The Secret Formula Behind the Fastest-Growing Auto Repair Empire

Wow, welcome everybody to Master Tech to Millionaire. I'm Todd Hayes, sitting in for Joe Adams, and I have with us today Peter Serenditas. He is the General Managing Partner of Auto Tech Answers, part of the Auto Shop Answers family of businesses. A matter of fact, I need to do a quick commercial break before we get started.

Hey, Master Tech to Millionaire Manage in the Trenches podcast brought Talked to you by the Houston-Boston Partnership. Auto Shop Answers, family of businesses, which is Auto Shop Answers, key to key to callbacks. Training program, which is FIRE. If you come in, go to autoshopanswers.com, look up the date, get in touch with Todd Westerlin.

Again, it is FIRE. It will change your life. It will change your business. And the name of the podcast, Master Tech to Millionaire.

If you are obsessed, if you commit to it, you will become a millionaire. It is just amazing. Also, Autotech Answers, again, spearheaded by Peter Serenditas. Auto shop callbacks, so much more than callbacks.

Reoccurring revenue, just amazing stuff. Auto shop media, shop tours, just fire stuff, guys. You have to have shop tours. You need to have recruiting videos for your team.

We handle all that auto shop recruiting. Is there a shortage of technicians? Not if you have a great image, not if you have a great company culture. We can recruit all day long, period.

And then auto shop coaching, which is another division. And man, it's Rilla good. We use Rilla, which is an AI, which is fire recording our phone calls, recording every single touch point, every live, every show cell. It is amazing.

It is a game changer. We also have, boy, Michael Floyd. We just had our first Auto Shop Answers AIX, which was fire. Again, we're going to have another AIX.

I do believe it's in a couple of months. And coming up this month, we have Auto Shop Answers Key to Key to Callbacks. And we also have our program on accounting first, guys and fraud prevention. This is mission critical. is the most important thing you can have is how well you count your money.

If you do a great job counting your money, you will make a lot of money. If you do a poor job counting your money, unfortunately, someone else is counting your money and that's normally someone taking money from you. It is a must, must attend class. Again, your number one asset is people.

Your number two asset is how much money do you make shareholder value? That is where your multiple comes in. when you're dealing with private equity. Look, enough about our commercial, because we are the best in the business. We've scaled from $3 million to $100 million in revenue.

We are soon to go to $200, $300. And our mission is a $1 billion company over the next five years. And we feel very confident doing that. But now let's just get to Peter Serenditas.

Peter, wow. Welcome to the podcast, Auto Tech to Millionaire. Wow. Good to have you.

That's it. Yeah. So Peter, how the heck, how did you get involved with me? Oh, good, good, good, good question.

Pretty simple, actually. I was out doing my own thing. I wanted to be kind of retired on this. I've gone through my stage of life, different careers and whatnot.

And my son says, hey, dad, I'm working at Adams Automotive. And I'm wondering if you would be interested in talking to Todd Hayes. I go, well, who's Todd Hayes? He goes, you got to come in and talk to Todd, no matter what.

You just got to come in and talk to him and see what we got there. He's interested in training. So I said, okay, I'll take a look at training. So let's pause for one minute.

Now, who is your son? My son, Nico Sarantidis. Is he a hammer? He's my pride and joy.

Is he a hammer? He is a hammer. Oh, my God. You have to understand, Nico is a player.

So let me hear you. When we recruited Nico, he's such a, he is really one of our hammers. High integrity, superstar guy. And that's exactly what happened.

He goes, hey, Todd, man, would you like to meet my dad? His name's Peter Sarantidis. He is a technical trainer, one of the best in the country. And I go, really?

And he goes, no, really, man. He is amazing. And so now you got to understand, Nico is a star. And so, man, if he's a superstar, A is a track day.

So I know his dad's going to be a player. So I go, absolutely. Let me Google his name. So I Google his name and I go, oh, are you kidding me?

So, Peter, you were the, I'm going to go through this nice resume from Snap-on, knowing all their scan tools. Then you became a national trainer for Christian Brothers. You were there for I don't know how many years. And then from Christian Brothers, Napa National Trainer, very well known throughout the industry.

Vision, High Tech, all the, all the, you guys all know who Peter Serendidas is, which is really amazing. And I was like, that's your dad. And I go, thank you, God. Like right in my wheelhouse, you know, to scale a company, we needed tech training.

And so here I have one of the top trainers in the country. He was, um, at the time, I think you were with Napa at the time. I was exiting. I was exiting Napa.

And so it was like a gift from God. And so, and so next thing you know, I meet with Peter, we cut the deal. And wow, how's that been, Peter? Tell us about your career, though.

I mean, how did you get it? Tell us about, really, you started out in the business. I think your dad, correct? Yeah, my father got me into the business.

You know, when all my friends were out playing baseball and soccer at their, you know, early years of their education, I was out there pumping gas back in the day when we still had full service way before self-service. And so my father kept me close to him, and I thank him for that. I've been in the business as far as turning wrenches and owning and running a shop for over 34, 35 years. So I knew exactly what it takes to run a shop.

I knew exactly what the back of the shop was, but I was more into it from a technical point of view. My brother came along and onboarded with me as far as our shop goes and gave me an exit plan to get out of it, just hand over the shop to my brother, more or less. He's doing very well. As a matter of fact, the shop's still thriving.

From there, I went to, I was thinking to myself, well, I'm semi-retired. What am I going to do? And my wife says, well, look, you'd like to teach. Why don't you go check out this one ad in the paper?

