Brian Rhodes Has Recruited 1,000 Techs During a ‘Shortage’ — Here’s How

What's up, players? This is Joe Adams with Adams Automotive, the number one shop in America. This is episode three of Master Tech to Millionaire, presented by Autoshop Answers. The team and Todd Hayes, where we take technicians and we talk about the transition from technician to business owner, CEO, millionaire.

We are here with my partner, Brian Rhodes, today. He is the director of our recruiting arm, Auto Shop Recruiting. He handles a lot of our external recruiting. We've made placements for hundreds of people across the country.

We're probably going on 400 technicians and front of the house and managers. I'll let Brian talk more about that and his story. But man, we've been on this journey for about five years. Brian's been with us for about two years.

He is a servant leader, faith-based guy. We love him to death. He is our partner. And man, he just does such a great job internally, externally, you know, great father, great family.

So without further ado, what's up you freaking superstar, Brian Rhodes. How are we doing this morning? What's up, Joe? I'm doing fantastic.

How are you doing today? I'm doing excellent. I'm doing excellent. So my first question, let's just get going here is, I don't know, just tell me a little bit about your story.

How did you get into recruiting? And then how did you specifically get into like blue collar recruiting? Because I think a lot of people think of like headhunting, poaching people kind of in like corporate white collar America. But yeah, just walk me through your story a little bit.

Yeah, man, recruiting is one of those industries or fields that you don't really. Go into it like it's not something that you it's one of those ones you kind of fall into and I definitely fell into it I originally went to school for accounting and actually I take that back I originally went to school for film at University of Houston transitioned into accounting and then so when I got out of school I was working in an accounting department at an oil and gas company in 2009 there was some layoffs with market conditions and I actually went to a staffing company called Robert Half it's one of the larger staffing firms in the world and okay And I went there trying to find a job and I actually got recruited from them to be a recruiter. And they were kind of excited to see my background because I had accounting experience. But before that, I actually had sales experience.

I don't know if you knew that, but I did door-to-door sales. I sold meat door-to-door. Oh, you can sell? I can sell.

I can sell. Let's go. Yeah, door-to-door sales. I met my wife doing that.

So I can say I met my wife selling meat door-to-door. That's a fun little story. Okay. Which I have to hear about.

Okay, continue. But I have to hear that story, okay? Yeah. Yeah.

So I kind of fell into it. And, you know, having a sales and accounting background, it was kind of an interesting blend for a recruiter. So I did it for accounting and finance initially for the first three years. Then a couple of partners that I had at the time, we decided we were going to start our own thing.

We did our own thing for a couple of years there. And mostly we were focusing on the oil and gas sector. So this is like 2013. And this is in Houston, Texas the whole time?

All Houston. I'm born and raised Houstonian. Okay. Not many of us around here.

You are too. Yeah. Yeah. Born and raised.

Yeah. Not many of us. So, yeah, I did that for, so we ran a company. We did oil and gas recruiting, and pretty quickly after we got that up and running, oil and gas really went through one of its standard cycles, everything went down.

And so we had to transition. We moved from oil and gas to more manufacturing recruiting. So I started to explore more equipment operators, machinists, technicians. So I really started to get my blue collar recruited.

Staffing going probably 2013, 2017. Okay. So you actually ran your own business is what I'm hearing. Okay.

Yeah. So you ran your own business, you're recruiting machinists and you get in the blue collar road. Okay. So continue.

Yeah. So my wife and I were looking to start a family somewhere around 2017. I knew an awesome guy named Zach Bynum. He was, he'd been with Christian Brothers for many years.

He's still there. And he was in Bible study with me and he had been talking about Christian Brothers Automotive for many years. And so looking to get out of the business ownership, business running area, move into more of a, back into a corporate role. So they actually had a position posted and it was like crazy timing.

And I applied for it. They didn't really have a recruiting group at that time. There was a guy named Matt Miller there, awesome dude as well, and prayed over the job, went and interviewed multiple cycles. We actually did an escape room as my final interview story there too.

We got to start incorporating that into our strategy. Okay. So Christian Brothers Automotive. Yeah.

So I joined there 2017. At that time, they really didn't have a recruiting structure. Matt Miller was running it. He was kind of the brains behind it.

He was a former Jasper salesman. And so I came in with more experience on the recruiting side. He definitely had the automotive side. And so between us, we were able to kind of grow that department.

And I was there from 2013 to, let's see, 2017 to 2023. So I was there for six years serving as their director of recruiting, grew that department. We had at any given time, probably about four or five regional recruiters. We had some people that came through our department, they would get promoted out of our department into different areas.

But in 2023, decided it was a good time to exit. You know, some things were changing with the amount of support that we were able to offer the franchisees and I left the company. And very quickly after that, Todd Hayes found me on, I think on LinkedIn. What a crazy story.

So you really, okay. So you really cut your teeth recruiting for Christian Brothers. We love Christian Brothers. They're a great company, but you know, you, you find yourself in an industry where there's a shortage of technicians.

I've heard that there's a shortage of technicians, which we'll get into, which is a great opportunity for somebody like you. You said, I asked you a question earlier. I said, are you in sales or you can sell? If you are...

In the business of recruiting, whether you're a CEO or business owner or you're an actual recruiter, you're in sales. You have to 100% sell the dream and paint a picture for why your company or the company that you are recruiting for is the dream. It is the company that will change your family's life. You have to literally get your point across.

So we are a sales-based company. Every single thing that we do in our life is selling, whether that's on a shop tour, whether it's recruiting, whether it's actually selling jobs. So I just wanted to paint that picture. But you cut your teeth at Christian Brothers Automotive for six years.

You actually exited. Can you tell me a little bit more about why you exited? And then I want to tell the story of how Todd brought you into our life. Yeah, absolutely.

So when I started there in 2017, I think they were at 165 locations. Okay. When I left there, they were pushing about 275. So we opened up all the locations with about five team members each time, recruiting for success, you know, five, six people, including the franchisee.

So technician, service advisors, managers. So I love the time there. I learned so much. I got my automotive, you know, experience, was able to make some relationships with some amazing franchisees that I still talk to today.

So it's a great, great part of my history. In 2023. There's a whole backstory with the franchisee, franchisor life, and companies are not able to offer as much support on the recruiting side just because it doesn't approach on the joint employer is what they can refer to it. Okay.

So the direction of the department was moving from on support for the franchisees on the recruiting side to more of a training support, meaning they would basically teach the franchisees how to fish. Like a help desk, right? The complexity of franchising is probably super complex. So kind of taking more responsibility out of corporate and giving it to the hands of the business owner that is a franchisee, correct?

So you exit Christian Brothers Automotive, which is a blessing in disguise for us. We actually grew our company from 2020 to 2023. We personally recruited probably over a hundred people, me and Todd and our team and Glenn and all the amazing people. And Todd looks at me one day, he's like, man, I think we need a recruiter.

We had, I think three or four stores. Do you remember when you started? How many stores we had? We had, we had Blaylock Woodlands.

We had just opened Barker. Okay. So we had, we were, you know, we're on our fourth store and it's like, man, we need a recruiter. So what do we do?

We literally look on LinkedIn for automotive recruiter and who shows up Brian Rhodes and his LinkedIn profile. We prayed about it first. I want to make that very clear. What's on his profile.

