How Todd Hayes Turned $25k into $20 Million in Auto Repair

What's up, players? Good morning from beautiful Houston, Texas. My name is Joe Adams. This is our pilot episode of Master Tech to Millionaire.

If you don't know my background, we run Adams Automotive. It's the number one shop in the country. We have an amazing team. We are launching this podcast to hopefully educate the community and the industry and just tell a bunch of stories about how a bunch of members of our leadership team have transitioned from master technician to CEO, operator, millionaire.

So today I've got, I'll tell you more about my story later. Today I've got the one and only G-O-A-T, GOAT. His name is Todd. Jeffrey Todd Hayes is in the building.

He's, you know, a lot of people have a lot to say about Todd, but here's what I'll say before I get him going. He has a reputation in the industry and I will say that I can personally vouch for him. I'll tell you more about my story in another episode, but what I will say is he changed my life. He changed my family's life.

He changed every single person in our business's life. He's so wonderful. So Todd, you're going to introduce yourself here, but I've got a question for you. Up, Joe Adams, you freaking rock star.

Here's my question for you, Todd. You got a $25,000 loan from your father-in-law. You saved up $25,000, which is equivalent to probably $100,000 in today's dollars. And you turned that into $20 million in 11 years, and now you're working on a billion-dollar deal.

How the hell did you do that? Wow. I think he just threw an old joke in there. Well, you are super old.

You know, hey man, $25,000 way back then. Now, you know, it's really a great story. You know, my father-in-law, who is my mentor, I call him Dad Davis, Dick Davis. You guys, if you're around me, you hear me talk about him because he was instrumental in changing my life.

And so when I was about 17 years old, I met his daughter who became my first wife. And she is the mother of my beautiful daughter, Christina. Well, Christina's grandpa, her grandfather was amazing. And so, you know, obviously, you know, here I am a Daytona beach guy racing motocross and his daughter falls in love with me.

And he's a very successful guy, had grown a company and graduated from Princeton, Ivy Leaguer, Blue Blood family. And, you know, he's kind of looking at me going, wow, if you're going to marry my daughter, I better teach you business. And so, you know, he started talking to me when I was 17 years old about really generational wealth, teaching me how to own a business, grow a company, scale a company, obviously get educated, you know. So, um, obviously I was educated, um, with my, with my first wife.

We, um, attended, um, I started out at North Harris County Community college and up to UT. And then I started my career straight out of college when I'm Goodyear corporate. And she went to work for the family business. So coming straight out of college, we were making a significant amount of money, which was really a blessing.

But the biggest blessing was I had the fundamentals of business. But Dad Davis taught me the down and dirty, really in the trenches part of business, which is amazing. What a freaking gift. And I think that when you talk to Joe Adams and you hear about Joe, that's what I do now is really take, you know, really down and dirty business, man, and man, turn it into a fortune 500 company.

I'll never forget my father-in-law when I was 17 talking to me about, look, son. Every dollar a profit you take out of your business as a paycheck, let's just say you get 75 cents that 25% goes to taxes and other issues, but you have, you have disposed income of really 70 cents. And he goes, now every dollar a profit I leave in my company, I can sell it for 10 to $20, even more in the market. Now I'm 17 years old and I went, yeah, right.

Just like the majority of people say that to me, even now, isn't that crazy? I said it to you at the beginning. I was like, Yeah. Can you walk me through that one more time?

I got to understand. Yeah, but it's just the truth. And I did. I go, yeah, walk me through that one more time.

And he goes, no, it is the truth. And he started educating me on it. And I hung on every single word he said. And so I get recruited by Goodyear.

I go to work for Goodyear. But during this time, I'm writing a business plan. And again, my father-in-law is overseeing this business plan. I'd turn in my notes and he was like the ultimate real world business professor.

He would circle it. And again, don't forget, we didn't have computers then. This was on Olympic time. You were chiseling in stone, correct?

That was about a thousand years ago. Don't you just love this, Joe Adams? You know, I keep telling him, he keeps making old jokes. So I'm going to start filling his mind with false information.

But anyway, so yes, we're on this Olympic typewriter. We're typing out this business plan. And I mean, it was really amazing. But he would circle it with this big red circle, knowing that I have to retype it.

And as we were retyping it, you're just absorbing this knowledge, just absorbing this knowledge. It was really an absolutely brilliant move. But when it was done, we had created pretty much a brand. We had created the demographic we wanted to go for.

We had created performance projections, which is really your analysis. If it doesn't work on paper in business, it's not going to work. And so I had five years of projections on scaling this single store. We had ads done, rate or roll.

And everything, traffic counts, demographic, everything you need to have no risk in business. And so when you can de-risk your business by getting all your numbers in order, that's what we did. And so finally I was 26 years old and he finally looked at me and said, you're ready. And when he said you're ready, it was like, okay, let's go find a location.

And that's how it started. But I got to give you some of the fun stuff about how we deal with even private equity now and how some of the things that he did for me, that now I get to transition to where we're at today. And that is my father-in-law. Can I point something out real quick?

You haven't spent, we're seven minutes into this podcast. You haven't spent a single second talking about the car. It has nothing. And that's what I want.

This is going to be a core pillar and theme of this podcast. It has absolutely nothing to do with the car. And I want to get back to the private equity stuff you were talking about, but it's the classic e-myth. This is one of the first things you taught me.

You said, Hey, Joe, look at this expensive mic you're talking into. Who paid for that? That would be the customer. Who paid for this computer?

That would be the customer. It is the classic e-myth. The industry is full of amazing technicians, but they're getting 20% of the pie. And they're like, well, why am I giving my, my owner sucks.

He doesn't show up to work. He doesn't pay me on time. He pays me under the table. He takes advantage of people.

Why am I giving 80% of the profit away? I could go open my own deal. So I'm going to go do that. And then they go and try to open their own business.

And then they get into all the weeds that you just talked about. They don't have a business plan. They don't know about payroll. They don't know about recruiting, which I want to get into later.

They don't know how to train their people. They don't know how to sell. It's a sales job in case you didn't know. And then they become a negative technician business owner who takes advantage of their people, pays them under the table.

And then that cycles off another generation of just horrible, negative, bitter technicians. And that is not to talk negatively about the industry, but I just had to highlight that. We live in the best industry in the world full of amazing, talented people, but you have not spent a cent. We're talking about how did you make $20 million when you 37 years old.

Yeah, yeah. It had nothing to do, absolutely nothing to do with diagnosing the car right, with, with putting the water pump on the car the right way. You know, people want to be the biggest technician in town. I can fix anything.

