's like a busy restaurant. You go to any busy restaurant in the city, you can tell like, you know what the best advertising is a line out the door for a restaurant. You ever go and sit in a restaurant and it's stone cold empty. It's like, Ooh, I don't want to eat here. This isn't good. Well, it's the same thing in auto repair. You know, you go sit in, you can drive past the shop and I'll see a bunch of full bays in a full parking lot with nice cars. And I'm just like, Ooh, there's a player in that store. There's somebody who says yes on the phone. They give great customer service. They're slight. They know how to recruit technicians and they're slammed. And they're a producer. So, um, you know, I just, I guess, Amy, do you have, you're a psychologist.

What do you, when you're recruiting a stud, what are you looking for? Like, what are you, what's an identifier for you that they're an A player? You know, what's so funny is we just had a guy that we just hired. He just started this week in Carol stream. And, um, I walked into the interview. He was interviewing with Cody and Jeremy over here is actually a friend of Cody's. So it was a referral and Cody's like, this guy's a stud. This guy's a stud. You got to come meet him. You got to sit down with them. And immediately upon sitting down, you just get a vibe, right? You get a vibe, you know, immediately with the first few sentences out of their mouth, what kind of player they're going to be because of the energy they bring to the conversation. And it's, it's truly that simple because again, I don't care what you know about cars. I don't care how much you know about cars. I care about how you can communicate with people.

I care about the energy and the positivity and the vibes that you are bringing to the environment. So at the end of the day, I literally know within the first three minutes of sitting down with a candidate, if they are going to be an A player for our team, because it's, it's literally what kind of vibe that you are producing and what you're sitting, putting out there. So it's, it's almost immediate, Joe. It is almost immediate. Yes. Preach, preach Amy Bartel. Oh my God. Okay. Glenn thinks it's not even three minutes. He thinks it's five seconds. He's like, yeah, I can get that. Pretty much, pretty much like 95% of the interview is like the first impression. Like, okay, especially in customer service. Like, you know, we have to hustle and, and grind. And these guys have, you know, 10, 20 tickets on their whip. You've got a limited amount of time with each and every customer to really make them fall in love with you fast.

And man, Todd calls it the gift. It's like, you've got a, if you got the gift, man, it's like that charisma, the swag. And here's an example I like to talk about in training. You ever call a, you know, like a customer service agent for, I don't know, AT&T or Verizon or a ticket sales company or anything. And you know about five seconds if you got a player on the phone and they're actually going to help you. Help you. Or it's going to suck. And you go, hey, let me talk to a manager. You know, it's like, that's what, it's like, man, about 90% of it is that first, not even the handshake, but just like their energy. Like you said. Energy. The energy. All about the energy. And then the rest of the interview is what's wrong? What's the catch? You know, like we spend the rest of the interview saying, what's the catch? Hey, what do you do in your spare time? You know, if I pass, if I ran you through a background check, would you pass it?

You know, and I just, I'm trying to, I'm trying to basically find out the catch because it's really easy to fall in love with people. And then you find out they've got like a really, you know, messed up personal life or you guys, you guys know the rigor. So anyway. It's on skeletons. Yeah. Skeletons. I'm rambling again, but a players. Can you talk about the difference, Amy, between like, you know, I think there's a players, B players and C players. You want to talk about that for a bit, like how you just conceptualize that at Bartels? Yeah. I mean, I would say that, you know, I'm going to bring in a really good example of what we've been using lately for training and that's Rilla. And I mean, Rilla just sheds light on exactly who those players are. Not only with how often they're utilizing it for their own training and how often they're asking for feedback and requesting the ride alongs for training, but you can hear the difference between an A player, B player and C player.

You can hear that A player not only executing the script, but executing the script with enthusiasm and likability and just how they talk to customers, how they're they don't even overcome objections because they're having a conversation about how can I help you get this done? It's not even about overcoming an objection. It's about how do I solve your problem and not get the sale, but get you as my customer for life. So that I feel like is the biggest difference between having an A player versus a B or C player. They are going to go the extra mile. The devil's in the details for them. They're opening the door for that customer that's coming in. They're opening the door and opening the car door when the customer is leaving, you know, so there's they just go the extra mile. They pay attention to the details and they care. They just care. They care more about, you know, selling the job. They care more about the customer.