It says servant leader, Christian brothers, automotive director of recruiting six years. And Todd's like, okay, hey, God, you're showing off. And, you know, he DM'd you and painted a picture. Did he sell you?

Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely. He sold the crap out of you. You have to be able to sell.

And so, I think we did a shop tour. You came through training. You saw kind of the vision, and you took a jump off the high dive. Is that correct?

That's it, man. And how's it been ever since? It's been amazing. You know, it was the best decision I've ever made in my life.

And, you know, you know, whenever you leave an organization, especially one that you've been with for six years. You have a lot of relationships, a lot of history. Right. You know, obviously it's a little, you know, it rattles your head a little bit, but one, one worst day of your life can be the best day of your life.

And that's what it really, how I see it. And it's, it's definitely been that the whole time. Let's go. And, you know, I think I talked to our recruiters a lot and you guys are really on the front lines of experiencing, not even in our company, but outside of our company, like you can actually influence people's lives so directly.

I mean, our industry is so, um, notorious for negativity. And, you know, just like, there's just not that many great, great operators that can provide an incredible career for people and their families. And then if you can recruit somebody out of a bad situation and put them into an amazing operators company and change their life and they get to buy a house for their family and they get to provide, man, that really, it really does change lives. So I bet, I bet that's a very rewarding part of your career.

It is. I tell that to people all the time. I have really one of the most rewarding jobs in the world because I'm able to help people make a direct impact on their family, find them better positions. It's a great job.

It's fun. It's a grind. I have a great team that works alongside me, great people, and a great, great company. Yeah.

So my first question, well, I guess my second question to you, Brian Rhodes, do you believe that there is a technician shortage in the United States of America? I do. Okay. Can you tell me a little bit about why?

I have my thoughts, but I want to hear your Okay. So if you look at numbers, okay, if we're looking at stats, we're looking at numbers, you look at Department of Labor, then yes. Okay. If you look at it, then for every one person that's coming into the industry, three people are probably coming out of the industry, either through retirement.

Through baby boomers, whoever you want to look at. But I would argue that a technician shortage is not there because there are still amazing, amazingly talented people out there. You're still going to have a top 10% of the industry to go after. Now, just if your top 10 of the industry is over a million people, or if it's over 800,000 people, you're still having top tier people out there to go after.

And you just need to know how to go, where to go find them, how to attract them, how to get engaged and how to get them to the table. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. There's not a shortage of technicians. I'm sorry.

For every car in America and every bay, if you had to put a master technician in every single bay in America, yes, there's technically a shortage. But do you know why? Because the industry is so full of bad operators who don't know how to take care of people that people literally do not want to work in this business. because it's so bad out there if you don't know what you're doing. And so, you know, that's one of the points of this podcast is hopefully we can educate the community and give you guys a roadmap for how to operate more effectively and have great technicians.

But what I say there's a shortage of is A++ operators, A++ operators. You have to be a stud. If you cannot attract an A player, you are not an A player. I'm sorry.

You have to be able to paint a picture for somebody and tell them why your opportunity will change them in their family's life, straight up. It is not that hard. We have the biggest shop in America and we've got clean floors and we've got a 401k and we've got PTO and benefits and all that stuff. But man, it is just not that we got people wrapped around the building to work for us Monday through Friday, let alone the weekends.

We have technicians wrapped around the building to work for us on weekends. On Sundays. They say, you know, people say you can't get technicians to work on Sundays. It's like I can because guess what?

I can I can pay them more and I can provide them a 401k and I can provide them time off and I can provide them unlimited hours and a picture for how I can influence their family for the better. So, you know, this concept of, I want to go over this concept with you, Brian, it's internal control, internal locus of control and external locus of control. Most people want to blame everything else for why they're having issues in their life. And it's the number one indicator of a successful CEO or successful person, honestly, is I am in control of my destiny and I can only control what I can control and I'm going to make it happen.

So look, if you, how many technicians do you need? Brian, how many technicians does the average, how many technicians is the average operator in America? One, two, how many? Well, it depends on the size of the shop.

I mean, I would say at least, you know, two, three, at least two or three. Okay. Two. Yeah.

You need two people. I live in Houston, Texas. There are 4 million people in Houston, Texas. I can find two technicians.

It's like, and we're going to get into this. You know, how do you find them? Where do they work? You know, look.

I am in control of my destiny. And, you know, I like to point to Charlie's lack host because he doesn't have 56 bays. He doesn't have the biggest shop in America, but he's Charlie. Why do people work for Charlie?

Because he's Charlie and he works seven days a week and he freaking busts his butt and he literally takes care of his customers and people follow a leader. He is a leader. And how easy you recruit for Charlie. You have recruited for Charlie.

How easy is it to recruit for Charlie? It's so easy. Yeah. I mean, I think the whole recruiting or excuse me, the technician shortage, unfortunately, has been used as a crutch now.

It's an excuse for people to make to say, hey, there's no way I can find people. I'm just going to be status quo. I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing. I'm going to keep going through technicians.

I'm just going to have B or C techs running my shop. And they're not willing to go and make the changes to their benefits, to their structure, to their leadership, to their whatever. I mean, there's 25 different things that they can make changes. They can, you know, you will be surprised how, how much impact clean floors make on a technician's decision to me.

Is it cluttered? Is it a clean shop? Those types of things. And so if people are not willing to, to invest in the shop, make changes to not just the benefits, but sometimes just to themselves, you know, then they're going to use it as a crutch.

Look, you don't need anything. You just need to be a hard worker. Yeah. That's it.

It's like. Okay, if you want to mail it in and hang out on the beach in Cancun and have a passive income shop, good luck. Like, good luck. Have fun recruiting AA plus superstar players to come work for you because it just doesn't work that way.

Man, even if you're on the ground floor, you're just starting out in this business. If you're freaking busting it, you're the first person at the shop and they can see you working and they can see you grinding shoulder to shoulder with them. You can recruit people like they will follow you off the street. they will follow you. Charlie told a great story last week about a guy who literally rolled into his shop on a bike.

And he was like, I see you guys working all the time, man, I want to work here. It's like, why did that guy come to work for Charlie? Cause he's a leader, you know? So it's like, it's recruiting is very easy if you have a product to sell.

And that product is. The dream. The product is you can provide for you and your family forever and have an amazing career fixing cars. And the competition is so low.

We get to compete in an industry that is widely ignored, highly fragmented across the industry, mom and pop. There's no major player who's consolidated it. And in my opinion, the major players don't really run great operations. They don't pay as well as we can pay.

So let's move on. Let's talk about where do you actually, okay, so now that you have a great product to sell, you've got hopefully leadership structure and some sort of package benefits, your team members can make a lot of money and be secure for them and their family. They can buy houses. Where do you actually find these people?

So I know what I have to say, but Brian, where do you find these people? Where do you find a master technician in an industry where there's a shortage? Everywhere. I mean, I will even ask people at the grocery store, who do you trust to work on your car?

The referral tree is one of the largest one. Networking, referrals, asking, who do you know, who do you know, who do you know? I think what a lot of people, one mistake they make when they're asking for referrals is they say, hey, do you know anybody that's looking for a technician? Can you refer me anybody?