And they think Joe Adams, they think we're evil shop owners because we charge a lot and provide great service. I can't change the people's lives in our business by being the best technician in town. But what I can do, if you read all of our Google reviews is provide amazing total integrity service to our community that changes the lives of our employees. So I want to hand it back off to you, Todd, but you didn't spend a single second in this journey to 20 million and a billion plus talking about the car.

And so I just want to. Yeah. Yeah. It's all about the customer and the right.

And we, and we'll spend a lot of time talking about the customer because the customer pays for everything, everything. Now you got to understand something back when we decided to get in this business, you have to hear something. We chose the industry. My father-in-law made me sit down with a Wall Street Journal industry.

All the industries are laid out in the Wall Street Journal. And we went down industry by industry by industry. Is that crazy? Because we were looking for a business that does not attract talent.

So, you know, when he was starting his printing company, you know, think about it. You had these guys that were, they run these big AB Dick presses. They had these big rubber bib overalls on, ink flying everywhere. You know, I think of this burly guy coming in to the front counter, writing down an order for fricking business cards with ink all over them and man he was able to retail that business and clean it up put front of the house people the the press operators were back of the house man crushing it printing all the time but man you know there's a big separation there technicians dealing with customers is probably not there you're not not in their wheelhouse was the same with press operators it wasn't in their.

A product called quick printing when there was no such thing as quick printing this because years ago so we're looking at well what can i do and man it came to car repair we looked at dealerships first but they were the entry level to get into the dealer into a dealership group was too high and plus it was already attracting the roger penskys of the world it's a big business and. Franchise dealerships of the manufacturer. And so we could do it, but it was just too big of a deal. And so it just kept going back to, wow, we could retail car repair.

Let's retail this business. Let's create auto hospitality. Man, if you could take this industry, pretty it up is all I did. Man we launched with this company called mobile car care repair anywhere home officer shop we had mobile vans that would go out to your car click turn over nothing we'd get the car into our service facility we do under hood mid-rise full-rise inspections of the vehicle we would present to them exactly what they needed do what we call the isolate so let's just say a car had a click turn over no start okay so it needed a battery so we're only going to focus on that battery so I'm going to get a battery in the car I'm going to get the car back into my shop and then I'm going to ask permission to go ahead and look over the rest of the vehicle to make sure they can be charging systems good alternator starter the rest of and while the vehicle is in I'm going to look over your vehicle because that's my professional obligation and man that worked I I mean, it worked big time.

And then I created this deal. And people, if you've come through our Auto Shop Answers training program, this is amazing. A life-changing event was when I took a Polaroid picture in 1986 of a guy who had an intake leaking on his Ford van. Now, I want you to hear something.

This is defining moment number one. A major defining moment, guys. This defining moment truly happened. Gave me wealth, generational wealth, the rest of my freaking life.

That's it. That's actually. This is a fact. This is an absolute fact.

This is how we scaled a company from 3 million to 80 million in five years. And man, it goes back to this, to, to these defining moments. And this one defining moment was I had the engine cover off. The technician had the engine cover off.

Doing a tune up at that time was points, plugs, condensers, cab rotor. We had it down even then, where if you called them wires, I couldn't charge as much as if I called them ignition cables. Cables sound more expensive than wires. My family was very good at truly market research studies.

Man, we did, and we still are very, very good at that. We have, I think Joe Adams could sit here and go, at 65 years old, do I have any guesswork of what I do? No, it's actually so predictable. And there's so many defining moments, but man, we're going to get into all of them.

This business is extremely predictable. The customers say the exact same thing every day. We hear the exact same objections in our business. Everybody says there's a technician shortage.

Everybody says it's tax season. That's why there's no cars. Everybody wants to blame everything else except for their ability to operate their own business. That's one of the main things that you've taught me.

Internal locus of control. If we don't have car count, it's on us. And so I want to get back to your defining moments. Number one is the Polaroid camera.

Wrap up the story. And then, so this is really fun. So I call the customer. I'm the owner.

I'm new in business. We're open until nine o'clock at night. So we had extended store hours and people go, yeah, that guy's never going to make it. Why is he still open until nine?

Well, from six o'clock to nine o'clock, I do satisfaction and callbacks. When you fast forward to my 65 years old, you will definitely understand how mission critical that is. But so defining moment. So the guy, I call him up and I'm the owner.

I'm selling this job or telling about the job and I'm doing it with passion. See, I never sell with pressure is with passion. I personally inspected it. Mr.

Smith, this needs your immediate attention. i can see the intake leaking it looks like there's green algae coming off of the intake and my technician is telling me this is engine threatening this needs your immediate attention and so here's what i did i call the customer i say it just like that and he gives me a very strong resounding no. Absolutely not. Sorry, not going to do it. And I'm like, what the freak?

How can I get rejected? You know, I personally inspected it with my technician. It's bad. It needs your immediate attention.

But because I was new in business, guess what? He didn't believe me. Do you understand that? I chose the industry because the industry is fueled by a reputation of customers getting taken advantage of what if i told you that was our defining moment that's why we got total integrity see i got in the business for total integrity what if i paint my walls white i put my team in tight white button down oxfords and we are players and we constantly train so here's what happened so i look at my general service guy my he was actually my my first employee his name was Eric Greggers.

I love Eric. I still call him number one because he was my first team member. I said, Eric, what's the front? And I ran down to that time.

They were Eckerd drugs before private equity got in and bought them out. Jack Eckerd, again, made a fortune off of private equity, which I love private equity. Now here's what happens though. And so I go down and buy the Polaroid camera.

I take a Polaroid picture of it. We do the tune up. The vehicle's running great. We get the engine cow back on.

It has CB radio. And for those of you who have heard the story, It is life-changing. So the guy comes up, and this is where you get what's called a meet-and-greet again, reopen, miss-sell, when they're picking up the car. I would normally re-rack the vehicle so I could get the customer under it and show it to him.

But since it was a van, I could not show it to him. So I took these Polaroid pictures. And so when he came to pick up the vehicle, I go, Mr. Jones, man, I was so concerned about your Ford van.

I went down to Eckerdrugs and bought this Polaroid camera. And here's pictures of your intake leaking. He could see the green algae it was so bad he goes wow i had no idea it was that bad and i go you know i'm open till nine o'clock i'm starting on it tonight i have it ready for you tomorrow with your permission i'm gonna go ahead and take care of it and what did he say absolutely wait you're telling me that you just took a picture and showed it to him and that he bought no really so so so pictures speak volume so you're saying it had nothing to do with your expertise of the technician, which you had drunk technicians, by the way, I want to get into that. It had nothing to do with that.