They're looking for an instructor at the local college. I'm like, teaching? I don't know about that. I don't know what that's all about.

But I tried it and they hired me on the spot. So I created a first class training curriculum for them. It took them from a regular associate of science degree to an associate of arts degree with AA, I guess it was. We went into from a 12-month training program into an 18-month training program.

And I basically took care of that. Then I started getting bored of that. So I found an opportunity with one of my friends to go work with Snap-on diagnostics at the time. So I moved on to Snap-on.

Snap-on brought me over here to Texas. Oh, you're kidding. No, seriously. Yeah.

And so you know how to run all the Snap-on equipment. Yeah, I help actually with that. I gave some ideas and whatnot. But yeah, no, that was part of my gig for a while.

And then obviously I got tired of that. I left that and I got into something more local. That's where Christian Brothers came in. So they, how long were you a Christian brothers?

I think it was five years. Right on. Good. And you were the national trainer, tech trainer.

They didn't call me a national trainer, even though we had stores all over, all over the country at the time. We had just broken the 200 store gap. I think it was, or just at the cusp of it or whatever, when I was exiting, but that was right before COVID. And so, yeah, so I got a lot of experience from that.

Very good mentorship also from the people that I was with. And then from there I got a, let's say a gig with, with Napa. And that's where, of course, I ended up with NAPA for a while. And from there, obviously.

And so that's traveling around the country. Oh, yeah. I'm teaching on their tools and stuff or actually technically training. Tell me what you did.

No, yeah. So that was different, right? So what I was doing as far as technically training goes, I had a curriculum that I was following. Of course, all of our fellow associates, of course, as trainers go, we did.

We had a curriculum we'd follow. And I'd go out and do these presentations. So they're basically knowledge-based presentations on the latest and greatest technology out there from in-cylinder pressure transducer testing, lab scope setups. We talked about ADOS.

We worked with configurations. We went into hybrid systems. I mean, this was cutting-edge stuff at the time. It still is.

So when I do go out to training venues to actually see where I can get and fit my training, I see that is still a relevant or those are still relevant topics that everybody's talking about. So I'm really happy to see that I got really good training from the trainers. So it was more of a train the trainer type of experience for me. Well, it's so amazing when you think, you know, obviously most people out there.

I started my first company. I was 26 years old. I have no mechanical experience whatsoever. But I am a retailer.

Peter, am I a retailer? You are the retailer. Peter will actually, hey, Peter will vouch for me. We really have serious, serious game here.

But one of the things that I knew that when I was scaling my first company, technical training was still very hard to get. We had some AC Delco tech training that went on and some other things back in the day. But, you know, to truly scale a company, and this is where the industry has to hear this, we are scaling a billion-dollar company. we have technical training down. That doesn't mean that we are perfect, but it does mean that my technicians, when they come to work for Adams Automotive or one of our Houston-Boston partnership stores, they are guaranteed technical training, cutting edge technical training.

That is a fact. And see, that's something that me in the industry thinks, wow, you know, as I'm scaling this company, man, I love, Peter, do I respect technicians? Oh, you put your arm around them every day. I hug every technician.

Do I love technicians? Oh, yeah, you do. Do you know why? Because I'm nothing without great technicians, and that is what people don't get.

See, I actually have an industry where front of the house and back of the house fight. Oh, no, man. Yeah. Man, at our company, Houston-Boston Partnership Auto Shop Answers, the two must become one.

Do you understand if you have a great technician and horrible front of the house, it doesn't work? Is that a fact either? That's a fact. If I have a great front of the house and bad technicians, it does not work.

That's a fact, period. Now, if I have great front of the house, great technicians, they respect one another, they work for one another, man, it's fire. Now, since I have Peter here, how good do we treat our technicians here? Actually, our technicians are, I think, if not, one of the best programs that we've seen for treating compensation and treating them.

And as far as what they need and supplying them with the tools that they need and everything. Yeah, no, it's top notch. So I want to put something to rest. You know, God says I have Peter on here, who's, you know, again, you know, technical trainer.

He knows every technician in our company. Here's the deal. When, well, and here's like the big argument out there. Do I charge for diagnostics?

And the answer to that, if a customer calls in, you got to hear something. You have to hear this is where the industry gets it wrong. It's absolutely no charge to have one of my certified technicians back to your vehicle to determine exactly what's wrong with it. It is now a good time to bring your vehicle in.

Peter, does that give my technicians a ton of opportunity once I hit that speed lift? Now, I want you to hear something. If that car comes in my shop. That technician still gets paid.

I'm just not charging for it. Do you understand that? See, that's where the industry can't seem to figure it out. My technicians make a ton of money.

I pay them well, big time. They do nothing for free. But as a business owner, I can elect to say it's absolutely no charge for you to bring your vehicle in. I'm going to inspect the vehicle.

I'm going to have one of my certified technicians. I don't really care if it's even a smoke test. I can do a smoke test fairly quick, but that technician is going to be paid whatever he would get paid. He gets to flag that job.

Even if the customer says, nope, I'm not buying it, and he leaves, my technician gets paid. Absolutely. See? See, my industry doesn't get it.

But if I can tell that customer who has been burnt by most shops, don't ever forget when that customer is calling you a first time customer, he has fired or she has fired every single shop they have been in since they've been driving. Do you understand that? So, wow, we're super nice on the phone. We say yes on the phone.

Absolutely is now a good time to bring your vehicle. It's absolutely no charge to have one of my certified technicians inspect your vehicle. I put the pressure on me to sell. If I do not close that job, that technician's paid no matter what, period.