And that's something that you can't teach. And that is what I constantly tell these guys when we do have these interviews and we do have possible candidates coming in. It's like, do they have what we can't teach? Because I cannot teach personality. We can I can teach you to read a script. I can get a monkey to read the script, but I cannot teach you personality. I can't teach you how to connect with people, build rapport with people. And and, you know, that customer service that we don't get anywhere else in this industry. It can't be taught. So you either have it or you don't. Either have it or you don't, man. And the hardest part about this is the B to a jump. OK, huge. There's three players. OK, C players are easy. You get rid of them. You know, they show up hungover or they, you know, they got a stomach bug, you know, a couple of times a month. And you know what I'm talking about? Oh, yeah. They make themselves known.

Yeah, that's easy. A players will change your life. You know, like a players. It's like LeBron James is on the court. He's Duncan from the free throw line. He's an A player. Like, it's pretty obvious. You know, it's what's hard is the B players. The B players are good. They're good. They're just good. Good. And Steve Jobs talks about this. He's like, look, he calls it the dynamic range. He's like the dynamic range between an A player and a B player. Even if I'm paying an A player like double. And that's kind of part of our whole concept is we pay people what they're worth and we expect a lot out of them and we create a great environment. Even if I'm paying an A player double what the industry pays them at Apple, he's like, I might get 50 or 100 times out of them productivity wise, you know, performance wise. And not even out of them, but just like they love coming to work. They bring the energy. They got a Rolodex full of people.

You said Jeremy was a referral. You know, they know people. They attract A players. When you're interviewing another A player, they see A players and they're like, oh, man, OK, it's a good environment. It's like, man, the B players in your business will literally destroy you and the A players will tank will literally change your life. And here's a litmus test. Here's here's a litmus test. We practice every week, every month. If this person came up and they said, Amy, Amy, I found another job. It's my favorite class. I found another job. You know, here are my keys. Here are my keys. I'm going to go, you know, I'm going to start day trading or I'm going to go work for this other shop. And you're not like freaking out. Then they're probably not an A player. They're probably like a B plus or a B. And if you're excited, then they're a B minus or a C. So anyway, some people and we did it month and three. And it's like everybody knows it's like the negative technician who's really good at fixing cars.

If they came and quit, you'd actually be relieved more than more than anything. So I want to read. But, you know, it's a good exercise because that's what we do with our that's what we've been doing with our GMs lately is basically running that exercise. If who gave you whoever gives you your keys and if you're not fighting for them and you don't want them to stay, that is what is motivating our staff and our GMs to recruit right now. That's exactly what the motivator is, is because I think so often with the B players, yeah, they're just good enough and they and they get by and they're not helping project you to the next level. So you're holding on to them, whether it be because, you know, these guys work with these guys day in and day out. They get an emotional attachment to them, you know, so it's a lot it's a lot harder, I think, sometimes to weed out the B players and to see the B players because you do have a certain level of emotional attachment to them when you're working on a daily basis.

So this exercise of going, all right, if so and so is handing you your keys, are you OK to let them go? Are you fighting for them? What's the status? And really highlighting that is huge and motivating for recruitment. It's huge. It's so hard, though. Oh, my God. It is. It's impossible. I listen to this podcast about Elon Musk and how ruthless he is, and I don't admire him in this way, but he's so ruthless. Like he doesn't even encourage people to be friends in the company. He's like it messes with objectivity. You know, like, well, it is a double edged sword. It's really a double edged sword. And I'm constantly telling these guys, you know, you guys walk a fine line. We we pride ourselves when you're a family, you know, owned and operated business. And you know this, you pride yourselves on having that family environment. Right. And, you know, surrounding yourself with with the right people and treating your people right.

And, you know, fostering that culture and fostering a place that everybody wants. I mean, you spend the majority of your time at work. Right. So you want to foster that culture and that morale and the team morale. So it's really hard to walk a fine line on, you know, building those personal relationships, keeping them personal and professional and whatever that blurred line can sometimes be. And so that's why I think it's really good that, you know, our GMs and how Adam and I are so involved in the business because we can keep it more objective. I don't have the same personal relationship with all of our staff that a GM would have with all of their staff. You know what I mean? So just being able to have those conversations and keep being able to be objective while also walking that fine line, because it's hard. It's you spend how many hours a week with these people? You know, so it is really difficult.