So you're telling me that people buy from people they like and trust and that driving this business is a sales job and you can only take care of your employees, change their lives, take care of the community, provide amazing service. If you sell jobs, you know, I hear all, we heard one yesterday. Oh, Adams is a high pressured sales environment. They take advantage their customers.

Well, okay, hold on. So me showing you a Polaroid picture in 1986 of an engine cow, or, you know, with, with, with fluid leaking out of it, that's putting high pressure on a customer. Was that a customer for life, Todd? Absolutely.

Is that a guy who you did business with for years and years? Because you have total integrity. How do you stay in business taking advantage of customers for 45 years? It doesn't happen.

People are like, yeah, they're high-pressure sales. Those are people who didn't make the team, by the way. It's like, look, amazing, world-class customer service. Once again, it has nothing to do with the car.

You trained us, and I'm so grateful, how to take off your master. And we need amazing technicians. We pay our technicians a lot of money. We had a guy make, you know, maybe I shouldn't say it on the air, but we got technicians.

No, say it. Say it. $250,000. We got technicians living in six bedroom houses. You know, they're going on vacations with their family because guess what?

That guy works seven days a week, but he can't, you know, and he loves it. We're not making him work seven days a week. We're just open because guess what? On the weekends, he's putting his tools in his truck, doing his breaks for his neighbor.

And then he gets the bright idea. Oh, I'm going to go open my own shop. And it spurs this negative, you know, this cycle of technician turned business owner turned technician turns business owner. Well, we're just open seven days a week, which we can talk about later.

For our technicians to run crazy, crazy hours. But none of that can happen if you don't relentlessly train on sales culture and how to better take care of the customer and understand the psychology of your consumer. That is the ultimate, ultimate thing that you can focus on. So Todd, I want to get back to you on defining moment number one was taking Polaroid pictures to provide total integrity for your customer and total integrity with passion you can present work.

What was defining moment number two. But let's talk about even that Polaroid picture. So when you find something that was an aha moment, see, it's an aha moment. So from that day, have I ever, now you got to hear this, this is career ending with me.

Have I ever. Sold a job, presented a service job without taking a Polaroid picture. Why would you? Why would you?

How do I do? Can I say this real quick? When I'm recruiting a guy, if I'm training him, how to identify a talented salesperson, how to identify a player, a hammer is what we call him. If you look on the logo of this podcast, the guy on the right, he's a hammer.

That's like, we talk about hammers. Okay. You are a stud. If I just lay out the concept for you and then you just do it.

It's like, how could you put pictures, videos, moto visuals, some of the stuff that you hear about in our training, a Polaroid picture in 1986? Why would you ever not do that? If you don't do it, you're lazy. I'm sorry.

You don't want that much out of life. When I hear about something, a piece of technology, artificial intelligence, how could I not utilize it? I will do everything in my power to maximize my ability to take amazing care of my team. So how could you not do it?

And that is really the truth. I mean, you talk about a Polaroid camera. we scaled an entire business taking pictures which gave complete transparency and i would say mr jones you know we'd walk through our presentation on breaks i've taken polaroid pictures and i'm going to save your old parts oh my gosh did i get yeses heck yeah i did massive close ratio we were able to scale this little store i bought a bf goodrich store i paid pennies for it, but it was doing $10,000 a month, $10,000 a month. We scaled it to $150,000 a month. What was your labor rate?

Oh, I have no idea. It was low, like 45 bucks an hour back then. That's crazy. Shut up.

That was like, and that was like a hundred years ago. Yeah, it was a long time ago, but still, but can you imagine those dollars were so valuable? I'll never forget my first year business anniversary. I bought a 9-11 and it was gorgeous. read BBS, Wills, Welltel.

It was just one of those things I regret now. Which we will get into that. Hey, I'll get into that. I had to get that guy to be the guy I am today.

But yeah, so that was defining moment number one. But I also want to go back to where I was building that business plan. So my very first month in business, I netted $5,000. And really that company never had a loss, which is just amazing because we built such a great business plan.

And we started developing the key-to-key-to-callback business model, which is perfected. See, it is truly perfected. So that became the meet-and-greet again. You know, it became a turnover, a tag team.

It's not a no and go. It's like, wow, man, I need to show this customer pictures, which we've taken that to a whole different level. Again, it is freaking amazing. But going back to my father-in-law, this business plan, because this is mission critical.

He sent me up to meet with the president of Texas Commerce Bank, which is really fun. It's one of my favorite, another just defining moment of how amazing of a business guy this guy was. And so I created my business plan. I go up to meet the president of Texas Commerce Bank, who was a friend of his.

And he's waiting down the lobby. We drive to downtown Houston. You know, I'm a kid, 26. Right now, I'll never forget, you know, big freaking high rise downtown.

Town riding up like to the top floor you're way up there and you get out the president's you know assistant takes you into his private office you sit down and you're giving him a presentation, with your business plan and you know was i nervous anyone who says they weren't full of crap you know if you tell me you weren't scared the day you open up your business you're a freaking liar or you have no game because really you didn't open up a business you opened up a hobby a lifestyle business. Man, I was here to scale a company. And so what happened was, um, I ride down the elevator and there he was waiting on me. He goes, well, son, how'd it go?

I go, well, wow. I mean, I think the meeting went good, but you're not going to believe this. You know, I didn't have a table of contents. And then he looked at me with his little smile that he had like, Hmm, really?

Because you already knew it. And, and can you believe I didn't have page numbers so all of a sudden i want to go through my performance my numbers my projections and i'm kind of scrambling through trying to find it versus going to table of conscience page 36 performance you know and he knew it but that was my practice swing i get down the elevator and he goes how did it go and i was telling him and he goes yeah he goes that was your practice swing he goes john cooney he's a president of banga southwest he was my best friend from college and high school, he's giving you the loan. I just need you to be prepared for him. And I went, wow, wow.

Who does that? How brilliant is that? So when I started now teaching my team private equity, I do the same thing. So we have had how many private equity people have we met with?

I'm so cocky now. And I want to approach this with so much humility. People are going to think I'm super arrogant, but our business is so fun and it's so dynamic and it's so rare. And I mean, I just, I get so excited to come into work every day and I get to look at people.

I was talking to a guy last week. He said, this company changed my life. Yeah. I'm having a baby in October and this company changed my life.

