Hire Hammers, Build Champions: Inside Auto Hospitality’s Recruiting Playbook

What's up, players? Good morning from Adams Automotive, the number one shop in America. This is Joe Adams with Master Tech to Millionaire. Uh, we're gonna do an episode today on the hot topic in our company right now at the Auto Hospitality Group, and that is recruiting. Now, what we've been talking about a lot lately is every single company is the same. We've been perfecting the business model for 40 years, but none of it matters if we don't have extremely high leverage, high quality people. I don't care how good your MotoVisuals are, your concept, your marketing, your accounting, your back office— if there is no amount of quality people in the business, recruiting is ultimately the bottleneck. And at the end of the day, we are just a handful of amazing people from taking us to the next level. So I'm here with none other than the GOAT himself, the CEO, the chairman, the founder of the platform. How you doing, Mr. Hayes? What's up, Joe? Superstar,

let's go! So Todd, I want to get right into it. Basically, you have been recruiting for a very long time. Are you pretty I want to hear— and I know the story, but I want the folks to hear on the podcast— you learned to recruit at a very young age. So I want, I want you to tell a story, man. How did— 26 years old. How'd you learn how to do it? Joe loves this story, um, and it is, um, down-and-dirty entrepreneurship. I was 26 years old, I launched my first company, and my first 2 technicians, one was an alcoholic And one was a chronic alcoholic. And that is the truth. I'll never— once one guy's name was Ivan and, and the other guy's name was Tim. And we said he had the Polynesian syndrome. That means he would make just enough money throughout the week and they wouldn't show up anymore because they're going to get drunk. And it was like, oh man, you know, you're 26 years old, you don't know how to fix cars. You've launched this great— this is

great company, Mobile Car Care. And, you know, one day I show up, um, shout out to Eric Griggers, um, who is 101, right? Yeah, employee number 1. Um, still love Eric so much. He's out of Houston, um, and he's just a wonderful guy. But, um, hey, oh, Eric's been around. He was around a long time, so he knows all these stories. But, um, one day we show up for work and we have no technicians. Both of them are gone. Now this is your first location, right? 1986. I just opened. It was a BFGoodrich 6-bay, so you got 2 technicians and I, I I'd bought out a BF Goodrich. And you're 0 for 2, they're both gone. They're both gone. And I don't know how to fix cars. And I got Eric, who's a GS, who, um, who I'm like, oh boy. And we were busy, you know. We, we, we, we came out very strong even with our first store because we knew how to advertise. Early to bed, early to rise, work like heck and advertise. And so even when that first Valassis—

it was called Advil at that time— shared mail piece dropped, man, we were busy. And so, you I have cars in the lot, cars in my bay, I have technicians. I'm like, oh boy, this is ugly. And so, um, you know, it must have been about noon when Ivan shows up for work. You know, can I chime in? I also want to paint the— is this 2 weeks in, 4 weeks in? This is like probably within the first 90 days. So, you know, you got to paint the picture for those of you that are not informed, which is you got a loan from your father-in-law, you got all your money on the line, you don't know how to fix cars, you saved up money for 4 years as a manager of Goodyear stores and an independent. And you told me one time, you're like, Joe, 2 weeks in, I had a day in revenue where I did $15. Yeah, $14.95. And I, I got one $25 alignment, and he came in with a coupon. And so you're on the— not that you're on the mat, you were successful quickly,

but you don't know how to fix a car. But no, everybody has to hear— it's a great story. It's in that very beginning period, man. Beginning period. I don't care who you are, right? I had a great business plan, a great mentor. We had plenty of money. You know, we did have money set aside for working capital. And I was very confident myself. But, you know, if you— anyone who opens up their own business, I'll tell you, if you're not scared, they're lying. You're lying. You know, they're lying. It's scary. I mean, no matter what is scary. So you're scared and you got a car torn apart and you got a drunk tech and a chronically drunk tech. So walk me through the story. So, so they're getting so About noon, Ivan shows up. I'm gonna tell it just the way it was, you know. I'm like, oh my God, thank God you, you ran. Like, you know, I ran up and hugged him like, oh my God, you're here. And it was so funny. I go,

Ivan, what happened? He goes, well, hold on, this, this is a Christian-based podcast, so let's keep it clean. True story. There was a bar called the Gunny Shack. And the Gunny Shack was out in Spring, Texas. And he goes, man, I'll be honest with you, I got really drunk last night and I think I married some girl. And I'm like, you did what? From my memory— and I wasn't there, but I don't think he used those words. I'm trying to keep it— he tells me to keep it clean. And there he goes. Yeah, we're going to bleep that part out. Yeah, I know. So I'm going to keep it nice and clean. But he said, you know, I got drunk and I married some chick. I'm like, oh my gosh. Okay, well, so I'm still missing Polynesian Tim again. You know, he'd make just enough money where he had enough money to go drinking and he wouldn't show up. But that's what you start with. Yeah, well, you know, about, you know, now I'm really kind of worried about him

because normally he would come sailing in. Well, he didn't sail in this day. And so I get that, that if you've ever had this call before, will you accept a collect call from the Houston Police Department. And you're like, oh boy, you know, and you know this is not gonna be good. Sure I will. And so you accept the collect call, and, um, Tim had been pulled over for DUI, um, and he is in the— he's, he's in the big house, you know. And I had— and it's so funny because you're now— at least you know he's okay, and he's probably going to be at work tomorrow, which is good, as long as I go bail him out. Yeah. And so, and you're right, and you don't know fix a car, so you have to. I have to. Yeah, yeah. Oh, he's getting bailed out no matter what. And so, um, so I— we were open until 9 o'clock at night, and, um, and so I had to hire a bail bondsman, bail him out of jail. I get off work at 9. It was really a busy time. I got off work

at 9. I drive to down here by Knapp Chevrolet, which is a Houston Police Department. That's like— that's pretty far from where your store was. Yeah, I was way up in North Houston, and it's late, and let me tell There's some undesirables there. And so you're sitting, you're literally, you know, you go up and you say, hey, I'm here to pick up Tim. I can't think of his last name now. And you're sitting on a brick bench and that brick— and I have a tie on, white button-down, and I'm looking around going, oh my, you know, I mean, man, I'm like, am I going to get out of here alive? I mean, you're literally at a police station wondering, am I going to get out of here alive? And I'm like, Oh man, this is not good. I got to be at work tomorrow at 6 a.m. Yeah, I'm open. No, no, no, really. He got out of the drunk tank. It must have been about midnight. Yeah. You know, and so then you got to drive him home. We didn't have Ubers and all that. So I drive him

home. He can't drive. So I got to arrange to get him picked up in the morning so he can come to work. He can't do road service for me anymore because he was my road service technician. He's got a DUI. Yeah. Oh man. And I'm like, oh boy, yeah, this is never gonna happen again. Because that's the first time I knew, wow, I can never feel hostage to my team members. And so, um, I became masterful at recruiting. So let me paint the picture. So you're, you're 26, you're working your tail off, you know, you're just figuring out if you're gonna make it, and you're at a— you're on a cement block bench at the Harris County Police Station in a red tie. Yeah, you're 26 years old, and I can just see— I want to I wasn't there. I can just see it in my mind though. You just hit your head against the wall, you just lean back with a deep breath, and you're like, oh my God, I can't do this. I gotta find some technicians. You look around— I'm not kidding, you know, I, I didn't even know