It's that simple. And see, that is how it works. I need them to love coming here. So for that technician, why don't you hear some of you're a technician for me.

Do technicians love working here? Absolutely. What kind of turnover do we have? Little to none.

Little to zero. Zero, yeah. Because it is amazing. When I hang up that phone, I send out a shop tour for the technician so that that customer can see how amazing we are.

When that customer walks in my door, what's the next thing that I do? I rush out there, do a strong meet and greet, take in, take photos, which then gets pre-booked through AI up on my call center. Boom, just set up two appointments. I take a picture of the mileage, and guess what happens?

Boy, that's my third base. I'm already setting up to talk to the customer about fluid exchanges, and they haven't even come in and done a live shop tour. Now, do I do a live shop tour, Peter? Always, yeah.

Do I introduce everyone at Larry Mouton, all these great, Josh, all these amazing technicians, man. Hi, man. It's a first time customer. Introduce them to the family, yeah.

Oh, my God. And do my technicians love that? They really appreciate that. Man, I'm proud of my technicians.

They're not the redheaded stepchildren that everybody perceives them to be. Hey, man, man. They're amazing, buttoned up, polished, professional business technician, business athlete. Now, I give a complete shop tour, and then we get the customer settled in or in a loaner car.

But see, when I talk about free diagnostics, Peter, does it work? Of course it does. Of course it does. But I say, I will not charge a customer.

Nowhere do I say I'm not paying my technician. Do I pay my technician? Very well. 100%. Very well.

See, that's where the industry doesn't get it. See, what happens is the industry doesn't have confidence in themselves, so they're actually making a living off of .510 diagnostics. Oh, no, it's going to be a minimum diagnostic fee because that's all you're going to get. Because why?

And most of the people will hang up and leave, and we can track that, which we track everything. And so, man, if you're tracking out of your business, you're seeing you're losing lifetime customers because you're hell-bent on making sure that we recharge a minimum diagnostic fee. Wow. I would much rather get the customer and show them how great we are, have my technician diagnose it.

It's free to the customer, but not free to me. Free to the customer, not free to me. My technician gets paid. Isn't that amazing?

Now, since he's diagnosed it, am I going to be able to close that job? Oh, my God. By the time I shoot videos, MotoVisual, Chad GDB Attachment, is it fire, Peter? It's absolutely fire.

Yeah. It's the bomb. It's the bomb. Now, Peter, you have been around many business models.

Is it a perfected business model? It is. It's structured, first of all. There's no question of what you're going to do.

You know exactly where diagnostics starts and where it stops. A lot of people have an illusion of that. Like, well, what do you mean diagnostics? And that's our fault because we've shot ourselves in the foot.

We have not set the boundaries, but over here, that's exactly what we do. We say, here's what you get. And it's done. And we're great with it.

See, it just doesn't matter. Now, my close ratio is very high. Extremely, yeah, from what I've seen. It's extremely high.

What do you mean from what you've seen? Well, in the industry. Yeah. Oh, yeah, compared to the industry.

There's no comparison. How does Nico do? Nico is a player. He is a player.

Yeah. How's his close ratio? It's close to 100%. It's very close.

That's what I'm saying. Yeah. So I want you to hear something. If Nico gets a ticket like anyone else and they go to our boom, boom room and they set it up and Nico has shot his video, Nico's attached MotoVisual is to it.

Nico has put ChatGDP on it, sent it to the customer. And Nico has this great presence. I mean, man, he's a stud. And so, yeah, I call him Nico Scorsese.

He shoots great videos. I mean, he's in the trenches with the wrenches where I work in the trenches. Is that great? And then he closes a deal.

If he doesn't close the deal, my technicians know I'm going to tag team it, turn it over. Man, I'm going to do everything in my power to close that deal. And we do. Again, guys, my average store last month, Houston-Boston Partnership, was over $550,000.

You know, Adams Automotive is known as the million-dollar store. We have done $1.2 million in a month out of this store. And then I have, which is the largest store in the country, with a great 62.5 GP or plus. Plus, we have the smallest store in the country, Charlie Serendita.

That's right. I've been there. I mean, Charlie. Charlie, it's all Greek.

It's all Greek to me. All my Greek friends are accountants Greek. I got these hard-headed Greeks I work with. I love my Greek.

I call them my Greek posse. Isn't that funny? Hey, man, my Greek posse's with me. Yeah, but don't think about it.

Then you have Charlie, he's got two base, four lifts. Is he amazing? Oh, my gosh. I couldn't believe it.

When I went there, I went, are you kidding me? Right, right. Yeah, but does he do it? $400,000, two base, four lifts. Yeah, that's over $100,000.

I mean, just a fricking machine. Anytime you have an opportunity to be around Charlie's Lackos, please be around Charlie's Lackos. Now, I want you to hear this. It's absolutely no charge.

I am not charging the customer, but I am paying my technician people. Does everybody understand that? See, it's like, well, I can't believe you make your technicians work for free. Wow that's crazy it's insane like wow but that's what they think out there i mean i have my national technical trainer sitting next to me going yeah that's insane yeah you know my god we pay them great again i don't charge a customer but i pay my technician industry can everybody hear that it's like magic you are losing lifetime customers listen to how you answer the phone right listen to If you're rude or nice on the phone.

And when that customer calls up, they're going to help. I listened to a call today. Customer calls up. A lady calls up from a shop out there talking about check engine lights on.

It's flashing. It's not running good. Now, how will I answer that? She goes, can you help me with it?

