Burn the Boats: AJ Nealey’s Multi-Unit Breakthrough - Bonus Zoom Episode 6

Good morning, Glenn Piccolo here with Adams Automotive, bringing you another episode of Master Tech to Millionaire, brought to you by Autoshop Answers. Man, today we've got a very special guest on the line. We've got AJ Neely, multi-unit operator out of Maryland. He is an absolute stud. He's been coming through the program now for probably about a year or so. He's just doing amazing things out there, and we just love AJ so much. So I hope you guys enjoy this. Thank you so much for listening. Let's dive in. good morning superstars hey good morning guys good morning how we doing good morning. Man, I'm so excited.

We got AJ Neely on the line this morning. This is going to be so fun. Thank you so much, AJ, for jumping on this morning. Absolutely. Thanks for reaching out. I'm like, who's this number? Who was this last night? New phone, who it is? Yeah. Yeah. Sorry for the short notice. Man, I've just been wanting to get you on. And, you know, ever since we met you, you've been just an absolute rock star. And we're so excited to have you. Always excited when you come down to Houston, which you've been down a bunch of times. And so I was like, man, I can't wait to get AJ on.

And so the timing was great. And so thank you so much for jumping on, man. Absolutely. Yeah. So I know you've got multi-unit in Maryland.

And you're you're uh right near jj is that right yeah i'm probably 45 minutes to an hour away from him he's in waldorf so uh yeah charles county and we're most of our locations are in anne arundel county so near annapolis area but yeah about 45 minutes to an hour away got it got it now did you know did you know jj before key to key i did not no no i did not so i was uh it was funny like as Before I came down and attended my first event, I kind of watched some of the reels and videos you guys kind of had online.

I saw that he was on there. But actually, at the time, I didn't really have an idea that he was in Waldorf. But, yeah, I met him at my first training event. And, yeah, who doesn't love JJ, man? Wow, what a special, special person. So, yeah, and he, again, just like the rest of the family, right, arms wide open, you know, allowed me to come visit his shop. I brought my new manager there and just to witness it in action after that first training weekend. But yeah, man. Yeah. Great, great soul. Awesome, man. Well, man, you're lucky you get to be 45 minutes away from JJ.

We're a plane ride away. But that's really cool. So, man, so tell us a little bit about AJ and kind of how you got started and a little bit about your journey to where you are now. Yeah, absolutely. When I always talk about the origin story, I always start off with Legos. I was five years old. Legos were my thing. I felt like I had a knack working with my hands, kind of transitioned into RC cars in school, and then I got my license. And once I got my license, I was really just fascinated with vehicles.

You know, I didn't come from a family of technicians or anything of that sort, just kind of self-taught. And there was actually a vocational program that I had no idea about. And quite honestly, when I was in high school, if I had known about the automotive program, I would have just been all in on it. But I thought I wanted to be an engineer. I actually tried college for one year for mechanical engineering. But I went to University of Delaware and I was involved in their Formula SAE program. So Society of Automotive Engineers.

And I pretty much was skipping class every day to be in the machine shop, building the car. We competed out at Pontiac, Michigan, out there with that vehicle. So, you know, and what was funny is, and this is when I realized I was going to go down a different path, because prior to me going to college, I worked as a technician. I got a job right out of high school wrenching on cars in Pasadena, Maryland, called Honda Man's Auto Service. I worked there for that summer. My boss at the time was telling me like, AJ, you don't want to go to college, man.

It's going to be a waste of time. I was like, no, man, I want to try this. So I went in. Again, I did college for a year, but man, I came home because all of my friends were seniors and they graduated college and they got jobs like crazy. Designing toilets for a living, you know, behind a desk. I'm like, no, there's no way. So I, uh, I dropped out of college. I had the support of my family to do that. And, uh, I just, I just started wrenching immediately. So I, um, I worked, uh, at this shop for about 10 years.

Um, I bought a house, uh, in Edgewater, Maryland, where I still live in Edgewater, Maryland today. But, uh, the first two words in the home description was mechanics dream. So I realized, all right, I got to check this out. Had an awesome one bay garage behind the house. So I was moonlighting as a technician, and it's a very similar story that you guys kind of talk about in Key to Key. You know, all the good technicians are taking their tools home on the weekends, and they're working on cars. And that's what I was doing.

I was working during the week, and then at night, weekends, I'd work on other vehicles for some side money. And so then I had enough work to kind of quit my day job. So I did that in 2011, and that's really when I started the company technically. I got my LLC. I was working out of my house, which really wasn't technically legal, but it got me by. I did that for about three or four years before I decided to kind of take this seriously. I actually, I knew everything about working on cars. I knew nothing about running a business.