the term what like a junkie was. And there are people around you that you now know, oh boy. I knew it was not a good environment because you're outside on— in the drunk tank waiting on them to open up the door and go, yeah, he's free. The jailbird. What kind of— what kind of bird can't sing? A jailbird. No, I'm like, oh boy, there was nothing funny about it. But that was the day, a defining moment, defining moment in my life where I said I must be masterful at recruiting. And so, um, so how'd you learn? Yeah, well, number one, um, you know, you read everything there is on recruiting at the time. And then, um, as I continued to get better and better at it, especially when you, um, needed to, um, you know, one, I, I would, um, hands-on recruit. I got very good at hands-on recruiting. I built a a mousetrap. My store was busy, and so, um, and that was great. Word of mouth got around. And so some of the stores that I'd been to right out of school,

you know, I could recruit some people from Goodyear, which I did. Um, and I recruited some guys from, um, another company which was called Cardock from a student airline, um, which I had, um, worked at to, to learn how an independent runs. And, um, and so again, you would almost call that poaching, but I call it hands-on recruiting. And plus, I was building a better company, I was offering a better opportunity for people to work for me. And that really is something that's spectacular, is, um, I never felt bad about recruiting someone from a competitor because I offer a better opportunity. 40 years later, I still offer a better opportunity, period. So this was one thing, you know, and I came into the business so green, you know, and I grew up in the business, but I didn't know really anything about operating the mousetrap. And this was something that was hard for me to wrap my head around when I was 22, 23 years old. I'm like, man, what,

man, we're like, we're going to get people. Like, you know, and that's like a hard thing. You want everyone to like you. But my defining moment is, you know, I remember being like 22 and I didn't know anything. And I remembered this story in hindsight, but I was with my mom and dad. And for those of you that aren't informed, like we didn't have a $100 million platform. We had a quality auto repair shop that had been family owned for 40 years. And we had 18 employees, but the majority of the employees were B-players. There was a lot of alcohol. It was barbecue on Fridays. And I remember being at this conference, not even a conference, just like a little get-together. I don't even know if I've told you this, of shop owners in Houston and these other— I remember in hindsight, these 2 similar, you know, mom-and-pop owners, this husband and wife, they were like, ask— because we had been experiencing massive growth because

of your involvement and implementing the hospitality concept. And they were like, how do you— how are you getting good people? There's no good people these days. And we were like, oh, I think I just answered some bogus answer like Indeed or something. I didn't know. And they were like, oh man, there's no— we can't get anybody out there. There's no— there's no good people out there anymore. Nobody wants to work these days. And as I learned that recruiting is less about just trying to close somebody into coming to work for you and taking somebody's employees from another mom-and-pop thing, it's more about, like you said, building a better mousetrap. It's like, oh, they, they unfortunately didn't understand. I wish I could go back and like teach them maybe like the reason you're not getting good people is because you don't give them insurance and there's no technician hours and they don't have 401, they don't have benefits, they don't have

a good quality environment with air-conditioned shops and training and, and high-paid, you know, hourly rates with tons of gravy hours. That's it. And that's the truth. And that's it. And, and so I felt really bad, you know, for a long time about like, you know, I'll just say aggressively pursuing employees from other companies. But the fact of the matter is, you know, when you're offering a technician— I encourage everybody, if you haven't listened to the Josh, uh, you know, the Josh podcast, The Technician: 99% Diagnostic Accuracy, he literally said, I am so glad y'all quote unquote poached me because I'm making double or triple what I used to make. I'm in a great environment and I feel like I'm on a winning team. So I'll hand it back to you, Todd, but you learned how to You learned how to build a better mousetrap along the way, but at some point you had to actually learn the skill of recruiting, right? That was really getting into the management side.

That's another, another great story. Um, but you know, when you said, um, you know, you want to be liked by everybody, I really don't care, right? No, I'm scaling a company, which is super powerful. I tell everybody, you know, look, when you get into— when you go into business, it's war. Do not kid yourself. You know, it's, it's Coke versus Pepsi. They do not like each other. Their biggest— when they're doing quarterly meetings, it's about, are we kicking Pepsi's ass? Yeah, pretty much. Who's winning? Who's winning? And, and it's on any branding that you do, there's always brand number 1, brand number 2. Well, let me tell you something. I remember, you know, you can see quotes from, um, Steve Jobs talking about people recruiting his people. Yeah. And he's pissed. Yeah. You know, man, are poaching my people. That goes on to this day. Yeah. Especially in the AI revolution. Let me tell you something. You know, Elon Musk talks about poaching. People are poaching our

people. How are they getting our people? And because it's serious business. So don't kid yourself. And, you know, if you think I'm your buddy and you're across the street from me, I'm not your buddy. I can't be. My job is not only to win market share Because that's business. I have an industry that thinks we're all supposed to be buddies and sing Kumbaya. Sorry, I'm in business. I am in business to provide for a lot of families. If there is so much business out there, but if you want to compete with me, you better be good, period. And so I am going after your people. I will. I, no matter what, I will get your people. They will drive by and see a beautiful facility. They always have. You know, if you drive by and you look at Adams Automotive, it's gorgeous. Well, who wants to go to work at some dirty facility? And you talk about insurance. You know how many shops out there don't offer insurance? You know, they'll tell

me it's too expensive. Oh, man. While the customer pays for everything, they want your employees to have insurance. Clean your place up, make it look great so you can charge the right amount of money to pay your technicians a very fair wage. Give them insurance, give them 401, give them benefits. What the heck, people? And, and man, they don't know what they don't know. And man, there is a massive amount of talented people out there working for people who are not talented, and that's sad. I will come after you. And so, you know, like Tom Brady, you think he's like just hoping that his opponents have just a great offseason and they recruit great players? No, he's trying to win a 7th Super Bowl. And the idea that Like, you know, another thing that helps me feel comfortable, and not only comfortable but obligated— I actually feel obligated to offer those opportunities— is because the longer you do this, the more times you hear stories of people being like,

wow, dude, I just bought a house for the first time. Thank you. I got— I didn't even tell you this— right before we came into this, uh, you know, this podcast, I was talking to Superstar Kyle, and he was in the call center, and he was killing it in the call center. Is now a good time saying yes to customers? And he said, I've been praying about this. We just, we just brought him down to the shop floor to make him a service advisor. He goes, thank you. He goes, I am so excited. I feel like I was in the minor leagues and I just got called. Not that the call center is the minor leagues, dude. We need superstars in the call center. But he wanted to be a service advisor. That's his dream. And he was like, I am going to kill it. Thank you. And so my— I'm not here to brag about the mousetrap. Like, I'm not. That makes me feel so happy that my family's legacy is appreciated by people that work in our business. And here's what I always close with in training: if