Absolutely. Matter of fact, why don't I come pick up your vehicle right now? And I will do that. oh my god this phone call was butchered beat up torn up and the customer was lost it's about it was a seven minute phone call versus a 45 second outrageous phone call it's absolutely no charge let me come pick it up for you manor safety is my concern let me get your name number i'm on my way that's right boom get the car in the shop that's customer service that's customer service now am i going to sell that job absolutely am i going to charge her to look at it no but i'm going to sell the job because we are that good but even if i do not sell the job is my technician paid their hourly rate absolutely that's not a question see and that's that's where the industry just doesn't get and not only do i have an opportunity to send a shop tour do a shop tour man overwhelm them with auto hospitality peter how long you've been in the car repair business 50 how long you've been in auto hospitality. I thought.

Yeah. Now you're in the auto hospitality business. What's better, car repair or auto hospitality? It's about fixing the customer, not the car.

Oh, man. Amen, man. It's about giving that customer outrageous customer service. Peter, can we fix cars?

Oh, everybody could fix cars. Yeah, everybody can fix cars. But do we fix cars with outrageous customer service? Always.

And see, there's the difference, guys. That's what technicians want. Do we have a shortage of technicians, Peter? Not that I know of.

Nope. No way. It used to be a misnomer. Yeah, well, see, it is.

No, no, stop right now. Yeah, yeah. And now think about it, Peter. When you walk into your office, which, by the way, I'm here podcasting out of Peter's office, is this a beautiful facility?

It is, it is. I enjoy coming in, yeah. Now, is Charlie's forebayer a beautiful facility? It is.

Two bay. Two bay forebayer. All of them are. They're all beautiful.

Yeah, everyone I've been in. That's right. They're all clean and beautiful. Yeah.

And you're proud to go there. Are technicians proud to be there? They do. They want to come into work.

Yes, yes, they want to come into work because, one, we give outrageous customer service to not our customers, to their customers. We give them a spotless, clean environment to work in every single morning. Stop wherever you're at right now. Walk outside, take a picture of your shop right this minute.

Walk inside your shop, take a picture of the interior of your shop. Are you attracting great technicians or are you running a dirty car repair business? We have made a fortune on buying shops, have we not, Peter? I think so.

We buy shops that go out of business. Why? Because they're dirty. They're dingy.

I remodel them. Perry Adams, the master of remodels. Oh, my God. He goes in and remodels them.

We staff them with great front of the house, great back of the house, and we rock and roll. I mean, massive numbers. Massive numbers. and the higher the revenue, the happier the technician. Higher the revenue, happier the advisors because everybody has a financial stake in the outcome of the business.

Now, since we make a lot of money, what does that allow me to do? It allows me to pay Peter Serenditas a lot of money, build a company with him, and, man, Peter travels around the country, not only at Vision and all these other shows, to stay on top of cutting edge technology, but he also brings it in and trains our technicians. What is at work to a technician? Why isn't anybody doing that?

I mean, everybody should be doing that. There should be a lead tech somehow that's getting all the information and bringing it back, of course. Techs like to share their information. You know that.

Every time. Ask them something simple. Ask them what time it is. Oh, my God.

Peter had to bring that up. That's an inside joke between Peter and I. Hard-headed Greek. Peter is brilliant, but, oh, he pushes my button.

Now, Peter, what time is? Well, Todd, let me tell you how to diagnose your Apple Watch. No, I'm just kidding. Now, Peter is an amazing guy.

Peter, tell us about your van, you know, how that van works for us. And then I wouldn't mind you getting to what's called ADOS. Oh, yeah. Yeah, because that's kind of a hot topic out there.

You got people out there that are actually creating their own businesses that come in and do ADOS alignments and stuff for you. I have a friend who launched that company. You have some shops that are buying into ADOS. A lot of them haven't yet.

So I want to first, first question, tell me about that van that we use and put on the road. Sure. So it's more of a training van, but of course I have everything I need in it. So that's my moving toolbox.

If you want to look at it that way, I can diagnose just about everything on it. Obviously I don't have a way to lift a vehicle, but as far as helping someone out and showing them exactly, you know, how to look at a vehicle and maybe how to complete a process, that's what the van is for. If you can't come to me, I'll go to you. And we do that training between all our stores.

And that's how we basically, you know, get the word around as to what the next level of training is going to be by visiting the stores. And so the van is very, very crucial to that. So if I have a vehicle, one, they can call you up and you can normally diagnose over the phone, kind of like the old, I think, a Jeff Sweet with Identifix. You know, back in the day when Jeff.

We have a support system here where the technicians within our group, if they have an issue or whatever, it builds up a ticket for us and we support them through our system over here internally. So we do communicate with all of our techs. They have a free open invitation and support ticket system that we manage. So, yeah, support is everywhere.

There's no use or there's no excuse not to have support. It's there. Right. And so how are other shops getting their training right now?

See, I think it's a major, major miss in the industry. And it was mission critical. When I was putting together our Fortune 500 infrastructure, one of the most important parts of it was tech training. I told you that.

And it just so happened. What a great opportunity. I now know that I can recruit superstar technicians, give them superstar training through a superstar tech trainer who is obsessed with, See, Peter is obsessed. Matter of fact, I love Peter because he is obsessed, but he has to understand I am a retail business professional.

So Peter will go, hey, Todd, let me show you this. Peter, you lost me at hello. Really? No, he'll get me out to a car and I go, Peter, stop it.

Come on, Peter. That's why I have you. I will never get this. But no, it is so spectacular what he does for our company.