I was a master ASE certified technician, had my A1 through A8. I had my A9, my L1 advanced cert as well. And so then I... I took a business management course. And it's funny, I look back on it all. And look, honestly, I wouldn't be where I am today if it weren't for these things that I did to work on myself. And so I took a business management course. It was called the Gorilla Shop Management course from RLO Training back in the day. And that was a boot camp that I took about learning about how to run an automotive repair shop.

And so I guess you can say I was classically trained in auto repair. And, uh, so, so that was in 2015. And then there, there was a, uh, you know, to go from one bay behind your house to go to, which is our, our current flagship store where I'm at today. Uh, this is a nine bay shop.

Um, and you know, I, I, I, you know, the, the story in which we were able to acquire this, I mean, there's so much divine intervention throughout this entire journey, but to go from one bay to a nine bay facility and purchasing a location, man, just, just, you know, so many things had to go right. And like I said, divine intervention was definitely there, but we, we purchased this location in 2015. And, and again, that could be its own podcast and just how that all went. But we opened our doors in April, 2016. And that was It was our first store.

You know, we, that, that, you know, you learn, you have so many firsts along the way, right? You hire your first person, you fire your first person. You know, I had to learn to take my toolbox home. You know, I had to, I had to kind of get out of that technician mindset. I had to kind of become that service advisor. And as Todd Hayes says, right? So it's a law of the lid. I realized that I'm going to be the biggest constraint in the company and in the business. So I had to continuously work on myself to get better.

So there was a point in time, this was probably in like 2019, where I had spent two or three years building this store up. We're doing really well. Had multiple technicians. I had multiple service advisors. And I mean, it was running on its own. I was shuttling a customer home. I'll never forget it. And I realized, I just asked myself, man, is this it? I could just cruise at this point and make a pretty decent living, but I still have so much fire in the belly and I want to take us to the next level.

So I got into multi-store ownership and that started in 2021 outside of, you know, on the, you know, the aftermath of COVID, access to capital was relatively easy. It was pretty cheap to borrow money. So I was involved in a group as well, kind of like almost like a 20 group. It was kind of like a merger and acquisition group that actually a few of those friends of mine, you know, as a result of that started straight away auto.

So I know some of those, uh, those friends from, from, from that, but being in that group, you know, I, I, uh, again, we added four stores in 18 months and I'll tell you what, along that journey, I can definitely tell you what not to do. I'll say this, don't buy dumpster fires. Cause that's what we had done. Um, and so it was, uh, man, what, what, uh, what a, what a journey, uh, in doing that. And so, uh, I, you know, I was at my breaking point, man.

I can really relate to Rob Eskew's episode, you know, and he was on the brink of tears in that episode because, man, I know exactly what he's talking about. I can feel those heartstrings because, you know, we have five stores at this point. And we were just draining money. You know, my one store was really supporting my Golden Goose, Edgewater, my Edgewater location was paying for all these other locations. And so just starting to see that bank account dwindle and dwindle and dwindle and just start to just deteriorate in a road.

And, you know, there was a point and it was a little over a year ago, I didn't have enough money to make payroll, you know? And, and so, you know, you are at a breaking point at the, and I had insulated everybody from this as well. Like no one even knew this. I don't even think my wife really knew what was, what was happening as well. And, um, you know, I had heard about auto shop answers.

Um, I, uh, I talked to, I'm also part of another, uh, 20 group of, uh, tire store owners and, and, uh, someone had told me about, uh, auto shop answers and this rack attack concept. And I started watching videos online, like, man, I got to check this out. And I'll tell you what, the Lord called me to go to Texas, you know, in February of last year. And I asked my wife to like, Hey, you want to go to Texas this weekend, check out this training.

And I got to say like that, that, that, that, that weekend, you know, that four days I was there, I was there Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, did the ride along with Todd Hayes the next day. It's, you know, it's life changing. It's transformational. And it was the jumpstart. It was as Todd Hayes says, it was the violent injection of change that we needed to get us to the next level. And so I know that's a long-winded story, but man, it's just a little bit of the journey about where we've come from, where we are, where we're headed. And just so happy to be here, man. So blessed. Man, that's awesome.

You know, it's a very similar story. We hear that story all the time where, well, first of all, being able to just go out on your own, start your own shop. You had Charlie beat, you know, two bay, four lifts, man. You haven't beat with one bay, one lift. Yeah. And it's like the book, The E-Myth. If you've read that book, or I'm sure you have, or most people listening probably have, and it's the entrepreneur that just... There's just going to be that ceiling. And you said it right there.