And there's not any great technicians out there that are just hanging out on Indeed. I mean, there's amazing talent on Indeed, don't get me wrong. But if you're looking for top tier service advisors, technicians, they're not hanging out on unemployment for six months. They're out there finding the job, making things happen.

So I like to frame it into a different manner. Instead of saying, hey, do you know anybody that's looking? It's just like, man, hey, who's the best technician you've ever worked with? And just shut up and and just wait for them to respond.

They will tell you, man, I worked with this guy named Larry. He's one of the best technicians I've ever had the opportunity to work with. I learned so much from that guy. Cool.

Tell me more about Larry. I want to hear about him. What's his phone number? I want to chat with him.

And if you just change that little small question like that, you're going to open up your database, your internal database, or just your funnel of people coming through people that you know. And people want to work with people that they've worked with in the past and people that they trust. So I would say networking and referrals is huge. we do have access to quite a few different resources where, as you know, we're really heavy into AI these days. We're putting AI in every different part of our business and especially on the recruiting side.

So, I mean, we have a lot of resources. I could sit there and go through probably 12 or 15 of them. But number one, the first thing that we want to do is we want to talk to that shop owner. We want to talk to that manager and we want to figure out like, what's the profile look like?

What does this person need to have? Either technical abilities, you know, personality, culture fit, all those different things, because I can go out and I I could spend, you know, a couple of days and find some L1 master certified technicians that are amazing. But if they don't meet the mold, the culture, the personality, all those different things, then we're just, then we're just cycling people through the doors. So I think the culture, the soft skills and all those things are super important first.

Well, hold on. You're telling me that you will, are you saying that you poach people, Brian Rhodes? Absolutely. You poach people from, from other people's shops.

How do you sleep at night, bro? Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, we, we definitely do.

So I mean, that's, that's recruiting. I actually, I was talking to a good friend of mine, his name is Gabe. He reached out to me. He runs a Hyundai dealership here in town.

And he's like, man, I get it recruiting because, you know, recruiter equals poacher. I mean, we do poach, let's just be honest. But our job is not to poach people and put them in a worse opportunity. Our job is to poach them and put them in an amazing opportunity that's going to be life-changing for them and their families.

I want to make something clear. I will never, ever, ever, ever feel bad for offering somebody an opportunity that can change their life. And you might be listening to this thinking, wow, these guys are cocky as hell. I'm sorry.

Look, I call into these shops every day, all the time, and to train the industry on how poorly people are answering the phone. And these operators, those are the same people who are complaining about its tax season, or they're complaining about the rodeos in town, or man, I can't wait for summer, or man, the kids are going back to school, or man, it's Christmas, they can't afford to fix their car, or man, it's January, it's a low month, people are overextended after Christmas, and then all of a sudden we're back. Back to spring break and back to tax time, tax season. Okay.

Those people, they're not getting up at six in the morning and freaking grinding and they hate their business. And it's this cycle of negativity that we've talked about. Those people are not selling jobs and taking good care of their customers and they are not producing hours for their technicians. I'm sorry.

There is a reason people have wheels on their boxes because technicians, even really good ones, will literally, it's called a rap sheet resume. They will literally roll from shop to shop year after year because they are just not in the right home yet. They have not found the opportunity, a major player to work for that can provide unlimited hours, benefits, retirement, and an amazing opportunity and career for their family. So I will never feel bad for poaching somebody.

Into our company because I'm not poaching them. I am offering them an opportunity that will change your life. Brian, did this company change your life? Not in an arrogant way, but has this been one of the best decisions that you've ever made?

It really has. Yeah. Like, and I can go down the list of people in our company that I had a guy pull, pull Todd aside two weeks ago. And he goes, you changed my family.

Like I'm buying a house for the first time. And his, his, and like his wife called Todd and she was like, thank you. I noticed my husband's coming home different. We're making more.

It's like that is what is on the table. That is what we have the opportunity and the responsibility to offer opportunities to people. So you might think I'm crazy. But look, if you've got Indeed applications coming into your inbox, guess what you're hiring from, Brian Rhodes?

What would you call that? Unemployment? I would call that the unemployment line. The line that is at your door going into that interview, those people are unemployed.

The best people in the market have jobs. They have jobs. Glenn Piccolo, 26 years in the industry. You know he never has had a resume?

Never. He's never had a resume. On the last episode, he started working when he was 18. He's got the gifts.

He's majorly successful right away. He has been on the job market for approximately five days in his entire career. He has never had a resume. He's never been on a resume database.

He has always had an opportunity. So we talk about this concept, you know, and I'll get off the mic here, but Brian, we talk about this concept of always be recruiting always, even when you're fully staffed. Why, why do you think, you know, what have you learned about our business? Why, why do we always need to be recruiting?

Well, well, you always want to build a bench. I mean, that's, that's going to be important. You know, when you, when you run a product, when you run a shop like Adams and now in our system here, like you said earlier, man, we have people wrapped around the door, wrapped around the building that want to work for us. I mean, you never know what type of talent that you're going to come across.

And if you, if you stop recruiting, whenever you fill all your positions, what happens, what happens three months later, six months later. When John, the technician decides, Hey, I'm moving or Hey, I found another job and you're starting back over. I think the average time to fill right now for any type of position is probably about 60 days in the country. I would probably say a technician is even longer than that, I would imagine.

Our time to fill, we average about 10 days. So whenever a shop reaches out to us, we're going to find somebody within 10 days. But going back to always being recruiting, you always need to have a pipeline. You always need to know who's out there.

And maybe there's sometimes you can upgrade. Maybe there's sometimes that you have somebody in your shop that's not cutting the mustard. And maybe it's time to maybe move them in a different role, put them in a different type of setup, or maybe find somebody better. Look, and we run it like the NFL.

That's what we say. We run it like a bank. We run it like a pro sports franchise. It's like, here's what happens when you make a panic hiring decision because you need a body.

Somebody who can fog a mirror, as Glenn Piccolo would say. Somebody with a pulse. We don't want players like that. We want AA players.

Look, Patrick Mahomes goes down, and do you have a backup quarterback or do you have somebody who can fog a mirror? That's how we feel and it's like how many times have we seen it in the NFL where you know star quarterback goes down and they make some crazy hiring decision and trade for some guy and now they're in panic mode we look. We have a pipeline of so many people that want to work for us. And that's not to brag, or I want to approach this with so much humility, but you get in a bad situation and we've seen it.

I've seen great, great people self-sabotage or they, you know, we don't have a lot of turnover. People don't quit very often, but they leave your business or they're moving across the country or something happens. You never know what's going to happen. People just don't stay with you forever.

A hundred percent of the time. if you have to have a body, like somebody's got to run the store. And if you have two people that work in the front of the house and one of them quits on you, you're in panic mode. If you're in the industry, you have to find somebody. And so you will make a bad decision.

You will make a decision that is clouded by the judgment of it's Friday afternoon. And I don't have anybody to work this weekend, or I don't have anybody to work Monday. So we are constantly recruiting. We are constantly looking.

We are always hiring. What's our rule? Hey, Brian Rhodes, Let's say you're fully staffed and you don't have any more money for a superstar front of the house, superstar, technician, anybody. If they are a AAA player, superstar, and they walk in your door, what do you do?

You hire them. No way. Really? Can you tell me more about that?