Thank you. And I said, thank you. I was like, the ability, the gratitude that that gives me to be able to sit in that room on a Sunday morning. Yes, we're a faith-based business.

Yes, we're open on Sundays and talk to a guy. And he said, this company changed my life. It's about that. But man, what that allows me to do is I sit in these meetings with guys, these bankers, because guess what?

If you're listening to this podcast, you are probably a technician turned business owner, turned stud service advisor, turn whatever you want to be, you are in the best business on planet earth because, Hey Todd, is AI going to be able to fix the car? No. Is AI going to be able to talk to the customer face to face? No.

Our jobs are so safe. And so private equity is literally pouring billions and billions and billions of dollars, trillions of dollars. I mean, they literally are begging to buy our company. And so I am in these meetings and I got screen recordings of, these memos and it says you have literally you've literally ruined us.

We cannot get into the space and do business with anybody else because you guys have ruined us so not to brag or bat you know pat ourselves on the back but Todd you know. These defining moments, they've evolved into the concept that we run today, and it's really, really spectacular. So yeah, those are our practice swings, but we're very aggressive. And again, someone said, oh, sure, you're really courting all these private equity people.

And I go, what? I'm not courting anybody. We don't need the money. We run a debt-free business.

We make a tremendous amount of money because that is our job, our fiduciary responsibility. I have to be profitable. I have to be. Our fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders, to my partners, is I have to make money.

And my customers allow me to make money because I deliver outrageous customer service to them seven days a week. So they have been allowing me to have an amazing lifestyle, create generational wealth since 1986 by delivering outrageous customer service with auto hospitality. Can I just spin off on that? And I want to get back to your defining moments.

But if you are listening to this podcast and you have ever felt insecure about the price that you charge for your labor, I need you to get over that. You are allowed to be profitable. You are allowed to make money because guess what? Our business is a ministry and we take care of the people that work for us.

Look, our labor rates, 250, 280, like 300 bucks an hour. And it used to be higher. We went a little bit too high. We could talk about that.

I did another episode. So if you're charging $119 an hour, if you're charging $159 an hour, first of all, you have to provide excellent service to be able to charge more. But at that price, you can't charge enough to take care of your team members with things like 401k. With things like paid time off, with things like benefits, with things like ongoing training, with things like an amazing company culture full of superstars that are paid a living wage.

I was talking to a guy and we know him. His name's Tommy Mello. He goes, I was literally sitting in a room and they said, how do you sleep at night charging the prices you charge? And he says, how do I sleep at night?

Great question. How do you sleep at night? He's like, you guys are paying your team members 40, $50,000 a year with no benefits under the table and they can't afford to take their wife out to dinner. They can't afford to put their kids in private school and go on vacation.

How do you sleep at night? So look, you are allowed. If you're on this podcast, you are allowed to make money. You are allowed to make money.

Is charging the customer a high price, taking advantage of a customer? No. Lying to them and having low integrity is taking advantage of a customer. You are allowed to be profitable and make margin.

Guess what the margin is on a Coke Zero at McDonald's? It's 99%. It costs them two cents to make it. Are they taking advantage of you?

No. They are giving you an amazing service. I love my Coke Zero. So if you're listening to this, the price that you charge is not high enough.

You can charge way more because if you can charge more, you can provide better service. You can provide loaner vehicles. You can provide an amazing service in a great community and you can pay your people what they are worth and they will take care of the customers and the customers take care of the business and it's a ministry. I had to get off on that tangent.

I don't know how we got here. Let's get back to your defining moments. I always talk about our prices are very fair for the quality of service that we deliver. You know, so I want to throw a couple of things out there.

Our technicians do not work seven days a week. Everybody is scheduled five days a week. But if you give them an opportunity to come in and clean up their work, they'll actually come in. Because, man, technicians like to start fresh on Monday.

And for the shops that are only open five days a week, I tell them just pause for a minute and just watch them load up their tools and go get ready to do their side work on the weekends. That's how it works. It's insane. It's absolutely insane.

It's like, well, why don't I just open up and just run more hours? And they love that. And again, if you advertise and you say yes, how many cars did we have coming here yesterday? Wait, you're telling me that if I advertise and I say yes on the phone, that water pumps will break on the weekends?

Oh, no way. So, you know, what we tell people in our training company is our friends, we call them. You don't have to open Sundays, but man, Saturdays are freaking free. Did you know that you can fly Delta Airlines every day of the year?

Whoa, what a crazy idea. Imagine if you couldn't log into Netflix and said, hey, it's the weekend. Sorry, we're closed. They are a business.

You can go to a restaurant. Gas station. Anything. See, only in car repair is this a bad word.

And man, we have analyzed exactly how that happened. And that goes back to when they quit having full service gas stations. Because really the oil companies got tired of complaints because of integrity issues and poor service. And so they said, you know, we can make more money, get rid of these fricking bays and putting convenience stores in.

And that's exactly what happened. We're going to go to self-serve. I don't need these guys running out, washing windshields, checking wiper blades, checking the tire, lifting up the hood, checking air filter, PCV valves, checking the oil, man, talking to them about getting their oil changed, talking to them about selling tires. This is how full service started.

A lot of great, great grandparents actually live behind their gas station because they're open seven freaking days a week serving the customer. Well, now we have an industry that thinks the customer, it's a privilege for that customer to come do business with him. Well, dude, you're smoking crack. I'm sorry.

You're just freaking nuts, man. It is my honor to serve that customer. Is the customer always right? Yep.

The customer is always right. Even when the customer is wrong, that customer is always right. If I have to refund money to a customer who's wrong to make him right, Ah, piece of cake, spinny, spinny, spinny. Wait, you're saying you have to be profitable to be able to take care of people?

Absolutely. No way. We had a customer who was dead wrong, 100% wrong, told me I'm a criminal to my face. And you know what we did?

Gave him his money back. It's like, wow, we had 50,000 customers last year. I'm going to do right by people. I'm going to take care of our employees.

We had a tree fall on an employee's vehicle last year. It cost us 6,000 bucks. Did you know that we make enough money to be able to take care of our guy? Anything.

Our guy, anything he needs. It's like, okay, a tree fell on your car while it was at the shop. Am I really going to hang our employee, our team member up on that and make him pay $6,000? No.

That is why I can sleep perfectly well charging the prices we charge because our customers are more than willing to pay for it. So, Todd, let's circle back. Defining moment number one, Polaroid pictures, reopening missed sales. Man, did you grow a chain on that.