You had to go and put your toolbox away and become a CEO of your company, which is probably very, very hard to do. So matter of fact, a lot of people just, they can't do that because they can't give up that control of just the thing that they're great at, what they specialize in, what got them where they are is the reason they started the business to begin with. But then you have to go and you have to put on a different hat if you want to go to a different level. And a lot of people, they just struggle to do that.

We talk about it all the time where technicians are leaving on Friday night and they're taking their tools with them because they're going to go do side work because they have to make ends meet. Now, these are the same technicians that will say, I don't work weekends, okay? But they're actually going to work. On the weekend. And so what happens is they end up starting to work on cars. And next thing you know, they're like, man, I can do this, except I get to take all the money and I don't have to give any money to the owner of my company.

So I could actually go and start my own business. And most people start it just like that, like a one-bay deal or just a little place that they lease out or whatever. And next thing you know, man, they're in business. They're a technician. And what ends up happening is they don't understand business. Now, you obviously went and learned business, you're, you know, obviously a extremely, extremely sharp guy. I mean, I knew that, you know, the moment I met you. And, you know, so you are definitely different, you know, than what we typically see out there. And a lot of people just, they just don't understand.

Todd talks about it all the time. If I go buy all the snap-on tools in the big box, that doesn't make me a technician. But in our industry, it's been basically, you know, just a repetitive cycle where technicians will go and start their own business, but they just don't understand business. And a lot of them, unfortunately, don't make it. And I'm so thankful that you were able to come through and go through key to key, you know, before maybe you hit that rock bottom, you know, because, man, it's a tough deal. So, and yeah, Rob's story, very similar, great story.

But man, it's great to see you guys both just absolutely thriving right now. So let me ask you this. You come through Key2Key. At this point, you have, is it five locations? Yes, five stores, yep. So you got five stores. And so you've got to go back and implement this process in five stores. How do you start with, when you have five, I can understand one store, just going leading from the front, being in the trenches. But how do you do it with five? Yeah. And man, like, uh, again, I have so many one-liners I've got from Todd. I use all the time.

So, you know, you probably heard all this before, but, uh, yeah, you can't unsee it. That was the one thing I remember, like literally I couldn't sleep over the weekend during that first training weekend. Cause he just said, you can't unsee this. And I remember just like literally saying that in my sleep, I can't unsee this. So I just like could not wait to get back to the shop.

I was uh again I had stayed through the weekend I stayed on a Monday as well I did a ride along with Joe Adams and and Todd Hayes I looked at I went and visited all their stores and then I was really excited about getting back flying home Monday night we're gonna have an all-company meeting uh on Tuesday and man I ended up getting like food poisoning man it was so bad I'll say this was a burrito joint at that Houston airport don't go there man like they're they're that was bad. So I'll just say that right there.

But anyway, so I had to, I was sick as a dog all days, Tuesday. So then I had to wait another day to like, guys, like just get them all pumped up about what we, you know, what we witnessed, uh, what we're going to be doing. Uh, and also too, you know, I, I do want to touch on this because. You know, there's a common, um, theme that, uh, we, we talk with Jim Rohn says this motivational speaker. I listened to a lot. Jim Rohn says this all the time is like, look, the math doesn't change, but the faces do.

And what that means is that, you know, there's only going to be 3% of the attendees that are really just going to take this stuff and implement it. And I have to, I have to, to touch on this because I think that there's certain people, they have to be, you know, man, like, well, then also I think of someone like Mark Pons out there, right? So Chapel Hill Tire, right? Like he's got a good thing going, right? But I like what he says. Like, man, if there's a new mousetrap out there, like I want to implement that. So that was something that Mark had said about this.

But there's also a subset, and I'll put myself into this category, where, you know. We like to say like, oh, we're going to burn the ships because this is the way that we're going to go. Well, I joke and I say, well, I didn't even have any ships to burn. Like, that's how bad it was. But, you know, you almost kind of need to be at a breaking point to go all in on implementing this. Like, you know, I think that there's different levels at which you can implement the change and it might be slow and steady, but man, there was no choice.

We had to, as Todd Hayes says, that violent injection of change. We had to go all in on this very, very quickly. And so it started with that location leaders meeting that we had, that managers meeting with everyone just to get them on board. And also, too, we knew going into this, just from what we learned in training, you're going to go through a lot of turnover. Not everyone's going to be bought into this. So we just knew that. And I got to say this, I'm just blessed to have my wife in my life because she has an executive search background. She was a recruiter.