you want to come recruit Kyle and my people and Josh and they want to go, shame on me, because that means I'm not paying them enough, I'm not providing enough hours, I'm not air conditioning the shops, I'm not taking care of them. And if I truly care about our people and I'm truly in it to give a great outcome to our people, then if somebody comes up to them and offers them an opportunity that is far superior and it can change their life, then they should take it if I actually care about them. But in my opinion and in my experience, Todd, most shop owners do not have the capacity— a lot do, if you're listening to this podcast, you probably do— don't have the capacity to provide that kind of environment and that level of a mousetrap. So, Todd, and then you get into, you know, you get into hands-on recruiting. You know, we had a complaint the other day and it went all over social media, and I'm like, what is wrong with you people? I even gave

code of ethics on recruiting companies, you know, from the National Recruiting associations, very clear. You know, that's how it works, guys. Sorry, automotive people, this is how it works in the real world. Um, we had a complaint that we were in someone's, um, shop and we're hands-on recruiting. And we were. And so, yeah, we were. Sure we were. I don't hide it. Yeah, I do not hide it. And, you know, and it was someone— okay, maybe, um, we, we shouldn't have done it because we do know him. I could see— we really don't. I could see— but you got to hear this. He wasn't a client of mine. I do not recruit from clients of mine. Um, and so I actually called Charlie because Charlie had a relationship with him, and Charlie said, man, sorry, you know, it won't happen again. But the guy— I didn't know this— had one of our ex-employees who's over there in our store, 2 of our stores, yeah, within the last 30 days trying to recruit

my people. See, it's insane. 2 oil changes. See, it's like, come on, guys. You remember the one where, uh, I'm not gonna say it. Yeah, one time we were recruiting a, uh, you know, somebody were harpooning, calling into shops, and the owner, you know, called right back and was very upset. And I won't tell you who it is, you know, I'll leave it at that. Technician comes up 5 minutes later, he says, man, that guy was trying to recruit me last week, and here's his text, and here's his text. And, and, and so look, dude, it's like, call it, call it straight. And guess who won? We did. Yeah, we got the technician because we're a better company, period. That's it, man. And I mean, it took a while Well, we stayed on this technician and he ended up at the Woodland store. And because we're just better, we really are. But when it comes down to management recruiting, which is, man, we're— or man, my standards are very high.

And at this time, you can muscle one store. I had one store, 1986 to 1990. And then, man, I launched my Louetta store, which is store 102. And you can't muscle 2 stores. Yeah, you cannot. You must have people. And I found I didn't have people, and I found I couldn't muscle 2 stores. And so, um, that's when I hired a recruiter, Mike Gershon. What kind of recruiter? Like, I, I hired a guy, it was Elliott Associates. Um, Mike was a hospitality recruiter. He focused on the restaurant industry, hospitality. Um, and, and that's really when I restaurant people into our business because I can train on the concept. I really can. And it's a much better career than being in the, in the restaurant business. And so we spent probably 6 months, you know, trying to find that guy. And we found a guy at TGI Fridays. And man, let me tell you something. Mark would go into TGI Fridays, just sit there, sit at the bar and just observe everyone. Oh yeah. What's going on? You can see it. You know,

you can see the studs. You can see the studs. And there was this guy named Greg Sands. Shout out to Greg. And it took about 6 months to land Greg, to pull him out of being a GM for Fridays and get in the car repair business or auto hospitality business. And, and wow, what a move. You hire one guy, he can impact your business. And then A's like working for A's. Yeah, there you go. And so it was like, well, Greg, who do you know? Well, then the next guy was Craig Berkowitz, which he was an A-player. Friday's, the GM of the Greenspoint store. And, well, Craig, who do you know? Tim Strobel. Well, Tim Strobel was kitchen manager for Friday's trying to become a GM, and he's still— these guys are all still in the business to this day. That's crazy. And have all had amazing financial success. Well, as you're learning how to recruit and how to create pre-chat questions Well, today it's even easier. Yeah, it's so much easier.

You know, my God, I have Zoom calls, and so that means that I can identify talent. I mean, I can— there's so many things that you can do, but you must have great people, period. That's it. You have to have great people. One of the formulas that you need to just instill in your brain is find the right people Make it a great place to work. Give them a financial stake in the outcome of the business and train them. Do you know how many companies do not have an onboarding program? That's pathetic. They're pulling shifts. You know, wow, you are— you— I call them counter mounters. You are sitting at a counter waiting on the phone to ring or waiting on a customer to come in. Holy God. Trust me, if you're listening to this, give us a call because I'll give you the most exciting career in your life. You do not want to live as a counter mounter and then you die. Look around your business and go, how many millionaires do I work with?

There you go. If the answer is zero, you're in the wrong room, baby. Yes. Look, so there's 4 things: find the right people, make it a great place to work, give them a financial stake in the outcome of the business, and train them. And something we've been talking about a lot lately is The 3 of those 4— I just realized this— 3 of those 4 are make it a great place to work, give them a financial stake in the outcome of the business, and train them. All 3 of those have so much less to do with the recruiting part of it and much more to do with the quality of the mousetrap part of it. And recruiting is just marketing. I don't care how good you are at car repair. If— or excuse me, at marketing, if you have horrible customer service, if the food tastes bad and you're late with your service, I don't care how many leads you get, they're not coming back. And so if you are really good at recruiting but you got people walking out the back door and they're leaving every

2 weeks, you know, rap sheet resume technicians, well, I can tell you we like rap sheet resume technicians because they have standards. That means they're going into shops and they find out, oh my God, this guy's paying me late, he's paying me under the table, he said he has benefits but he really doesn't, he promised me all these hours and a sign-on bonus, but it's all fake. And so give me your thoughts on that, Todd. It's what we've been saying, but it's less about recruiting. Yes, we are aggressive with recruiting and offering opportunities, but 3 quarters of it is really on us for quality— providing a quality working environment for our team members to have opportunities. Give me your thoughts. Well, you know, and also, you know, we chose a different lane called auto hospitality. You know, back in 1986, my guys were in ties, white button-down experts. We were already delivering outrageous customer service. Your dad 40 years ago created world-class service.

