Why Most Shop Owners Never Become Millionaires

Hey, Glenn Piccolo here with Adams Automotive and Autoshop Answers, sitting here with the GOAT, Todd Hayes. Hey, what's up, Glenn Piccolo? What's going on, man? We're about to, man, just have an amazing fireside chat, as you call it. Yeah, fireside chat. Debriefing a major, major weekend a couple weeks ago. Yep. Yeah, we had courtside, which was fire. I got to go train at courtside, which I've been waiting to do. I can't wait to hear about that. I've been wanting to go, but you kind of have me scheduled already on that day, so I don't get to make it. Yeah, you're kind of keeping me kind of busy.

But since you guys were in Vegas, I got to go and do Quartzside with... Yeah, so we'll be able to also debrief the Vegas key to key. So, yeah, I try to keep you busy. Yeah, I'd say so. You're a rock star. Oh, by the way, who's this brought to you by? Oh, Autoshop Answers. Boom, let's go. Yeah, what an amazing company. him. Glenn, you know, before we even get into the debriefing, you know, Glenn and I go back many, many years.

I was talking to the team about this at Key to Key in Vegas, you know, how, you know, I do have a great sense of finding great people, you know, identifying great people. And so I was telling him, no, like really, you know, I can't remember this, but I, but Glenn tells me I specifically trained him on PMI and cars when he was 18 years old. I remember that day. And I'm like, wow. You know, obviously, you know, through the years, I've trained so many people. But because of people that you and I know, I was able to keep my eye on your career. Yeah.

And this is the fun thing about scaling a company, is I watched Glenn's career as it blossomed through the years, and I said, man, that guy's going to be part of my team. He's going to be part of my team. He's going to be part of my team. And we stayed in touch, you know, really until finally, you know, we're a, business, God opened the door. And that was actually on a private equity deal at a company you were working for. Glenn was overseeing a pretty big operation. And Sun Auto came in, did a private equity deal with Loretta.

And obviously, I knew Shane and the rest of the team there. And so I mean the day. I mean the day. It was the day. No, it was the day. No kidding.

This was the absolute day that um i heard about that deal um i was making the phone call yeah i remember the day i remember exactly where i was you know how there's there's those moments in your life i do too you remember i i was you know i was in patty's uh like no i was actually um living with perry and patty you know when i would come out here um and we started scaling adams i would stay at Perry and Patty's home when I was in Houston and Boston, you know, I would stay with, um, with Bill or Charlie and, um, and, and kind of, you know, it was like a kind of a vagabond as we're still in this thing, but we're all like family.

I was in the camo room. Oh yeah. Camo room at Perry and Patty's sitting on the side of the bed, talking on the phone. Yeah. Yeah. Right then. I remember it so well and I knew. Obviously we pray for everything and I knew and you turned me down because of your loyalty to even the company which you just have to say wow look at this loyalty. But again it went in a different direction for your career and I love the story that you tell about.

Um you know the day that you found out the company was being sold sure it was kind of devastating to you and i said and i told you now i said well you looked at it at that moment it was one of the worst days of your life because this man is scary yeah you know man what what about me and um but god had a plan that it was truly the best day of your life would you agree i agree let's go yeah i thought you know for years i was teaching your concept matter of fact i gave you credit right um because you know when you had sold your first company um you know when i started at that company as joe adams said back when i was young yeah back uh in 98 is when i started and you had sold the company but i knew you because everybody obviously knew you sold the company and so uh they had presented it to me as todd hayes's concept right and so i'm like man i know todd's concept and And so then as I transitioned in my career, everybody's taken bits and pieces of your concept and tried to teach it.

And I thought I was actually teaching it. Like I've been teaching phone skills, right? Like for years and years and years, but I didn't understand the full concept. And you told me I'm going to teach you the real concept. Have I done that? And you have done that. Matter of fact, in the first six months, I learned more. About not only running a shop, but business and just people's a big thing. Then I, then I learned in my first 20 years. So I think, but, but, you know, Hey, it also comes down to you, you know?

Um, and as you started really embracing the full breadth of the con of the concept, you know, you just, you know, we're just amazing. Um, and what you've done with Adams is simply amazing. You know, I mean, I think you came on board maybe three months, two to three months after we just started scaling the company. And man, right away between you and Jose Garcia, give it up. We're big clappers, man. Right away, Jose Garcia was your, you two were, you know, just in alignment. And, you know, really starting those take fives that we do every day that I've done for years. And I'm really mastering the concept.

And then, man, to watch you guys scale this thing, I always loved it. I told this story at Courtside when we rocked it. You know, we doubled the revenue pretty quick, over doubled to $500,000. And, you know, I just, I was like so proud of you guys. because we did it so quick. I think it was like so fast. So fast. So fast. I think we did it in about four months. And people don't understand, I was in the trenches with the wrenches every day. I mean, I was sweating bullets. We were PMIing cars.

We didn't have all the speed racks, and all the things that we've developed um now but um but wow there's so many stories even on how everything develops man we were taking pictures we were doing moto visuals pretty straight on what you actually brought to our company from louetta yep you know and and that's another story we could even talk about because it's so good oh my gosh you know and um and and And then we hit 500 and I go, all right, man, next stop, 750. And Glenn's like... Wait a minute, what happened to 600? How about 550? 525. Something. 550. Something, man. Yeah, 750. So I'm like, wow.

Wow, let's go. 750. Yeah, hey, what was next up? After that? We climbed right up to 750. And wow, man, what a rock star team. And that's when I was really like, man, we have such a stable of superstars. You know, I mean, and really and truly, you know, I did. I said, wow, man, next stop, $1 million after we hit $750. And Glenn was like, hey, man, what do you mean? You're doing it again. What do you mean? You're doing it again. And I said, well, yeah, it's my personal goal. Why don't we settle on a goal? What was it? 800. 800, yeah. It's still about 800, isn't it?