How do you scale without it? How do you scale without having a top flight technical trainer on staff? And again, as part of our private equity, as part of what we do, access to an amazing technical trainer. And again, I know we flash cars.

We do all kinds of stuff. Yeah, everybody should be able to do that. I mean, you know, flashing vehicles was available to be back in 96. So if you haven't been able to flash a vehicle from 1996 till today, what are you doing, right?

Yeah. It's been around the whole time. It's just some people just don't feel comfortable with it, right? And so I bring the tools to them and I show them how to do it.

And when they figure out exactly the precautions they need to have up front, which is not hard. I mean, look, they're doing it at the dealership, right? And if they could do it there, we could do it here. What's the difference, right?

So if we show them properly how to do things and keep in step with the procedures that need to be done, anybody can do it. It's not that it's a mystery. you know and so that's what we do we just try to keep up with the latest technology and just bring it forward to our team and and train our technicians our technicians are the top trained technicians in the country you put on a class recently that i heard nothing but positive about air conditioning oh there you go it's amazing oh my goodness across the industry yeah it was like really peter yeah no and it's simple you know because it's our own fault the our biggest problem is, you know. Just doing and getting just by with something and not really understanding why you're doing it. And so air conditioning is one of those things.

You know, typically what I've seen in the industry, you know, I'm not picking at people, but what will happen is a car will come in, it'll have some kind of a air conditioning performance issue. The first thing the tech does is suck down the system, you know, recover it and then recharge and then see how it does afterwards. Why? That's not the way we grew up.

That's not the way I grew up in the seventies. We have gauges. We have pressure to temperature translation charts that show us exactly what the static pressure is before we do anything. Why are we wasting our inventory?

Why are we wasting our time? So I just brought up some of these fundamentals to some of the people out there that I was training and they're like, oh, you know, bright lights. Why haven't we known about this? Why?

Because the industry trends and what's happening. I'll tell you one thing, obviously, diagnostics, right? The biggest killer of diagnostics is flat rate. Todd takes that whole thing out of the equation.

You know, he doesn't have to worry about it. The technician is going to get paid anyways. So the biggest problem is, oh, I have so much time to figure this out. Look, if you present the technician with a lot of the information up front.

Half of his diagnostic time has already been handed to him. He now has more time after he gets what we call our diagnostic triage, which is done basically at the speed rack. Sure you know and that that's given to him he's like oh my gosh i got everything i need right now i know what the charging voltage is i know what the condition of the battery is i know if there's any tsbs my goodness i got all this in front of they've already done a global network health check right they've already told me exactly what code said so now all i gotta do is a little research put two and two together and come up with a test plan and here's the deal guys on again we do not work on cannibalized cars i will never be that shot oh my god oh my and here's the deal you know there's that shop out there that technician who makes no absolutely no freaking money and peter knows this to be true i don't care what it is i spend it 10 shops but i'm gonna fix it and let me tell you you know he will spend a day on a car and not bill it out you know he'll build two hours yeah and i just do not work on cannibalized cars now the car comes into my shop and it's been cannibalized it's not my customer that is not where i make my money but if i if that lady who's driving down the road novice in her check engine light comes on is flashing man i can diagnose and repair that car very fast the good news is. I can see it's absolutely no charge to have one of my certified technician inspector vehicle give you a complete written estimate now i don't care if it took him five minutes or 15 minutes or an hour all he has to do is tell me how much time do i owe you right and he can say two hours great done paid thanks thank you thank you but normally if i tell a technician what is the book time called where i need an hour diagnostic how fast can you tell me yeah give me five minutes great thank you very much and there's how it works i'm guaranteeing him an hour diagnostics done the customer says no it's paid paid paid does everybody understand i just don't charge the customer.

But then I sell the job. Not only do I sell the isolate and then I get to inspect the rest of the vehicle. I move around the bases, sell the additional concern. And then I move around the third base and I sell fluid exchanges.

So by the time I'm done, it's a $3,500 ticket and it is winner, winner, chicken dinner. Everybody wins. The customer's super happy. I get customers for life.

Massive reoccurring revenue to our call center pre-booters. It is fire. Technicians have guaranteed hours, guaranteed hours. Do you know that I'm open seven days a week?

Peter, oh my God, is a guy who's from the industry. How big is seven days a week? Well, we were always open seven days a week. I mean, when I was growing up.

Oh, yeah, when you were growing up, right. So explain that. Let's talk about that because yes, gas stations. We're open seven days a week.

We had a thing called full service, right? Ding, ding, you ran out there, fill her up. Customer sat in the car. That was part of the customer service, right?

The experience. So you check the air in the tires, the windshield, you check everything underneath the hood, right? Check the oil, air pressure, everything was checked for, right? When you're checking the tires, air pressure, you're looking at tire tread, you're looking at shocks, looking for any leaks underneath.

This was, wow, once a week. Every week this was done for that customer, right? So when they got their gas. So what kind of service was that?

But come fast forward around 2006 or so, I think there was a national survey that said 12% of the accidents on the highways were due to under tire inflation. Right. So why? Because people aren't checking their tires.

They're relying on that little light to come on and hoping it'll go away. So what happened to that customer service? Oh, it went to self-service. Oh, it went to self-service.

It went to convenience stores. Yes, it did. And so guess what? The shop owner started opening five days a week, which is absolutely nuts.

Are we in the retail business, Peter? Of course we are. My God, how busy are Saturdays and Sundays? Listen, if you're closed, your tech is probably working on something.

Yes, he is. Now, here's another. No, no, let me talk about this. So we are open seven days a week.

