99.08% Diagnostic Accuracy: Inside a Master Tech’s Playbook

What's up, players? It's Joe Adams with Adams Automotive. This is Master Tech to Millionaire. We're coming from Adams Automotive, the number one shop in the country. My name's Joe. We are here today with none other than Josh Gerbrecht. Say hi to the people, Josh. Hey. What up, Josh? So Josh is, you know, I've been really excited about this podcast because he is our, you know, probably number one diagnostic level technician. I'll introduce him real quick. He has an automotive technology degree from Houston Community College. He is a master technician and L1 master certified for 10 plus years, and he's been working on flat rate for 13 years. He actually has a spreadsheet, which is hilarious. I love this. He has a spreadsheet of every job that he's worked on this entire year, what it came in for, how he diagnosed it, and whether or not the vehicle came back. He's very proud to say that he's at a 99.08 diagnostic accuracy, which is sick.

And he just went through key to key to callbacks this weekend in August of 2026. And we are here to debrief all the amazing takeaways that we had from this weekend working together. So Josh, how are you feeling? I'm feeling great. It's super cool to do this. It's It was an awesome opportunity, as a technician, you know, to be able to do something like this. And thank you for that intro and sharing my spreadsheet. I'm a little bit nutty doing something like that, but I enjoy it. You know, you get what you track. And yes, key to key, what can I say? It was, I- Say what you just said right before we came on there about the symbiosis of working together. Absolutely. So as a technician. I see myself as half of getting the job done, the other half being my service advisor. And you've got a service advisor and a technician that they need to be in sync. And I kind of look at it as, you know, if we're one body trying to get one job

done, which is outstanding service and then an outstanding repair. You know, the service advisor would be kind of like the brain of the body. And as a technician, I'm the body. I'm the work. You're like producing the actual product, you know, like it has to be sold, but you have to actually like cook the food. You're the chef, you know? Absolutely. And as the body, how can I do a great job if I don't completely understand what's going on in the brain? So, that was my biggest takeaway is now having a much better understanding of the brain, of the playbook, of what's being executed in the front of the house, I can now better complement that in the back of the house. So the analogy that I'm kind of where we were exploring is the NFL and we're the NFL of car repair. And I believe that the front of the house, the service advisors are the offense. So at the end of the day, you can't win games if you don't score points.

I have to score points in the form of money ball. I have to sell jobs. I have to drive revenue. I have to score points. And I believe that the technicians are the defense. You know, you guys keep, you know, defense wins championships. And I don't know if it's a perfect analogy, but it's kind of like a recheck is pretty much when we score a touchdown and it gets called back because of a penalty or something. It's like I just threw I just threw a 70 yard touchdown or I just had a a I drove down the field. I moved the ball down the field for two days and key to key to callbacks. I sold the job to the customer for sixty five hundred dollars. They're happy. Five star Google review. If the car comes back the next day because we didn't fix the car right it literally like does not matter it's like turning the ball over and and so if i just you know if you guys are the defense from, and the ball just keeps getting turned over or uh maybe maybe the analogy is

not perfect if the car keeps coming back over and over again, the defense wins championships like we're going to lose those customers no matter how good our offense is so i think it's a decent analogy, but you know, let's get into it. I want to get your background before you came to Adams. And then I want to kind of go into your time at Adams, your thoughts. And then let's talk about key to key this weekend and now your perspective after key to key. So where did you start your career? I started my career at a shop in Stafford calling one auto center. And, Like a lot of shops, there's nothing totally wrong with it. It wasn't a bad shop, but it was like every other shop out there. I kind of grew up there as a technician and enjoyed my time there. But I was, you know, I was making what I was making after about 10 years there. And there was really nowhere else to go. Job wise, day wise. 10 years. You were there 10 years. I was there for 10 years.

So you're loyal, you're making, you know, you're putting good work out, you're learning. Are you training yourself to become a good technician or how, what did that look like? So I was actually fortunate enough to have them as a young guy, fresh out of school, make me an apprentice. So they actually paired me with one of the master techs that was there at the time, which was outstanding for my career. And then got put on flat rate, became a big boy technician and struggled for a little while. And there was a lot of self-learning, like most techs, right? Most techs out there, especially the young guys, and if there's any technicians listening, they know what I'm talking about. They just kind of bang their head against the wall until something's fixed, and the next time they have to bang one less time. And so, you know, here, there's support everywhere, and it's just a totally different feeling. So, okay, so you came over here in February of 2024.

Correct. And how did we get you? Oh, that's great. So, like I was saying, the shop I was at wasn't necessarily bad, but it was an average shop. And we, y'all, I guess at that time, were hiring a general service tech. Yeah. And when y'all were interviewing him, I guess he was asked the question, hey, do you know any master techs? Well, he handed y'all my phone number. I get a phone call. And, you know, I was a little, wasn't too interested at first. I thought I was at a good shop. I didn't know how great it could be and took the phone call, came up here, did a shop tour one day. And you were hooked. I was blown away. And we sent you that shop tour video. It's like you're seeing the floors. Yes, I was blown away. It was an eye opener. Wow, look at what else is out there. The next day I came in, sat down with Glenn Piccolo. Stud. And I don't think he would have led me out of there without taking a job. Without closing you. Without closing me, absolutely. And I am.

I'm so grateful that y'all found me, that y'all recruited me. Well, hold on. Let's use the word that we poached you. You poached me. Yeah, we poached you hard. So we got issues, you know, every month in training with people are like, man, you guys are poaching people? Wow. You're stealing. And I say, I say it pretty aggressively now, kind of just to make a point. I'm not really that aggressive in terms of recruiting. Like, I'm not like, you know, there are some pretty crazy strategies that I've heard that are, they're like over the line. And catch me offline if you want to talk about what is considered over the line. But that's neither here nor there. We... You know, Todd, I've been with Todd when he's walked into stores and literally grabbed people. We are very aggressive in terms of what I like to call offering humans, offering people an opportunity that can change their life. And people say it all the time. I'm like, you know, we go through this long

section in recruiting and in key to key and about how important it is and how you need great people to run the playbook and run the offense. And then I'm like, all right, where do we get these people? And every month people are like, well, you recruit them. And I'm like, okay, where, where do I get them? And they're like, well, you staff, you, you, you go find talent, you go offer people opportunities. And I'm like, no, no, no, say it. Like you poach them, you steal them because it can feel that way. You know, it can feel like as a, as a person with empathy and running a business, you want people to like you and you want. To make sure in your community that your, that your reputation, is, you know, as an upstanding member of the community, and I totally understand that, and I dealt with it for a long time, but I try to make a, I try to paint a picture every month that, You know, like the person that you are, quote unquote, poaching wants to be

poached. They just don't know it yet. And 95% of the shops are good old boy. You know, I know the shop that you used to work at and it's 4.8 on Google, thousand stars, you know, thousand five star reviews. It's got a great reputation, great people. However, they did not have the skill set to get you an environment to allow you to make the kind of money that you make now versus what you made working for them. They just don't know. And that doesn't make them a bad person. So it doesn't make me a bad person to quote unquote poach you, um, to take you out of that environment and put you in our environment. So it can feel like you're taking technicians, but what it sounds like I'm hearing from you, Josh, is that you're grateful that we quote unquote poached you because you had no idea that shops like ours even existed. Is that right? That's, uh, that's exactly how I would say it myself. I did not know what was out there.

Yes, I'm very grateful. Y'all found me and poached me. I'm here now. My income is more than doubled, almost tripled. Let's go. And I thought, I thought I was about at the top of what a technician in Houston could make. And I just had no idea. That gives me chills, dude. Sick. Like that's sick. So if I, it just gives me more and more conviction every year, like every year that goes by. It's like, there are real people that really get to work in my family's business and I, If I'm nervous to call somebody and talk to them and recruit them and poach them, like I'm potentially withholding the opportunity for them to double or triple their income. And more importantly, work in an environment, not that the old environment was bad, but work in an environment where it's like, wow, this is the NFL. Everybody is freaking rolling in the same direction. We're winning hard. We're a faith-based business. You know, we're pouring into people. We're training people.