You hire them. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, they're going to produce. They're going to pay for themselves.

If it's a technician, if it's an advisor, I mean, these are sales roles. These are production-based people. If they're a superstar, man, get them in there. You owe it to your team to surround your teammates with other top talent.

If you pass on somebody like that, they're just going to go to the competition. You know, I also say one other thing about a reason why you should always be in recruiting is if you're running a shop and let's say you fill all your positions. Okay. So you stop recruiting.

What happens when you start to make a decision like, hey, I need to really replace Larry or John or whoever that is. And, oh, wow. You start recruiting. You start interviewing.

What is your team going to do? Oh, it freaks them out. They're going to be like, oh, gosh, boss man's bringing the people to interview. They're going to start thinking like, oh, somebody's on the chopping block or something's about to happen.

But if you're continually interviewing, continually having people come through the door and just telling your teammate, man, we're always looking for top talent, that when the time comes that you actually do have to make a replacement because somebody is not doing what they need to be doing, they're not going to get scared. They're not going to get intimidated. It's not going to ruin the culture of the shop for a temporary period. Yeah.

And we love our team members. We love our technicians. I mean, we literally go, I mean, do we not? We hug every single employee. we know them by name.

I do my best to know people's kids' names and what's going on in their life. But, you know, there has to be some sort of structure where they know who's in control. And that's not, I want to approach this with humility, but we call it tail wagging the dog. And everybody on this podcast has probably experienced it.

You've got a technician who's been there forever. He's a stud and he knows that the shop would fall apart without him. Well, all of a sudden, we've had that happen in our business before Todd came into our business, negativity and cancer, and it was like. Because they know they have the power over you.

They have, they know that they can show up late and leave early and that they can take vacations if they want to. And that's kind of just an upside down thing. It's tail wagging the dog, just the small nature. And this isn't a power trip.

I absolutely don't want it to sound like that. But if you just constantly are bringing people around the facility, it's a healthy amount of like, almost like the fear of God in you to keep you on your toes and say, hey, man, these people, they're professionals. In the NFL, they have 46 people on staff that are recruiting at high school football games. MLB, it's the same thing.

Do you think those people that are starters aren't grinding every single day because they know somebody's got their hand on the doorknob to take their job away? We think the same way. It's like we run it like a pro football team. We are a performance-based company.

And so just a little bit of the nature of, you know, like we run the show and if you're going to work here, you're going to do it our way and we're going to do it. You know, we're going to have an amazing company culture. We're going to laugh. We're going to take you guys out to dinner, but this is the direction we're rowing the boat, I think is very healthy.

So let me circle back to if a superstar, and I know I'm talking a lot here. If a superstar walks in your door, here's an analogy we say in training. Okay, Brian Rhodes, let's say you're running an NBA franchise and you got five people on the starting lineup. LeBron James walks into your front office and he says, hey man, I'm looking for a job.

Are you guys hiring? And you say to him, nah, LeBron, man, we just hired this guy and he's doing really good. So we're going to see how he goes. You know, I'll give you a call back in about, I'll give you a call back if it doesn't work out.

How would that go, Brian Rhodes? It wouldn't go good. I mean, seriously, if it's LeBron James, Think about it. If it's a superstar AA player, they will change your life.

Like they will literally change your life. AAA players are so amazing and they're team players and they know other A players. So can you talk a little bit more about referrals? What a lot of people don't consider is they don't cough up the money to hire a really, really great player.

You know, something Todd taught me is that when you hire a superstar, you're hiring their whole network. So can you talk a little bit more about referrals? Yeah, I've had people ask me over the years, you know, what's the right amount to offer to get somebody excited about doing referrals? And I respond like, well, what do they ask for?

You know, if somebody wants $10,000, they want $5,000, they want $1,000. If they're going to bring you an A player, hey, it, you know, I know it's easier for me to say, you know, it's probably easier for me to say than you guys write the check. But I mean, at the end of the day, if this guy's going to come in and bring, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue into the shop, because he's such a superstar, man, he's worth the investment. I mean, when we hired Glenn Piccolo, we hired his whole network.

Guess where all of Glenn's top, top, top players from a 20 plus year career work now? That would be Adams Automotive. That would be now AutoCare in Houston, Texas. It's like, you're not just getting them, you're getting their entire Rolodex of superstar, superstar players.

So the last thing I'll say on this is I just want to make it very clear. We're not committing warfare in the Houston market. We're not poaching people that are down the street, that are part of our network, that are our friends. We're not literally all-out warfare guerrilla recruiting, but there's just so many bad operators there that don't treat their people right.

And I apologize if I get so passionate. I feel inclined to get amazing people out of a bad environment and offer them an opportunity that can change their life. And I used to be very uncomfortable with this concept, but Todd, man, he's obviously does not care what people think. And I've just seen it happen.

The opportunity to be taken out of a negative, you know, environment that's not clean and has no benefits and be put into an environment that's professional, buttoned up and can lift your self-esteem and change your life is very important to me. So yeah, go look. If you're listening to this, do not feel bad. Go and find superstars.

Go and find them. Like they will like they will listen to you. I will literally just go onto Google and I will read the Google reviews of some random shop. You know, bad reviews or semi-decent reviews because it's a shop and I will call and I will ask to talk to the guy who's really busy because guess who always answers the phone?

That would be the lazy guy who's sitting on his stool, not doing anything. I will ask to talk to the superstar player and I'll just offer him a job and it's 50-50 if they want to give me their phone number to talk after work. I've had people tell me to go F off and I've had people say crazy things to me, but dude, I don't care because what if I get a superstar? What if I get a Glenn?

What if I get Glenn, what's that worth? It could be worth literally millions and millions of dollars of enterprise value to your business. So here's the thing. I don't know why the automotive industry has got this feeling that it's not allowed or it's frowned upon to poach or to call at other shops to talk to people because every other industry does it.

When I recruited controllers, I would call shop. I would call companies and ask to speak to their controller. When I recruited blue-collar people, I would call and ask to speak with their blue-collar person, whoever it is. these are where the people are. You can't just rely on a resume database or an Indeed.

The post and pray model, it just doesn't work. I mean, you got to go out and find the people where they are. And I've heard horror stories, dude. I've heard brutal corporate recruiting stories.

I mean, it's pretty funny, but it's not cool, in my opinion. You don't have to be that brutal in car repair. You can just say, hey, man, can I offer you a job? I'd love to give you an amazing opportunity that will change your life.

And that's it. And shut up. And 50-50, 50% of the people are literally going to be so excited for that. And now the other 50% of the people will hang up.

I heard this story from, I think it was Greg Wappler actually in our recruiting department. He said, man, I used to, I used to recruit for a corporate company and I was trying to get, I was head hunting for a, you know, like a C-suite level executive. And we were doing some training and I wasn't actually recruiting for him, but we couldn't get ahold of this one guy that we really wanted. And the director of our staffing agency, he got us all in an office and he goes, you guys aren't hard enough.

Watch this. And he calls the front desk of the guy's company that they were trying to get a hold of. You're not going to believe this. And he goes, Dad.

Dad. And the poor front lady, the secretary is like, oh my gosh, who is this? And he goes, can I talk to my dad, please? And the lady obviously puts him through to the CEO or the executive.