She used to hire CEOs and CFOs and executive level individuals for C-suites. And now I got her looking for lube technicians. You know, so anyway, she had to kind of make a transition out of that to help us out in the business. But, you know, with her help, you know, she was able to identify, wow, we need to get some great people in the door. Right. Because, again, a great process is nothing. Like you said, you can have all the tools in the world, but if you don't have the people to execute, what good is it?

So as far as how we implemented it, it was just that that all group meeting. And then we did. We just we took one store. You know, we we had had a relatively new manager at that point, David Keys. He was the first one, I'm pretty sure, that's one of the first ones I took out there to training as we started rotating our employees through training in Houston. And so I immediately got him on board. And that's actually when we visited JJ Shops because I visited JJ.

And then my manager, David, and I, we went immediately like that week to Waldorf to watch it in action and just to see it and David had not been to Key2Key in Houston, but he saw and witnessed this whole thing in action. He's like, okay, we can do this. And so we would just come in, you know, 6 a.m. at the shop. We'd start rack attacking cars. We'd do the videos. We would just kind of go through that process. And David's a hammer. He'd get on the phone and we would just turn, you know, drop off oil changes into $2,000 tickets. It's like boom, boom, boom.

So we just started proving the concept that it does work. And we started gaining traction pretty quickly. So, you know, it's funny. I got some graphs of our revenue and our cash in banks figures. And so it took about six weeks before we started to really see that spike and that exponential improvement from the numbers is like, again, a byproduct of the process. And so yeah, we did. We just had to focus on one while at the same time educating everyone about the concept. And so we really just had to get that buy-in. And if people weren't on board, they had to go. We did.

We went through so much change. Actually, my wife and I were just talking about this last night. And since my wife came on board, I think that of all the employees, there's only three people that are still on that original team from before. And we're at 47 people right now. And so that just goes to show you, when you do this, it's going to be a trial. You're going to go through a lot of people. You got to level up your staff. But quite honestly, it's just the baby steps. As I say, just do the take five. Just start there. Just do the take five. Do the videos.

And then just say yes. Say yes on the phones. There's just a couple things. It can be really overwhelming when you look at the entire list, but it's just baby steps. Just a couple items on there. Just focus on that. Get relentless. Listen, as you guys say in training, I love this, right? Amateurs practice so they get it right. Pros practice so they can't get it wrong. It's just the fundamentals. You just got to go through it every day. Yeah. And with five stores, I would imagine that could be a little bit challenging, being that you can't spread yourself across five different locations, right?

Now, I know you've been to Key2Key a bunch of times and you brought your team back. How many times have you been through? I mean, do you even know? That's a good question. Yeah. I don't know how many times I've been down there. I've, I've been, I've been in pretty much all the classes. So yeah, AIX, the fraud prevention class, key to key, bunch of times, court side, you know, let's see a hiring class, you know, the recruiting class. So we've been through it all. I can't, I don't even remember. I've kind of lost count, but it seems like just about every month we're sending people down and yeah.

So that's the thing, right? Just, you're just trying to empower your crew and that's one way of doing it. Like, yeah, if I didn't send anyone down, we wouldn't be anywhere close to where we would be today. Right. So you you do. And I love the analogy, again, that you guys talk about. It's like watching a movie. Right. Watching a really good movie. You know, I've been down there so many times and I'm still taking notes, man. I'm still taking copious amount of notes. I'm picking stuff up. You guys are continuously tweaking the process.

Process so we're just we're just reaping from those uh you know the the benefits of that and so you just got to keep going down you're going to pick little things up and that's the thing like the first time you go you might come back and just implement maybe the anytime script and maybe the videos right well now we're kind of at a point where it's like you know we're really focused on actually like the callbacks right that's what we're doing right now like that's our big key thing we're making sure we're doing the the calls the uh next day so it's you know everyone's at a different stage of the process as far as that implementation but when you start it's the low hanging fruit and then you're really trying to fine-tune now you're just trying to get those you know if you're you know from racing at all you're just trying to get those last tenths last you know hundreds of a second on your lap times you're just trying to eat that out so that's kind of kind of where we're at but it just never ends man it just like as they say it's blocking and tackling it's for fundamentals it's every day you got to do this stuff.

Yeah. And you're right about the 3%, right? We can look in a room because we get to see all the faces looking back at us. And I can tell, Joe can tell, Todd, Charlie, whoever's teaching can tell who's going to do this. And I know when you came down, you were originally planning on coming down for, I think, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for the rack attack and then going through key to key. And then I think you told your wife, hey, I'm going to stay another day. I want to stay one more day because you want to do the Whistle Stop Tour with Todd and go see all the stores.