And we're winning. So, recruiting, man, if you are not convicted by hearing that and you work in our company, I need our recruiting department to be listening to this. Like, no, dude, this will change your life because it will. So, let's get back on the narrative structure here. You worked for us for the last two and a half years kind of observing all the – we don't send technicians through key-to-key to callbacks because we've never really, I guess, made the connection of how important it might be. Right. Um, because, you know, it's more important to know how to fix a car as a technician than it is to like understand how, uh, marketing works and, uh, how phone skills works, uh, in key to key. But you opened our eyes to how much you really didn't know, but I want to back up for, for what, what, what were you able to observe and what was your perspective of your first two years or so working here? And then we'll go into debriefing the actual weekend.

Yeah. So the first two years here, you know, I like to think I pay attention and pick up on things. And that's what it was. It was two years of picking up on little things here and there. You know, it doesn't take long to realize... Um, as your service advisors are on the phones and you're in the office for whatever reason as a technician that boy, that service advisor and that service advisor and that service advisor all sound very similar. Pro. They sound pro they're, they're executing on the phones and it's like, that's okay. That's, that's different. Um, you know, doesn't take long to notice the take fives happening in the morning, get here a few minutes early. And it's like, wait, every morning, all these guys are here early. Just training practicing and it's like okay these these guys are doing something different and then you connect that to it's turning into hours for me right hours that you know,

i'm not having to do you know vehicle inspections and stuff on my own it's it's quite literally handed to me on a platter, yeah we talk about sundays you know we talk about like you come in josh josh comes in monday morning and there's a ticket with 13 hours on it and like you don't you may see all the stuff you see us sweat and you see us staying late you see us early and you start to put together like okay, this is not the same as the place that i was these people right like it's hard to look at glenn piccolo and work with him for a year and be like, not be aware of how freaking amazing he is you know and then the rest of our team as well but. You know, it takes a while to put it together because you don't see all the work that goes into it when you see just a ticket with 13 hours. And I want to address something here. You said it. I don't have to inspect cars. Oh, yeah. Because technicians literally hate inspecting cars. They like fixing cars and

diagnosing cars. And you fall into a category of somebody who you need a little bit of challenge in your life. You don't want to just R&R control arms 10 times in a row just because it pays the most. You need, I mean, you literally have a spreadsheet of 99.808%, you know, so you need a little bit of that in your life, but you still got to pay your bills. And so we, you know, we're open on the weekends and we call it like the emergency room and we're open on the weekends. We're open on Sundays, but the doctor doesn't come in until Monday morning, but I can still check out a ton of cars and check out people that need to see the doctor on the weekend or need to see at least the emergency room um. Or at least they think they need to go see the doctor and they just know they just they don't actually understand that they just need to get the car their car checked so we will get cars all day sunday because we're the only game in

town and people say hey i got a noise coming from that brakes can you check it out, i don't need an l1 master certified technician to take the wheels off that car and see red brakes right like i just don't, if it's a check engine of mine and I can't diagnose it at the speed rack, our current process is pull the codes, communicate to the customer, hey, I'm going to need some more time with a master technician to diagnose this. Can I get you a shuttle home? And then we're going to call you first thing in the morning when he gets here. It's that simple. And people on LinkedIn and on Facebook, they're like, oh, so you guys, and every training, they're like, oh, so you guys aren't diagnosing cars, right? Like, so master techs aren't diagnosing cars. It's like, no, like we're, we're inspecting the car for gravy, the technical term for gravy, for rear, you know, for rear shock, for everything. And if we can't figure it out.

We don't need to because it's Sunday and nobody else is open anyway. We can wait for Josh. And so by the time Josh gets here on Monday, we've sold $40,000 or $20,000 or $70,000 on a weekend. And they're in a shuttle and they're not going to pick up their car till Tuesday after Josh is done working on it. And it'll be check engine light plus all the rear shocks plus all the fluids. And that's a 13-hour ticket for Josh to freaking knock out in three hours on Monday morning. So give me your thoughts. You want to know one of the scenarios I love is, right, vehicles been in, customers' transportation issues solved, and y'all have spotted all that stuff. You've spotted brakes, motor mounts, struts, whatever. It's all the gravy, you know. But, right, we have to address the customer's ISO first. What brought them in? So, then it gets to me, and it's, hey, Josh, we need you to diagnose this. And I know that as soon as I get that diagnosis and y'all can get it back and

back in touch with the customer, sell them the you know we can take care of why they're here there's all that gravy waiting right behind it so it incentivizes talk about a motivator to get that check engine like diagnosed quickly and accurately because when I do, there's 10 hours of gravy waiting behind yeah it's almost like you are being incentivized to diagnose it the right way fast because it's like Like you're getting paid, maybe not in the form of, that's so fascinating. You're not getting paid in the form of like dot five diagnostic time. You're getting paid in the form of 10 hours of gravy if you diagnose it fast. Yes. And I don't have to worry that you guys are going to get that gravy sold after we handle the customer's complaint. What brought them in? Because you guys don't miss. We're going to try as hard as we possibly can. So speaking of, oh, yeah. One other thing. I had this happen with one of our superstar service advisors,

Cliffhanger. Stud. Last week, I had our Ram truck in here, needed ball joints, control arms. And it didn't sell. The truck did leave, left at about 4.30 or 5 o'clock. I get to work the next day, and I don't remember exactly the time, 8 o'clock, 8.30. Cliff comes pulling the truck back into my bay, sold. And it's like, as a technician, that's all I know. You know, I'm thinking, I don't know, maybe the customer brought it back after all, whatever. But after being through key to key, now I know what kind of execution and work and effort went on even after that truck left to get it back in my bay and hours back on my paycheck. Like Cliff probably called that customer after hours to make sure he got it home okay. Okay. And then Glenn probably called him first thing in the morning and was like, hey, we're doing a, you know, he didn't say it like this, but he's probably like, hey, we are doing a reopen miss sale next day satisfaction

callback to call you and check on you to make sure that you're okay. But really, we're just asking to see if you, I mean, we want to know, we want to make sure you're, you know, that you're happy with the service and that everything went good. But also it's an opportunity for Glenn, that's what we train on. To talk to that customer and see if they have gotten it fixed somewhere else or if we still have an opportunity to earn the business. because we say that the business is not, it's not a missed sale. See, most people classify that as a missed sale. Right. But it's not. It's a missed sale when the car gets fixed by us or someone else. And so- And you going through key to key, you know, speaking of being able to identify all the work that goes into it. Now, you know that that ball joint, the guy didn't just go home, Google it and then decide to come back. Right. Like we had to work and the offense had to huddle and they had to run

some plays and they had to get sacked on third down punt, get the ball back, re-strategize and drive down the field to like score that touchdown. And now you get to freaking, it's like you got to watch the offense. It's like if you're on the deep, it's like if you're on the sidelines for the NFL and you just went into the locker room every single time and didn't like appreciate the quarterback getting slammed. Like it literally fires me up when I'm watching the NFL and I see the quarterback get slammed, like Baker Mayfield, take a hit and just get right back up and freaking score. Right. And it's like, you got to watch it and that fires me up. So I need to chill out. I'm gonna start screaming into this microphone. So, okay. It fires me up too. Again, I keep having this tendency to want to talk to any technicians that may be listening. But it's like, as a tech, to know, to have that knowledge back there,

you're talking about getting fired up. It fires me up too. It's like, I'm on a winning team. I am, in fact, in the NFL now. 100%. And you guys are there. Y'all have that mentality. As a technician, to also bring that kind of intensity, it ups the quality of my work. Yeah. It ups my attitude all day in the shop. I'm happy. I'm proud to be here. It's something else. That's sick, dude. So let's talk about this concept. So there's this concept of... You know, being around A players. So that, so you're, it's more like, it's less that you're not around, you weren't around A players. It's more, you're just aware of how high level the players are on the field. And Elon talks about this concept of A players hate being around fuzzy thinkers, you know, and there's this idea that you did a deep sigh. Cause, cause look, you know, I call it advanced common sense customer service, you know, as a technician internally who the hammer is like,

you know, working at your old shop. And if you're a technician listening to this, driving to work, you know, who you hope is talking to the customer for your tickets. Like, Hey, I just diagnosed this car service advisor. A, um, can you make sure service advisor B sells it? You know, like, it's like, Hey, you've probably done that where you walk into the office and you hand the ticket and you see the one, Oh no, I'm going to hand it to you because that person's going to sell. You just didn't maybe externalize. You didn't like know why you did that. You just know, like, that's the, that's the salesman. That's the, that's the one. So being around a fuzzy thinker, it actually has this cognitive effect where it drags you down. It's like, show me your friends, I'll show you your future. When you're around people that don't, and I'm not saying dumb, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying people who like aren't motivated,