Defining moment number two. Walk me through that. Defining moment number two was recording phone calls. I mean, I would call around just like every other shop owner, 26 years old, how much are brakes?

How much are brakes? Well, you know, man, they would tell me, it's like asking someone what time it is. And they say, well, hold on a minute. Let me show you how I build my watch.

They would literally walk me through a brake repair and I'm asking how much is it? And that is nothing more than for them to try to let the customer know how smart I am about brakes. About the car. Let me see.

If it's a grinding noise, what's happened is the brake pads have worn out. They're grinding into the rotor. So you're probably going to need the brakes, the brake pad, and the rotor if I can't resurface it. Now, this is back to 1986.

Plus, maybe the caliper's bad. Now, do you understand a customer has no idea what you just said? They have no idea. See, it's your business.

They don't know what a brake rotor is. They don't know what a brake caliper is. See, my technicians are so close to the industry, they can't get that. It's like, why would a customer know what a brake caliper is?

Why would a customer know what a brake pad is? Hell, that's not their business. That's our business. I take the back of a TV off.

Well, you know what the components are? No, it was crazy. But they all said it the same way. And I go, oh, man.

So I mystery shop my team and son of a gun. We suck just as bad. I'm like, oh, wow. So I started recording phone calls.

I met a guy. His name was Brian Tracy. Pretty famous guy now. And man, he talked about if you do the same thing over and over every single day, you can write professional presentations.

So I grabbed a Radio Shack recorder. Put a little suction cup on the back of my phone, and we started recording phone calls from that day forward. And I wrote presentations, one called the Anytime Presentation. And then I had the ISO presentation, Additional Concern presentation.

Now I have a portfolio of presentations overcoming objections. And, man, it worked. So the same customer calls in and says, how much are breaks? Well, doesn't this make more sense to go WhatsApp? but concern you having with your brakes yes and then that customer is going to tell you it's a direct question what is doing man every time i apply the brake pedal i hear a grinding noise when anytime you're experiencing a grinding noise you apply the brake pedal you need to have one of our certified technicians inspect it is now a good time for you to bring your vehicle in furthermore do you feel safe driving that car because i'll come and pick that car up have one of my technicians inspect your vehicle.

Give you a no obligation written estimate. And back then, and I'll take Polaroid pictures and I'll save your old parts. It's now a good time for me to come pick up your car. Wow.

That is just not rocket science. Because again, we had mobile vans going out. I knew if I could get that car in my shop, I'm going to make money because I'm going to out service any of my competition. And it's still that way today.

Nothing has changed. So this is a key defining moment that I want to riff on. Okay. So all around the country, there are, you know, there's like a ceiling where shops can't do above 3 million or they can't do above a million because do you know what their actual business model is?

It's about 100 hours a week of hardcore work ethic from a serious entrepreneur who's in the trenches with his people. And that's about it. If you take the CEO, if you take the entrepreneur out of the business, sales go in the tank because there is actually no concept. There is actually no predictability. standard operating procedures, systems, and processes.

So you're telling me, and this is the defining moment of our training program, it's what we open up with every single time. That your day is extremely predictable. What if I told you that you're going to get phone calls tomorrow and they are going to ask, how much do you charge for brakes? Hey, I've got oil leaking on my driveway.

What do you think that is? How much do you charge for an alignment? How much do you charge for an oil change? What if I told you that a customer is going to decline a $2,000 repair because they're going to have to talk to their wife?

What if they have to talk to their wife about selling the vehicle? Well, they're going to tell me that they're going to sell the vehicle six months from now on the oil change for the same car. What if I told you that the customers say the exact same thing every day? What if I told you they all break in the exact same way?

Audi control arms, Audi motor mounts, Jeep 3.6 liter engine, it's going to leak from the oil cooler every single time. A Range Rover is going to have cooling system issues. They are extremely predictable. So the way that you scale your business as you transition from master tech to millionaire is by doing exactly what Todd did in the late 80s.

How do you turn 25,000 into 20 million? You clone your brain with systems and procedures that your team members can execute on and you train relentlessly. That is how you do it. The customer is going to answer the phone.

You are going to answer the phone and the customer is going to say the same thing every day. Here's another concept, decision fatigue. The further along that your brain goes in the day, the worse and worse it gets at making decisions. And when you have to just wing it on every single sale, how many times have you sold a break job in your life, Todd?

A million times. So why don't we just say it the exact same way? Tiger Woods has hit a million three-foot putts. Did you know he hits it the exact same way every single time?

I can see Steph Curry in my mind taking his mouth guard out of his mouth. It's hanging out of his lips. He dribbles the ball twice, and then he takes his routine and he executes. Why?

Because he's done it a million times because he knows he's going to do it a million more times. We call ourselves professional business athletes and we treat it like a sport. So why would I not train relentlessly to absolutely destroy my competition so that I can provide amazing service for the customer? Because guess what?

If I have to wing it every single time, I am going to get massive decision fatigue because I'm so exhausted at the end of every day. I'm not going to be excited to go into work tomorrow because I just don't know what to expect. But man, when you hear that customer object, when you hear that customer ask for the price over the phone and you know exactly what to say, your confidence goes through the roof and you start hearing yeses way more often. And it literally, I've watched it change people's lives.

I've watched people make more money than they've ever made in 20 years in this business, more money than business owners make out there. And they go home happy and their wives start to notice and they buy their first house and it completely and radically changes your life. So how do you do that? How do you go from master tech to millionaire?

Defining moment number two, you scale your systems and processes and you clone your brain and you literally cannot do that without training relentlessly and executing on your standard operating procedures. And guess what, Todd? We, you wrote the playbook. We have the playbook literally just, you know, we, we train people all over the country and they go, well, let me tell you how I'm doing in my market.

And I'm like, dude, Todd literally made tens of millions of dollars. And I've never seen somebody not execute his concept perfectly and not become a millionaire. Just do it the way Todd does it. And he goes, you know, people go, Todd's hard on people.

He's not hard on me. Cause I just execute relentlessly. So that's defining moment. Number two, I'll get off my soapbox. add something on Tommy Mello, you know, you cannot benchmark yourself against this industry.

Sorry. I mean, there's not, there's not enough good players. So, you know, we, you think about, well, where did, if you have a customer who wants a refund, what do I do? I've given this fricking money back.

Simple. Well, that comes back from Nordstrom's. So man, that's who I benchmarked against was Nordstrom's. There's a great story, Nordstrom story about a customer bringing four tires back to Nordstrom's.