Our technicians do not work seven days a week. Our technicians work five days a week. Does everybody hear that? Five days a week.

They get two days off. Now, here's what's happening. See, in a shop that's only open five days a week, they have no option to work more than five days a week. And so if they want to finish up a job on Saturday, not going to happen.

My technicians have keys to my shop and their own alarm clock because we're always freaking open. And some of them want to come in even early to get work done because we're slammed. Do you understand we are slammed? Our top technicians make multiple six figures.

It's massive. Now you have to hear this. Now on Fridays when you're shutting down your store, watch your technician, this poor guy, loads up his freaking tools. Puts them in his car to go do his side work.

Shame on you, industry. Shame on you. That means he's working with no insurance, no workers' comp, doing side work, trying to make enough money to make a living, putting a water pump on in someone's driveway. Shame on you.

See, I'm open seven days a week. Man, I don't care. I got some guys who want to work seven days a week. Man, Todd, I don't want to work seven days a week.

I want to make as much money as I can make for my family, my wife. I'm buying a big house. I'm buying cars. I'm doing all this.

I'm taking them to Walt Disney World, whatever it takes. That's their choice, though. But everyone in my company is scheduled five-day work week. And then people, here's my favorite line about being open on Sunday.

Well, how do you get parts? I love it. It's crazy. How do you get parts?

I don't fix cars on Sunday. I sell them. It's kind of like race. You know, I grew up around NASCAR.

Wait, I grew up around NASCAR. And, you know, the NASCAR is saying, went on Sunday, sell on Monday. PMI on Sunday, sell on Monday This is so easy, guys That's what we did back in the day Sure, who cares And brought the cars in and had our bays loaded for Monday morning You bet, yeah, who cares about fixing the car But I can for darn sure do a check in July Cars break down on the weekend Check breaks, get them a loan in the car Cars, do you not know what day of the week it is What month it is Oh man, it's a seasonal business Hey, is it a seasonal business? Are you crazy?

A water pump doesn't care if it's Christmas A water pump doesn't care what month it is, what day it is. It goes bad. It needs to be fixed, period. Our last holiday, we had one of the biggest days.

Sure, we always do. Yeah. Hey, and again, hey, holidays were for federal government, federal employees. That's a federal paid holiday.

And we're like, are you crazy? Man, I grew up, you know, right out of college and went for goods. We're stocking them deep, selling them cheap. See, goods are open, all major holidays.

Why, man? That's your big tire cell banner tire cells Stacking them Jeep, selling them Jeep And so wow, I'm a retailer. Auto, I'm a retailer that specializes in auto hospitality. See, I don't fix cars on Sundays.

Woo! Come into Auto Shop, answer us, key to key to callbacks, and you will learn a perfected business model. But I will tell you, my record two days, Saturday and Sunday, out of the store we're sitting in right now is $108,000 sold. I didn't fix $108,000 worth of jobs, but I had technicians walking in with so many hours, it's ridiculous.

And that's what we do across all of our stores. Anyone who gets involved with auto shop answers goes, oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. Wow.

See, the industry has no idea what we're doing. And then you got all these other guys, these amateurs teaching amateurs talking about, oh, I know it can be really stressful. No, it's not stressful. Business is not stressful.

If you're properly staffed, if you have great people front of the house, great people back at the house, you're open seven days a week, You are slammed seven days a week Not fixing cars seven days a week But man, I'm selling jobs seven days a week It is amazing Real quick, talk to me about ADOS Oh, what about, what do you want to know? First of all You know, it's kind of a big word out there A lot of people are talking about Do shops buy it, do they not buy it? Well, as far as shops go They need to be equipped to do that, right? So it is a safety enhancement on all vehicles We've always had some sort of a, you know Safety or ADOS system on our vehicles, right? in the past, all the features that we've had.

Well, tell people exactly what that is. It's all these sensors. It's all these sensors. That's Todd Hayes talking, by the way.

Hey, technicians will go, wow, man, there's sensors all over the car. And I go, ching, ching, ching, ching. No, but basically, advanced driver assist systems, we all know, of course, are just safety enhancements. ABS brakes is one of the first ADOS systems that we have.

Anything that has to do with safety. But the thing is, we have all these different eyes, ears, and senses around the vehicle right now that can help predict and help us, of course, in safety, right, safety-wise. So you need to be tooled up for it. You need to be trained for it.

You need to be ready for it. There are specialty shops that do just that, but I don't see why not everybody couldn't, right? Yeah. Yeah.

And that is really part of an alignment procedure now, big time. Oh yeah. No, no. Look, if you're not, well, most of them are actually programmed into a lot of these alignment machines anyways.

You know, anything, even a windshield nowadays, you see some of these windshield companies are even talking about, oh, we'll even adjust your camera for you. I mean, this is, you know, what we're doing right now. It's becoming everyday. But the problem that we as an industry have, we don't embrace this technology quick enough.

And of course it surpasses us and those that do embrace it are the ones that stay ahead so peter does todd haze embrace technology oh come on tell me what are you working on peter give us i know i don't know how much time how much time have we been on here i don't know it's over i don't know 40 minutes we got a little more time tell us about what you're working on because you you have to understand guys you know our technology in 1986 was really a polaroid camera and a radio shack recorder. Today, we have AI throughout our business model. Every single touch point, the things that we are doing with AI, we had our first auto shop answers AIX class last month. How was it, Peter?

Oh, it was packed. Yeah, packed. First one, it was packed. Packed.

Packed. I mean, it's amazing what we're doing with AI. It is amazing. See, these are game changers.