And man, that Whistle Stop Tour is like so impactful. We have so many people that come through now, it's hard for Todd to do that anymore. But I've seen just people's lives get changed before the program even starts, just doing the Whistle Stop Tour, going to the shops, just taking a tour around the shops and just seeing that, wow, there's something different out there can literally change the way that you look at this business. And I'm so glad that you got to do that. And we knew right away, you are going to take this back and you're going to do it. There's three types of people that come through training.

There's the vacationer, there's the sponge, and then there's the hostage. And the vacationer is just there, their boss sent them there. They're just going for a weekend trip and they're going to just go through the process. And then you've got the hostage. Right? Which, you know, those are typically going to be the people that don't have the buy-in from the owner, but the owner is trying to move the needle without actually going in the trenches. And so what they're going to do is they're going to send people down and they're going to say, you need to learn this concept and come back and implement it.

But then they're not bought in and they're not all in. And so then what happens is you just have people that aren't going to do it. I mean, that's just the reality of it. And then you've got the sponges, which, you know, there's just a few, a handful of them in, in those classes and we can tell exactly who they are. So you having the buy-in and you being able to say, look, I'm going all in. I believe in this. Burn the boats, like you said. And then your team is going to buy in because man, the leader is bought in and they will follow the leader.

So man, that's just so cool. Go ahead, sir. No, no, no. Go ahead. Well, I was just going to say Like, you know, really the big thing was, uh, you know, Todd and you guys and the whole crew, it gave me permission to stop tolerating mediocrity. Right. And so, you know, I felt like it's really sad, but like, I felt like we were held hostage, you know, by our employees that we couldn't let someone go because we actually needed that person, that warm body in there.

And, you know, and, and, uh, Todd Hayes in the early days of some of the training, he'd come in and he'd pretend like he had guns and start, start just capping people like, all right, you know, So I felt like I was actually coming back kind of like that, and it was. I mean, I fired a guy right on the spot from just – he gave me permission to stop tolerating mediocrity, to start acting like a professional business athlete, start acting like the head coach that I need to be, and the fact that that is what's required if you want greatness, man.

How could you ever expect to get there with a mediocre crew, right? So really like it just clicked, you know, I you always have heard that phrase. It's all about the people, but man, it finally it really was starting to ring true. It's like, man, when you get when you find those studs, when you get those amazing players on your team, man. You know, you, you don't have, you get to invest your time in people instead of expensing your time in people, right? They become fountains. They're not drains, right? You're not exhausting your energy. You're actually, you actually get, you get energy by investing in those right people.

So when you do coach those A players, these people, like you said, are the sponges that are receptive to the feedback to being great. Right.

And so, man, that is like, that is just, again it just gave me permission to stop tolerating mediocrity find the amazing players and as you guys say time and time again you know you might you're going to pay a guy a lot more right but you're just just but the roi you get from that i mean oh my gosh like that's that's how you you're going to move mountains and so i just really want to touch on that it's just giving you permission uh to stop tolerating the mediocrity that was the big big culture shift for us as well. Yeah, it's one of the hardest things to do.

We talk about it all the time is those B players. And I was reading something last night and it was like hire talent and get rid of the tenants in your business. And the people that are just living in your business versus like the talented people that will absolutely take you to the next level. And yeah, they cost more. But man, like you said, the ROI on an A player is just like 10x what you're going to get out of a B player, probably more than that. And once you learn how to hire great people, well, what happens is your team understands that you know how to hire great people.

And one of the most important things as the owner of a business or managing a business or whatever that is, is the team has to know and understand that you know how to hire and retain great people. Otherwise they will hold you hostage. And most companies out there, their people are holding them hostage. And you're just never going to get to the next level if you've got people holding you hostage. But it's hard, you know, it's hard. It's hard to have a B player that you like because B players are, you know, they're good, right? Everybody likes them. They show up on time. They're reliable. They're the most dependable people.

They get along with everybody, but they're not the people that are going to absolutely move that needle. And it's really hard to do, but there's, like Todd says, There's only so many seats on the bus and, you know, you're responsible for all the other people on that bus. So, so yeah, that's a really, really good takeaway from that. Now, you've said you went through the accounting. I know you went through all the deals, but accounting, the fraud and prevention, what takeaways do you have from that? Because I think that is probably probably one of the most underrated. Uh, classes that we do have.