And sometimes, you know, we have to come in and go, well, here's the problem. Here's this situation. He's this. This is a B player that ultimately is not going to help us get to the next level. So, you know, and I think that's the beauty of also how close we all are with the GMs as a team is that we can have these hard conversations and ultimately go, it's time to recruit. It's time to move on. Yeah, it's like a second set of eyes. You know, it's like that's kind of my job sometimes. It's just to kind of tell our team leaders, you know, what they already know deep down inside. Exactly. Todd taught us how to run it like a pro football team, man. And it's like we talk about the NFL all the time. It's like, you know, week one last year in the NFL, there was a kicker. We use the story all the time. I think his name was Cade York. He went 0 for 2 from 47 and 53 yards. And he got cut. Like, oh, dude, you got. And it was like a 30.

It was like a 37 to 10 blowout. You know, there are 50 yarders he missed. But, I mean, you're the GM of the Buccaneers and you're paying this guy $950,000 to kick field goals. And he's missing field goals. It's like that. Right. It's pretty straight at that level. And you might think to yourself, well, that's the NFL. I just run an auto repair shop. Whatever. I'm going to run it as like intense as I possibly can. I'm going to run it like the best in the world. And those guys are in. Those guys are intense. You see those guys get after it. You know, it's like I'm not going to. You know, that's and that's why we love paying people a lot of money, because like, man, when you pay a lot of money, it's like. Yeah. Like the expectation is this is we're intense. Like this is a this is a profession. This is not like you're not going to work for here. You know, you're not going to work here for three years. You pull a shift and then you haven't learned anything.

And you move on to your next station at your career and then 20 years go by and you're like, oh, my God, like I'm, you know, still doing the same thing every single day. I want people to work here and like learn from Todd, learn from us, learn from how to run a business. And if that doesn't like, hmm, that's like what a player is, is they wake up. Yes. And they're self-motivated. I mean, we got a guy. We got team members to get on the Zoom calls at six in the morning, driving to work and they're just fired up. Absolutely. Like, absolutely. There's no better way to start the day. But you can't you can't pay somebody, you know, you can't pay somebody hourly. You can't you can't pay people half of what they're worth and expect that out of them. So I want to read this. If you if you're listening to this, if you know what Mr. B, you guys heard of Mr. Beast. He's a famous. Oh, my kids love. Yeah. Mr. Beast. He's like the number one.

He's like a billionaire. You know, he's like the number one YouTuber in the world. OK. And I read his manifesto. This is a tangent. But I read his he's got like a he's got like a introduction to his company. You know, he's got like he's got a literally like a billion subscribers. OK, he's like obsessed. And there's a section in here called I only want a players. And I thought it was so good. So he says, as I type this, I realize it might not be the wisest to categorize all of humanity into three buckets. But I believe we should look at everybody as part of the production team. You're either an A player, a B player or a C player. There is only room in this company for A players. A players are obsessive. They learn from mistakes. They're coachable, intelligent, and they don't make excuses. They believe in YouTube. They see the value of this company. And they're in the best in the GD world at their job. The best.

Wow. They are the best. The best. Look, B players are new and they need to be trained into A players or B let go. C players are just average. They do not suck, but they're not exceptional. They just exist and collect a paycheck. They're not obsessive. They are poisonous to the business and should be transitioned to a different company, all caps, immediately. It is okay. We give everybody severance. Don't worry about that. And so it's, dude, every 45 minutes, we're 45 minutes into this podcast and it's like, wow, like every business is the exact same. It actually has nothing to do with cars. It has nothing to do with making YouTube videos. When you come to training, you realize like, okay, here's the playbook. There's some operational things that if you just comply to key to callbacks, they will drive your revenue. You know, taking a picture and a moto visual and using technology and using scripts, they will move your revenue, but it's a people business.

It's like, I have the absolute best of the best people that I love coming to work with. I love it. I absolutely love it. You know, my dad is the best at telling the stories. Like, you know, back when he was really running the company more, it's like he literally hated coming here at some points in the history of the company. And I'm sure you guys have experienced that. It's like, you got negative people. Oh, yeah. It sucks. You know, it's not fun. Yeah. You know, you have a problem when you don't want to visit that store. Yeah. And you always want to visit the store that's printing, you know, the store that's crappy. You're like, oh, I want to go hang out with those guys, but you can't. Oh, yeah. Exactly. All right. So as we race to the finish here, for people that are listening, like you guys have known Todd for 10 years now. I've known him for five. Well, Adam, I guess you've known him for 20, but he's been more intimate with the Bartell