Is this a game changer for shop owners? Yes, of course it is. I mean, that's just the next level. But even the key to callback.

Oh, wow. Come on. Come on, guys. See, here's the deal.

That's immediate. It will change your life. Will it, Peter? That's immediate.

And then you throw in... AI, and then you start talking about Peter, this is where I fade out. So I'm going to take a nap for a minute. So I'm just kidding because Peter has AI on things he's working on.

And it's just over my head, guys. Again, I'm a retailer. I cannot fix a car. A matter of fact, you're, you know, and no disrespect, but you have to hear this.

I was groomed from the womb to be a retailer. Now, I can go buy. Can I afford any toolbox out there, Peter? Of course.

We have a great toolbox program, a matter of fact. I actually purchased it for a couple of our techs. Yeah, you bet. I have a toolbox program.

We are so good to our great technicians. Now, once you guys hear this, so I go out and I buy a toolbox and I equip it with a bunch of tools. Can Todd Hayes become a technician? No.

Nope. Absolutely not. See, and now you got to hear this. Just because you can fix cars, Peter, a great technician, does that put him in my league as a shop owner?

No. It's not even close. And that's nothing that's not, man, Peter, do I love you? Of course you do.

You have an entirely different skill set than I do. But Peter will tell you, wow, Todd, thank you for showing me this. Oh, my gosh. You're right.

Man, I can fix cars. But now he understands the business model. Now he understands key to key to callback. Now he understands outrageous customer service, although he's doing a great job, but man, this is a whole different level, is it not?

And it's the truth. How can I, if you cannot see that comparison, that just because I buy a toolbox and I put tools in it, I can even order an ASE YouTube certified technician off of YouTube or off of Amazon and put a patch on my sleeve. Does that make me a technician no it does not just because you open up a shop does not make you a business owner entrepreneur business machine and please be very careful who's whispering in your ears out there guys you have amateur people who do not know what they're talking about teaching you guys wrong stuff i'm saying it and it's a fact sorry it is a fact how important are state inspect. I had a trainer out there talking about state inspections.

They go, oh my God, it is crazy. Why would anyone do state inspections? I cannot believe it. I'm going, right.

Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Well, because it's a thousand dollar ticket average if you do it right. So the customer has an opportunity to come into my shop.

And see this beautiful facility. Hey, do you do state inspections? Absolutely. Is now a good time to bring your vehicle in?

I send out a shop tour. They come in. I give them a shop tour. I put the car on the speed rack right next to my state inspection machine.

While your vehicle's in here, I'm going to look at it. We just make sure it's in tip-top condition. And what is my state inspection average ticket? That'd be $1,000.

And I got the industry people out there going, they're crazy. What the state is telling you to inspect it so isn't that a great opportunity hold on hold on isn't our responsibility yes to make sure the car is safe anytime a car drives in your bay isn't it your professional obligation to inspect that car see it's your professional obligation i just have an industry who's been beat up burnout don't understand that see i mean it is really pathetic yeah see man if your mother brought her car in for estate inspection would you sniff it stick it and get it the heck out of here or would you go oh my god mom while your vehicle is in her i'm gonna look it over make sure some tip-top condition oh thank you son and if i find something wrong with that car it's my professional obligation to show that customer because their safety is my concern industry wake up same with an oil change it is my professional obligation someone changing their oil, do they maintain their car? They're great customers. So, wow, could a customer bring their car in for an oil change?

Absolutely. I'll take care of it right now while it's in here. I'm going to look at it and make sure it's in tip-top conditions. If I find a safety concern, what's my close ratio on that, Peter?

Oh, it's over. I've got 95. Almost 100. It depends on if Nico is doing it.

Nico, 100%. No, Nico is a stud. But you have to hear this. See, that's crazy.

See, it's our job as professionals. Peter is one of the top professional technician trainers in the country. Is it your professional obligation, Peter, anytime you look at a car their safety is your concern? It has to be.

My industry doesn't get that. My industry says, ah man, spill it, fill it and get the heck out of here. Lick it, stick it, and go. It's just a state inspection.

We're 100% liable. Even with ADOS. If you get somebody else to do the ADOS for you, you are still responsible. When we get oil taken away, that's Our hazard is waste.

We're responsible for it. We have to be responsible for it. But you hear that, guys. As a professional in the business.

As a professional business owner, as a professional technician, it is our responsibility. Their safety is our concern. When that phone rings, are you answering that phone like, help, I need your freaking help? Or are they a nuisance?

Oh, it's a freaking state inspection. Another oil change. Not now, tomorrow, maybe. Okay, I have a ticket average of $1,000.

Do the math, guys. Do the math. That's how we average over $550,000 in store. And now we've scaled from $3 million to $100 million, delivering auto hospitality with outrageous customer service.

Fact, open seven days a week, and our team loves working here. They're not doing side work. They're not putting their life. Think about it.

They're using jack stands, doing breaks at their house or at some neighbor's house. Shame on you for allowing that to happen. I want every single shop owner that listens to this to take a mental picture if they're closed on Friday. I want you to watch your technicians load their tools in the car.

Shame on you. We do not allow that to happen. Man, if they want to come in and work Saturday, that's up to them. I'd much rather them work in a professional shop with insurance than absolutely doing side work where they could get hurt.

It's insane. And then they come back the next week because they're hurt. Right. It's an insane, insane way.

Anyway, Peter, let's wrap this thing up. Man, what a great time. Yeah. You know, you're working on some cool AI stuff.