It's 800. That's the goal. Yeah, I've never changed it. The goal is $800 because a million a month is not sustainable. But, man, you rock star, what was your all-time record out of this store in a month? 1.2. But you carry a day and you carry 200. We carry 200. Joe will say 1.2, 253. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, man. Don't forget that 253. That's right. Where's he at when you need him? Yeah, but the most impressive thing was we delivered $1.2 million a month and carried $200,000. You know, so that's really, we sold $1.4 million that month. Which is amazing.

I mean, wow, again, that deserves, you know, I was on Bradley's podcast, so he'd be dropping a bomb. I can't take it, but boom, that's a major boom from the boom-boom room. But, you know, that's not sustainable. I never looked at that as being a sustainable number. You know, in our budget, our budget and everything we do revolves around $800,000. But, boy, a couple months ago, you banged down another million dollar a month. Yep. Well, that year, I think you did, averaged about a million a month. Yeah, we did 12 million. Yeah, 12 million. I didn't hear that. Does key to key work? Absolutely.

Key to key to call back work? 100%. Do you know the concept? I know it like the back of my hand. Yes, you do. Have you mastered it? I have mastered it. Do you sleep good at night knowing you've mastered it? Absolutely. It's completely changed my life and so many other people's lives. Well, you have changed so many lives now. So, again, if you've come to Key2Key, and Glenn is obviously, you know, he is just a partner in not only Adams. He's a partner in Houston-Boston Partnership, which is now we're changing the name. Boom. Hey, on the podcast, you're hearing it. Houston-Boston Partnership Auto Hospitality Group.

We're all about auto hospitality, but Glenn's a partner also in Auto Shop Answers, is just a phenomenal trainer. As we scale the company, Glenn will be just in charge of training and doing all this training for us. He is spectacular.

Store operations he's one of the best on the planet there's no doubt about it but on training, absolutely a superstar so uh man not only have you mastered it but now you train thousands of people across the country and um and i was able you know one time you know i was doing all the key to key yep and then um and then i had some help you know and now i don't get to do it anymore You know, yay! No, but no, I love doing it. And I can remember, you know, it's so funny.

I think back on when you guys were, you know, as I was pushing you guys out front and you guys were just do such a great job. But you know, I would think, did they do that? And I would interrupt. And then finally I did, they said, yes, Todd, we did it. And so I go, okay, bye-bye, I'm giving you. We got it. We got it, we got it. And so I've never been more proud of it. But man, you know, we had.

Spectacular freaking weekend was it last weekend my weeks go by so quick yeah last weekend man it was incredible i got to go to courtside uh you guys were in vegas um and i'm glad because this is kind of like my first debrief of that really i didn't hear too much about it we've been just so busy we had a hundred thousand dollar weekend we were over at courtside by the way what is your record weekend at adams automotive um 10 10 uh 108 000 boom is that crazy saturday that's a heck of a month you had last weekend yeah exactly the last weekend you did right over a hundred thousand again um again that's amazing you know p and our business you know auto hospitality were open seven days a week it's spectacular you know maybe it's not for you but man let me tell you our customers There's dual income with kids, dual income without kids.

They're off on the weekend and they have spoken. I mean, we understand weekends are mission critical. Absolutely. But they sold $100,000. Joe Adams tried to actually give me another dollar. I said, no, it was just $1 back the first time. We've done it. That's three. We've done it three times. Three times. It's amazing. Which is crazy. And it's not only have you broken a hundred three times. It's a spectacular result of 52 weeks of weekends again when we started scaling Adams it was not open on Saturday or Sunday and that was also another funny story.

Yeah, hey, Glenn, we're going to open on Saturdays, and man, if we do this number, you know, I said, you know, you won't have to work weekends or something. I can't remember. It was 500. It's like, look, I'm opening weekends. I'm a retailer. I'm opening Saturdays. I'm opening Sunday. You were planting seeds. But I was going to open Sunday. Sprinkling seed is what you used to call it. Spreading that seed. Spreading that seed. And so you're like, look, do 500, and you guys don't have to work weekends. Me and Jose were Monday through Friday because our industry teaches you kind of like that's what you're trying to like accomplish.

You're trying to get to that ivory tower. You're trying to get to weekends off like it's a different mentality. And so you guys are not our mentality, but the industry. Right. You know, go to multi-unit and grow store count. And it's just it's a crazy deal. And so you're like, hey, look. Go do 500 and we'll build a team for the weekend. Perfect. So we do that. And then we launch Saturdays, you, me, Jose.

And we were crushing it no man i'm telling you see and people don't understand this were we in the trenches oh man we pmi'd every car see if saturdays and sundays will work if you launch them correctly yes you think you're gonna put a team in and say i need you to open up your store on saturday it's not gonna work it's a punishment to the punishment it's a punishment most of these shops that are out there they're they're they're on sunday because they feel that they're being punished that's why you drive by a shop and on a sunday you'll see a couple gs's sitting on uh you know sitting on tires you know smoking cigarettes out in the parking lot we see that all the time they're saying no on the phone and they're saying no on the phone and so we look at it like man it's just a it's just another day today and when we launched when we rolled we were here sure we were months well i ended up being here no you started my deal again my deal was Work Monday through Friday We'll build a team for the weekend And I remember The first Like A couple months I.

Uh we were hey we're a shop hey we're in a shop here let's go we're shooting a podcast live hey straight from the trenches came upstairs do a podcast there's a podcast from a podcast center i'll be right back down something with no noise we're not the podcast to watch yes. Yeah so um because the sound of that riches money is paying for this podcast pays for everything That's right. And so you said, yeah, exactly. So you said, hey, you can have the weekends off, whatever. We'll build a team. And then we launched it. And then it became a normal day. Like it was just a normal day.