And so, you know, when we got— when we were able to combine forces, it was really, really just a match made in heaven. Thank you, God. And it was because you cannot offer world-class service with B and C players. You cannot. My father-in-law, Dad Davis, um, uh, who is my mentor, made it very clear, you run it like a bank. And I run it like a bank, guys. I do not run this like any other business you'll RC. We have, we, we have gamified it. Jack Stack, great game of business, uh, man. Make it fun, a fun place to work. It is so fun to work here. And also something about our business which will blow you away is I do have some turnover, but it's normally employer-initiated turnover. Yeah, because they self-sabotage. It's the NFL. Yeah, we are the NFL. We hit harder, we work harder, we run big numbers. I mean, think about The average shop out there in private equity is poking around $100,000 a month, maybe $1.2

million in annual revenue. I do that in a month at Adam's store. One month we have done that. And it's way higher margins. Is that crazy? But just think about that. What did they do with the rest of the year? I know. See, and they wonder, worry about, does flat rate work? No, it does not work with a $100,000 store. Sorry, you can't keep anyone busy. Because you're dead. I don't even know what you're doing all month. You know, I will do that in days. My record weekend at Adams with this spectacular team is what, $108,000? Oh yeah, $108,000 on a Saturday, Sunday. But the industry said that— told me that— and they told me that techs don't want to work on the weekend. Yeah, techs want to make money. They want to make money. We're gonna do a— you know, we don't do this very often, but it's a good time time to, you know, do some promotion. We're going to talk about auto shop recruiting with Brian Rhodes and the team at Auto Shop

Answers. If you're listening to this podcast and you're like, man, I don't know how to recruit, I, uh, I've never, I've never done that before, I grew up fixing cars, I'm running a business and I'm trying to learn how to find great people, guess what? We have figured a lot of the hard stuff out for you. It's one of our amazing services that we provide through Auto Shop Answers, which is the platform infrastructure for our actual company at Auto Shop, uh, excuse me, at Auto Hospitality Group. So man, if you have any questions about recruiting, please reach out to Todd Westerland or Brian Rhodes on LinkedIn. Give us a call anytime. We would love to find some superstar A-players for you and your business. So anyway, back to the pod. And you know, we pay our technicians top dollar. I'm talking they have the ability to make more money than any technicians in the industry. And that's a fact. And owners. And owners. Oh, oh, no doubt.

And same with our— same with our front of the house people. They have— our front of the house people have an opportunity. It's an unlimited opportunity. You know, I can give you story after story after story of people who have created amazing opportunities for them and their family because they joined um, Adams Automotive or a part of the Auto Hospitality Group across the country. It's spectacular. It's really amazing, you know. And so when it comes down to recruiting, you have to be aggressive. The good news is I know where they all work. I know where all service advisors work. Where? At my competition, be it at one of the, the chain stores, be it one of the private equity stores, be it at a dealership. See, that's where they work. So I'm gonna go in and I'm gonna find him and I'm gonna listen to him on the phone, or I'm gonna walk in and mystery shop him and I'm gonna get him. I will find a superstar technician. So, or, or front of the house. I want to get into

pre-interview questions because I think they're brilliant. But, you know, one strategy that we did like 2 weeks ago was, you know, Mike Quinn, he went and sat in the parking lot with somebody from— I think it was Brian, somebody on the recruiting team— and they actually called the store and watched, and they found the guy. They were sitting in the parking lot watching him work because it's— that's how you— I mean, dude, you got to watch film. And they saw the guy, you know, the, the guy or gal, but I think it was a guy in this instance that was hustling and picking the tire off the car. And he immediately ran to the phone, and he picked up the phone and answered the phone. Boom. And he didn't sound— you know, I don't know if he sounded great on the phone, but guess what? Most people haven't been trained, and that guy's a hustler. And so 15 minutes later, they walked in, they just went straight for him, and it's like, hey man, we want to offer you an opportunity. And guess

what? We've been thrown out of doors, people get upset with us. And, you know, there's so many ways to recruit nowadays, like you can be creative. But the point is, we're trying to find people, and it's hard to put people in a box. We're trying to find people that want to do something with their life. And once we have a hint, a lead that they might be that person, we're going to get on a Zoom call or talk to them in person, and we're going to go through, you know, our pre-interview questions. So Todd, I want to pick your brain on how did you— you know, when you're in the interview, or specifically the pre-interview, because we're busy, we don't want to be interviewing a million people. If you suspect somebody's a stud and you're going to do a phone call with them after you've, you know, maybe gotten their contact information, what are you looking for in the first 5 minutes? What questions are you asking them and how do you generally think about it?

Well, you know, it's a great question. You know, when you talk about recruiting, recruiting, you can get what's called hiring fatigue. For sure. Oh yeah. If you don't know how to recruit, oh, you're good. I think you and I were out at a restaurant recently. I've done it. And, um, and they were recruiting for someone out of his front of the house or back of the house, and we could actually hear the interview. It was cool. Yeah, and they sucked. It was a— but unfortunately, they had about 10 people lined up, if you recall. Yeah, it was 10 back-to-back interviews. Back-to-back interviews, which is going to give you hiring fatigue. And you're like, why are they here? See, my gosh, I can do a Zoom call and I can see this guy's face, this person's face. I can hear his voice. You know, I've already determined I want to do a Zoom call with And so I'm going to do a Zoom call with them. And, you know, first question out of my mouth, are you a hammer?

Oh, yeah, straight up. Straight up. I don't care if you're in front of the house or back of the house, you're a freaking hammer. And people go, wow, man, you just hire hammers. I only want hammers. If you're a stud, you need to be working for me, period. I am a stud. I only have studs working for me. I don't have duds. I call them the killer bees. Get out of my life. Unfortunately, I can't scale a company that way. But what happened is you can hear it immediately. I mean, yeah, can you imagine this person who has hiring fatigue out recruiting 10 people in a row doing interviews, and you saw her blow one guy off, just blew him out the door? Yeah. And it's like, she probably could have potentially missed the real stud, the diamond that was sitting there. Who knows? But oh my God, it was Oh, who wants to do that? Because, man, I can get on a phone call. I can look at— if you answer that question and all of a sudden, man, are you a frickin'— are you a

frickin' stud? Are you a player? You know, you're a hammer. And they pause. Yeah. Uh, you know. Oh, you're not a hammer. Gotta go. I mean, if Joe Adams asked me, Todd, are you a hammer? Yes. Are you kidding me? Yeah. Yeah, I'm trying to close a $400 million deal. Yeah, I'm a hammer. Yeah. Okay, okay, okay. So I'm gonna— I'm not, I'm not like the young folks anymore, really, the college kids, the TikTok scene. But there's this phrase that you probably have never heard of that I've been using lately. I think it's hilarious. It's called, uh, it's— somebody's listening to this that's 23 and they're gonna make fun of me. I'm gonna get a text from Ryland after this. It's, uh, you know ball? It's like basically like when somebody starts talking about, let's say it's college football or any topic like a video game or like just show, you know, what some people I think on TikTok or, or young people are saying.

They're, they'll be like, oh, you know ball? Like, you, like, basically like, oh, you're familiar with this topic? And it's basically kind of what you're doing in the pre-interview. Like, I'm a freaking player. And you're basically like trying to figure out, you can tell instantly if they speak the language. Oh, you, you know ball? It's basically like, do you speak? Because it's, because at the end of the day, look, if you listen to 10,000 hours of this podcast, I'm not doing it for views. Like, that's not what we're doing it. We're doing it to distill Todd's brain and our operating brain into the people that listen to this. And I'm just saying, if you listen to Todd for 10,000 hours, guess what? You're probably going to think like Todd, and you're probably going to recognize what he recognizes in people. And at the end of the day, there's no set of questions that is going to give you the answer. You just