Nordstrom's doesn't sell tires. Did they give them a complete refund on that absolutely they did tires yeah and it's a great story for our industry and so you have to benchmark yourself phone skills through four seasons you know rich carlton who how are they answering the phone well you know so we had the opportunity we've gotten to know tommy mellow we fly out and man he says the exact same stuff because players are players grinders or grinders. And it's the truth. And you know, the first thing he said, I looked at my team and we just started laughing.

Yeah, this won't work in my market. Oh my God. Oh my God. I started laughing so hard.

I go, yeah, we never hear that because yeah, it won't work in your market. Not because you're a market, but because of you, dude. Sorry. And so I want you to hear some, we have an exercise during our auto shop answers training weekend.

By the way, you should definitely come through that. It will change your life. shamelessly plug yeah i will shamelessly plug or i'll give your money back and i have never given a dime back it changes people's lives do you understand that yes it's made people so so many people millionaires it is ridiculous but so um but so we're out we're out visiting with tommy and we get we get done with tommy and we hit everybody hits it off really well it's really Because you know why? Because we speak the same language, the language of success. You cannot fake it till you make it.

You have to have a business model or you do not have a business. We have perfected a business model. Oh, my gosh. I can give you an elevator speech and explain my business model in seconds.

Well, can you do that? No, you're opening up, pulling freaking shifts, going home miserable, and that's your life. And you make very little money. It sucks.

I am serious. And people think that's hard to hear, but dude, it changed my life. You have to hear it. You think Bill Belichick was nice on his people?

No. Peyton Manning, he's like, man, I need a coach who's hard on me. I need him to coach me. I want to be knowing.

I want to know exactly what I'm doing wrong and how I can execute. Do you think, and fake it till you make it. I love that term, but I hate it because you think Tiger Woods just fakes it in the 18th fairway when he's got a one-shot lead? He was putting on the Merv Griffins when he was three, four years old.

Do you understand that? You cannot fake business knowledge. Now you can take someone like charlie zalako stud man what a rock god he's so oh my god he's brilliant now because he's self-educated for the last 15 years mastered our concept and has become a millionaire with a shop two bays four lifts which will do 400 freaking thousand all-time record so proud of 370 000 and there are six parking spots two stores in boston he's a partner in all that we do with Adams Automotive outside of 1010 now auto care auto shop answers Houston Boston partnership so hey here's a master technician who became a millionaire Bill Broussard master technician who became a millionaire and these guys will tell you I'm tough I'm as tough as my father-in-law was but I love them to death but man it trans it transforms Transforms their life, your life, your family's life. Wow.

It is amazing. Anyone who says having money is not important. Yeah, they're dead broke. Sorry.

It's very important. Man, it allows you the best medical care you can get. It allows you a nice home. It allows you date night with your wife.

It allows you a housekeeper so your wife's not grinding. It can afford you anything you want. It allows you to take your team out to dinner and take care of them. It allows you to serve the Lord.

It allows you to support ministries globally. Here's what people don't understand. The global ministry that the Adams family has is massive. Our business is a ministry.

We change lives, pay it forward. So they in turn can change lives and also serve the Lord. So let's get to my next defining moment. Todd, I'm about to run through a brick wall.

My gosh. Okay. Defining moment number three. Oh man, this is so great.

My next door neighbor in business, his name was Dr. John D. Schakowski. I hope John is still alive.

He lives in Austin, Texas. Defining moment number three. callbacks and pre-books I was already doing callbacks that was my father's deal you call every single customer I actually started calling customers doing you know and when I would work with my wife you know during the summer we would do callbacks drop off business cards all kinds of stuff but you know we'd add you would call his customers and say were you completely satisfied with the services you received at Speedy Running oh yes we were great you know we'd mark that down And so I was doing callbacks from six until nine o'clock at night. That's why I had extended store hours. And you go back, they only had one phone line.

And guess what? People were actually at home from six to nine. They only had one phone line. So I had a pretty captive audience.

And so John goes, you know, this dentist across the street goes, have you ever thought about pre-booking, you know, your services? You know, we do these things called recalls. So before the client walks out of my office, I set their next appointment and I go, oh, what an idiot. Oh my God.

I mean, that is like brilliant. Like, are you kidding me? That is so stupid and simple. And so I started pre-booking their oil changes.

So I see them every 90 days. I would set, I would take an index card and I would put it in a file folder exactly 90 days to the date I pulled out the index card. And I would call Mr. Smith and go, Mr.

Smith. Yes. Wait, so you're telling me you invented the spam call? Are you to blame for that?

No, it's not a spam call. They're your customers. And I would tell them, oh, by the way, I'm going to call you in exactly 90 days. I have this little index card.

Guys, we didn't have computers then. So I had an index card. We'd write it. And we would then put it in this little folder that was dated 1 through 31.

What are they called, Joe Adams? And accordion file. Accordion file. We had all these accordion.

We had 12 accordion files for January all the way through December. And 90 days from this exact date, I'd pull out that index card and I would go, hi, Mr. Adams. This is Todd Hayes with Mobile Car Care.

It's now a good time to talk. But yes, it is. Can you believe it's been 90 days since we did your last oil change? Man, I'm open seven days a week.

Would you like to bring it by this Saturday or Sunday? Would you like me to come pick it up? Seriously, how hard is that? Now, did that customer, did I get the corn in my shop.

I'm sure I did. Well, then we turned that into state inspection callbacks. Today, we have a national call center, a local, our Houston-Boston partnership call center. And in the last year, we have scaled that company to do, last month, it did $1.3 million of reoccurring revenue for shops across the country.

Houston-Boston partnership alone did over $800,000 reoccurring revenue through our local call center, which actually is here at Adams Automotive. And my father-in-law is looking down on me because he was a great faith-based guy. And he's going, are you still doing those callbacks? And with pride, I go, look at what we've done, dad.

We perfected a call center. We perfected a call center. So those are three major, major defining moments. I have one more that I have to tell you about.

And that, because Joe Adams will definitely riff off this, and that is recruiting outside the industry. So I started recruiting restaurant guys. Wait, hold on. Let's back up a second.

I got to tell the story. And I want you to tell the story, but let's set the scene. So you're 26 years old, it's midnight, and you're in a prison. How the hell did you get there?

And what did it teach you about your life? I got to hear this story for the audience. No, that's when I, that was when I wasn't, I wasn't in prison. No, I'm, I had two drunk technicians because you take whatever you can.

You had an alcoholic and a chronic alcoholic. I'll never forget it, man. We had this one chronic alcoholic and we said, he's got the Polynesian syndrome. And that was, he make just enough money where he goes drinking.