And then next thing you know, I wake up years later. I worked every weekend. And I love working weekends, by the way. We have no competition on the weekends. Everybody's saying no. Even shops that are open are saying no. Matter of fact, they're saying no during the week. Uh-oh. I mean, all week long. And so I love weekends. And it's just a normal day. And so I tell people all the time, how would you limit your success in your career to a day on the calendar? And people just look at it like, well, I need weekends off. Well, it's just a different mindset. You really don't.

They do not understand work-life integration. And most people don't understand generational wealth, scaling companies, retail, you know, outrageous customer service, customer pays for everything. You know, they're in it for them, period. Right. And yet if they change their mindset, wow, what a difference that makes. Yeah. I mean, you know, and there's I tell people when I'm traveling around the country speaking that there's a population of people who need to work on Sundays, Saturdays and Sundays. A hundred percent. A population. All you do is advertise for them. There are people in our space that need it. And we talk about all the time about their shops out there.

They're open four days a week. That's just ignorant. I mean, I'm sorry. I mean, I hope I don't fit in anyone, but I really don't care. That's that's not a business. That's a hobby. I mean, your technicians can't make enough money. Again, we have technicians pushing $300,000 over that this year. And they only work five-day work weeks. We have different shifts that we pull. But, man, oh, man, the guys that are open, and there's even some jobs open three days. That's not even a business. That's not even a hobby. I heard of one two days a week recently on a podcast. Two days a week. That's good.

Just open up. then you're running out of your home garage, because they have side work. They have to get paid somewhere. And so, you know, I always tell people, shame on my industry, that they don't allow technicians to be available seven days a week or whenever they want to work because they go home with tools in their car doing side work. And my industry, yeah, they'll deny it and say, no, they don't. Well, hell yes, they do. Come on. Get real, guys. Instead of allowing them to come to a beautiful facility and if they want to work over, if they want to work on a Saturday, they can.

If they want to work on a Sunday, they can. And, man, they can grind out, I mean, really and truly flag big hours, huge hours. Yeah, and I think, you know, like, how many people have we seen change that said they would never open on the weekends? We were interviewing Amy, and she was like, she was against Sundays. Saturdays, yes, but she was against Sundays. And then she had a situation where she broke down on a road trip on a Sunday and they were trying to find a shop and it changed her mindset. But everybody that comes through, I mean, we've had so many people convert to that.

And this isn't about changing your business to open in seven days a week. But when you come through the programs, it's life changing and it's just a whole different deal. You have that option. You do have that option. Sure. So I wanted to get more into Vegas. Tell me about Vegas and I'll tell you about course. I want to hear about the deal. Well, you know, obviously, you know, we miss Glenn because it's normally the Glenn and Joe show. Yeah. But, you know, we had Joe and Charlie's Alakos. Ah, shout out to those guys.

Studs um and so it was um it was an amazing show we were at light speed um vt studio brad lee's offices so we videoed it for video training um we have a full video training library now as we go forward with private equity it's it's smoking good yep um but you know it was great you know obviously um about the only drawback was if you look us up on social media and you see some of our reels they have very fancy chairs there they were almost recliners and you know it's like wake up boy yeah you know because you could get it's almost like in a bar you know berkeliner you know.

But um it was great you know we're in vegas we had a great west coast crowd um come come through We had some guys who were from the West Coast that had been through your training before. And, you know, obviously, The more you come through, the better you are. Period. That's it. For sure. And so it was a wonderful training program. We had a great time. It was, again, spectacular. Brad came out and spoke for 30 minutes to an hour. And then we went upstairs and crushed out a Dropping Bombs podcast, which was a lot of fun. I mean, Brad's a stud, obviously. Yeah, for sure.

And so, yeah, it was great. I mean, again, the thing about it now, do you recall when we first started, you know, really offering key to key out in the public? You know, people come in all defensive. Yeah. Yeah, we're not getting that anymore. Have you noticed that? I have noticed that. Yeah, I mean, we're not getting that anymore. I mean, I guess right now, Charlie Zalakos and Mikey Quinn are sitting in Canada doing a major training program for Midas, doing a two-day key-to-key for Midas. We do a lot of private training out there.

And here's what's really great is, you know, when they see that these larger companies are embracing auto hospitality, embracing it. Well they're not shooting holes in it they're embracing it yeah um because man you know we do have an industry that's frozen in time it really is and um if it comes to your operational model and the image of your store you know so in in just everything we teach in key to key and then throwing the ai you know ai is not going to take anyone's job here but someone who knows ai is going to take your job.

If you do not know AI, I want you to understand you will lose your job. Period.

You understand oh yeah and we're ai infected in our business you know and that goes back from our original polaroid camera it's always fun to go to key to key because you see the progression from a polaroid camera radio shack recorder to um this this file folder this organizer you know that we would um put index cards in for callbacks to now see you know digital technology push a button moto visuals chat gdp off to the customer customer watches it calls them up you guys close the deal um man it's spectacular it's spectacular but um and then um and so we've gone from a polaroid camera there's great digital technology to animations explaining you know to the customer exactly what they need clearly showing them what's on their vehicle um and then, And then from there, you know, real AI and listening to phone calls, which you are a master at it.

You know, you are a master at training on phone skills, which is mission. How important are phone skills? It's the most important thing. It is the most important. Communication skills and how you answer the phone. You know, I can remember my father-in-law was training me on phone skills. They mentored me on it. I mean, you answer that phone with a smile, and yes, you can answer what's your question. You know, I'm period. You have to say yes to your customer.

And as I started recording calls, and it's probably still, you know, whether I'm in Vegas, whether I'm training somewhere else around the country, it blows me away that in 1986, I started recording phone calls. And you know, it's my favorite exercise. Is it key to key? Yeah, and it's the same. It's your favorite exercise. How predictable is it? Yes. It's as predictable as the day is long. Well, absolutely. Make phone calls to service centers. Competitive service centers with someone in the room, and he will predict exactly what they're going to say. So he can predict exactly how not to answer the phone and how to say no. Isn't that amazing?