aren't trying, aren't trying to be in the NFL. It drags you down like 30% or something crazy. I don't know if that's an exact number, but like. It feels, it feels accurate. It sounds about right. You know, like if I'm like, it's like I'm fighting through the fuzziness of thinking and it makes me want to think less and it just sucks. The inverse is also true. When you're with an A player, like I was so tired coming into this podcast, but I'm like jacked up now because you're an A player and I'm like, oh my God, dude, he's understanding. And now I'm understanding him. And now we're working even better. It's not, it's not one plus one equals two. It's one plus one equals like 10. Yeah. you know what i'm saying like it's like oh sweet you and now i've got the idea in my head of like oh my god i need to send all of our freaking techs and our a player techs through key to key so they can get riled up and be like oh my god dude i need to fix these cars right because it's freaking hard to sell these jobs

like oh it's so good i'll get off myself that's that was my thought i mean i've come back and i've already been talking to some of the other guys and it's like hey do you do you know do you have any idea right what what level of execution is happening up there because i I got it now. Well, I had all the pieces and now the puzzle has been put together. And in the same way, I don't know what it's like to put that kind of work in to fix the freaking car. Like I kind of do through my dad. You know, my dad, like actually he roasts you guys, by the way, like not you specifically, but he's like the way the work has changed. Yeah. He's like back in my day, we had. Sorry, dad, if you're listening, we had to actually fix cars. Like he's like radiator. You had to actually fix the radiator and put it back in the car. Now, all the old heads are going to be listening to this, being like, they're going to be messaging Perry and be like, you're right.

Now, you just put a new radiator in there. That's easy. He's like, I had a workbench. I had to actually fix stuff. So funny. Anyway, he... You know, he was a technician that came into the business. Master tech to millionaire is the name of our podcast. Todd was not a technician. I am not a technician. And I love Todd to death, but he never really experienced the pain of not being successful as a business owner. Whereas my dad experienced the pain. He experienced the pain of like, dude, it's hard work on your body and on your hands and on your feet for years to freaking fix these cars. And then it's even harder work to try and figure out how to run the business, you know, and like actually take care of the customers. And so I can kind of relate through my dad how hard it is to be a technician and how hard it is to fix cars 12 hours a day and how hard it is on your body. Right i mean he literally can't hear at dinner you know like he i see young

guys shooting air guns by their ears, uh at this rack attack and ripping you know whatever they're called what is it lug nuts, like uh like like no like under the splash shield those are the loudest ones on the range rovers oh yeah when you've got a metal skid plate a metal skid plate and it just blasts their eardrums and i'm like dude like my dad literally cannot hear uh, at the dinner table when there's too many voices and so. I can just feel maybe, Maybe like through him, the wear and tear that it puts on a technician's body and how hard it is to fix these cars over and over and over again, day in, day out. But it makes me want to kind of get in y'all's world and have a better understanding of like how your brain works and how the work is because I'm seeing how effective it was for you. So we're kind of talking. I'm talking a lot. I need to hear. The people want to hear more from you. They want to hear your thoughts. So it's two days.

Try to communicate to a technician who's listening to this or to a service advisor who's never been from your perspective kind of just what you saw this weekend what what was it what did we do um. It was more than i expected it was um i mean let me back up one awesome thing i saw that's um, i think pretty unique is to watch watch yourself and glenn up there and this kind of ties back to in the wrenches with the trenches. To be a technician, just like you were talking about, it's hot, our bodies hurt, it wears you out. And to see my leaders, the leadership in this company, to see you guys in the shop all day. I mean, Glenn puts on gloves and takes tires on and off. He's outside. He's got sweat on his forehead too. So to see my leadership out in the shop, very literally in the trenches, you might not actually have a wrench in your hand. Right. You're out here with us, talking to us every day. Boy, that's motivating. Yeah, it's like Elon Musk was sleeping on the factory floor, you know?

Seriously, it's like Napoleon back in history. You think he ran the army from an office? Right. Or do you think he was at the front? You know, like that's it. And Todd, shout out Todd, taught us this. He's like, look, check out my, it's in the movie. You saw the movie. He goes, the cool thing about this is check out my office. Here's my office right here. And he just walks into the speed rack. Yeah, he walks to the speed rack. It's like, that's sick. Because he's like, we scaled this whole business from my phone in Bay One. Like, I don't need to be freaking in an ivory tower. And the ivory tower has to happen sometimes. Like, behind closed doors, we've got to have a management team. We've got to grow the business. We've got to think about marketing. We've got to think about recruiting. We've got to think about training. You know, me and you have talked behind closed doors about training and, like, what stuff could look like. We're doing a podcast right now.

We're not in the trenches right now. Stuff has to happen. But at the end of the day, if you're an individual unit leader, you know, if you have multi-unit, you only have a couple stores or not only a couple stores. That's not what I meant. If you're at a level where you're running an individual unit, you do not, you can run the whole business from within the business. And like there are times where you have to step out to kind of work on the business, not in the business, but the feeling from your entire team. Watching you and you're Baker Mayfield and you just took a sack and they just saw you get up and freaking like run the next play. Is it's just it's just sick that's just so sick so thank you Todd for teaching us um Glenn shout out number one guy in the world Jose the whole team everybody Mike Quinn I mean there's too many people to list there it is we have to work, outside like we have to work in the trenches we have to watch the defense,

kill themselves for us and do it alongside time with them and it's one plus one equals 10 it's like so so, cool it is it's so motivating you know i mean, yeah one of the things you know you there's shop talk right and one of them is when you got a shop and a manager that's in the air conditioning all day yeah point that's one of the things technicians talk about manager might come out for a minute say something go back in air conditioning, and the comments amongst the technicians are you know, i won't say i'm here but everyone can use their imagination. Yeah, you can use it. So you guys are out here with us. We're investing in air conditioning at the other locations and we're working on this location. Can you talk as a technician what that would mean to you guys? So, oh gosh, what does that mean? It's everything. It means everything. I think you mentioned it and I joked with you, you know, if you put air conditioning, I'll never leave.

I expect I'll never leave anyways, but that gives you a sense of what that means to a technician. And um yeah the the comfort that could bring the productivity that would increase i have a uh a image i want to paint you okay it's 1980. My dad worked in a gas station across the street up the street i've never actually showed you i should show you and it's a convenience store now but, he was telling me the story one time he goes joe because we're talking about air conditioning the shop he told me this recently he goes joe it was an oven and i go yeah it was hot no he goes no no No, no, no, no, I don't think you understand. It's so hot in Houston and at Blaylock, we have big doors. So the air flows through at least and we have giant fans. At least it's like, you know, there's some airflow. He goes, Joe, I worked in a cinder block backed oven. Like the back of the garage was cinder blocks and it was west facing.

He's so funny how he thinks. I love my dad. It's west facing. And so the sunset and the heat of the day from three, you know, two to three to four to 5 p.m. And as instead of getting cooler, the sun is hitting the cinder blocks directly and baking me in that freaking box in the early 1980s. So, yes, air conditioning would make our guys fix the cars faster. And I'm like, wow, I just have I have so much respect for y'all because it is, it's tough, man. It's hot out there. And it is too, other than just like, wow, that would be awesome to see my company make that kind of, I don't know what it's going to cost, but I'm sure that is a massive- Like $100,000. Right. Like a lot of money. Like, you know, that investment, that's for us. You guys are doing that for us. But you do it for us for- That's right. For a few reasons. One, you like to win, but one, you like to make money. And we talk about this in training. It's like, pay your people what they're

worth, pay them, pay them what they're worth. Get people that are worth it and pay them what they're worth. And I can't, you know, we talk about this in training. I'm going to dovetail here, but it's like, is it low integrity to charge a super high price? No, it's not. Low integrity is doing something or saying something that you, are not doing something that you said you would or vice versa, lying to a customer. That's all integrity. Mm hmm. It is high integrity. It is, I think it's low integrity to charge your customers half of what you should be because you are having somebody else pay for it. And the person that's paying for it is the technicians and the people in the front of the house. And they don't have benefits. They don't have 401k. They don't have insurance. You know, they don't get to work in an air conditioned shop. They get paid, you know, no offense, the place that you were working previously