have to have a lot of experience recruiting people. And at the end of the day, you figure out what a hammer looks like. And you just— you just— you're at the point, you know, you just ask them. It's crazy. You have to be very direct. Are you a freaking hammer? Yeah. You know, and a lot of people miss on so many good people. Yes. You think about Mike Quinn, how many people would've recruited him? None. None in my industry. No experience. No way. No experience in the industry. But I saw something in him. I went back to his— I wanted to talk to him a little bit about his background. And here's a guy who says, I'm not going to lose. And he actually said, I'm not going to be the guy that sucks. Yeah, and, um, and he had already done research on me, he says, and, um, and so he was excited to sit down with me. I didn't know that, um, but, you know, I could tell. I've seen— and also when you're recruiting, you look for people

who have the same characteristics of other players. Yes, they say the same language. You know, I talked to my team about private equity. It's a language. It's a language. It's just a language. Once you learn the language. I cannot make up Spanish. I cannot have a conversation in Spanish because I don't know it. Yep. But man, I mean, if you knew— do know Spanish, man, you can tee it up and there it goes. Well, it's the same with A-players. Have the same language. We run to the car. We can't wait to close deals. You guys talk about the drip, the dopamine drip. Yes, we talk about— man, I would sit here in this store 6 years ago when we were perfecting a $40,000 day, I would not leave the store until we had $40,000 done. And I mean, I would sit right here. We would bust our ass out there sweating, making it happen. And I'd be going, come on, guys, give me that one hit. Give me that hit. Boom. I'm having withdrawals. And I go, boom, there it

is. Bye. Old man would have to leave. But you know, how exciting is that? We're in the hunt, you know? And that's the beautiful thing about our business also. So when we're recruiting, teamwork makes the dream work. You ask about pre-chat questions. We have about 20 pre-chat questions just kind of to keep you in line. There's no specific order, but you know, there's some things you can't ask someone. There are things you can ask. I will tell you, if, if I'm doing a pre-chat question, I go, what do you do on your spare time? I love this one. You know, and the guy goes, oh man, you know, I love my family. Family, you know, I have 2 kids. Well, now I open up the door. Man, he's married, got 2 kids. Yeah, you know, we love to go camping, or we love to do this, or we love to do that. I got a family man on the line, you know. But one, he's got to make a living. Two, I mean, he's already said he was a hammer because I never get to

that question if he doesn't answer, are you a hammer? So I open up with, are you a hammer? And man, if he goes, oh yeah, where's the nail? You know, like a dog. Yeah, like a dog trying to jump the fence, you know. Yeah, give it to me, give it to me. Yeah, you got to put the chain around his neck, you know. And man, you just hear it, you hear it, you hear it. And then all of a sudden you find— but now if I ask that question, he goes, ah, you know, me and my buddies, you know, we go out dirt bike riding and then we go, you know, drinking, you know. Oh boy, oh boy. Yeah, I probably got a gray area guy here. Doesn't mean he's not good, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna dig into that a little bit and find out what's your gray area. Because there's a lot of gray area guys out there that are studs. A lot of people fire hire their best talent. Okay, okay, we— I gotta get into— you brought up so many good things that I want to dive into. So first, let's start with— man, dude, gray area interviewing

them out. Okay, so let's start with what do you do in your spare time? So let's define terms here. There are 2 types of people that you are interviewing. There's one that is a confirmed hammer and they work for another company, or you just know like this person has a great career. You are trying to basically get them sold on coming in. Now, there are other people that you are interviewing maybe off of an application or somebody that walks in the street, we are trying to find what Todd says, any excuse why they shouldn't work here and interview them. So basically the concept is, what do you do in your spare time? Well, my name's Joe. What do I do in my spare time? Let's see. I spend time with my family. I play some golf and I work all the freaking time and I go to the gym and that's about it. That's the right freaking answer. The answer is that's it. That is the answer. We had one guy, he goes, well, I'm in a

drinking club. That's pretty cool. You're gone. You're Done. Sorry, Tom Brady is not in a drinking club. What does Tom Brady do in his spare time? Well, I watch film. I, uh, I'm up till midnight because I'm crazy. I'm looking at highlights from 2 years ago on the defense. Like, I'm recruiting. Like, that's what Tom Brady does in his spare time. So I'll give you an anecdote. One time, and I think you pointed this out to me, Todd, we asked this guy, what do you do in your spare time? And he's got a ring on his finger, and he says, well, you know, I travel around the country with my buddies and we play, uh, softball. We go to these softball tournaments. And, uh, man, we just have a great time. What does that translate to, Todd? Yeah, guy likes being on the road, he likes being away from his family, there might be some shenanigans going on. He's not like— and, and, and are you kidding me? What I'm trying to say here is I

am totally cool with having hobbies outside of work. Look, I like to play golf, you know, like I like to do it, and I— that's part of my answer. But dude, my passion is my career and my, and my family, like, and my faith. Like, I am here to work because I believe I'm obligated to give the resources that I've been given on to more and more people. And I love the game, and I'm looking for people that know ball. They also love the game. And so speak the language. They have to speak the language. And so what do you do in your spare time is a great way to get the answer, because I'm not— I'm trying to get them as comfortable as possible, like Glenn says, because you, you see their hair come down, you see what they're really passionate about. I want to see them lean in and be like, oh man, this is what I do in my spare time. I listen to these podcasts. I listen. I've heard people say, man, dude, I, I've been doing a lot

of sales training and this, this, and this. I'm like, yes, yes please. And then all I'm trying to do is find, you know, you have to go through the bases. You have to ask them, hey, do you have a clean driving record? You know, if we ran a background check, how would that go? You know, are you able to be, you know, can you drive a vehicle? Because we have to be able to be insured to drive customer vehicles, so on and so forth. So that is the difference between interviewing them out and selling the I want to move on to the next one, Todd, and get your thoughts on this one. I think you are exceptional at the following concept, which is you are willing to take a risk on almost anybody if you think there's a glimmer of talent, because you do not have the fear of firing them if they're an underperformer. I think most people in the industry, they get— they are— they want people like them, and I struggle with this too. 2, and it's very difficult to be objective

when somebody is not making the team if you like them, and they hire somebody who's maybe a B or a B-, but they don't know right away. You are extremely good at the— you understand that I'm just gonna hire a ton of people and it's a business decision. If you don't make the NFL, dude, it's not personal, it's the NFL, and you fire them quickly. And what that allows you to do is so many people hire— they, they pass on gray area people that might have a bad, you know, bad part of their resume or a rap sheet resume. And then it's like, just, man, I want to talk about that more in detail. But give me your thoughts on— I don't want to say firing them quickly, giving them the, you know, but like, we have no risk. You say this all the time. We have no football team. We have no risk. So give me that concept. It's a pro football team. You got to hear that. It's a pro sport. We are called professional business athletes. Yeah, do not get— see,

see, my industry is ran by the killer Bs or worse than that, Cs. And, um, I run a pro sport franchise, and so, you know, I'll take guys that, um, that have a gray area. Hell, I had a gray area for many years. Yeah, I, I tell people, huh, if I didn't own the company, I probably would have fired myself. It is what it is. But, um, now, boy, at my age, I go I gotta, I gotta really train this guy and get him to understand why that behavior's not good, why he has such talent, and then show him there's a whole different world out there for him and his family. And anybody's got to dump the gray area. Yeah. And whether that's drinking, drugging, womanizing, whatever, because I do not tolerate any of that in my business at all. Zero. And I mean, that's what you're dealing with. A lot of A-players, they self-sabotage. I see it all the time. Joe Adams and I'll be driving around visiting stores and we'll be so thankful for the team we have. And then we

go, oh man, we'll break into a prayer, right? And please, Lord, don't let anyone self-sabotage. And I promise you, someone will self-sabotage and you're like, wow. I mean, and so then you have to go, wow, can I save them or can I not save them? Um, and I will do a lot to save a superstar. Oh yeah, from themselves. I've seen you do it. But eventually I have to cut it if they're not getting it. I recently had to cut one, um, because it got too hairy. In other words, you're, you're disrupting my business. You're disrupting, you know, man, you're, you're talking about alcohol and then other, other issues that are really major, I gotta let you go. Yeah, I can't do it. But man, if I can— or other issues with family members on drugs and all kinds of crazy stuff that, that you're not going to be able to work for me and give me that commitment. And, and you know, man, I'll just about spend the night with you. It's like Antonio Brown, he had to live with Tom