We know exactly. I'm going to tell you something crazy, And this happened this last court site. So we talk about this all the time. What is your ticket average? Our ticket average is $1,000, right? That's with every single car that comes through our shop. So every phone call is worth $1,000. That means that phone rings, it's worth $1,000. So in training, I'll say, look, this is what I'm going to do. And you can do this too. I'm going to call the shop. I'm going to tell them to check engine lights on. And they're going to tell me it could be spark plugs. It could be coils.

Half the time they tell me you might need an engine. It could be something internal.

Customer has no idea what's going on so we hang up the phone and it's predictable and everybody you know goes oh my gosh that's so they also tell you they can't get to it oh yeah they say no of course they say no can't get to you it's going to be next week my tech engine lights flashing well i'm so sorry we can't get to you until next week we're booked right and then they pump their chest that they're booked up so we know it's a thousand dollars so we so we translate in our mind phone rings thank you for calling adams automotive this is glenn how can i help you hey glenn i've got a thousand dollars uh burning a hole in my pocket and i'm trying to figure out what's the fastest way I can get it to you if you deliver me amazing service?

And I'm like, can I come get it right now? Okay, that's how we translate it in our mind. So we took it a step further this last time. Call up the shop. We did it in the group exercise. The guy says. Hey, I'm in town right now. I'm having a grinding noise on my car and I've got a thousand dollar budget. Can you get me in today? And you know what they tell him? No, I can't get you. So we literally did it traveling through town. I think traveling through town. We literally said we have a thousand dollars. We just actually did that. Right.

I have a thousand dollars burning a hole in my pocket. Can you do it? And they said, no, can't get to you. I'm just like, oh my gosh, That's crazy. It's wild. My business, our industry is absolutely insane. I mean, they're frozen in time. They say no all the time. They actually think they're busy. See, think about it. You know, when you're doing, you know, you might think you're busy at 100K or 150K. Are they busy? Well, you know, I think, this is what I think. I think a lot of people are being trained out there. I know this. Wrong. By people that, wrong, for sure.

But I think the people trading don't even know it's wrong. They don't. They believe they're giving the good stuff. They believe they're teaching the right way. How do I move the needle just a little bit? How do I move this number just a little bit? But they don't understand that all that time they're spending trying to move that needle a little bit this way, they're missing out on the big picture, which is saying yes to your customer, serve your customer, hire spectacular people, hire the best technicians that you can get, be attractive so that those people will actually come to you. People miss the boat on that.

And then there's bad leadership out there and people don't want to work for bad leaders and we know that and that's what i love about dirty shops and bad leaders yeah courtside you know i want to talk a little bit about that so courtside is amazing because they've already been through key to key a couple of times this is the this is the cool part key to key we i mean most of the time we have. You know, 60%, 70% new faces in there. And then we have our repeat people that continue to come back, and that's obviously growing. But courtside is, man, everybody is like players committed.

They've already come through. You've got to come through a couple times before, but you come to courtside. When you go to courtside, man, you're in it to win it. You are engaged. You are working the concept. Yeah, we are working. And you're doing the reps. We're sitting at a table. I'm like, we have these breakout groups, and I'm like, the horsepower at this table.

The horsepower at this table it's insane we're sitting there and it's it's me and it's bill Lewandowski which we just did a podcast oh yeah absolute stud lock down bill baby shout out lockdown loop we got donovan we got william lovano and we're literally sitting there on a call training how about shout out to rob rescue boom let's go major stud and it's like the the the horsepower of doing a breakout group of recruiting like what that just sparked right there like just to see people's complete you know transformation in their mind of wow i get it now like waiting for someone to fall in your lap ain't happening it's not happening but if i get on the phone and i'm actually active and i am like just having the effort to try and reach people and then I can send them out, whether it be recruiting video, shop tour, podcast.

I sent one out yesterday. It's like, listen to one. Listen to one that's going to change your life. We had a guy in Key2Key a couple weeks ago. He's like, I stumbled upon a podcast, and I listened to everyone multiple times, and then I booked a flight, and I came here, and this changed my life. Yep, sure it will. That fast. It changed your life, yeah. Industry has it completely backwards. 100%. This is wrong. Yeah. I love it when I'm at Key2Key, even in Vegas, I ask the question, how many people in here do break jobs? Well, everybody does a great job.

And I say, so that's not a competitive advantage at all, is it? No, everybody does a great job. So customer service has to be the competitive advantage. Outrageous customer service, auto hospitality, speed of service. I also sit there and go, my industry doesn't get it. It's not about getting a car fixed today, it's about.

Easing their mind figuring out what is wrong with the car and giving them transportation to take care of their life and man you're in great shape then you got it period it's that simple you know it's like nascar you know i love nascar a lot of our our um our speed of service is around a pit crew um um the speed rack is all about a pit crew and um and nascar used to have a say saying when on sunday sell on monday well i'm inspect on sunday fix on monday it's not very hard but yeah man we're gonna get the parts at how are you gonna get the parts for that car how are you gonna do this i'm like oh my god man did you see my picture i just told oh my god on monday yeah so Well, I sent a picture out, and it's my part shelf on Monday, the intake of parts.

And it is, we did $100,000 weekend. Right. And the part shelf is just. Were your technicians happy when they showed up on Monday? Oh, absolutely. They understand. So you mean you would actually like to feed them a massive hour? Oh, just feed them gravy. Here you go, here you go, here you go. Because people think you need to have technicians. Look, you don't even have to have technicians on Sunday to sell work. We sold, I think our record here is 88 hours we sold on a Sunday with no technician.