probably paid you less per hour. And they probably didn't have as good of a retirement program and so on and so forth. When your uniform wore out, it was probably harder to get a new one. You know we've got equipment and clean floors and amazing service advisors they get paid what they're worth, and we invest in payroll because it it's the it's the players on the field it is literally the players on the field and how can you expect to have a super bowl outcome with people that you're getting a good deal on, and so i'm you know like i'm so it's like hey patrick mahomes dude i know you just threw 37 touchdowns last year but like dude we're gonna pay you like 20k this year like it just doesn't like it doesn't work that he's getting paid 50 million dollars a year, to freaking throw bombs and hit bombs so anyway, you heard it from directly from josh like your prices are. If you're not charging the right price like you may feel like you're ripping

off your customers by continuing to raise the price it's you're ripping off your people if you're not charging the right prices because that money, in my opinion is we need to be profitable we need to make money so that we can stay around and everybody is money motivated and deserves to make a profit. You deserve to make money. My mom deserves to make money. However, that money has to be distributed to your team members, uh, so that they can go buy houses and freaking take care of their families. And I'm just so, if that doesn't give you conviction to charge the right price, I don't know what does. Yep. Oh yeah. And. And it'll, at least amongst technicians, paying technicians more, generally, there's exceptions to everything. It will improve the quality of their work. Yeah. When you, as a technician, when you feel like you're underpaid and this and that, your service advisors aren't selling work, you know, then all those things compound into bad attitude.

And you don't care about the car anymore. You don't care about the customer anymore. You know, you fix an oil leak. Are you going to clean up the oil that was leaking? No I'm not getting paid for that that's what you hear in a shop but when you can pay techs what they're worth and create an environment where they're proud and they know not feel like they know they're on the winning team. Yeah man I'm gonna clean up that oil it goes from feeling like a chore I'm not getting paid to do that to something I'm proud to do I mean it feels great to put out super high quality work and, it's this system that builds on itself. If I can pump out that quality of work, my service advisors. Can continue to execute what they're doing at a high level with confidence that the product they're selling is worth every penny we're charging. No, it's so true because I have always, I'm a salesman, I'm a service advisor by nature. You do not want me fixing your car.

I've always thought that like no offense I've always thought that the service advisor matters more than the technician because nothing happens unless something gets sold and the technician has to fix the car, and so like it's kind of chicken the egg but the chicken has to get burst the egg it's always in my head, the more I man the more I'm doing this it's like okay but try having no defense and like winning the Super Bowl it just doesn't like it's not a fair comparison they're two different things and, dude a stud technician like the sales go up Like when Michael Felix, shout out Michael Felix Studd, is about to throw the ball 50 yards down the field. And he knows that the person catching the ball is like an ace or whatever the analogy is, he's sending it. Like he is selling it with confidence. When you are, man, when you know that tech, when it's like, hey, will it be done today? Like what's Michael Felix's thought process? Like either, man,

like he's like, I don't know if it's going to be done today, right? Done the right way. But if it's you, he's like, yeah, it'll be done today. We'll get started on it right now. And he's going to sell more because you're going to produce, our other guys are going to produce and you need more hours and so he is going to in turn feel that confidence of like yes josh told me this is what it needs this is exactly what he needs, what it needs it's 99.08 accurate and he's going to fix it right and it's going to be quality so absolutely total investment 1,286 dollars i'm going to get started on right now versus, dude if technician sucks and they're freaking stripping anyway it's like you just don't feel as convicted that they're telling you the right information that you're selling the right stuff and that you're charging, twelve hundred dollars for i'm sorry a entry-level lower paid technician who's probably like it's it's maybe 70 chance that the car doesn't come about, you know?

And so it all works together. It all works together. Let's move on to, I don't know, just some other core pillars of the concept, any that you want to touch on. So we talk about answering the phones, we talk about marketing, we talk about recruiting, we talk about shop tours, we talk about the rack attack. You pick, what do you want to focus in on? Let's see. I mean, that's a lot of it. I mean, it really, the technician understanding, and the service advisors, the playbook. It's really that simple. I keep thinking about the body and the brain analogy. I mean, it's two halves to one goal. And when one side knows what the other side is doing, now something can happen. So let me, I'm going to interject here. I think we should talk about the rack attack. Because I get questions. Most people in the crowd that are owners, used to be a technician. It's like two-thirds of the industry that's an owner, started as a tech. My dad, Bill Broussard, Charlie, you know.

I didn't know it was that high. Yeah, it's like most people started as a technician. AJ Neely, shout out. Started as a technician. Some, like me, like Rob Eskew, like some of you other guys out there, didn't start as a technician, but most did. So every month, we're having to like unwind some of their bad habits in the inspection process. So I think we should talk about rack attack from a technician's perspective that utilizes the rack attack. So we inspect the cars in 15 minutes, we take pictures and videos, and we send it to a technician. And then the technician diagnoses what the customer came in for or just fixes the car if it was all gravy that came for an oil change for some reason every single month, it's like really hard for people to like just totally go away from the technicians are all individually diagnosing the cars right to we're gonna let the service advisors like start that process and then give it to the technician so can you

just give your perspective, as a tech what it's like on your end. The whole inspection slash diagnostic process. Right. It's outstanding. Good answer. Yeah. It's almost like, where was this? Where has this been? Because you made a comment earlier. It doesn't take a master technician to pull a wheel off and go, yep, it needs brakes. Yep. Or look at that strut. All the fluid is blown out of it and leaking down the body of the strut. Um and you know you guys you guys whenever there's something you're not an advisor is not sure about or whoever's running the speed rack. I get a call on the radio hey come look at this real quick i get to put my eyes on it and then it's real quick for me it's either yep this is what it is or hey this is something a technician needs to spend some time with and then it's that simple and then we communicate with, the customer see like i'm not then going into the waiting area and being like

hey, it needs 2,000 and we're just guessing. I'm saying, hey, a technician needs to look at it. You know, I'm going to hold it over on Sunday afternoon until Monday when he gets here and I'll update you in the morning and that's it. And like, usually if their car has some complicated issue, they're not like, worried about having to wait. You know, like they want it done right. Like if it's an oil change, there's nothing to diagnose. There's no check engine light. We're not going to pull codes. So if I communicate that your car needs tires, It's very easy for me to just tell you your car needs tires or your car needs rear shocks, right? If you come in with a check engine light or a noise concern or an air conditioning concern that has been finicky, You are not like expecting to leave the shop within five to ten minutes like you would at a fast line oil change place So it's very easy for me to basically

talk a customer into holding over until the technician can further diagnose it so. The story we tell in training, and Glenn made a great analogy this weekend, is give the same ticket to five different technicians and have them write it up, and you're going to get five different write-ups. Oh, you know, when he said that, I almost couldn't keep myself quiet back there because it is 100% true. Again, any technicians listening, you guys know what I'm talking about. You see oil leaking from somewhere. If it's a oil leak repair you're familiar with you know about what it pays you know how long it's going to take you you're writing it up you're telling your service advisor about it vice versa when it's, a pain in the rear end job electrical if it's not dripping on the floor yeah you know, you might not bring it up to anyone which because it's not gravy work and it creates inconsistency, bad you know that's not good service for the customer it's not honoring them.

Yeah so it's sketchy like it is and i i'm seeing it in your body language right now like, i understand it as a technician that works in a negative industry where you're literally just trying to make an income how you can have biases that impact your decision making and that doesn't make you a bad person if you're a technician listening to this and you're thinking oh my gosh i've totally uh, let my biases influence uh you know the safety of the customer i'm not here to condemn you, but, I'm here to tell you a story of, from my perspective as a service advisor and business owner, uh, is I was underneath a car one time. I don't, I don't even remember this story exactly right. I've told it so many times, but it's, I can't, I'm losing the details, but it generally goes something like this. I'm underneath the car, and I'm at the rack attack, and I pull a technician over, and I'm like, what do you think? Oil pan leaking, something like that, okay?