family for the last 10 years. Other than obviously recruiting and having players, like, is there anything else that sticks out to you guys about, you know, working with him, kind of what it's like to work with Todd, the way he runs his businesses, something like anything you guys have learned from him, basically. My, I mean, he hangs out in the back of the shop. His office is in the back of the shop. You know what I mean? Like, you know, you need to be in the mix. You need to be rack attacking cars. You need to be, you know, delegating and so forth. That's what he taught us as owners to be, you know, immersed in your business. You know what I mean? So that was the biggest thing, really. I mean, that changed a lot. You know, it's just a mindset, basically. I mean, what do you think? Yeah. I think that's the biggest thing is that you got to be in the shops. You know, anything else, paperwork, history, all of that.

I mean, it doesn't matter if, you know, you're not, you can't have expectations for your people. Even my grandpa always used to say, if you're not willing to do it yourself, you can't expect an employee to do it. You know, you have to lead by example. You have to lead your team by showing your team because monkey see, monkey do. And so I think that that's the biggest thing is that, you know, you can tell someone to follow this concept and do this concept, but if you're not willing to follow it, if you're not willing to be the model for that, then they're not going to do it. And it's really that simple. So, you know, one of the biggest things is even like take fives. Like, I love take fives. I live to do take fives. And, you know, we just recently made a bunch of big adjustments in our shops that everybody starts, you know, be at the shop at 645 for our morning take five. We've really cracked down on that because we want to start the day right.

We want to start the day with training, make sure everybody is there. And the biggest problem is I can't be in three places at once, right? So I'm missing all of various take fives. And so, you know, me just sending out a morning message to our team with basically what I think is a great point for the day to start the day and that being a quote unquote take five for training or a little nugget for them to take away with is huge because again, it's us paying attention to what's actually happening in the business and having a pulse on the business. If you have no idea, you're sitting in that ivory tower and you don't know what's going on, you are doing a major disservice to your to your people and to your customers. So I think that was the biggest thing and biggest takeaway from Todd is just you got to be in the trenches. You got to be with your people. You got to have a pulse on the business and you've got to execute how you want it executed.

You got to be in the trenches, man. Owner stuff. It's like ivory tower owner stuff is made up. It's a made up thing. And yes, you have to do it. You know, there are times when you got to be in the spreadsheets and you got to work on paper. Absolutely. But man, Elon in this podcast, I know I'm referring to a lot. It was shout out founders. It's a great pod. But he you know, the way Elon manages his company and he's got two multi hundred billion dollar businesses like he has two of them. That's so crazy. It's crazy. When he's when there's an issue in the factory, he literally gets on a plane and he goes to the factory and he's like on the he sets up his leadership's offices. They're all glass and they're on the factory floor so that when an engineer is like putting something together in the factory and it's messed up, they can go to their boss and be like, why did you design it this way? Like he literally has all of his leadership team in the trenches.

And so, you know, we do the same thing. Todd is in the trench. It's like he's a quarterback. You know, you can't you can't hear your cut, your your team members answer the phone from an ivory tower. You just can't. You can't hear how many rings it is. You can't see the intensity. And so, man, go to the go to the shop floor, make the process as simple as possible and execute with them. And they will run five times faster than if they work for some huge corporation that, you know, their store is just a number and, you know, their name is just a number. So super, super massively in the trenches. Todd has the love of the game, man. He taught me that it's like it's not about the money. He's got so much money, but it's not about that. It's about the love of the game. It's like I'm going to do one of my favorite Bible verses in Colossians. It's like do everything as if you're working for the Lord, not for a man.

And I think he really embodies that. It's like I'm going to I'm going to do the way you do everything. The way you do anything is just who you are. It's the way you do everything. The way you do anything is the way that you do everything. And so I'm going to bust my tail to do absolutely the best possible job that I can whenever I'm given an assignment. And so that's kind of the expectation that we have. But you can't have that expectation if you're not in the trenches. If you're not doing it. Yep. So. Yep. Exactly. So you mentioned that you guys are training all the time in take five. For those who are not informed, can you just walk me through what a take five looks like at Bartels? And then like what have you guys been training on lately? Like what's your focus lately? Yeah. So we have been take five is basically an opportunity to sharpen your skills on the process. So what you know, I would say the biggest focus is usually like, OK, so something that maybe

happened yesterday where we dropped the ball or something fell through on the process and we, you know, miss something. It's a great way to do a little rehash of that situation. What could we have done better? What went wrong? How do we fix it moving forward? And just sharpening up on exactly where the process failed. Because at the end of the day, we only ever have a problem when a ball is dropped in the process. When you're not executing every single step of that process, that is where a problem it could arise. So it's truly just sharpening your skills on how the process is executed. And I think that, you know, something we're constantly training on is really, you know, the PMIs and making sure that we're inspecting the vehicle properly and working those bases every time. And, you know, just it being our professional obligation to work those bases, to educate our customers on exactly what's going on on their vehicle.