Uh no technician available there's technicians here they're doing some work or whatever but like on the speed rack we sell 88 hours because look we don't have to um have the car diagnosed if if it's a harder complex one we can keep that car get the customer transportation look you need to we need see the industry's like that my check engine light's on wow man i can't get to you today man my technician's booked up he's backed up he's leaving early my diagnostic technician's not here today all those things we hear from our industry.

Versus absolutely is now a good time to bring it in let me get it inspected for you i'll inspect it while you wait i will take this off your page and then i get the car in i can pull the code and i can say look mr customer this is what we need to do i need to spend some time with it let me go and get your ride home we're going to take care of it you're in good hands loaner car uber shuttle whatever it is they just want to see action they want to see something happening and it's not fixing the car those cars i can keep over till monday if i need to but everything else everybody knows what a broken control arm looks like or bad ball joint worn out brakes uh you know leaking this everything it's so easy it's right there you can see it like because even if you don't know anything about cars a customer can look at something and go that's not right that should that be oh you mean you will bring a customer out let them look at the car every single time oh you mean you have a clean enough facility absolutely it's the biggest part oh boy big it's the biggest part uh you know i do a lot of sales training how important you know you're At courtside, we're training them on actually doing shop tours.

Yes, live shop tours. How important is that? It's so important. I do a lot of sales training, obviously, and I listen to a lot of calls. But here's the problem. It's not a problem, but it's kind of like watching game film from a football game, let's just say. We talk about NFL. We're going to go watch the game film.

but watch it on maybe a game that nobody prepared for and learn the playbook and learn the routes so i'm i'm being react i'm listening to calls to people that don't understand what leads up to the actual phone call right and that's what i learned a lot even myself from courtside so we're in there it's sunday uh first car comes in we're rack attacking the car we're doing our little breakout group pods and it's like six of us there first car comes in state inspection boom we get it in We rack attack that car, and what do we find on it? Immediately we find shocks are leaking on it, okay?

Just covered. So, immediately, we go grab the customer, bring the customer outside, show them that fast. Okay? And that car ended up leaving for, I think, about $2,000. But see, the customer would never know that their shocks are leaking if we just pulled the car and hooked the machine up and said, hey, have a nice day. But we inspect the car, and that creates hours for our technicians. Now we have a technician, Superstar Alex, from our announcement, was at Quartzide. Oh my God, I met with him yesterday. Which is awesome, because we're going to start bringing all our technicians through. Wow. Thank you for letting me attend that.

He's going to Key2Key next month. See, they don't know a lot of times if we don't explain to them what goes into the actual 15-hour ticket that I just handed you. You didn't see that the customer called up frantic on Friday night after hours. And then we said, yes, come here. We'll stay late for you. A video shop tour going out. And then we're going to. A video shop tour going out. Man, a physical shop tour going out. The shop tour. Videos being shot. Show sale happening. Loaner cars going out.

Then close the deal and get those that's right they call so we do vip rack attack friday night before key to key if you haven't been through that you need to come through you're in the trenches with our team running a day and so what happens that night well we're here and if the phones are ringing and doors are open guess what we say yes to our customers our sales always go up you know that night from 6 30 to 7 when we're done 7 7 15 when we're doing that rack attack our sales go up you know why because we're here we're available people pull in people call we say yes and we do it in front of them and so customer calls up 6 30 and we're closed technically that's what the sign on the door says as superstar chris garcia says that's just what the sign on the door says so the customer calls 6 30 absolutely man we're staying late for you i'll open the gate for you if the gate's closed we are here for you and then we're going to get that customer and then we're going to take them around we're going to show them our shop and we're going to tell them what they can expect from us and they're going to meet people and they're going to see it's clean and they're gonna see transparency, and they're gonna see cars that look like theirs, and they're gonna see a parking lot full of cars, okay?

And then we're gonna get a great video, and we're gonna show MotoVisuals, and we're gonna break it down for them. And then when we pick up the phone, see.

The work has already been done the sale has already been made and so listening to a phone call for someone who hasn't done all that first well you're just listening to somebody taking the snap and just throwing the ball and hoping that receiver right goes where he's supposed to go they have no place and so it's reactive there's no playbook and so when you do all these things leading up to it it becomes very easy and it's just you mean your close ratio goes up and your close ratio goes up, guess what? Let me see. If your close ratio goes up, does that change your entire image of yourself?

It changes everything. My industry is getting rejected over 50% of the time, if not more. I mean, it could be a close ratio of 20% or 30%. Not including the calls they miss. Wow. When I did that little post on that, 50% close ratio is the target for them, and that's the cars that actually make it to the shop. How many no's on the phone? Just think about this for one second. 10% close ratio is what our industry has on conversions of phone call to actual car showing up. How crazy is that? That's crazy. 10% to 15% is the app. We know this because we run it through AI.

So that means, and that's not even our, like that's, we have our data, but that's not even just our data. That's outside sources saying if 10 people call one and a half cars are going to show up at your shop. Now out of that one and a half, you're getting 50% on that. So that's like, okay, 0.75 on 10. What is that? I don't even know what that close race is. In the rejection, you know, when you're getting rejected all day, I love using the illustration of having a restaurant full of people and half of them just stand up and walk out.

You know, wow, man, you would feel pretty rejected. That's all there is to it. Well, now you have to take that home. So it negatively affects not only your business, your people, your attitude. Well, what happens when you learn a system that allows you to ramp up your close ratio, ramp up your car account, ramp up your profitability? Does auto hospitality pay better than auto repair? Sure does. And people get excited to actually go and do it. Oh, my God. And we've gamified the entire business. It's a great game of business. People run to work. I can't wait to play this game.