And I don't know the schematics of how hard it is. I'm not familiar with how many hours it pays or how many hours it is. I'm just like, hey, oil coming out of the oil pan, borderline between sleep and leak, what do you think? And if you have to ask, by the way, it's probably not leaking, but you know, I pull him over and he says, he looks at me and he goes. I'm going to over-exaggerate the accent here. Okay. He goes, four o'clock on a Friday, keep an eye on it. It's like, dude, and it's like a light bulb moment. It's like, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay. So we're the emergency room and customer just came in with some sort of mass on their MRI or x-ray. And it's four o'clock on a Friday and the doctor's like, you know what, dude? I'm trying to get out of here. So just go ahead and keep an eye on it and come back Monday or like, or whatever. I'll see you next oil change. You're crazy. Like, dude, what do you mean keep an eye on it,

dude? I'm not trying to get to the Red Sox game after work. Like I'm trying to make sure my customers are taken care of. And so you are leaving the safety of your customers' vehicles up to the mood of, And time of week for the technician riding up the car. And so that's why we inspect the cars on the front end. I mean, I'm over here just laughing and grinning because it is so true. So, so true. And yeah, so by having the speed rack process, by having one guy running it, some GSs up there, service advisors involved with the car that they're going to be selling. It creates consistency. It holds up integrity. It's um it's all around a great process and as a technician it's it's beautiful i'll never be able to work in another shop that doesn't have the rack attack process yeah i mean to think of going back to, customer drops off a car and a service advisor writes something down on a piece of paper and then it goes straight to a technician yeah it just doesn't make

sense anymore and you're putting an ipad underneath the car and taking 57 pictures see it just doesn't make sense so So, to anybody who's not familiar with the ragtag, it's very simple. The car comes in. We look under the hood, inspect it. We take, you know, just like the doctor at the emergency room, like the people at the front, before the doctor comes in, they're going to take your blood pressure. They're going to weigh you, put their, you know, stethoscope on you, make you go, ah. Get your history. Yeah, they're going to. Yeah, exactly. Like Carfax. They're going to look at your history, your charts. And then the doctor comes in and he looks at your little PMI and he's like, so you broke your wrist today. Like what, you know, what happened? and then he starts to like basically diagnose you and then he orders the x-ray or you know puts his hands on your wrist and tries to figure it out whatever it's the same way with the car we look under

the hood we take a picture of the filters in the battery whatever we look at the belt, no leaks great nothing's probably wrong check engine mounts if they didn't come in for anything i'm just gonna like scan under the hood to see if i can find something that's unsafe and guess what most cars like. Most cars have something that is broken on them, but most of the things on cars are generally in good shape. Like these cars have a hundred thousand parts on them and I'm looking for like one or two bad parts. Like most of it is solid. Okay. Next, I'm going to lift the car up. I'm going to shake it down. I'm going to check the brakes. I'm going to go all the way up. I'm going to go front to back. I'm going to look for any unsafe items on the vehicle and then I'm going to keep it moving. I'm going to identify all the broken things on the car. That's going to be tires, brakes, and hypothetically rear shocks.

I'm going to take pictures of all of them. And in 15 minutes, I've inspected the whole car visually and I get to dispatch the car to the parking lot. Then I call the customer and I sell the three things. And let's say that's a 13 hour ticket with all the fluids, maintenance, stuff against the history for Josh. You know, on Monday, I order all the parts. Monday when he gets here, Josh is working on other stuff. I push the parts over to his bay and I say, hey, go ahead and knock this out. And let me interrupt. That's it. All of that until he said my name josh i wasn't involved yeah with any of it and you don't have to be distracted from another job that you're currently working on yeah like hey i know you're working on this gravy job and your hands are literally in the like you're underneath the hood right now but can i pull you off of that job and have you do a dvi and i'm also not going to pay you for the dvi unless the

job sells it's like no wonder my linkedin is just covered in should tax get paid for you guys. What we do is the car is only tied up on a bay for 15 minutes. Or it's being worked on. In the industry, a car gets dispatched immediately to a technician, check the brakes, pull the wheels off. Yep, it needs brakes. Okay, time's ticking. And then Josh goes back to whatever he was already working on. Service advisor comes out. They bought the brakes. Okay, Josh goes ahead with the rest of the DVI that takes 45 minutes. He waits on the parts to get there. He puts the brakes on the car. He, you know, gives the DVI to the service advisor car still sitting on the rack still sitting on the rack the service advisor maybe sells all the rest of it let's say he does waits on the parts waits on the parts starts fixing it waits on more parts starts fixing it, the 13-hour job was on the rack for 13 hours, The other important thing for anyone listening that might not have put this

together yet, the speed racks are on dedicated racks. Yeah. They're their own dedicated racks. So when vehicles come to my bays as a technician, there's no checkout time, right? I've got a cart with parts on it. I'm pulling cars in, fixing, pulling them out. Diagnosing too, pulling stuff in, diagnosing. But there's no checkout happening in any of my bays. There's just work work is all that's happening in my base like imagine if you're listening to this. If you're listening to this and you work for another shop in houston and you would like to work at our shop come work for our shop apply online no that's a shameless plug auto shop recruiting but seriously imagine working in a shop where like literally all you do is fix the car, like and for 10 hours a day like 10 hours a day you're working on gravy how many hours could you produce in a day 30 you know like 20 or 30 like versus 10 and that's how you get a shop like Charlie's got four bays,

two lifts, excuse me, two bays, four lifts in Watertown, Massachusetts. And they did 460,000, which I don't know how many in a month, which I don't know how many technician hours that is, but I bet he can feed more techs than your average two bay, four lift shop. So let's keep moving. Other core pillars of the concept, shop tour, you know, let's talk about that. So what's your perspective as a technician? You experience shop tour every day. You've seen it now. Give me your thoughts. Let's keep reading. Well, I can tell you before for being here, customers in the shop as a technician is not, that's not something most technicians want. Correct. You know, we don't want customers in the shop. It's. It doesn't feel good. Get them out. Here now at Adams Automotive, you know, my bays are right near the office door where the shop tour starts. And I am excited almost, certainly proud when shop tours happen because that

customer is coming out with a service advisor. I can hear the service advisor telling them about our warranty and showing them our shop. And you can see these customers' faces are looking around. They're looking at our beautiful, blue, clean floors, and they're just caught off guard and surprised. They've never seen anything like it. And then the tour continues a little, and they get to my toolbox, and service advisor will, you know, if I'm not completely buried in something, will introduce me. And I get to see some of my customers. I get to smile at them, and they see my workspace, that it's clean and orderly and something I take pride in. Can I interrupt you? Yes. Everybody asks all the time, they're like, how do you get the techs to keep their place clean? And I'm like, dude, get techs that take pride in their work. So give me your thoughts on how important it is to keep the shop clean, especially during the shop tour and how you think about your office.

So, I mean, I've always been someone that was pretty proud of my work. But what happens is, and I can see because the pride I take in my work, the base level of pride I have didn't change too much from my last shop to here. But the environment i stepped into did change right right so, you know it's like you know it's easier to keep your room clean if you always keep your room clean so there's there's kind of a standard here in expectation and you step into that you see it and it's like all right let's go, back to the idea of winning team this is what a winning shop looks like um i get to be a part of it and i'm gonna i'm gonna be a part of it and you're like i don't want to be the weakest link Yes, right. Who wants to show up to an environment like this and have a sloppy mess around their bays? You stick out like a sore thumb. The last part of it is... Understanding that that shop tour gets me hours yeah i'm getting paid to be

clean it puts money in my paycheck um and same thing with, being accurate with diagnosing now my service advisors can sell with so much more confidence if i'm keeping my part of the shop clean these service advisors can pull our customers out on a shop tour, with so much confidence and it's just it's a special thing to see. And as technicians, again, I'll talk to the technicians out there. It's really easy for us to separate the car from the person. A lot of times we don't see the customer. We don't know their name. It's just a car and some hours. So those shop tours give me a little bit of putting faces. All kinds of different people and faces and people families on shop tours. And so. Given what I do, that bit of personal connection, and it's not a lot. It's just a little bit, but that's all it takes to have that little bit of personal connection. There's a real human with a family and a job and their own hobbies

and stuff they do for fun. It's going to get in this car when I'm done with it. And I want to take care of them. There's like a car seat in the back. Yeah, a car seat in the back. Like, oh my God, there's going to be a kid in this car. I need to lock in here. You know, not that you have to log in. It's like just a sense of pride. I'm going to take care of this guy's car. It helps you go the extra mile and at the end of day, enjoy your work more. I enjoy my work more. What about Sunday? You know, the Sunday day of Key2Key is mostly about auto shop callbacks, calling the customers to get them back in. You know, we talked a lot about this new concept. We're thinking about hospitality marketing, just take care of the customer, you know, retain them. We talked about Carfax and looking at their history and using moto visuals and pictures and videos did you enjoy the technician videos from the dealership oh that was so funny right it's crazy I mean.