And the guy goes, hey, Mr. Jones, this is Joe Adams with that or whatever his pitch is. And the guy goes, you sorry, dog. I'll give you a chance.

And he actually recruited the guy. He got his phone number. But that is ruthless. That is ruthless.

And so we're not asking you to do that. That's crazy. I told that story to Glenn and Glenn was like, I would be so irate. You mess with a person's family.

You mess with those emotions. But I only tell that story to iterate that you don't have to be so aggressive. I mean, we're not like aggressive people. There's so many bad operators and there's like 2 million cars that need to be fixed every year in Houston, Texas.

How many technicians do you need? Like two. How many front of the house people do you need? Like one, what if I get one amazing front of the house person every two months for a year?

What does your team look like 12 months from now? Boom. Boom. It's like that, that's the sauce.

So anyway, I'll move on. But man, do not be afraid to recruit people. So the next, next thing I have on my notes here is, okay, let's, let's say you've gotten over the issue of recruiting people. You can poach people.

I want to go through our pre-interview process. Okay. So let's say you get somebody interested pre-interview and interview process. So, Brian, can you walk me through how Todd has trained us to sort of sort through the weeds and identify who are A players, who are B players, et cetera?

Sure. Well, it depends on the role. So, like, you're talking about technicians, a lot of that. I mean, we do pre-chat with all of them.

So, that phone call, for us, it could be, I could talk to a technician for 30 minutes. I mean, Todd can be on a phone call for five minutes. He's ready to go. Let's get the guy in here.

I like to take a little bit more time just personally, because most of the time that I'm recruiting, I'm recruiting for shops outside of our organization. I'm not recruiting for an Adams. I'm recruiting for an XYZ shop in Minnesota or whoever it is. So I have to be able to sell that value of that shop, but I also need to make sure that I have the right person on the phone.

So that takes a little bit longer for me. So technicians, I'm typically talking to about 30 minutes. Service advisors, I talk to sometimes 45 minutes to an hour. I know it's crazy, but I really want to get a good feel for the person and make sure that they're the right fit.

I'm looking for top 10% people. I'm not looking for bottom 90%. And so what Todd and Joe are. And myself and my team, we have a pre-chat list of questions that we go through.

It can be 10 questions. It can be 25 questions. It really just depends on how the conversation flow. But we're really, really going through is more of checking boxes of like, for technicians, we're going to find out what are their flag hours?

How many hours they're doing? What does their tool investment look like? How many days did they miss last year? How many days they call in?

And, you know, it's more of a black and white for technicians. It's like, we want to see, is this person qualified? Now, but when you start to get to service advisors, it's more personality, more energy, more vibes. So I, man, for service advisors, one of the best questions I like to ask is, hey, are you a freaking hammer?

Yes. Can you close deals? Yes. If you ask that question and can you close deals and just see how they respond, you will hear immediately.

Are they a confident person or not? And for sales, they need to be confident. If somebody is like, you know, I'm, I'm okay. You know, that's probably not the guy.

But if you say, Hey, are you a, are you a sales? Are you a sales hammer? Are you a closer? Can you close deals?

And they're like, absolutely. Yes. I am the forge that, that the hammer was, was, was, was, uh, was, uh, was built in. You know, it's like, I've heard that.

Where's a nail. Give me a nail. I'm a hammer. I'm a hammer.

You know, you hear things like that. I want to talk to those guys or, or, or gals, because those are the ones that are, are just, man, they're confident in their ability. They're not going to be sidestepping into the deals. They're going to feel comfortable talking to customers.

Most of the time, they're going to be buttoned up professional. And you can just hear it. Service advisors, I can hear usually in the first... Five seconds.

Gosh, five seconds. Literally five seconds. Five seconds. You know, technicians I take a little bit more time with because, again, it's more technically based.

So for technicians, I do get a lot more. I'll run certain P codes by them. I want to see what their diagnostic process looks like. I want to see, you know, how they would handle a lean condition, a P0171, a P0456, and just kind of see what their process is.

Are they going to throw parts at it? Are they actually going to try to diagnose the issue? And so it's a little bit more technical for the technicians and the service advisors, more personality-based. All right, so shameless plug for Autoshop Recruiting, because I initially reacted to that.

I was like, man, I'm not taking 45 minutes. I know about five seconds, you know? But, you know, you are really, you're taking the time, you're putting people in front of business owners, you know, and these guys are busy. So shameless plug for Autoshop Recruiting.

You know, that's another company of ours. If you need a technician, talk to Brian Rhodes. Where can they find you, Brian, before we move on? Like LinkedIn, what's the best place for you?

LinkedIn, Facebook, you know, you can email me, you can call me, you can text me. Our information is on our website, which is www.autoshoprecruiting.com. Yeah, there's quite a few different places you can find me. I think that was our first advertisement on the pod ever.

Man. If you need a technician, call Brian Rhodes. Anyway, let's keep going. Sponsored in part by.

Yes, sponsored in part by Autoshop Answers. Okay. So pre-interview, one of my notes here is it's a script like everything else. I have a script for the way I answer my phones.

I have a script for the way our team members talk to customers, the way we do a shop tour, everything's a script. So take away decision fatigue. There are so many big decisions that you need to make when you're running your business. And so the stuff that you're going to do all the time, write a script for it.

So I ask the same questions every single time. I say, what do you do in your spare time? I ask that every single time. Why?

I ask because I am not legally allowed to ask them if they're married. I'm not legally allowed to ask them a lot of things, but I can pretty much know everything about you based on what you do in your spare time. And I'll give you an example. I was interviewing a guy and he had a ring on his finger.

And I said, what are you doing in your spare time? And I'm like, looking to see if this guy is going to talk about his family or if he's going to talk about something else. Because what is a guy, hey, Brian Rhodes, you're married with two kids. What do you do in your spare time?

Family time and working out. That's about it. That's what I'm looking for. It's like, what do you do in your spare time?

People get into trouble. Like if you are like family and kids and you got a great home life, you fricking work and you go home and you spend time with your family. Like that's what life pretty much turns into. And it's great.

And I'll this like softball team and we travel around the country and we've got these, I mean, I really, and I'm like trying to make them comfortable. You know, that's part of our strategy, make them as comfortable as possible. And he's talking about his softball team. That's what he does in his spare time.

And you know what I'm thinking? I'm thinking this guy's cheating on his wife. Like that was literally what Todd has trained me to, to think, because guess what? If you don't bring up your family, if you don't like, I know this is a tangent, but if you don't talk about what you're doing in your spare time as spending time with your family and you're a married guy, I apologize.

This guy's traveling around the country. You can see it so fast. He wants to be away from his family. He wants to get out of the house.

It's like, not to get too much on a tangent, but you can find out pretty much everything about a person based on how they answer that question. That one question. And I've seen it happen. I was in an interview with Glenn and they go, Glenn goes, what do you do in your spare time?

And he goes, man, I'm part of a drinking club. And most people you would think, and I'll tell you why we keep the interview going here in a minute. Most people you'd say, oh, I kick him out the door, you know, but man, Glenn is trying to make this guy as comfortable as possible. He says, oh man, tell me more.

And this guy starts going on and on about, man, yeah, we have a drinking club and we go bar to bar and sometimes we'll be out till three in the morning, but man, we'd make it to work the next day. And Glenn's like, man, how do you make it to work next day? That's crazy. And all he's thinking is there ain't no way this guy's getting an interview or getting another interview, you know?