Uh, and I think it's because a lot of people might be a little bit intimidated by that class. Um, but it's, it's one of the most impactful classes to not, uh, you know, to, to not leak, you know, from the, from the, from the bottom. So can you tell me, uh, some takeaways or maybe some of you even discovered in your own business? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's funny. So my first ever training weekend, again, it was February of last year, 2025. And, uh, so, uh, went all in on that weekend, right?

So Friday, I took that Friday class, they had a half day, uh, it was a fraud prevention class. And so, uh, and Todd was in that, in that room talking about it. And, uh, you know, uh, oh my gosh, like, oh, I'm so glad tech metric has fixed this, but the save for later, um, people are stealing from you. And it was so relevant to me because we had just fired somebody for stealing from the company. And so the huge takeaway is that you are going to learn processes and controls and making sure that, as Todd Hayes says, we know how to count our money really well.

And so when you do that, when you put up those systems, put up those controls, and you learn the best practices of that, it creates that deterrent from... To prevent others from stealing from you, right? And as they also talk about the 10-80-10 rule, right? 10% will always steal from you. 10% will never steal from you. But 80%, if the conditions are just right, they're going to steal from you. Whether it's a paperclip or embezzling tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars, right? They're going to steal from you, right? So you got to make sure that you're creating the environment to where they can't steal from you.

And man, we were just so blessed in implementing this concept. That we were having an immediate impact on our numbers. And then we got to a point last year, we were able to actually hire a controller. And so we brought Pete, our controller, out. That was a few months ago, actually. The last, I think that was also just this past February, he had another accounting class, which was an all-day. And that was with Matt Keyes. That was your CFO from HPP that put that on. Man, and Nick Paparikos, the CPA, We've got him, you know, on board with us as well.

And shout out to him because, man, you know, when you've got when you're surrounding yourself with great people, man, it is. It's like that. It's like that board of directors and those advisors that you've got around you and making sure that you're making the right decisions. But, yeah, as far as that accounting and fraud prevention class, man, there's just you learn so much, like I said, about best practices. But also, too, you can uncover and identify who's stealing from you. Right. And so, man, it's definitely a little bit sad to uncover the money that's been lost as a result of that.

But man, it's just, hey, let's tighten this stuff up. And it adds money straight to the bottom line as a result. Yeah, when you start doing big numbers, you know, they say sales fixes everything. And big numbers are great. You're doing big numbers. You're making big profit. But you definitely become way more exposed, especially having multi-unit. And you have to have these things in place to be able to identify how people can steal from you.

And it's almost like those, you know, like those FBI people that, you know, when they hire like criminals to come into the organization to like to go and like figure out how people are doing stuff. Like you've seen that before, like somebody that's really good at these, you know, these people that know exactly how to do it and they bring them in. And well, you know, unfortunately and fortunately over the course of, you know, my 20, I guess going on 28 years of doing this, I've seen so much.

So I, you know, like start to think the way that these people think because I have to be able to think like that to protect the business. Right. Like I've seen the craziest things in the world. I've seen I had a guy that would come in and he would now this might seem crazy, but what an easy way for someone to steal. He would come in and he would go to the computer and he would go and change the time on the computer. Now, how crazy is this? He'd go, he'd change the time on the computer.

Now, like in our company, you can't change the time on the computer, but most companies out there and probably people listening to this right now, you could probably click on the bottom right on your computer and you could change the time on your computer. And then he would clock in and then he would go and he would change the time back. Well, this guy, he's running all these hours. He's a clock hour guy at the time. And, uh.

It's like wow he's always here early this is man what a what a what a stud and multi-unit you know you're not in all these stores and so like you don't necessarily know when you know all everybody's comings and goings and whatnot and so when this guy's always on time and then one day on camera uh it's like he showed up late like he was there late and uh it's like wow it's time clock showed he got here like 20 minutes early well come to find out this guy was changing the time on the computer and he was clocking in and he was doing the same thing when you clock out.

And that was the way he was stealing, uh, you know, through his time clock. I've seen people take credit cards from extended warranty companies and run a refund on their own credit card. Okay. Or from a customer for that matter. So somebody, if they have access to be able to refund a customer, they could actually go in and they could refund their own credit card by taking a credit card from somebody else. I've seen, we've seen multiple, we've seen credit card, somebody had their own credit card machine processing, you know, like coin to sale machine. We have seen everything. And so no matter how tight you are.

People can still steal from you. We've had people steal from us and we're very, very tight on it. And so if somebody's out there and they think, well, nobody's stealing from me, I can tell you, you are wrong. People are stealing from you. At what level, I don't know. We've uncovered anything from, like you said, little small things to hundreds of thousands of dollars to where people end up in prison for it. And so the more you do in revenue and the bigger you grow, the more exposed you become because you have more people and it's just a math equation.