So I get, I was pretty good with him for about three, four days. And then he's going to be MIA because he made enough money to go drinking. It's the craziest world you've ever seen. And then the other guy, and he was the chronic alcoholic, the other alcoholic, He was just an alcoholic on the weekend.

You can't make this stuff. You can't make this stuff. So you're 26 years old. They call in sick.

You get a collect call. How's that go for you? No, wait. No, I had one guy.

They didn't call in. The one guy, there was a bar called the Gunny Shack, if anyone's from Houston. And this is way, way back. I mean, this is 30 years ago.

And I'm really, he went and got drunk at the Gunny Shack and said he got married. And that's why I didn't go for work. I'm like, oh, my God. And so then, so you got to understand, my other technician, Tim, didn't show up.

And so I'm like looking at Eric Griggers and myself going, oh, boy, this is going to be fun. And so I get a call like at 4 in the afternoon. Hi, this is a Harris County jail calling. Would you accept a collect call?

Absolutely. Oh, boy. And so I'm bailing him out of jail at midnight. Harris County.

So I close at 9. I get in my company vehicle at that time was a Chevy Astro van with mobile car gear all over it. And I drive down downtown to the, to the pokey, to the po-po to get a guy out of jail. I'm sitting on this cement.

Really? I can see it. I can literally see it. It was like a cement bench with all these other people at midnight, bailing out people.

And this is not the in crowd. Do you understand that? I'm going to go on. I'm going to get killed here.

Oh, my God. So I bail him out. I get him home. I get back home.

It must be one or two o'clock in the morning. And I said, yeah, that will never happen again because because then I become masterful at recruiting. And so I said, man, I got to find studs in my business, stud technicians. And so through the years, we got so good at recruiting.

Can I just paint a picture, too, for everybody that's on this podcast, okay? You save up, equivalent to today's dollars, $100,000. You have a loan from your father-in-law, your wife's dad, for $100,000, and you're 30 days in business. Todd, you told me a story one time that you had a full day.

Where you did $13.95. Yeah, I was like- Do you think you don't move? $14.95. $14.95. It was a $25 ticket and the guy gave a $10 discount. And you think you don't move different?

Oh, yeah. You think you don't move with intensity? And you're driving downtown and you are about to, you're in business. I mean, you spent four years.

You told me you worked every single day for four years for Goodyear, learning how to run a retail operation, Goodyear and then Car Doctor. And you save up all your money, borrow money, And you're moving with intensity and you're at the Harris County Jail in downtown Houston, worried about your life, new in business, 26 years old. You think you wouldn't move with a little bit of intensity? Oh, yeah.

You think you wouldn't do whatever it takes to make sure. Do you know what that would feel like to go to your wife's dad to be like, hey, I failed. I went out of business. Oh, yeah, that's not going to happen.

And that's not going to happen. So walk me through. You become a recruiter. How's that work for you?

But still, even on that, you know, there's some. Again, some lucky things. You know, one of the girls that I met, one of my wife's friends in college, her name was Ili O'Connor Jones and her husband was Mike Jones. So we're at the Alley Theater, you know, and this is like really before I even opened up.

And she worked for a company at that time called Advo, which became Velasus for shared mail. And so I said, sure, man, I'm opening up a store. I'm going to put shared mail out there. And that was really amazing because our phones were ringing.

But it didn't drop until a month after I opened that first month. I had a $14.95 day waiting on ads to hit. You know, but here's what I was doing. From 6 o'clock to 9 o'clock, I'm calling the customers that came in.

I'm in a phone book. Doing a new customer introduction. Now, do we do new customer introductions today? Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. So you got to hear this. That's why I'm in a phone book. Hi, this is Todd Hayes.

I have a company called Mobile Car Care. It's at 17611 Kirkendall Road in Spring, Texas. You know, I got your number out of the phone book, but I want to introduce you to my services. The next time you need an oil change, man, can I count on you to come in?

I'd love to introduce you to my business. And hand to God, that's what I freaking did. Call backs work. Calling people work.

A new customer introduction. So that when the customer came in, did I do a strong meet and greet? You bet your ass I did. I had that handout.

I'm meeting and greeting that customer. I have my white uniform on, red tie. I'm giving them a shop tour. I'm showing them around.

I'm introducing them to people. And then I talk to them about my Polaroid picture. I'm going to shave your old parts. Boy, we blew a company up.

And then Vlas's dropped or Advo dropped, which was a shared mail. So now I got cars coming in. At the end of my first month, I netted $5,000. That company never had a loss.

It was a spectacular ride. But as I started scaling to my second store, that's when we had to go outside the industry because I needed people that were like-minded. I have an industry so shut down right now, they actually will be poor. They will almost go hungry and not open on a Saturday when your top customer is at, oh yeah, my technicians love not working on Saturday.

No, they don't love not making any money. My technicians love making $200,000, $250,000, $150,000, $120,000, more than a lot of shop owners make. Sorry, it is the truth. and so I'm auto hospitality I'm open when the customer wants to do business it's not a seasonal business I walked through a deal the other day with it with a client a friend and I'm going he goes man it's such a seasonal business I go shut up please just shut up really so water pump knows that it's Christmas no they go bad you know does this car break down because it breaks cars break people early to bad early to rise work I can't get advertised and answer the phone and say yes. Cars break 365 days a year yep on the side of the road all over town leaking oil cars don't start oh no man i can't wait for a conditioner season if you're saying that sell your company because you have no idea what you're doing give me your phone number i'll pay you ten thousand dollars for it and i'll open a store across the street no i'm kidding no no but it's a truth i had people tell me oh yeah man the rodeo's coming to town we're really going to be slow shut up are you freaking kidding me see it's not a seasonal business tax time not a seasonal business when your car breaks you don't put your babies in broke cars you find the money you borrow the money you get in-store financing or you have the money i sit there and i go why would anyone put their business in a poor demographic well the rent was cheap yeah i can't fix that level you know seriously.

Man, we choose our demographics. We choose where people want outrageous customer service. But again, you just have to experience what we call auto hospitality. I started recruiting restaurant guys in the early nineties.

Why is that? Because they worked seven days a week. They would work until two o'clock in the morning and they already understood hospitality. All I had to do is show them what a brake rotor was because the customer doesn't know what a brake rotor was.

But if I can get them to present with a professional presentation, will that close deals? Oh, my God. Well, it kind of did. We scaled a beautiful company.