You have no idea. It's so funny out there. Yeah. Like, because that's, it's not the technician's fault. I mean, you see that. It's not. It goes back to what we've been talking about the whole time, is it's some technician who's like, F my manager who's sitting in the AC, excuse my language, or my, whatever. And he's like, whatever, I'm just going to do this because my boss wants me to. I'm not getting paid for it. I'm not getting paid, yeah. This is not, and I think you said it too. Technicians, we did not get into this. To take videos. To be videographers. Yeah. We got in this because we like getting our hands dirty and the challenge and getting something fixed, you know? And someone, you know, you might go to school or not, or you learn from an uncle or something. You're like, yeah, I could do this. And then you show up and they're like, yeah, here's an iPad and a 57-point inspection. We need you to do this on every

car. And it's like, well, we're not paying you for it. And you're like, what? Yeah. So, you know, putting together a really good presentation for the customer, it is the sale. It is the way that you communicate. And ultimately, technicians like fixing cars. Like you said it. And also touch on this because the next section was margin. You know, we talk about repair pal, gross profit, charging in the right price. And I spoke on that earlier. So I'll move quickly through this. But my dad's got this rule and he's a technician. And you said it. Technicians like the challenge. So I'll transition out of motoviduals and videos. Obviously, we do a great job in the front of the house. Glenn and the team. They train so well to take good quality videos for the technicians. Sometimes we have to protect technicians from themselves. And I truly believe this because my dad's got this rule. He says, emotional satisfaction as a tech, emotional satisfaction is fine,

but it doesn't show up on the bottom line. And what that means is avoid non-gravy work. And it's like basically, you know, it might feel good to win the challenge and win the battle, but it doesn't show up on the bottom line. It doesn't pay because scratching your head and going back and asking the you know being the shop that fixes the car that's been in six other shops for a year and they've been chasing this whatever. And you know it's a cannibalized car is what glenn call or what todd calls it we call it tng, it's like a car it's really a repair that you shouldn't be doing tng or cars that are highly modified or like rebuilding a transmission or like, yeah exactly non-gravy garbage work it might feel good to conquer that as a technician, but we're not selling. This is what I want you. I haven't even talked to you about this outside of the podcast. We are literally not even selling car repair. Like we are selling the feeling

of hospitality to the customer. Like we're called the auto hospitality group. So what are they paying for? They are literally not paying for the car to be fixed. They're paying for the car to be fixed plus the feeling of peace of mind. No matter what, 365 days a year, they're covered by amazing people who are going to stand behind their warranty. They won't even need the warranty because it's quality work. But at the end of the day, like, that's not even our product. Our product is not car repair. Our product is auto hospitality. And it might feel good to, like, be 15 hours into this car and, like, finally figure it out. And I've watched you kind of, like, it's exciting and satisfying to finally figure it out. But it's frustrating too because you're like dude my my paycheck's like not, it's gonna be affected by this so do you want to um do you have any thoughts on that like working on the right stuff as a shop and that it's okay to be,

i heard somebody this weekend he goes well how do you defend about he goes how do you defend against people being, people calling you a soft shop that's what he said and i was like like he was joking yeah but i knew what he meant because it's like oh you're you're money motivated like it's all about the money to you and i'm like yeah it is all about the money because at the end of the day i need money to freaking buy ac for the techs to work in yeah like i it might feel good for the techs in the moment to be emotionally satisfied in solving this crazy problem but two weeks later when payrolls come around they're gonna be like hey man i didn't get enough hours this week. And it's like almost like i'm not saying i have to protect you i'm not in charge of you but but you gotta you gotta keep you yeah i do Mr. Perry couldn't have been more right. I fall victim to it. And since I've been here, and that's been pointed out to me,

I mean, I've heard you say that quote before, I see it in myself. And it's something I've been working on. Because it is 100% true. And yeah, it's not about being a soft shop. It's about being able to identify people, you know, a vehicle or a problem where it just doesn't make sense to pursue it. If it's your project vehicle, it's different. Go for it. But if it's a customer's actual vehicle and they have to actually pay for the diagnostic time in addition and they have to actually pay for the expensive repair, and it's TNG and it could come back and they could have to spend more on it, like, we're not selling the repair. We're selling that customer. And their experience and so what i mean by that is like sometimes the vehicle is worth getting rid of and sometimes as a technician it's hard to know when that time is because you're like oh i could fix it yeah you know like i could keep this thing running forever,

and it's like that's kind of like your best quality is i can fix anything but also, because you're not seeing the customer experience sometimes like, you can kind of become uh callous to like this oh this i can keep it running forever but retail a retail customer is going to have to pay like eleven thousand dollars to get to keep it going and it's pretty highly likely that it's just going to come back in six months and they're going to need another seven thousand you know what analogy it makes me think of and we use it for parts right, you don't you don't bring your own steak to the steakhouse right right but it could almost same analogy could be used here not with the customer bringing their own steak but sometimes chasing, you know these kinds of problems if you could compare it to cooking a bad cheap steak yeah right if you start with a cheap steak, no matter how you cook it you're not going to end up with a five-star steak

delay you know like it's just not going to happen not going to work out and, and um yeah we put out five-star steaks here yeah that's right and customers pay you know and like we don't want customers to pay for one-star steaks and yeah okay so i have one more topic I want to cover. We're supposed to be up on time, but I don't care. We're going to go a little long. Flat rate. This is a debate in the industry that we kind of just ignore typically because we're not really on Facebook. We're not really on LinkedIn as much as we should be. I'm not in the comments, you know. But there's this big debate on like flat rate being stupid. And I just generally haven't messed with it in our company because, there's so many other things that I think are just like more pressing, you know, like Like air conditioning the shops, like training service advisors, recruiting, all that marketing to get more leads and getting better at the phones,

accounting. But. And flat rate's like just kind of the incumbent, like it's always been that way. And, you know, so why change it? It would be a big, it would be a big, uh, ask to kind of rewire all of the technicians in our company's mind to like, kind of think about the way they get paid differently, but flat rate commission pay. Give me your thoughts. Well, it's what we've talked about before outside of here is it, um, it very clearly incentivizes one thing and it's banging out as many hours as you can. And and you know in some shops they'll backflag guys but you know we don't we don't do that here and so and a lot of shops don't and that's a whole nother conversation, but it it doesn't incentivize financially doesn't incentivize that quality the kind of quality we've been talking about, so you end up with the only thing you're banking on um to get quality work out of your techs is what we've been talking about, the pride and feeling good and

one, to be a winning superstar, all-star technician. But, you know, that stuff can fade and, you know, go up and go down. So, what we've been talking about is figuring out some way to measure, monitor, track, rechecks, comebacks, and then create some sort of scorecard. Some sort of scorecard, yep. How do you score yourself? Like, when you go to 99.08%, like, what do you, how do you define terms? So, I have a tick box for recheck. It's a spreadsheet. It's just, yep. So you've had two all year. I've had two so far since January 1st. But how do you define recheck? Like it could be the part. So my spreadsheet, after clicking the recheck box, then there's three categories a recheck can go into. Either parts, meaning there was a part failure. Okay. And that's really uncommon. Neither one of my rechecks are due to parts failure because we use quality parts, which also as a technician and technicians out there,

we all know how good it feels when the shop gets you a good quality part and how bad it feels when they get you a low quality part yeah other new different topic it's not worth it pay extra for the good part charge for it you know so it's either a parts failure, um a misdiagnosis meaning i looked into a problem i said replacing this part will fix it and it didn't. Or a labor issue Meaning the diagnosis was correct, had the right part, but the actual job, the actual replacement of the part... Somehow went wrong. Sorry, I interrupted. No, go ahead. So do you think most technicians, they struggle with diagnosis or execution? Because it's basically you diagnose it, but you put the part on wrong, or you misdiagnose it, and you put the part on right. Right. Or it's the part, but it's rarely the part if we're using quality parts. If we're using quality parts, yeah, we can almost eliminate that one. You know, Joe, I would say across the industry, I bet it's close to 50-50. Really?