So all of that to say, that's only one question of our pre-interview process. And I can know everything I need to know about a person. I can know if he is... Like if I, like most people is family or they're single.

If they're a young guy and they say, yeah, I play video games and I work on cars on the weekend. I know they're single. I know that right away. And I know what they're getting into because people will get into trouble if they aren't careful.

And if a guy says I pretty much work and go to the gym, great. That's what I'm looking for. So I'll move on. What about toolbox inventory, Brian?

Do you ever ask that question? That's a good one for me. Every time. Yeah.

For technicians. Why? Because, I mean, you want to know if the person's invested in their craft. You know, I would say what the right amount is, it just depends.

Like, you know, we've had some technicians that have worked at dealerships that they provide them tools. And, you know, this guy may be a master level certified technician, one of the best Audi technicians in the country. And he's got, you know, $10,000 worth of personal tools. Yeah.

You know, so does that mean he can't do the job? Does that mean he's not a great technician? No, it just means he's going to need a little time to tool up. And you just need to make sure that he's not having to borrow everybody's tools every five minutes.

Yeah, that makes sense. But, I mean, you could pretty much figure out the quality of a technician. I have very limited technical knowledge. If you're a technician listening to this podcast, you are so superior to me in the way that I understand car repair.

But I can ask a guy what your technician toolbox inventory is and I can pretty much know his ability. And I can ask him how much he made last year. If a guy says, yeah, I made 150,000 fixing cars and I've got 100,000 in tools. What else do I need to know?

I can ask that question in about five seconds and I know the level of technician. If a guy's, you know, like in his 20s and he's got, $1,800 for the tools and he made, you know, 48,000. That's great. I know the level of technician I'm talking to in about five seconds.

So me personally, I'm looking for, I'm, and I mostly only recruit from front of the house. I let our general managers and Brian and his amazing team kind of deal with managing the back of the house and staffing for technicians and stuff, because can I be honest with you? If you recruit a stud front of the house with industry track record experience, guess who they also know? They know people.

They know stud technicians. A's attract A's. So the three things that I'm looking for, and I want to hear your thoughts on this, are I'm literally only looking for three things. One is the gift.

The gift of I can connect with this guy or girl in approximately three seconds. And everybody knows the feeling. You call to Verizon customer service because your service, your bill is too high or something. and how long does it take you to identify if the person on the other end is actually going to help you with your problem? Oh gosh, immediately.

It takes you about five seconds if it's going to be a nightmare or if it's, wow, I really got a player on the phone. So we feel the same way. I'm looking for people with major charisma, just major, like super likable people. It's a very simple concept, but like the first five seconds of me being able to connect with somebody on the phone and they have that extroverted personality in sales, man, that's what I'm looking for personally.

I've seen people sell a million different ways, but that's just, that's one of my main things. The second one is, Can I say something about that one? Yeah, absolutely. So how much time is our service advisors, service specialists on the phone?

What, 80%, 70% of the time? A lot. You know, I always think, would I buy for them? Would I feel comfortable with them selling to my mother?

Will I feel comfortable with them selling to my wife? That's what immediately goes through my head. Will I feel comfortable with my customer being, talking to this person? And if they answer the phone like, hello, you know, I can, I get a feeling most of the time off the hello.

Yep. You know, you can, it's immediate. No, absolutely. I had a guy, I had a conversation this morning.

I was recruiting a guy and he goes, Good morning. And I'm like, okay, that's all I need to know. This guy's freaking not working right now. It's 10 o'clock in the morning and he just got out of bed.

Like, I know everything I need to know about that person in about five seconds. And the rest of it is going to be data to confirm what I learned in the first five seconds or deny it, you know, because sometimes it does happen. But let's keep it going here. So the first 10 seconds, the connection, the second thing I'm looking for is internal locus of control.

If I ask a guy or a girl and I say, have you ever been terminated before? I'm going to learn a lot about them because one, hopefully they've never been terminated. I'm totally okay if they have been, but I was talking to another gentleman today and he's like, yeah, the market crash. And I just, you know, the tariffs and the, you know, and he's like blaming, he's bus tossing, he's blaming managers.

He's bland. It's like when that guy, when that person gets into our business, they're going to just totally throw everybody under the bus for why they're not performing. Like a hundred percent. It's a very core structure to a human being's brain is, are they going to blame every single thing that's external to their world for all their problems?

Or are they going to take control of their future and learn the skills required to become an amazing superstar? It's like Mike Quinn. Okay. This is a guy who literally three years ago knew nothing about cars.

And now he runs a $670,000 record month, nine bay Goodyear store in the Woodlands. That guy, he took. He took the bull by the horns. You know, like he literally is like, I'm in control.

I can control my destiny. This is a great company. I'm going to go all in for about two years and it'll change my life. And it did.

So that's the second thing I'm looking for is if they bus toss people, throw people under the bus, it's an immediate no pass go for me. And there's a gray area here. I'm curious if you have any thoughts on this. It's like, I just can't put up, I cannot work with people who are going to blame a bunch of other things for why they haven't been successful in their life.

So do you have any thoughts on that? I think a lot of that just has to go with gut reactions. So your gut, when you get your gut responses based off of those things, I get gut responses off a lot of stuff. And I think that's when, as a recruiter, that's your best gift is trusting that gut, trusting that inner voice.

And so, yeah, I would agree too. If the person's just sitting there making excuses the entire time, blaming it on everybody else, then it's probably not gonna be the best fit. You know, I heard about this thing one time that your gut is actually real. Your, your gut feeling is, you know, so you're, you're, let me see if I can communicate this properly.

Your brain is a computer, right? And your brain has like an incredibly high level of computing power. It's, it's taking in so much data every second from what you're listening to from your eyes. And there's just so much that is coming into your brain that you can't actually consciously process all of it in real time.

And so I read that your gut feeling, you know, if somebody can't look you in the eye or if they're shifty or if their body position is like they're lying to you or something, it's actually real. It's actually your subconscious picking up on the 90% of communication that you just can't process fast enough because there's so many data points and that your gut reaction is typically you picking up on something that. You didn't consciously recognize. I'll give you a perfect example.

And I'm going to go out on a limb here and I'm going to say that the females in our world are much more powerful and in tune with this feeling. I lean on my fiance a lot of times for discernment for our business. And, you know, one time I took around the company and she met probably 50 people that day. And, She only mentioned one guy.

She was like, what about this guy? I didn't really like him that much. And I was like, no way. We had been having problems with that guy for a long time.

I was like, no way. You talked to him for five seconds. How did you know? And she just was in tune.

She was just totally. And my mom is so like that. She just understands. Dogs are like that.

We don't do business with you. If my dog does not like you, sorry. They know it. They smell it.

And so I know that I'll get off my soapbox, but your gut feeling is actually a real thing backed by science. So the last thing that I want to talk about is going to be, what do I have here? Oh, buttoned up family life. Absolutely.

So here's the thing. Really, really talented people are really good at making money. Do you know what money does to you? Causes problems.

So look, we talk about hammers in their gray area. Man, the number of people that I've talked to that are so talented and they just self-sabotage their life is crazy. And we work on it so much and we work with people and we love people and we take care of them. I could tell you story after story, but man, selling jobs is easy.