Brady. Tried, you know. I have guys on our team that most people would have fired, and today they're absolute superstars. And man, I walked in the store, we hugged them. They are absolutely phenoms. Yeah. And I told them, they got Todd Hayes protection. You can't fire them. They go, what do you mean I can't fire them? You can't fire them. Move to another store. But man, they got my protection because I know I'm gonna beat the absolute snot out of them and beat them into submission. And I do. And, and I have this painting which is really beautiful, and it, um, it's a painting that I received when I first became rather successful. I'd become a millionaire, and my father-in-law, my, my in-laws gave it to me. And it's a painting of a goose laying golden eggs, actually 2 golden eggs, and says the goose is alive and well. And well, actually, you're the goose. The business is a goose. If you know the fable, the fable is, you know, this goose is laying golden

eggs, but, you know, we self-sabotage. We cut the goose's neck off. We reach down his throat and try to pull out eggs. Now you just killed the goose. You killed the goose. And see, man, you will kill your family. You will kill your business. All of these shenanigans, you got to understand, this industry is filled up with people who drink and drug and, and womanize. And I'm sorry, I just call it out the way it is. And I just don't have time for that, you know, especially at 66. Are you kidding me? You know, man, my shelf life has a shelf life period on it. And, and really, there are— and I had a great conversation with, um, with one of our guys this morning. And, um, and I was up here early, or it was actually yesterday. And I go, man, tell me more about your, um, your life, you know. And, and he was, uh, he was from— he lived in Seattle. Um, he started working at this company when he was 17 years old, and he's a little

rock star. He's a rock— not little, he's a mature guy, he's a rock star guy. And he worked for a company that, that sincerely abused him, you know, from 17. It's the only world he knew. He didn't know a company like ours existed. So many people out there don't know a company like ours exists in our industry, and it does. I agree, we are good, man. And so let me tell you something, he was abused used. He was taken advantage of. He was underpaid, underappreciated, and he finally, after 15 years, broke. His wife was, um, transferred and he got to come in and work with our company. He goes, wow, I love this business. I love you guys. And see, I want you to understand, that's what the majority of the shops are out there. See, they, they don't operate like ours. And if you think you're in that environment, reach out to us. Give us a call. I'm not kidding. See, it's my professional obligation to people to save them from that store.

People ask me, why do I need hammers working for me? Because I'm here to serve that customer. And you have to hear this. My professional obligation to that customer is to keep them out of other shops. Since 1987, My family chose this business when I was 17 years old. I have never taken advantage of a customer and I never will take advantage of a customer. I started with a Polaroid camera. Today we have such high integrity in our business. We do everything in our power to ensure total integrity. Most shops out there, sorry, they're not. They're not. And man, you'll find that out. So my job is to make absolutely sure that I give my customer every opportunity to do business with us and to keep them out of those other shops because they're dirty, dirty, rat holes. And so I, I want to, I want to define terms here too. When we say gray area, we do not mean low integrity. No, no, no. You know, we— I'm gonna paint a picture here. We do this exercise in

Courtside every month, and it's where you put on the y-axis, you put talent level 1 to 10, and then on the x-axis, you put difficulty to manage 1 to 10, and you put your employees employees or team members or people you work with on the scatter plot. And typically what we found out is the more talented somebody is, the more difficult they are to manage. And let me paint a picture for you. Um, the Dallas Cowboys for the entire 1990s, uh, Dennis Rodman, you know, there are stories. Antonio Brown, professional athletes. Look, if you're the best in the world at what do. I'm sorry, Tiger Woods had a gray area. Like, like, he's the best in the world. He is an edge case type person. You can just go athlete after athlete after athlete. Like, look, same with us. When you are that good at your craft, and it's literally the NFL, guess what? You have a high aptitude for getting in trouble. But also, guess what? Michael Jordan understood

that nobody could get the ball back on offense like Dennis Rodman, so he would literally drag him out of the club. And so you know, to play in the playoffs. He's probably hungover for, you know, for however many playoff games. But man, he's going after that ball. So I got to get him on the team because he is an ace when he's on the court and we got to keep him on the court. So I hear this all the time. People beat their chest, you know, and they're like, what's the hardest thing you've ever had to do in business? And I've heard people say, you know, one time I fired— I had to fire my top producer or salesperson because they were bad for company culture. And I'm like, I'm not laughing at them because every situation is different. But I'm like, I'm always giving them the Todd Hayes Hmm, I'm like, you probably are not as talented as they are in their— you're probably not as good of a manager as they are, or a coach, as they are a player. And Mike Quinn

is this shout out, you know, Mike Quinn, Glenn Pickle are the top in the world at learning from you how to, as you said, beat the snot out of them, how to get the talent out of these super talented people because You know, when you— of course B players are good for culture. They are nice guys and they're nice to be around. And it's like, I'm not saying you can't be an absolute ace and be a nice guy. The, the cool thing about the scatter plot is when you go from 10 talent down to 8 difficulty to manage and then 6 difficulty to manage and all the way down to 1— shout out Woodlands team, you guys have been getting easier and easier. 900,000. Shout out. Then guess what? There are opportunities. You Like Mike Quinn, 10 talent, 1 difficulty to manage. Glenn Piccolo, Jose Garcia, all these top people, you know, it eventually— you elevate. But what I want to point out is, are you an A-player operator, and can

you coach the A-players and keep them in their lane? When we say gray area, we aren't talking about integrity. We're saying some form of self-sabotage, and as Todd calls it, sex drugs and rock and roll. Yeah, give me your thoughts. No, that's it. Yeah, there is no gray area of integrity. Um, you compromise for integrity with a customer, there's no pass-go. I will get on an airplane no matter where I'm at, I will fly in and fire you, period. In a conversation or in your personal life. Yeah, anywhere, anywhere. I just want— I, I will not deal with that. Yeah, if you want— if you want to have an affair on your wife, well, you're fired, period. Because if you're going to cheat on your wife, the person you love the You're going to steal money from me. Fired. Done. Go away. And man, we've had it all. And but when I talk about gray area, someone who maybe struggled with alcohol, someone who maybe struggles with getting up on time, someone who struggles