Yep. Okay. Lack of training on actually how to execute the repair and lack of training on how to diagnose. Let me clarify that a little bit. The labor rechecks are not necessarily going to be, okay, so diagnose a bad ABS module. It's not going to be that you didn't install the ABS module correctly. It's going to be that, you know, you didn't tighten, retighten one of the brake lines enough and it comes back leaking brake fluid. Okay. Does that make sense? Or leaving something loose, some scenario like that. You know what's crazy? When you say ABS module, I don't even know what that looks like. Computer that controls the brakes. We were talking before about this story my dad had. We have a treadmill at our house, and I am not a mechanical person. I just literally do not understand it. Mm-hmm. I'm a salesperson. Like I can, I can like maneuver my way through a conversation, like more effortlessly than I can some other areas of my life,

like fixing stuff around the house. And I was trying to fix this treadmill, dude. And I just couldn't figure it out for like an app, like literally an hour. I'm like taking pictures of it, putting it in chat. I'm like, dude, how do I fix the belt? Keeps sliding to the left. Like, you know what I'm talking about? Yep. And I just gave up my ego. Finally, I was like, dad, can you help me, man? This is like six months ago and he puts the little wrench thing on he puts his hands on it the little adjuster and it's like he could see through the entire machine and he instantly it's like he had see-through vision he could see how it worked mechanically in his head, and he was just like oh you just do this and it was crazy it was like literally 15 seconds dude it was like instantaneous so anyway you were saying earlier your brain your brain thinks like that right I'm 100% with your dad there. Everyone's probably seen at some point a cross-sectional diagram or something

in a textbook or whatever. Yeah, as technicians, we kind of, at least myself, I know some other guys I've talked to also. We look at stuff in the world around us and it's like my brain can cross section something yeah and see no way yes wait that's crazy and as i'm as i'm driving a vehicle like if i'm listening for a noise you're thinking in pictures in my head i've got a visual model like moto visuals i've got moto visuals in my head and i can see the pieces moving and okay i hit a bump in that way what piece would have moved how dude okay this is. We're side noting into like psychology but I've heard of stories of people who don't have like an internal narrator. Right. They see in picture. I've heard of people that are mute or something. They dream in pictures of sign language. Visually. Like it's pictures of hands doing sign language. Wow. Like that's so crazy. So you're telling me that my brain, my brain is wired for like, I think it's literally just words coming across my screen.

And I'm just like talking faster than my mouth can like keep up sometimes. I'm a talker. And it gets me in trouble sometimes. But you're saying your brain literally is like more like pictures of schematics when you're trying to like. But it's the data that you've ingested into your brain's model for the last 10 years is like you've been staring at schematics of on all data or whatever. That's so crazy. So you can literally see it. It's like a picture in your head. It does. Whoa. Okay. So 50% of the time they can't see the picture in their head. So they misdiagnose it. And 50% of the time they put the part on the car, but some other downstream effect, like a brake line being tight, kind of. Sloppy. Sloppy work. That would be the kind of the labor category of a recheck is someone was sloppy. That's usually what it is. So what I think is valuable for the people is you have managed to be accurate 99.08% of the time. So you have a step-by-step process

that you use to diagnose cars. Walk me through that. Yeah, so the first step is, it's really about information gathering, right? We work on pretty much every make and model here. So it's not like I'm a dealership guy where I can learn and tell you off the top of my head that GM LAN systems use a green wire. I think that is true, but besides the point. I know what some of those words mean. So a lot of what I'm doing, especially the diagnosing side, the first thing I'm doing is gathering information, right? I'm looking at wiring diagrams. I'm understanding if I have codes, exactly what the set criteria is. It's essentially the idea that you can't fix something if you don't know how it's supposed to work in the first place. So we've got our information gathering step. That also would include scanning the vehicle, searching for TSBs. Talking to the service advisor. Talking to the service advisor, making sure I understand the complaint, exactly what's going on.

From there, if it's not something that's like a vehicle won't start, I must replicate the customer's concern. Whether it's a noise or runs rough sometimes, I have to experience the customer's complaint. Without that step, and a lot of guys skip it, without it, you're guessing. Yeah, you're throwing a part at it. Yep, you're throwing a part at it. So verify concern would be the next step. Okay, so step one is gather information. Step two is verify concern. Verify concern. Okay. Yep. From there... You know, you could list some steps, but from there with experience, you kind of start, it's build a test plan, right? Like triage. Like if it's doing this, it's not that. X that off the list. If it's doing this, it might be this. Then you do the, it's like basically if this, do that. Yeah, that's the point we're going to say, you know, I've experienced the concern. I've done my research. The next best step is to go ahead and throw a fuel pressure gauge on it.

Yeah. Right? And that comes with experience and whatnot. So now you're testing. And now we're looking for a test that can demonstrate pinpoint failure. So here's what I get excited about. How long does the gathering of the information take? Oh, it can take anywhere from a few minutes to 30 minutes. And where do you gather the information? Like, let's be your very first principles in our thinking. So where do you look first my main sources are going to be all data no no before that like what it would probably be the it would be the service the service advisor whatever so the line on the customer concerns line and, if you're a technician you're listening to this it's like c-e-l that's what it says on the customer concerns line but there was like a 10 minute conversation yes and uh the service advisor took terrible notes so um, so number one is like, like try to find the source of truth basically from the customer through the

service advisor through TechMetric Yep into your brain Yep Okay so that's step one gathering information where else do you look? Um, history, our internal history and car facts. So what parts have we put on the car? Or other people have put on it. Or anyone else has put on it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. The number of times that you can connect a, you know, someone left a ground loose, whatever. We've seen plenty of that. Um, then from there, I'm moving towards the vehicle. Yeah. I'm scanning for codes. Oh yeah. Yeah. Sources for codes. I'm searching through TSBs, recalls, that kind of low hanging. Your own brain. Yeah. My own brain. that kind of low-hanging fruit stuff, right? I mean, boy, there's nothing better than having some weird codes and a weird issue and boom, a TSB for the exact symptoms pops right up and we can just start moving forward. But that research takes time and not every source, TechMetric,

all data, they don't seem to all perfectly have all the TSB. So you're searching each one of these databases. Yeah, IATN, Mitchell. Yep. So I'm going to try, I've been literally talking Mike Quinn and Michael Floyd and your Josh's ear off for the last week about helping people, technicians diagnose cars with ai and i do not just mean i do not just mean come to our ai class you have to come to it if you're listening to this it's literally going to take your job if you don't start using it it's crazy um. Or somebody who uses it is going to take your job um and that's kind of scary to think about it's really like crazy but i believe it it's so transformational and i'm about to walk you through a use case for how intense this technology is so, those things that josh is determining talking about like checking vehicle history, is actually just him moving a mouse around on tech metric and clicking a bunch of buttons

and like clicking summary and then clicking the customer's like name in the hyper blue hyperlink and then it takes him to the profile and then clicking to the repair order from four months ago and then the one from nine months ago, and then your brain ingesting the data on those tabs, into your mental model for like okay okay, it was here six months ago and we put a fuel pressure switch, whatever that is, I don't know what that is, on the car and it didn't fix the check engine line or they came back and now they're with this symptom. Like that's just you clicking buttons on a screen to extract data out of the computer and put it in your brain. And there's a lot of data that's not useful. So there's a lot of just sifting and filtering for what matters. Going to the, okay, now let's go to the front counter. Going to talk to a service advisor It's like a game of telephone. It's like, hey, I know you were talking to 50 other people in the last five

hours and this car came in four hours ago and I just got to it and I'm diagnosing it. And it says on the ticket that we have till the end of the week, but whatever. Can you go ahead and remember exactly? Could you either take notes or remember exactly what the customer said, like verbatim? And then you have to get that information out of the service advisor's brain and put it in your brain or in your process. And then you have to go click around on TSBs on all data. I think it could take 30 minutes. Like in my head, it's like 30 minutes on average in order to properly diagnose the car if you do not have a lot of experience. Like you probably get to skip a lot of steps because you're 10, 15 years into this and you just like, you're like, oh, I've been here before and you can do it. But if you had to follow all the steps every single time and like go down the TSB, like you don't need to go into a TSB rabbit hole if it's like leaking rear