What can you tell us about that? Well, I just call it just-in-time training. So it takes a little bit of everything. Biggest problem we have in the industry is, you know, can I get training for my techs, but I can't.

Give them up because they're actually working. So when do we bring them in, right? Usually at night. We're going to feed them a couple of pizzas.

We're going to do some, they're asleep. Now, what's this? Do we pay our technicians when they come in for training? Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. See, there you go. Oh, yeah. Everybody has to understand.

Technicians come in to get trained by Peter. We pay them. We give them food and we pay them. See, our technicians are so well compensated.

So do my technicians do anything for free, Peter? No, of course not. No, not at all. I know they don't have to, they never do.

And we are saying, go ahead, Peter, tell us more. No, no, no. So basically I've incorporated training and diagnosing at the same time while you're working on the vehicle. And I've also gamified it.

So we have a leaderboard, we have fun doing it. It's right on. It is, it is a, oh my gosh, it's, it's next level stuff. Thanks to AI.

It's so fun. Gamifying your business is mission critical. I mean, You know, we call Moneyball the great game of business. It is a game.

We have, our team rushes to work. We love being here. We're obsessed with the game of business, a great game of business, getting the boom. Man, I mean, follow us, please.

You can follow me on LinkedIn, Todd Hayes. Follow me on Facebook if you'd like to friend me. You know, it's just so fun what we're doing and learn about our industry. Peter, does it work?

Of course it works. Does it work? Oh, I got testimony. To every shop owner out there, does key to key to callback work?

Can they get their technicians trained? Can they get their service advisors trained? Can they get their service advisors coached by auto shop coaching? What is it that they can't get?

We are a Fortune 500 infrastructure company. Can we shoot their videos? Yes. I mean, by way of their shop tour videos, their recruiting videos.

How important is that to a technician? See, and also, this is really great. I have to say this. This one blows people away.

Someone will look at a resume guys got a rap sheet resume i was talking to our recruiter today sam we're out visiting stores and i go man that's a guy i want well why would you ever want a guy who's got a rap sheet resume ah he's got standards he's looking for a home and you call that resume up and you talk to him and go yeah you're looking for a home aren't you you bet you're telling him every shop there's so many dirty shops out there so many poorly ran businesses out there so many owners barely getting by all you got to do is commit to auto shop interest key to key to call back i promise you will change your life it will change your family it will change your business which in turn changes your technician is that a fact peter it's a fact yeah that's a fact i mean has it been fun being part of this ride it's been a ride that's for sure but yeah it's been yeah it's been very fun so our next deal i think our next gig together we're at asta is that next yes we are Yes, we are. A-S-T-A. Peter Serenditas is going to be with me. Please, if you're going to A-S-T-A, sign up.

Todd Hayes, great class. How can this be wrong? It is freaking fire. It is an hour, I guarantee.

Will change your life. As you guys know, Brandon Dawson from Cardone Ventures was here yesterday. How did that little visit go, huh? So Brandon and I go back, you know, probably about a year.

What do you think about it? He was blown away, actually. Yeah, sure he was. And I didn't expect that from him.

Sure he was, yeah. He was like, okay, so what's next? Yeah, 10X Automotive. Yeah, but see, guys, it's a real deal.

We've had everyone from the top brass and the top, top guys, Morgan Stanley, wow, you have perfected a business model. We have Grant Cardone, Brandon Dawson coming in going, wow, you perfected a business model. Guys, it's a real deal. We have perfected a business model, and we will continue to grow. our next stop is 200 million.

And it's not about the money. It's about changing lives and changing an industry. The money is just a byproduct of it. But let me tell you something, man.

If you can take a close ratio, a close ratio because of the way we operate with outrageous auto hospitality, great customer service. Video, moto visuals, all the things that we do to absolutely blow the customer away with hospitality and your sales double and triple do you think their service advisor self-esteem will go up i have an industry that hates going to work because they get told no 50 of the time or less that sucks man my team can't wait to show up we do a take five here every single morning at 6 45 my teams are at 6 30 ready to rock and roll to serve customers at 7 o'clock. Peter, thank you so much. I appreciate you, you rock star.

Thank you, Nico, for absolutely introducing me to your dad. You've been part of the team now for quite some time. And as we wrap up, I wish I could tell you the exact date of our next training program. It is in August.

Do you know what date it is? I'm not really sure, but in August. Just go over to autoshopanswers.com. What is it?

It's the 23rd. It's the 23rd, 24th, but also we have a counting first, I do believe, on the 22nd of August. That's right. Again, we will be at the ASTA convention.

We'll be speaking for an hour, sign up for that. And then our next stop on our tour of speaking is going to be at the Ratchet & Wrench convention. Do you know the date on that, Peter? Yeah, I believe that one is in October.

So Ratchet & Wrench is October 8th through the 10th. shout out to the guys at Ratchet and Ratchet. Oh, we love Ratchet and Ratchet. Great, great, great. Thank you so much.

Chris, Chris, all you guys are just amazing. So anyway, again, this has been Master Technician and Millionaire brought to you by Houston Boston Partnership. Auto Shop Answers, family of businesses. Please just hit us up on Houston Boston Partnership.

If you want to know about our private equity side, Auto Shop Answers about our Fortune 500 really infrastructure that is available to you. Most of all, come to Key2Key to Callback. Thank you guys so much for listening. Hopefully Joe Adams will be back.

I'm not really sure when Joe's going to be back. I think he's on a European vacation. He deserves it. He's a grinder.

But thank you guys so much. I look forward to talking to you next time on Master Tech to Millionaire.