If you've got the gift and you utilize the training, the rest of your life is the hard part, man. It is actually not that difficult to execute this business model. It's so easy. You take pictures, you talk to customers, you sell jobs, you close the deal.

It's all the other stuff in their personal life. It's like, man, you got these people. It's Todd calls it sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Let's be a hundred percent clear here.

It's like the Dennis Rodmans of the world. Man, Michael Jordan's freaking dragging Dennis Rodman out of the club at 3 a.m. Because they got a finals game the next day. Why do you think they continue to employ Dennis Rodman?

Because he's a beast. He had like all-time record rebounds. In the NBA finals, he's a beast, but he has a gray area. And I'm telling you, man, Antonio Brown, I can think of everybody.

I mean, there's so many people in every sports league. It's like the same thing applies to our business. So those are pretty much the three things. I mean, do you have any more thoughts on that?

It's like, do I connect with them immediately? Do they have a buttoned up family life, like buttoned up, not even family, but just personal life? Like, because those are the things that are going to cause you problems down the road. And do they, do they blame other people for stuff?

Do you have any other thoughts on that? I also look at coachability, like, you know, because I mean, the way that, especially with Adams, I mean, it's, it's just such a different concept. It's a different way of doing it. You know, most of the, most of the industry is doing it a completely different way.

And if, If we're going to hire somebody that's coming from outside, I need to know like, hey, how would you feel about forgetting everything that you've ever learned and doing it this way? And, you know, sometimes they're open to it. Sometimes they're not. And, you know, I think that's a big thing.

Obviously, the numbers is an important thing. I'm a numbers guy. So, you know, I'm going to look at guys that are they doing AROs that are $150, $200? Are they have, are these guys that are typically doing $1,300, $1,400 AROs?

So I look at that as well. I mean, there's a lot of things. Yeah. Coachability is, is.

It's very important because, you know, we have a concept and most people, especially really talented ones, have been doing it a certain way and that brought them success. But man, Todd has mastered the business model. We are very open to input if you become an A player for us. However, typically when somebody gives a lot of pushback or they want to do it their way or they don't want to conform or they're uncoachable, it's really, really a bad, it's typically a red flag early on.

So I want to go backwards a little bit. We talk about hammers a lot. And I think a lot of people have a, I heard the other day I was interviewing a gentleman for one of our clients, one of our friends. And he was like, oh, I've heard of Adams.

You guys are high pressure salespeople. And I'm like, wow. Like we have thousands of five-star reviews of customers that are super happy in full parking lots. And it's like, you don't get there by taking advantage of customers and pressuring them for 45 years.

That's just not how it works. So, but we talk about the word hammer and Todd's philosophy is I got to be a closer. I got to be able to make customers fall in love with me and approve these repairs and build that relationship with them and provide them excellent customer service because I got to keep them out of these other shops. I got shops all over the country that are still spray painting alternators.

They're still squirting transmission fluid on rear shocks and driving them down a dusty road to make it look like they've been leaking for a long time. I've heard it all. I've heard of people letting the air conditioning. Letting Freon out of the air conditioning system in the wintertime and all of a sudden their AC doesn't work in the summertime.

Yeah, it's going to need a compressor. It's going to be $4,000. It's like, I have heard of train wreck after train wreck and I have to keep our customers out of these other shops that just don't do a good job. They don't answer the phone right.

They don't take care of their people. They don't take care of customers. So we're very intense on, we call them hammers. That's one of our key words.

If you're a hammer for us, man, whether you're a technician, front of the house, admin, recruiter, man, that is the word that you want to be called. So let's move forward. Yeah, hammer stud. Let's move forward.

So the last concept I want to cover is we have no risk. This is something Todd taught me very early on, like... We don't have any risk. The risk, the exposure is approximately a week.

It doesn't take that long to know if a technician lied to you in the interview and he actually has no idea what he's doing fixing a car. It doesn't take that long for a front of the house or a manager for me to identify if they are able to close customers. If they get about 50 tickets in their name and they got $150 ticket average, it's like, see you later. And I don't need to wait that long.

So our risk is about a week, you know, like we've, there's this concept of iterating super fast. Iterating is, if you don't know what iteration means, it's like going from rough draft to 2.0 to 3.0, really, really fast and evolving it really, really fast. All the most successful people in history have had this nature about them. Thomas Edison didn't invent the light bulb.

He actually iterated 10,000 versions of a light bulb that didn't work until he found the formula that worked. And so the way Todd applies that to our business is he will literally just hire 10 people. And I've seen, I mean, you've seen it happen. It's crazy.

He will literally hire 10 people and he calls it draft day. You know, he calls it training camp and he will just iterate super fast. And he's very, very comfortable with firing people. He doesn't love doing it.

Nobody loves doing it. But man, I am going to take the risk on the front end to be able to hire this person. I don't care if my unemployment rate goes up because they're costing me tons of money if they're not an A player. And I am going to get them in the game.

And what happens is, what happens is eight of those people aren't going to make it. I've called him late at night and I'm like, Todd, man, we got a lot of payroll. We got a lot of payroll. How are we going to make pay?

And he's like, Joe, chill. And then eight of them, you know, one guy's driver's license wasn't real. You know, we had to get him out of the deal. One guy said, man, this isn't for me.

Another guy, you know, just was really, really horrible. And they just dropped like flies. And we had two that were really, really good. And so what did we end up with six months later? an amazing team of front of the house, superstar salespeople that are really good at taking care of customers.

So I just wanted to touch on that concept. Do you have any thoughts on that, Brian? I mean, you just do not actually have to pay them $100,000. You pay them two weeks at a time.

That's what I was going to just, yeah, you took the words out of my mouth. I mean, sometimes we talk to owners. They're like, man, I cannot, I can't pay this guy $100,000. I'm like, you're not going to pay him $100,000.

You are going to pay him $2,000 a week. Yes. And if he does not produce, fire him. It is not personal.

It's a business decision. You have to do what's best for your business. And so what does that cost you? I mean, is the guy not going to produce?

Okay, $2,000 for a week, $4,000 for two weeks, whatever it is. I mean, take the risk, get the guy in there, see what he can do or the lady in there and see what she can do. We have, look, this is the number one thing I see in our business and people have to, you know, and it's scary. I'm not going to say it's not scary because you don't actually know if they're going to move the revenue, but you know, let's call it XYZ Automotive is out there and you're doing 200,000 a month and you're netting like 18 grand.

You know what I mean? Like you're, you're making some money. That's a great living, but you're thinking to yourself, ain't no way I can afford to pay some guy $10,000 a month loaded cost to make $100,000. That's impossible because I'm only netting 18,000.

You don't have to pay them a hundred thousand upfront. It's like, I'm going to take the risk. And this is why you have to have cash in the bank. You have to be a far away from the cliff so that you can move fast and with speed.

But. If I hire a superstar, and let's say they're a six-figure guy, and that's a lot of money in the industry still, they could sell a million dollars. They could sell a million dollars immediately. I see it all over the country.

There's freaking two people at the front counter, phone rings, the other guy goes to the bathroom, two customers walk in. You can't get a good ticket average and take good care of the customer. You can't PMI these cars really fast. You can't inspect them fast enough.