shocks, which is why we love gravy. But if it's a check engine light, you know, you might like, the first time I heard about a TSB was my dad had a stutter in his transmission on the CTSV. Do you know what, you know about this? He- Tor converter? I don't know. He did three transmission flushes in a row and it fixed it. And there was a TSB on it. So crazy. So anyway. All of those things, that collecting of information is, there's a bottleneck of friction from the human getting that information from the multiple sources, which is going to be the human's brain at the front counter, the customer's brain, the TSBs, TechMetric, History, Carfax History, and so on and so forth, and their own brain. So there's like six data sources there, and AI can do all of it, dude. It's crazy. AI can extract all that information immediately. And so what do I mean by that? You know we've got api connectors if you don't know what an api connector is

it's software it's a software api key it's a key that makes one software talk to another okay so we've got apis from our phone system so i've got all the transcripts this is sick dude all the transcripts of everything that mr i'm not gonna say his last name the cadillac you know what car i'm talking about yeah, mr jones i'm gonna call mr jones he's had his cadillac in the shop and we're the only, that's worked on it since like 2015. I was looking at his profile the other day. So I have all the history internally rather than, Rather than click around and try to play telephone and get that information out of Glenn Pickle's brain. I can literally listen to all the transcripts from that phone number in our system for the last million years, and it's remembered perfectly. And I can store that in his customer profile. And then I can record the conversation at the front counter and do the exact same thing. And then I can get the API from TechMetric and I can pull the data out of TechMetric

and summarize it in front of Josh's face. And basically, it'll recognize patterns and it'll sift through it all instantly. And then I can have the API from the TSB boards and I can have my agents go look through all that stuff. And essentially, you've got agents via API connectors in ChatGPT or whatever you use going into, the world of phones and pulling all the transcripts, going into the world of front counter transcripts and pulling information, going into the world of TechMetric and the agents scrub the data and pull it back, and then going into the world of TSPs and scrub it back and processing it with basically your... Process for how you diagnose cars yep and and i remember showing you this yeah and you put your hands on your head and you were like you were like oh my god, you're like you're you're telling me i just have to fix cars now right you can't stop smiling because it's this whole first it's the pain this whole first step

of process can just kind of be wrapped up with a bow on a silver platter just kind of, handed to me like can you imagine a world immediately can you imagine a world where the car comes into the bay we pmi at 15 minutes and we do the whole thing all the pictures are taken and by the time it gets to you, there has been a chat gpt deep research that has looked in the phones looked at the front counter transcript looked at all the history looked at carfax looked online for all the tsbs the entire internet. Cross-reference all of it with some rando pattern thing that you'd have to sift through all oh the check engine light is on because of this thing that we put on their car eight months ago. Oh, we didn't tighten that one thing. And that led to this. Can you tell I don't know about cars? I don't, I'm just like- You're doing fine. Keep going. But anyway, give me your thoughts. If there's throw on top of that

too, y'all are pulling codes, taking pictures of the scanner and putting that in TechMetric. So if there's any codes or anything, it's also got that. Yeah, it's already got the code. By the time the vehicle gets to me and I've just, yeah, I get this nice little information blurb handed to me with a ticket. All of that, all of that pulled together, sifted through, no pieces missed. Yeah. Because, boy, I mean, I'm not perfect. I've definitely missed some information and started testing and gone down a rabbit hole and been like, wait, things don't make sense. Go back to the research phase, catch something. Oh, there it is, wasted hours. An AI model wouldn't do that. Yeah, it's crazy, bro. And to have all that just kind of handed to me. To get started testing would be a phenomenal tool. You could track at scale because the only reason I trust your 99.08% accuracy rate is because... I'm not saying other people don't have high integrity, but I know that you are

like, in your own words, nutty about this kind of thing. Like you are, you're not doing it to brag. You're doing it to like, know your level and compete against yourself. And I trust that you are like, you would have integrity to be like, no, I missed that one. Whereas maybe some guys wouldn't. And so the idea is flat rate. This is the whole point of the conversation before I started nerding out about ai, flat rate only incentivizes speed and let's do math you have a 99 right there's probably a lot of good technicians that are three times as fast as you that have like 80 right right, they make more money because they're just like even if they backflag those hours it's like oh well i can produce three times 80 that's 240 and he can produce 99, because Because I'm literally just, it's going to make me more money to just throw the part at the car. And eight or nine times out of 10, I can just go on to the next one and the

car is not going to come back. And even if I have to come back and fix the recheck, it doesn't really bother me because it doesn't affect me and the company's going to pay for it and the customer, I don't know the customer, so I don't care about them. One of the other things too is a lot of shops, vehicle comes back, they don't give it back to the same guy. The thinking is, he got it wrong the first time. Yes. Who's better than him? Let's move it up. so now you've really reinforced to a technician that they don't need to get it doesn't matter yes and so the idea is how do you incentivize accuracy and previously pre-ai i don't think there was a way to do it like you would have to not without huge resources you'd need to make it someone's full-time job you'd have to trust the tech you'd have to trust what he actually oh no i didn't diagnose with that i did this or it just the part no it was a part it was a bad part you guys put a bad part in the car

or the service advisor misremembering it oh you didn't tell me that, you know, but now AI is like a million armies of bots that are just like listening. It's like a police state. It's kind of sketchy, honestly, but it's like a, it's so cool, dude. And Matt, if the data is all clean, that's the thing. Like if the data is clean. We'll know we like if the data is clean and the data for diagnosing a car is pretty much customer's experience, historical, you know, database of what we've done and what other shops have done your brain. And then what's online about this and with AI, I'm pretty sure we can just get all that clean data into our model, which is, you know, what we run over the car, you know, before you even look at it. And then it gives you the information before you even diagnose it. And then now if you misdiagnose it. It's you. It's like you didn't use the information or you got lazy or you threw

a part at it or you didn't execute the repair. And so I could stand behind. This guy's got an 84.6, you know, recheck rate or not recheck rate. And so therefore I would incentivize him like either quarterly or via his flat rate. Like, hey, man, if you take these little modules or if you listen to our – if you don't go and get your certifications and you can get to an 85 or a 90% recheck rate or lack thereof, lack of recheck rate, you can get a raise or you can get a quarterly bonus because you crushed it this quarter. You did 97%. You deserve an incentive. And in my head that's the dude the customer getting a 99.08 fixed car, like i'm never getting a pen it's like never having any penalties that's what it is yeah the recheck is a penalty it's like everything went great, you know customers happy five-star review and you see the yellow flag on the bottom of the screen and you're watching for those of you who are playing fantasy

football this fall it's like oh my god my player just scored 13 points and then it's like holding 15 yard penalty we're back where we started and it's actually even worse right like that's the analogy right the recheck is, offensive pass interference or defensive pass interference it's like the worst possible thing that can happen for your team um. And so anyway i we've been talking for a long time but i have i am dreaming of a world where technicians are. Compensated for speed but also accuracy and i believe ai can take us there the other thing too is technicians are generally competitive so you know there's there's an option there to you know, you know have it have a board post everyone's rates how sick would that be and now you got guys you know competing to be as accurate as possible for yeah financial incentive absolutely but bragging rights man yeah i mean who doesn't want to say yeah look at me

top of the board i'm the most accurate technician for this quarter dude imagine like having duolingo on your app on your phone, it's like hey like you're at an 84.6 take these classes like it's like you're learning spanish you know it's like hey you need to do this this and this to like get better at diagnosing this and this like anyway i think we're up on time by 22 minutes this has been another episode of master detective millionaire josh you're the man do you have any closing thoughts um, about just like the concept auto shop answers key to key working at Adams um if not that's fine I can just take us home I mean I'm super proud to be here let's go and um, shop owners and managers bring your technicians in to the full circle yeah bring everyone into the playbook and um let it feel like a like a team effort. That's what I would say. Well, that's the pod. Hey, come check us out in Houston, Texas. Come see the operation. We're running a million-dollar-a-month shop.

I think we did $3.5 million last month in July with some really good net, and we use that net to take care of people and feed technicians, and we're having a whole lot of fun. So that's the pod. We'll see you next time. For more information, reach out to Todd Westerlin at 925-980-8012 or visit AutoshopAnswers.com. You can get more information about key-to-key-to-callbacks, courtside. We have a VIP Rack Attack Day where you spend an entire day in the trenches with our team, learning this perfected business model. We offer leadership classes. We have an AI academy. And also get more information about auto shop callbacks. We have auto tech training. We are literally your one-stop shop. Once again, that number for Todd Westerland is 925-980-8012.