So if it's 10, 80, 10, and you have 10 people, well, your exposure is a lot less than if you have 100 people because now how many people did that just open up the opportunity to steal from? It's way more people. And so just like recruiting, your people have to know that you know how to hire great people and can't hold you hostage, your people also have to know that you know how to. Investigate and go through the ins and the outs of your business to make sure that people are not stealing from you. And so that's a very, very powerful class to go through.

And I encourage everybody to sign up for that because, man, you will make your money back that day for sure. Probably way more than you would even think. Just like all these classes, they're an investment. And, you know, people, I can't tell you how many people say, I've already made my money back and we barely even started the program if we've even started it. So, yeah. So, awesome, man.

So, you know, during this whole change, resistance to the change, you know like did you have i know you didn't end up with a lot of uh the same people uh you've obviously turned over a lot of people like what what type of resistance did you get at the beginning when trying to change yeah you know what you know when it comes to change i heard someone say this once and it's really true it's it's people don't fear change they they fear the unknown and so uh and and really. You know, I think, unfortunately, there's a lot of people in this industry that are kind of stuck in their ways.

And so, you know, and as you said, right, like you're really trying to find the sponges, right? You're really trying to find the people that are going to buy in and get on the bus.

And so there will always be individuals that just have a hardened heart, you know, just uh aren't aren't receptive to a new way of doing things because um uh for or for whatever reason but you know look if you want to play for my team this is the way right like this is the playbook right and i just we we use the heck out of sports analogies now right so you know uh and so like belichick has the plays right you're gonna run these right um and so but to make my team you have to have these skill sets, right?

And these, this, this is, this is what it looks like. This is what a win looks like when you execute these plays, right? And so it's just at the end of the day, like you said, you know, we've kind of alluded to earlier when you're in a position where you know how to hire good talent you're no longer are our employees kind of holding you hostage, right? Now, again, I use a lot of one-liners from training that you guys use, but like When LeBron James comes on the market, you hire that guy, right?

And so we have to look at someone internally and their skill set as far as what their output is and what they're doing. And then we also have to look at what's out there on the market, right? Is it worth investing into this person my time and energy to try to build them up and get their skill set up to where they need to be? Or is it easier just to find someone outside of the organization, hire them, bring them on the team and start running up the score. And so we have to look at that all the time. And so if someone, you know.

Just is not is not able to execute the the fundamentals to this concept that then they can't play for my team right like you imagine if somebody was playing for the patriots and they're like no no i'm gonna run my own place you know i'm gonna do my own thing it it's not gonna work you're not gonna put numbers on the board i guarantee that so yeah so as a result you got to be all in and and we've had people that were probably like 85% in, 90% in, that's not good enough.

You can't say, oh, I'll do X, Y, Z, and this, this, this, and this, but you know what? I'm not going to go to third base with that customer. Well, that's a problem. This is the concept. You have to, it's, we are inflexible as far as the execution of these fundamentals. They must be done or else you don't put numbers on the board. You don't get to where you're trying to go. So we've run into that. And so as we're, and that's the thing that I would say is our biggest constraint right now. It is, it's just talent. It's, it's just continuously trying to find great people.

And so we've just continued to kind of level up our staff. And so, and we're still continuously trying to either develop the people that we have, or we've just got to level up, you know, those individuals. And so we're always like AVR, man, always be recruiting, you know, and, and again, also to just a shout out to Brian Rhodes.

If you haven't, you know, I know he's doing webinars now, hiring webinars, man, you're going to learn so much about how to find that great talent, you know, where they where they eat, sleep, where, you know, where they where they live, you know, where they're working, because they're not they're not on Indeed. They're not perusing the job postings. They're not doing any of that. So you got to go out. You got to, one, you got to be the company that's going to attract them. So that's really step one.

You got to really kind of internally rebuild the culture and work towards, again, just setting that message that you're going to bring them in. So yeah, so anyway, that's what's required. You got to build that culture that's going to attract the A talent. And once you get them on the team, they're going to... You know, you're, you're going to, you're, you're going to start to attract more of that talent. You're going to start running those numbers up, but man, that's just required. That's just, again, you can't, you can't cherry pick the process or the, or run your own plays.

And so, yeah, we went through a lot of turnover and, and that's just it. We're, like I said, we're, when, before we started the training, I think we had like 27, 28 employees, same five locations today, I think we're at 47 and we still have so many slots to fill. Right. And so, And especially if we want to get to weekends, because that's part of our long term growth strategy, you know, that we added 50 percent more employees, same five stores, you know, same five working days right now. But again, our plan is to build up the team, get to six days a week, get to seven days a week.