I can't wait for tomorrow when it's 9 o'clock in the morning. Right. And our whole team feels that way. I looked at the post after the $100,000 weekend. Did you see any mad faces? Mm-mm. Oh, man, they're holding that sign up, man, and they're going, Butter! See, it is winning. Winning is fun. And no decision fatigue. And there's a lot of shops out there who have never won. They don't win. They don't know what it is. They do not even know what winning looks like. They don't. And, you know, when we were perfecting a $40,000 day and people go, that's impossible. No, it's not. You know, 15 cars.

You know, 15, you take an hour, a PMI of 15 minutes. That's actually slow for us. Four cars an hour. Four cars an hour, 10-hour day, $40,000. And people go, yeah, there's no way. I'm going to come on down. I'll show you how to do it. I walk into your store. Can we walk into a store and do that with our eyes? Absolutely. Yes. And when I tell you that It means that Glenn and I and Jose and the team.

I'm not kidding I would not leave this store until five o'clock till the last time, until that laugh okay give me my boom give me my boom give my boom we built boom boom room it's so hot and man i would be so exhausted you know i mean you know i mean it's hard you run a 40 000 a day baby you're pni and pmi some cars you got a lot of sweat going on we're in texas and man i would not leave and then boom boom there it is todd man i'd walk out of that car you know off we go and someone drive me home when i fall asleep well physically exhausted but it's not mental no no no no i can't wait for tomorrow you can't i can't wait to be here at 6 30.

You're starting to take five how important is it take five uh it's the most everything i say is the most important thing if you notice that everything's the most important thing well you have to do take five that's the cool thing about courtside is we're doing take fives live you get to spin the wheel and then who goes up there and um you know it's just absolutely incredible to be able to see people that maybe have to get a little bit uncomfortable before they can get comfortable doing it right it could be a little bit nerve-wracking for somebody to see you know the wheel gets you know they spin the wheel which is so fun and then your name gets picked and you have to go up and do a take five and you're in a group full of people that are all learning this concept and some have been you know further along than others and once you get it and you get uncomfortable comfortable for a little bit, you start to become more comfortable and more comfortable.

And then that's what transforms your business. So getting uncomfortable to get to a point where you can go and lead your team. As I tell everybody, you have to do one to do a hundred. And so we do them every day. I've been doing them every day for so long in my life. It's nothing. I remember Charlie's Lackos. He hated doing it. He would not do it. Take five.

And i i beat him i pretty much beat him a matter of fact there's my hammer i beat him and um and he started doing take fives and um he fell in love with take fives he fell in love with training he he's always been a learner now he had charlie has perfected the business model charlie now speaks to large groups. Charlie now, every month, he is down at courtside with Mike Quinn teaching that and you're up here at Key to Key. And so Charlie and Mike, I mean, Charlie and Joe were down at. Over in Vegas and that's why you went in and assisted and coached on courtside.

I mean, you know, man, but you got to start with one, take five to get there. I mean, one, take five. You cannot scale a company without doing take five. A hundred percent. So Charlie goes from, man, don't want to do it to just nervous about doing it, right?

First of all guy i mean he speaks he speaks what four words when he comes yeah cat cat hat man dog okay watch his podcast gosh it's so good you got to watch him under the lift shout out tech metric while we're sitting here um watch their under the lift um freaking um video series they just won a telly award it's spectacular um and you can see um perry adams you can see um charlie zalakos yeah Greek immigrant spoke four words and now he teaches this concept across the country. But that take five He also has generational wealth.

Sure he does that take five that he had to get uncomfortable and a little uncomfortable to get comfortable to be able to go speak in front of hundreds, thousands, whatever that is Training Midas Right, like you have to be able to do that and so it's super important so that's where you get to get in the trenches and we do it and we practice as a group and as a team, and it's a lot of fun. And when people come through, that's like family. Going to Courtside is like being with family. I think our whole auto shop answers in our family of businesses, we don't even call them clients.

They are family. I think about Caleb and Precision Tune, what's going on in their world. They've been around 50 years. They don't miss training programs. We hosted a private training program for their leadership group a couple of months ago. They come in all the time.

Trans auto hospitality is transforming our company auto hospitality is only transforming precision tune transform midas it transforms anyone's business that comes through period yeah we have other companies i mean like we've seen other companies that are coming through changing their business um so it translates into all service any business it's dialed it's perfect we had we had Yeah, it's a perfected business model, not only in auto hospitality, but it is in service hospitality. So we have had roofing companies come through now. We have power washing services and plumbers. It's so fun. Yeah. You know, it's so fun to go there like, oh my God, I can use this.

And I go, oh yeah, you can. We're with Tommy Mello out of his home freedom. And we met a lot of people. We said, man, you guys should come through key to key. that came through key to key, and they're like, wow, this is amazing. Yeah. I mean, like, amazing. So, yeah, it's pretty spectacular. One other thing that I saw, I love this, is people have a hard time terminating people. And so they have B players or C players on their team. You have a panel of studs up there, A players, hammers, hammers. Oh, boy, tell me about your hammer time.

And then you get people up front and teach them how to. Actually terminate someone. It bodes me away because I'm never nervous about terminating anyone. I make a deal with you. We're the NFL. And I run it like a pro sport franchise. I tell everybody that up front I always have since 1986. And that means I'm different. I'm going to wear ties in 1986. I'm going to glove up. I'm going to be in white shirts, buttoned down. I'm going to be the NFL car repair.

but the good guys and we still are that and so when someone signs up to play on our team we tell them yeah hey man you got to make the cut you know i'm gonna bring you on there's a 90-day probationary period and you got to go through onboarding key-to-key court side you have to you have to show that you can play in the nfl if not i will terminate you yeah and we get to and they and they practice that in court side uh but the hammer panel yeah like to answer your question on the hammer panel, that's fire.