So, Todd, this is actually crazy. This has been electric. We're approaching our one hour, which is just so fun. But my final thing that I want to leave you with is this, okay?

So, you know, as we leave this podcast, somebody that's out there listening to this, they're like, where do I start? The number one thing that you've trained me on is that your job as the CEO of the company is to drive revenue. Lead from the front and be in the trenches with your team. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Talk about owner stuff and talk about, because I've talked to people and they're like, what do I do? Where do I start? What am I supposed to be doing? Your job is to be driving revenue.

What does that mean? Well, the first thing I would tell you, and I have to, I'm not going to plug out a shop answer, but please come in because you have to learn a business model. And again, if you're not completely satisfied, I will give your money back. I have been training on this business model now since the early nineties, I've never given a dime back.

And my mother would say, why are you telling everybody you're, they don't do it. Yeah. Why are you telling everybody your secret sauce? You know, and I go, because they won't do it mom, seriously, which is hysterical because man, I can tell you, I can show you exactly how to do it, but most out there won't do it.

But the ones who do it will become very, very rich. Now, if, when I talk about in the trenches with the wrenches. The first thing, I'm staring at a concept board right now. That means that I open up every single morning.

My team should be at my store by 6.30 because it's 6.45. We are doing our workout just like a pro sport team. We're on the field, kicking the ball, running our plays. And that's called a daily take five.

And you cannot be late to a take five. And here's why. Each one of my businesses are individual profit centers. I look at them as assets.

So if you're going to be part of running one of my assets, which is worth a fortune, man, you got to be on time for my customer. You got to open. So let me tell you, if you're late one time, I give you a pass. Second time you're fired.

I make that very clear in the interview process. I'm very tough when I'm interviewing people because I want to interview you out because I only want superstars to work for me. Every single morning, 365 days a year, we're only closed four days out of the year. We do a daily take five.

And, man, you have to do it. You have to talk to your team. And it's not about yesterday's car problems. It's about, hey, let's go over to meet and greet again.

Hey, when that phone rings, did you do the anytime presentation? Now I have AI listening to every single touch point. So sick. So I can train on every single touch point.

So, man, when that phone call comes in, did you deliver the anytime presentation? Did you start the customer's profile? When you start the customer's profile, you set up the appointment. The guy's going to be in there in 15 minutes.

Did you shoot him a virtual shop tour? When that customer hits my drive, am I doing a strong meet and greet at the car? Introducing myself, taking intake photos, state inspection, oil change mileage, state inspection, oil change. I just booked two pre-books up in my call center. that fast, mileage gets my Clarfax report ready to go.

And I walk him out and go, wow, this is your first time here. Man, let me show you around. Now I do a shop tour. I have a brochure all scripted out and I walk them through, tell them about our features and benefits, but most important, what else are we doing, Joe Adams?

We're finding out about them. Oh, it's huge. So here's a perfect example. People think that I just have to tell them about how a water pump works in order to sell the job.

No, you have to build a connection with the customer. I have to know where their kids go to school. I got to know what they do in their spare time, where they get their coffee. I got to get a coffee for them.

I got to ask them about their lives because people buy from people they like and trust and they want to do business with, not, who's got the lowest price and who they think can do a good job. It is, they want to spend money in their community. They want to take care of amazing people. They want to feel cared about.

And so we train relentlessly on how to do that. So I'll hand it back to you. Here's such a great story. And if you can't get this, guys, please just shut your business down.

I'm serious. It's really just, man, you're wasting your time. God, I love you, Todd, man. Tell them, man.

Tell them how it is. Yeah, man, it's just the way it is, man. You're not running a business, man. You're running a hobby probably got some dirt track car you're racing i don't know i'm just i'm just cracks me up man when you go wow that won't work in my market if you have clean floors and you walk your customers through this shop and she goes oh my god i have been looking for a new place to do business with aka translation i'm firing my last shop see every new customer you get just fired their last shot oh yeah so every single customer that ever walks in your door they they just fired their last shop you gotta know so i'm walking this customer through with eddie bravo shout out eddie bravo stud so here's what happens i i'm talking to the to the customer i am todd hayes how are you and she goes wow you guys are so nice i'm looking for someone to take care of my jeep it's my baby so i now know wow that she she calls her jeep her baby so do you believe i'm going to take care of her baby when i'm selling that job absolutely man this is going to take care of your jeep i know it's your baby i promise you you can trust me with your baby i'm going to go i've already ordered these parts and while your vehicle is in her i'm going to look her over and make sure it's in tip-top condition do you think that job sold well heck yeah it did guys this is not rocket science but i have an industry who says next i have an industry when the customer calls they go no, no, I can't get to you.

I'm too busy because you don't have a business model. If you come through and you learn our business model, you will go, Oh my God. Now this is every private equity company in America that has, that has come, has flown in. They go, Oh, I can't unsee this.

What have you guys done? Oh my God, I can't unsee it. And it's the truth. And you know, sometimes they're too far down the line to actually, pivot and do what we're doing.

You know, it's a tough business out there. So anyway. Well, man, Todd, I think that's the pod. That hour went by so fast.

If you're listening to this, thank you guys so much for tuning in. We are going to just lay it all out there. Master tech to millionaire. How do I get started?

How do I scale my business to two, three, four, five million dollars a year in revenue? You know, how do I go multi-unit? How do I ever, we're literally going to lay it all out there. If you haven't heard of us before, It's Adams Automotive, Houston, Boston Partners, Charlie, Bill, everybody involved.

We're doing auto shop answers once a month in Houston, Texas. It will change your life. Todd, you've changed my life five years ago. And I don't want to get too off on a tangent.

That's for another episode. But five years ago, our business was the same as every other business in America. We had a great business. My dad put us through college.

He put us through private school. But we had negative technicians. We had employees drinking beer on Friday afternoon and kickboxing in the back shop. We had employees taking their shirts off.

We had employees stealing from us. We had animals in the waiting room, police dogs barking at customers. We had every single thing that happens rampant throughout the business, and it caused a tremendous amount of stress on me and my family, and you changed our life. We have the most fun.

This is the most fun I've ever had, and I will continue to do this as long as I live, taking care of customers. Car repair is the best business on planet Earth, and I anticipate that the next five years is going to be such a wild ride. Thank you for taking us on this ride. If you're listening to this and you want a piece of this action, please come to Houston.

We are wide open. We've got shop tours every single month. You are allowed to come into my facility. But man, come down to Houston.

Todd, I think that's a pod. Great job, buddy. Great job, Joe Adams. Boom!

Let's go.