So all that's kind of needs to be in place to get where we want to go. Yeah, great points on all that. You know, I tell people all the time, especially multi-unit, when we go through the class and I ask, hey, how many people are multi-unit, whether it's five, eight, 10, 12, whatever the store count is, and I always ask the question. Well, I don't really ask the question. I just kind of tell them what I know. And I say, hey, so let me guess. You have two stores that are really good. You have two stores that are really bad. And the good stores pay for the bad stores.

And everybody starts laughing, right? They're like, oh my gosh, how does he know that? Well, I just know it because one, I've been there, done that, and it's just so predictable. But the one thing I would say to anybody multi-unit out there is, if you have a store that's struggling, we always ask the question, well, what if we took all the best people that you have in your entire company and you put them in that store? How would that store do? And they go, oh my gosh, we would crush it, right? These are stores that people say, I'm thinking about shutting this store down.

We're going to close the store down. And then we ask that question. Like, what if you had the best people in that store? And they go, oh my gosh, I would absolutely, we would crush it. Well, see, that's the answer. You just got to find the best people. And when you do that, then you're not going to be talking about closing stores down. But it gets harder as you get multi-unit, right? Because you can't spread yourself, you know, the way you once could. So don't ever think that because you have a struggling store, it's the store. I mean, in most cases, it's not. It's going to be the people.

It's always the biggest bottleneck. No matter what AI we have, No matter what technology, no matter what demographic you're in, it doesn't matter. It's always going to be the people. The people will always be the bottleneck. So, well, we just, we're about up on time, but let me ask you this real quick. We got a couple minutes, but somebody that's listening that hasn't been before, that's never heard of us or maybe has heard of us, what could you tell somebody listening right now? Oh, man. Yeah, it's man, it will change your life. But, you know, you I got to say this. Don't come if you have a hardened heart.

Don't come if you're not that sponge, because at the end of the day, you can come in and listen and learn and soak up all this information. But if you don't put it into action, it it it it's a waste of your time. Right. And so it requires that mindset. Um, uh, and you, you do, you just, it is, I guess Todd Hayes says it's the law of the lid, you know, and you have got to be that person that sets the tone, that sets the culture, that sets the expectation, that raises the bar.

And so, you know, look in the mirror that that's the biggest thing at the end of the day, look in the mirror. So man, I I've just having come to auto shop answers, hanging out with people like yourself, like Glenn, Joe Adams, you know, Charlie Zalakos. You know, Todd Hayes, you know, I mean, like the list goes on and on.

When you start hanging out with people like that and you start understanding, you know, the vocabulary that they use, the podcast that they listen to, the books that they read, you know, the physical workouts that they, like, you know, I look at that, like, I got to become that person, right? I got to be the best version of myself if I'm going to be putting this and implementing this into action across the entire organization. So I can't be the person, I can't be the absentee owner, I can't be in the ivory tower, you know, none of that's going to happen.

You know, you're not going to get that violent injection of change if you can't be in the trenches with the wrenches. So man, where are you going to find me? Bay one, rack attacking cars on the front lines, man, just in this concept gave me permission to get back into the shop. And that's why that's where I love being. I've been using a phrase lately. I'm kind of like the Gordon Ramsey of auto repair, but without all the obscenities. Right. And so we're, you know, Gordon Ramsey's in it. Right. He's in the kitchen. He's on the front lines. He's with the customers. He's there. He witnesses it.

And he gives that feedback instantaneously as he sees it. So, man, come out here. But then at the end of the day, got to look in the mirror. Can you become that person? Because that's what your business needs. That's what it requires. And the violent injection that your company needs, it's got to come from you. So look in the mirror. If you are that person, get your butt down to Houston and it will change your life. Awesome, man. Well, this was awesome. Thank you so much for getting on this morning. This was a blast. Always enjoy seeing you. Love talking with you. This was great, man.

And thank you so much, AJ. Keep crushing it. And I hope to see you here in Houston soon. Absolutely. Thanks, Glenn. Love you guys. Thank you so much. For more information, reach out to Todd Westerlin at 925-980-8012 or visit AutoshopAnswers.com. Get more information about Key to Key to Callbacks, Courtside, VIP Racketag Day, where you spend a full day in the trenches with our teams. We have leadership classes, an AI academy, accounting first, fraud and prevention, as well as auto tech training. We are literally your one-stop shop. Please don't hesitate. Reach out to Todd Westerland, 925-980-8012.