with calling in, going out, going out and having the alcohol flu on a Monday. When I call them out and I go, oh, wow, man, you're killing the goose. And, you know, now I send that goose over. I have a picture of that goose and I'll send it to you. I said, Man, you look at that. Are you protecting the goose? The goose is you, your business, your family. If you're not protecting that goose, you will lose it. And it's ugly out there. It is so freaking ugly out there. And, and see, when you start— I just want to add something to this, you know. When you think about Adams, you know, I walked into this store. This store is amazing. Perry Adams built this amazing store. It's been here 40 years. When I got on board, it was about 35 years. And, um, and man, you know, I, I served for one day the team. Takes him about a day to know who's a player, who's not. It is a language. And there were some players he had. He had one guy who was a

player, but he was such a bad guy, probably stealing from him, super bad attitude, undermining, um, the whole company, um, and tail wagging the dog. And, um, I couldn't break him, and so I fired him, you know. And, and I had that— we loved him, and I had to absolutely— it took 18 months. It 18 months for them to let me fire him. When I fired him, they were like, oh my God, you're right. Yeah, I'm all right. You know, I had to deal with it though. You know, I mean, this guy was horrible. Joe was right in the room we're in right now when I fired him. Wow, that's crazy. And he goes— and he walks in, he goes, oh, you know, he was expecting a raise. I said, I'm letting you go, it's gonna be a bad day. And he goes, oh, oh, you're letting God go? That's what he actually said. And I was like, oh boy, dude, wow, good luck with that. And, um, and And, you know, now you look at Glenn Piccolo. What a stud. Wow. I've been watching this guy when you're recruiting. How long have I been trying to

recruit Glenn? 20 years. Oh my God, for so long. And there was the opportunity. Franchise quarterback. There was an opportunity, I pounced. When you look at Jose Garcia, Jose Garcia was recruited from Pep Boys, but his first day working here, I was here. Man, we ran and we had such a great day. I know, oh, there's my franchise player. My stallion. There he is right there. I can build a team around him. He's my Tom Brady. And then all of a sudden I get a Glenn Piccolo. Who do you know? Who do you know? And all of a sudden you start building up this team and building this team. And, you know, all of a sudden sales are doubling and tripling. And that's what changed. Location didn't change. Advertising didn't change. We did change the business. We might've changed some advertising. But Perry did a great job with advertising. But what we did do is we put in place a perfected business model with great people who wanted a great career. Now let's

fast forward 6 years later. What does Glenn Pickle's career look like today? Pretty good. If you told him, you come to work for me, I will teach you this concept, you'll be training it to people all over the country, they will come in, they will clap 300 times in 2 days. They will be coming to tears. They will send you letters, Glenn, going, you have changed my life. Wow, that's amazing. Yeah. So the worst day of his life became the best day of his life when his company was sold to private equity. When you look at Jose Garcia, and Jose Garcia was just beat up by a national company, um, called Pep Boys. Just beat up. I mean, he was beat up. And man, what a talented guy. But man, when you tell him, you know, fast forward, you are going to run multi-unit, the now operation, be the president of that company. You will have an amazing career. Your son will be mentored through Adams Automotive and will now be a key player at Adams Automotive for

next generation. What is that worth? What has his life changed when you're around a faith-based business? What is that worth? What's it worth when you're around people who don't Oh my, it changes lives. All of a sudden you see this is a professional business ran by professional business athletes. I could give you story after story after story. That's what makes me proud. When you can tell them one day we'll have a ministry, Auto Shop Ministries, that changes lives, that saves lives. Oh my gosh, it's so spectacular. See, or, or, or you can work for a company open Monday through Friday, counter mount, and that's your life. That's it. That's as good as it gets. Surrender. I mean, you surrendered your entire life for that. That's as good as it gets, man. We have launched— it's like 19 companies in the, in the time I've been here, between real estate, LLCs, our auto shopping, family of businesses, all this stores that we have opened, private equity, bolt-ons.

Oh my God, look at the amount of knowledge that you get by being in a company like this. Or yeah, countermount, sit there in a chair, literally sit in a chair, answer the phone. Thank you for calling, this is Bob, how may I help you? You know, or customer walks in the door, yeah, how can I help you? Or they don't even look at you. And that, that is as good as it gets. Do you honestly think that your life is better than that? Well, let me tell you something. If you do, please give us a call. I mean, you need to call Adams Automotive. You need to call Brian Rhodes. You need to look us up online and get in touch with us because that is a true story. We have scaled a company from about $3 million, $3.5 million, something like that. Is that what we're about to do? To close to $100 million with all kinds of infrastructure. Structure. Don't you want to know how to do that? Joe Adams, how has it affected your life?

And this is the— and I'll close with this— is, you know, we talk a lot about generational wealth, and I, I will try not to get choked up, but it's not just about the money. It's about, like, it is a generational thing. And I'm watching that in my family, and I've watched that in people in our company families, and I've watched people go home and become a winner. And 6 months go by and their wife starts texting you, what did you do to my husband? He's coming home different. And they send you a picture of their new house with the big key in front of it, and they send you pictures of their babies, and they post their kids' birthdays, parties that they've never been able to have before. Or in the company group chat, and, and we get those text messages every now and then, and it's like, that's generational wealth to me. It is literally changing the generational curse, or whatever you want to call it, in the history of your family.

Or you can go pull a shift, and one year goes by, and you make the same amount you made last year. You're waiting for the weekend. You got your fantasy football draft tonight. It's that time of year. I know people are doing that, and I'm not trying to hear— I'm not here to convict people or condemn people, most people don't know that a company like ours exists. And so, you know, I'll close with this topic, Todd. It's come to my attention recently— I'm not really on Facebook or anything— that, you know, in the Houston market, our company has a reputation for people who don't know, they've never worked for us, and, you know, they hear from people that we terminated or that didn't make the team that just really maybe weren't as good as they thought they were. And it's not personal, they're not bad people, but they hear our reputation is, you know, oh, we work long hours and we grind our people and you burn

them out. And it's, you know, you can make a lot of money, but man, it's, it's— and it's like, look, man, the type of person that we want working at this company is the type of person who hears all the stuff that we were just talking about, about buying houses and changing the trajectory, literally changing the trajectory of your family's life. You know, people People have no idea the trajectory that has changed in my family's life. Straight up, we had a shop with 18 employees doing $2.5, $3 million a year. We had a great business, you know, nothing— my parents did a great job. But man, if you're trying to change the trajectory of your family's life, believe me, it's fun. We have so much fun here. We have people that have been tenured here that work here and love it. And we got to do a better job of getting the word out at what a quality place, uh, I believe that it is to work here. And we're going to continually try to improve. So Todd, I'll close with this.