We actually added Donovan to the hammer panel this last one. Shout out to Donovan. What a stud. What a great team we have. What an amazing team. And so you've got this hammer panel, and it's just five studs up there, and they're answering questions from everybody that's coming through. And it's just all these great questions. Matter of fact, that's available for people to watch. Mike uploaded it on his channel. They can watch the whole deal, the whole interaction, which is really cool. That's so good. But, you know, look, you've got to be able to manage these hammers, right?

You're like, there's so much content that's available, you know, through AutoShop Answers and this family of businesses. Go to AutoShopAnswers.com. Please sign up. And again, hey, we have a money back guarantee. How many times have we given money back? Every zero. And that's what I'm talking about over a very long period of time. You know, most of your industry guys that are players within the industry, have come through key to key. They either work for me at one time and then scale their own company or companies that are scaling. Most of them have come through key to key and bring their management team through.

So, you know, we're changing a lot of companies out there, which is spectacular, not including what we're doing on the private equity side, which is a whole nother ballgame. But man, when you're in the trenches with your wrenches.

You know, again, I don't have an office here that blows people away you know um glenn's office is in bay one right out that window um glenn will pmi cars with the team um which i used to do unfortunately i'm 66 now and can't do it quite as well but hey yesterday i was up at woodlands great story here's a perfect example yesterday at the woodland lady comes in for um um tire pressure he's tire pressing you know and she pulls up and i go wow man you know let's get her out of that car let's get the car on the rack and um because you know really you know it's it's like all i have to do is so we're going to also just bring it in real quick so i can inspect your tires and make sure that we're going to fill them up with pressure inspect them you know make sure all the treads are good make sure there's them nails or anything in them and who doesn't take you up on that until we pull right up on the speed rack but bring it in man friggin motor mounts coming out of the motor i mean literally you know when you put it in gear yeah you know and um that was two thousand dollars right away you know on motor mounts um tires were fine filled them up walked around so there's.

Extremely bad motor mount, and close that deal right away. Yeah. And see now how many shops would have done that. Well, we'll tell you, Discount Tire, if you visit one of their stores, which is a high-quality tire store, let me tell you, they have a place where they air up tires. Yeah. When they air up tires, they get down and check that tread, man. They're inspecting the tires, seeing if one's too low.

If it's not just low due to temperature changes, boy they want to know what there's a nail in there or not and see my industry um doesn't understand every single car that gets on your drive is an opportunity yeah there's trainers out there who tell you not to do state inspections we are freaking nuts what's our ticket average on state inspection thousand thousand dollars what's our ticket average on oil change thousand see wow you people crazy that allows that allow it's my professional obligation when that customer comes in for a state inspection to offer them and we didn't offer we just do it for them we're gonna bring up on my speed rack i'm doing the state inspection and i'm looking over to make sure the vehicle's in what tip top tip top condition period and what's our ticket average on that thousand dollars thousand oil change preventive main inspection make sure your vehicle's in what.

Tip top how many do you put your babies in broke cars they do not and how many how many how many cars are going to shops and leaving shops broken broken and the customer do you know that the customer like when the customer comes to your shop and they leave regardless of what they're there for they believe their car is safe and more times than not it's not and a lot of people say i use low ticket average low integrity is low integrity you got it see wow how can that be see now the industry's scratching their head you got a low ticket average you got a bunch of oil changes running through your shop or just eight inspections you got an integrity issue in your business because you're letting cars leave your shop especially oil change oil changes that customer thinks, I've changed my oil, my vehicle's in good shape, they did it, they didn't say anything was wrong with it, and I'm driving down the road.

Wow. If you did not, it's your professional obligation to inspect that car. If you inspect that car, you will find problems with that car. Period. 100%. 100%. This is brand new. Oh my gosh. Even brand new.

But it's our professional obligation to inspect cars well yeah even on our side you know we'll check balance we'll check online but even so we find problems on brand new cars that we get to bring okay so think about this car comes in let's say it's got 5 000 miles on it our shop or our shop our industry is not even looking at that car they're doing an inspection on that car they're saying hey have a nice day it's got 5 000 miles what could be wrong with it we'll lift the car up we'll find a concern on it that's under warranty at the dealership for the customer take the car over to the dealership for the customer, get the car service, bring it back to our shop, wash it, vacuum it, and deliver it back to the customer.

Wow. What is that worth? Outrageous customer. It's worth a lifetime customer. To find something that's under warranty for a customer. And then they get cycled to our call center. So now they're in my call center. So we're going to set them up for the next oil change. You know, our call center last month did $1.8 million in reoccurring revenue. Just making calls, setting up weekend appointments. Yes. You know, for fluid exchanges, for brake inspections, for oil changes, for state inspections. Steve, man, show me your schedule and I'll show you what? Success. You bet your bet I will.

And let me tell you something, man, and the better you answer the phone, our inbound, outbound call center, oh, my God. Hey, man, look, and we are, man, very, very dialed on this. We talk about the industry being 10% to 15%. We're way better than the industry. And we're still giving it. 6 a.m. This morning, I had a call with, I do every Friday morning with our inbound call center, private training with them. It's like six of us on the line, and we're dialing in to bridge the gap between call center and shop floor and just meshing the two together. So 6 a.m. this morning.

Tomorrow, 7 a.m., we have a call with the entire platform where we're going to train and get better. And that's before our take five where we go and then we execute today. Glenn is like an amazing trainer, a spectacular trainer. The other thing I want to talk about, how many claps did you get?

When you're training huh how many claps do you get i think our record's about 200 and no our record our record over the weekend was uh 280 or something yeah so during a during a two-day program that means the audience the people were training clap 280 times it's spectacular guys See, is it not amazing to watch their lives, the transformation? I do a deal at Key2Key called The Dash. Yeah. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. I get all choked up. It's faith-driven. It's beautiful. It's gorgeous. Man, you see the tears in the audience because it makes you think, wow, man. And what a great industry we're in.

there's just a lot of people giving out bad information in our industry yeah man hey what do you have to lose you've gone to all these other people you know um and and i i will just assure you this is the transformation will change our life you know um with glenn um we started together six years ago um we have a company today that will push close to a hundred million in revenue. Glenn's been instrumental in that. We have an enterprise value somewhere just caught between three and five hundred million. We're nowhere near done. We have a lot to do. We're growing a billion dollar plus business.