You cannot provide good service. So man, what if I told you, You can use that $18,000 of profit and you can hire two incredible Glenn Piccolos, Joe Adams, superstar people that can sell jobs. Man, that sounds arrogant and conceited. I promise I want to approach this with humility, but the point is they will move your revenue.

If Glenn Piccolo went into any shop in the country, the revenue would double immediately, immediately, immediately, not every single shop, but a lot of them. And so let's say you're doing 200,000 a month and and you're netting 18 grand. That's, what's the math on that? Like 2.4 million?

What if you go straight to 3.5? Seriously, like instantly. That's a million dollars, 60% GP. That's $600,000 of gross profit.

Straight to the bottom line, less the cost of that advisor. But people are just too afraid to do it. They put eight people on the field. In an NFL football game and they say, man, when you start winning games, I can hire more people.

Yeah. You know, it's like, when you, yes, when you start winning games, I can put more, you know, more people will come to the stadium and we'll sell more concessions and we can afford another player. That's not how it works. That's not how it works.

So anyway, I know I've been talking a lot, but man, you have to take the risk on the front end because you actually have no risk on the back end unless you get emotionally attached to people. And I love our people. I am so emotionally attached to our people. I care so deeply about them, but dude, it's a business.

It's the NFL. Cade York or whatever the guy's name is for the Buccaneers in 2024, he missed two field goals on opening day. And guess what? They fired him.

They cut him after one week because I looked up his contract. it's $975,000 a year. I am not going to pay you $900,000 to miss, to miss field goals when the game's on the line. And so that's how we feel. We pay people a lot of money.

We take really, really good care of them. But what that allows you to do is really keep them accountable. And if they're not good, you got to always be recruiting, man. You got to always be recruiting.

Joe, I want to add one more, one more final thing about that. We talked about a little while ago about always being recruiting. And I can't tell you how important that is. I mean, the always building off of your network tree, your referral tree.

I mean, you'll get one amazing person. They know two amazing people. And then that two turns into four. It's like the old MCI commercial, like, and you tell two friends and you tell two friends and so on and so forth.

I mean, it's so powerful if you do it the right way. And just think of every person you talk to. I mean, even if you're talking to, one of my favorite things to do is loop techs. I mean, you get a loop tech on the phone.

And, you know, if you're hiring for a general service technician, that's one of the best people to get a referral from because whenever a general service technician or lube tech is in a shop, they are constantly paying attention to what other people are doing. They're trying to learn from the best of the best. They're, they're, they're latching onto the shop foreman who's putting time in, investing in them and teaching them. And they're going to know exactly who are the best people at the shops because that's the people that they idolize as the new guy on the tree.

And yeah, man, when you're in an interview, this is the secret sauce. Okay. We're going to leave you guys with the sauce. And for the rest of the secrets, we've got a lot of secrets.

You got to come to our recruiting class. We got a great class in Houston or just call Brian. But man, here is the sauce. I'm going to give it away for free, okay?

When you're in an interview and they suck, sorry, but you're in an interview and they're talking about binge drinking and all this stuff and you just know you can't hire them. Most people write them off. What do we do, Brian? We freaking ask them for referrals.

Let's say I got a guy named Billy and Billy comes in and Billy's you know, talking about, you know, smoking weed and he's just not the guy we want. You know, we're looking for a GS or, you know, a lube technician. We love our general service technicians, you know, and he's talking about, you know, I'm getting him comfortable and he just goes off the rails a little bit. Well, I'm not going to hire this guy.

At that point, I'm going to say something along the lines of, Billy, you know, the next step in this process is we're probably going to need some referrals. Do you have anybody in mind that would say some nice things about you? Who can vouch for you? Who can vouch for you?

And he's going to say. Yeah, you can call my mom or, he's going to say something dumb. And then I'm going to say, no, no, I'm talking about like, give me an example. I'll give you an example.

Who's the best master technician you've ever worked for? Boom. Look, then he's going to be like, oh, I got this master technician, man. His name is Bob.

He worked for over here. Man, he's awesome. He could fix anything. He would say I'm a hard worker and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then I'm just going to go fishing. And I'm going to ask that guy for every phone number that he has. And guess what? I'm going to call those phone numbers.

I'm going to say, man, what about front of the house? Who's the best manager you've ever worked for. I'm talking they can sell, hard worker. You love working for them.

And he's going to be like, man, I got this guy, Chuck. And they're just going to tell you name after name after name. And that's literally all you need from one interview. From one interview, how many interviews could you set up, Brian?

Of dozens. Because you're going to ask all those people. You're going to call all those people. And about half of them are going to be interested in a job.

And the other half of them are going to tell you to go screw yourself. That's still like a handful of people that I can interview. And then I'm going to do the same thing for them. It literally can change your life.

One person can change your life. Glenn Piccolo came into our company. Todd recruited Glenn Piccolo. And he came into our company.

Todd recruited Jose Garcia. Actually, Jose was with our company before Todd. I want to take that back. But the point is two guys, you know, like how many people has Glenn brought with him and how many people have Glenn's people brought with them?

It's like a tree. It's like you get one person, that next person could be the A player that absolutely changes your life. And so recruiting, our whole concept is excellent. You know, we have a lot of fun selling jobs, but great people with no concept will run circles around a great concept and average or below average people.

So they are really, you can't even do anything without great people. And you got to pay for great people. The best people in America, Brian Rhodes, do they come cheap? No, they do not.

Did you know that Juan Soto signed a $765 million contract with the with the New York Mets. Yeah, I believe it. Do you think that's a good deal for Steve Cullen, the owner of the Mets? Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. It's a good deal. That company's worth like $8 billion. And he has so much risk tied up in that guy's ACLs.

It's like, what if he goes down? It's a 15-year contract, guaranteed money. Our risk is two weeks. It's like, Steph Curry's made like a billion dollars in his career.

He gets paid $60 million a year. But is he worth it? Is he worth it? He got drafted in 2010, okay?

And the Golden State Warriors were the worst team in the league or something, like 28th on the valuation list. They were worth $470 million. We say this in training. 15 years later, four championships, you know, I know they're not winning as much as they used to, but man, they are like one of the top five most valuable franchises in the history of sports. And they're worth like eight or $9 billion now in 10 years.

So you can tell me a 20X in 15 years, you can't find those returns anywhere. And they've paid Steph Curry hundreds of millions of dollars. Has it been worth it? Absolutely.

But for some reason, we cannot get that through to our industry. People want to get a deal. They want to get a deal, man. And find me a guy who I don't have to pay that much.

And it's like, man, you get what you pay for. And the same thing applies to our industry. So recruiting is so important. I think that's the pod.

I had a whole lot of fun here. Man, where can they find you? Again, Brian Rhodes, LinkedIn, Facebook. That's it.

Brian Rhodes, www.autoshoprecruiting.com. And yeah, looking forward to chatting to you guys. Let's freaking go. If you need a technician, please reach out.

You can find me in Houston, Texas. This was episode three of, man, we need an outro or something. Episode three of Master Tech to Millionaire. We will see you guys next time.

Sneak peek. I think we got Charlie Zalakos on the pod next time. So let's freaking go. That'll be a banger.

Awesome. Thank you guys. Boom. Boom.