So something is a lot of times I feel like it's so simple that some things are missed. And so it's constantly just reiterating that into our team's brain on how we do this process matters. Lately, we've been really doing a lot of RILA training and really honing in on RILA, making sure that our team is maximizing their RILA usage and utilizing it as the ultimate training tool hear themselves on the phone is such a crucial tool and it needs to be used more often. And, you know, we're providing feedback left and right on RILA on what we hear. But, you know, just having your actual employees listening to their own calls and their teammates calls, huge, just a game changer. It's huge. I don't think that sometimes people even realize how they sound or what they sound like when executing scripts. So that's really been a big focus, I would say, lately is RILA. Man, if you guys aren't using RILA or if you've never heard of it, it's basically an AI voice

recording software. It allows us to listen to all of our phone calls and even in-person sales presentations if we want to. And to basically super rapidly provide our team members feedback with data and adherence to the script. So and then what it really does is all of your top team members can listen to all the other top team members and get nuggets from the way they do it. You know, like we had a guy, we had a guy who was really good at selling fluids and he used this one line and it was... The around the world. He goes... My favorite. He goes, see, you guys even know it. You're in a different market. Yes. So that's what a case study. You know, he would be really good at selling fluids. He'd go, Mr. Miss Jones, did you know it's 24,901 miles around the equator of the earth and your car's got 48,000 miles on it. You've basically driven around the world twice and you've never changed your brake fluid. Can you believe it?

I love it. It's my favorite nugget ever. It's so good. You know, and it's like, boom. Then everybody else in the whole company just started using it. And so the way that you can diffuse knowledge, they're a great partner of ours. We have so much fun on Rilla. You can leave feedback anywhere and you can see who's adhering to the script. The secret sauce, I'll give you a nugget, is listening more. Most people interrupt customers and they can't even believe it once they start listening to their own calls. They talk too fast. I talk too fast. You know, interrupting customers is crazy. Most people talk... Crazy. Most people talk like 80 or 90% of the time. The best sellers in the company, they're patient. You know, they build that relationship on the new customer introduction by listening to the customer. By listening to the customer. And then, man, if you execute and build a relationship and are actually curious about

somebody else on the front end, you can basically read a script for 60 seconds and close big deals. Like, you can close big sales jobs because you're an active listener. You're a person who did the new shop tour, new customer intro shop tour. You know, care, and understand about the customer. And so, man, patience. Don't interrupt the customer, especially if there's an objection. You know, overcome the objection with patience. You know, most people talk over their customers. So, that's it for our episode with the Bartell family. Man, we are so excited to have them as part of the Houston-Boston partnership. We're kind of consolidating a massive company here. And we're having a whole lot of fun doing it. You guys are doing such an incredible job up in Chicago. And, man, talk about ruthless adherence to Todd's concept. And, you know, I know it's worked tremendously well for our family. I hope it's been working super well for you guys.

Thank you guys so much for being on here. Are you all coming to training this weekend? Are you all going to be here? I got one new guy coming. And I've got two guys that have already been through once before. But, unfortunately, I'm sending them by their own. Yeah, they're coming to solve this time. We'll be down in October for Dr. Dana's leadership. Yeah, let's go. Yeah, shout out Dr. Dana. Man, you guys have people every single month, you know. Yes, every month. That's the last thing I'll touch on is, you know, training. It's like you can't go to the gym, work out once a year for five hours, and then expect to be in shape. You know, you can't. It's like they got practice in the NFL every freaking week. You know, they got practice all offseason, and people are training. And it's the same for us. It's like if you're not practicing your presentations, you're just not getting better. I'm sorry. I'm obsessed, and I'm thinking constantly about how we can get better.

So that's it for us. That's the pod. This has been Master Tech to Millionaire, where we turn master technicians into CEO, stud, entrepreneur, millionaires. Thank you guys so much. Thank you to the Bartel. Thank you, Joe. This was amazing. Boom. Thank you, guys.