What are your thoughts on— just give me the thoughts on our reputation in the market, and then who, who should work here? What type of people should be working? Let's talk about that. That's really a great question. You know, I'm the bad guy in a lot of people's story, you know, because I have I had someone say, you know, to me and to you, you know, you people are so obsessed with your business. Absolutely. I'm like, wow, that's insane. Yes, I'm obsessed with my customer service. I'm obsessed with world-class service. I'm obsessed with giving my team the best lifestyle they could ever imagine. We offer a 5-day work week. I'm open 7 days a week because I serve my customer 7 days a week. But my team works 5 days a week. You gotta hear it. Something every other retail. So I actually went to the restaurant industry and I'm going back to it, digging back in that place because I have a great onboarding program. How many companies out there

recruit you, seduce you into their company? This will blow you away. How many— how many people have left our company? And I will tell you, the vast majority of them beg to come back. Boomerang. And I will not let them come back. Some I will, some I don't. But I mean, let me tell you something, it's ugly out there. But you know, when you think about a restaurant GM, you know, AM/PM shifts, you know, they're, they're up until 2 o'clock at night, you know, they're closing that restaurant 12 o'clock, late, late night hours, man. If you're in a restaurant business, reach out to me. I'd love to talk to you. You know, the typical corporate executive, they get on a plane Sunday night and they take off to the market they're going to be serving that week and they're away from their your family all week. See, it's only in car repair do you get this, this noise, because it is just noise. And, um, and, and we're not in car repair, we're in the hospitality industry. That's a, that's a big difference.

And so to make it in that business, you know, I like to tell people this: if you think that you can run a restaurant, you're probably someone I want to deal with. But, you know, most shop owners couldn't run a restaurant. Oh yeah, certainly. See, and run any other business, they were almost forced into this business. You know, a lot of people in the business were forced into this business. They hate the business. And you can also see that a lot of times you'll see a guy leave our space, leave our business, and not make it. You'll see it on the resume. I go, what happened here? Oh, you know, I went and tried this. No, no, you didn't make it at that. And so you, you— this was your fallback plan, is to come back here. You're not an A-player. See, if you're an player and you understand the enormous amount of success you can have in this business, you will never leave it, period. I remember with Joe Adams,

um, when I started working with Joe— and, um, thank you, Lord, and Perry and Patty, for letting me mentor him. He's such a great guy, you know what I mean? He had no desire to be in this business, but I said, man, just stay with me. Why don't you stay with me? Because I'm going to show you a lane that you can't imagine. It's the most exciting business you'll ever be in. It will accomplish anything you want. It can give you celebrity, it can give you wealth, it can— oh my God, it can give you anything you can imagine. You just can't imagine it. And today he can. And he— I— and so you know what he did? He goes, Todd, I have some fraternity friends. Who do you know, Joe? I got some fraternity friends that I want to recruit. And I go, great. I go, let me, let me have their names. Let me start recruiting right away. Oh yeah, right away. Because man, you know, I love smart people. And that's where Matt Keys came from. That's where Michael Floyd came from.

Stud, stud. But also I was able to offer them a lane. See, you have people out there right now, they don't know the lane they want to be in, right? And they hate their life. I live in a way, I live in a penthouse, um, one block from here. And I pray every day. I go, God, thank you so much. Wow. I see these people driving into downtown Houston, nothing but packed. It's the largest freeway in the country is I-10. It's massive. And I'm sitting up there from this penthouse looking at all these people driving into work and then driving back. Oh man, there's a better life than that, guys. There is a better life. And let me tell you something, you should experience auto hospitality. It's amazing. So, um, yeah, I'll close with that. I was, uh, I was listening to a podcast the other day, this business guy, and he's like, he said he was 27 when it happened to him. You know, he's a multi-hundred millionaire or something like that. And it's not about the money, it's about the

byproduct. That's just a score for how many people you can help, in my opinion. And he, he said his mom got really sick when he was 27 or something like that, and he was like, wow, I've been sleepwalking through life. That's the term he used. And I've been thinking about it a lot lately because I was doing that, just sleepwalking through life. I had no idea what lane I wanted to be in. I had all this energy, and I love to play golf, and I love like projects, and I just didn't know what I wanted to do with my career. And once you have that moment where you're like, man, I need to get it together, because this guy— in this guy's example, his mom was sick, and he's like, I am tired. I need to be focused. And I just think that's such a great way of thinking about it because most people, they just don't— they don't know that good companies exist and they just kind of get screwed maybe by a big corporation or something

and, and they say screw this and they just start just existing where they're, they're held hostage. Yeah, I, I, I want to— I want to add one more thing. I'm going to bring up golf here in a minute. It was— there used to be a commercial on TV and it was, I live in this big house, I have this big yard, and I have 2 kids, I have 2 new cars and guys mowing the lawn. And he goes, but I'm up to my eyeballs in debt. Oh yeah. And he's talking about, I hate my life, you know. And Joe Adams loves to play golf. And I said, I assure you, you'll have time to play golf, you know, but I'm going to show you something that you will love more than golf. And Joe Adams at that time said, there is no way. Ah, did I accomplish my goal? You did. But guess what? He still gets to play golf. You know, he now, um, and I'm going to talk about it. I said, you know, you're going to have a membership, pick a club. Well, he picked Champions. Good. He's a champion.

He's got a club membership at Champions so he can take his team members out to play golf. He's played golf all over the world now because you get to— not as good at it. That's good. You still get to play a lot of golf. I have a lot. His office is down the street No, no, it's the truth because there's a golf simulator. I go, take your friends down here, play golf with them. It's so fun. And see, people don't understand that. It's like there's no greater thing than to go, hey, Glenn, let's go play golf because you guys like to play. Work-life integration is massive. You guys get to go to Champions and play golf every Thursday if you want to before Key to Key. You guys play golf, you take people out playing golf, um, people want to host you. You'll be playing golf with Stevens, I think, um, what, in 2 weeks? Yeah, something like that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, no, it's the truth though. We were— me and Michael— Comcast flew you out to play golf. Me and Michael were playing,

you know, like someone. And, uh, sure, Todd, we didn't even play. We just rode in a cart and talked about the stores for like 4 hours and like hit some shots, you know. But like, we both played bad and we're both just like, he's, he's at the point now— shout out Michael, dude, you're an animal— he's at the point now where he intentionally doesn't bring his clubs. He's like, I don't even know, I like, I, I gotta work, you know, when he's in town. And it's— I have to talk him into bringing his sticks, you know. So anyway, so man, if you are listening to this and you're the type of person that wants to do something with their life, please give us a call. For a lot of people, you might not have made it to this part of the podcast. Like, a lot of people won't make it. If you apply to our company, it's a high likelihood that you won't make it. But man, I can assure you, if you are the type of person who is tired of

sleepwalking through life and you want to find your lane and get into it, please give us a call. Adams Automotive Auto Shop Recruiting. Just man, look us up. You can, you can figure it out. We're online, we're all over the place. You're listening to the podcast. So I think that's the pod, Todd. That was great. This has been another episode of Master Tech to Millionaire, where we take master technicians and transition them to business owner, CEO, millionaires. So we'll see you next time. Thanks. Boom. Bye. For more information, reach out to Todd Westerland at 925-980-8012 or visit autoshopanswers.com. You can get more information about Key to Key to Callbacks, uh, 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. Uh, we have auto tech

training. We are literally your one-stop shop. Once again, that number for Todd Westerland is 925-980-8012.