Do you have any doubt in your mind that we will hit that? I don't, and I'll tell you why. So every crazy thought that you've had along the way, you said if people don't think you're crazy, you're not thinking big enough. Every step of the way, man, it's like Todd, this morning it happened. Todd, every week you're like, man, hey, busy week this week. I've heard that over every week over the past six years, right? You say, man, we've got a busy weekend. We've got a busy week. Hey, it's a busy month. And I hear that every single week.

and then you tell me these things and they always come true and I'm just like, this guy's kind of crazy. Like I would think that at the beginning. Now I don't think that. I'm like, well, he said that. It's going to happen because he said that and he's delivered all the way through. It's virtually impossible to explain to everybody how you truly scale a great company, how you do it. I can't teach private equity in an hour. I've been doing it a long time. I totally understand it. We're right in the middle of a bake-off right now, which is exhausting. You've got bankers in here.

You've got private equity firms in. We're flying there and doing their programs. I mean, it's outrageous. But when we find the right private equity firm, the banker that represents us, and then we find the private equity firm that we're going to partner with to de-risk our portfolio, not sell our company, de-risk our portfolio, which is very different. And then I call it the unfinished start line. Again, we're highly competitive here. So then the racing, that's one finish line, but it's also the start line. Because once we do the deal with private equity, well, now we have to scale even more. Right.

And we have a very defined funnel way that we scale. Private equity road shows we're very, very good at this stuff. And the good news is, how have you learned, McGlynn? Are you pretty savvy with private equity? You know, I am. I've learned. Matter of fact, you know what I just did the other night? So I've been through two Adam Coffey roadshows. Yeah, by the way, if you haven't read, shout out. I love shouting out to people. He's a stud. Shout out to Adam Coffey. Private equity playbook. Please read all Adam's stuff. And before you jump there, I'll come back. Shout out to Jose Garcia and our great team. Boom.

Man, oh, man. See, he's very important. During our training. Sure he is. He shifts over here, and he actually crushes out these numbers while Glenn is training, whether it's key to gear or court side. But go ahead on, Adam. Yeah, so he does a deal where he says, look, if I do a 10-question quiz on everybody in the room, whatever that room is, before he starts a program. I forget what percentage, 90% of the people will fail that quiz. And he has access available, right? And he's a stud and we've learned from him and I've learned so much from you and been able to learn from him as well.

And I took that quiz the other night and I got 10 for 10. Boom! There you go, baby. And I was so, that was a proud moment because I was like, wow, I really learned, Let's go. I learned a lot where people fear private equity because they don't understand it. I didn't understand it. I went through a private equity deal that I thought wasn't a good deal. But now looking back after I learn and know, I understand they did what they were supposed to do. I just didn't understand the difference between a bolt on and right. And, you know, a platform and what that actually meant.

And so that's changed my whole perspective. So a lot of people are, you know, giving their thoughts on private equity based on wrong information, secondhand information. They don't know. They really have no idea. They don't know what they don't know. Yeah. And private equity is banging down people's doors right now. They're buying everything. They have a couple trillion dollars on the sidelines looking for spectacular companies. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of spectacular companies. And private equity also is making some bad moves. I call it Frankenstein approach. We're just buying and bolting Frankensteins. No culture, no infrastructure, no flywheel, no real training program.

You know, think about the auto shop answers family of businesses is just outrageous. When you talk about key to key, you talk about a recruiting company, You talk about our video company, Autoshop Media. You talk about Autoshop Callbacks, or inbound, outbound call center. You got Peter Serendidis is actually in our room with tech training. Man, we have everything. We're a true, we are a true platform company with company stores and bolt-on stores, and you will see significant growth out of us. Are you saying we're out of time, friend? One hour? Okay, well, we'll be on for one hour, so I'm going to probably call it it.

Anything else you want to add to it? No, I just, look, come see us. Come to Houston. Go to Boston. Go to AutoshopAnswers.com. Get with Todd Westerlin. Follow us on all the social media. LinkedIn, all social media, Paulie Glenn-Peckelow, myself, AutoshopAnswers.com, Todd Westerlin. Also, guys, if you're in the business, you know someone who's come for it. Just call. And if you watch this podcast and you have been through, could you please tell a friend and change their life just as your business has been transformed? You will see so many of your friends' businesses that are being transformed. I mean, massive. And so please tell a friend.

You'll change their lives with them. And that's what it's all about. We also have to, before I wrap up, you know, our newest program is AutoShop Ministries. You know, we're a faith-based company. I have to talk about this. We now have a new program on Sundays where AutoShop Ministries is sponsoring. We have our own minister on staff, Devontae Tidwell. And what he's going to do is he will give a Sunday service at the pod will drop every Sunday.

Starting next month but when you are in town which is really cool um he will do a live sermon for us 6 30 to 7 and then 7 our program kicks off and so on that's we're so excited about that and then as you guys know if you come through key to key in court side and you want to go up to Lakewood and really experienced Joe Osteen in Lakewood Church. We have, success to some pretty good seats there. And so it's a lot of fun. So one, but I really want to drop that in there. And we love the Lord and we love what we do.

And if God is for you, who can be against you? So, um, now I get the guy to go on. So, um, anyway, Hey man, what a great podcast. Boom. Let's go. I'm so proud of you, Glenn Pickle. Hey, thank you for everything. Glenn Pickle right here. And Josh, thank you so much. Boom! Autoshop Media. So we're, again, Autoshop Answers, AutoshopAnswers.com. Todd Westerlin. Sign up today.