The Gearbox Podcast

Jimmy Purdy [00:00:00]:
Foreign. Welcome to the Gearbox Podcast, where we dive deep into the dynamic world of automotive repair and ownership. I'm your host, Jimmy Purdy, an experienced technician turned shop owner with a passion for sharing insights, stories and conversations with industry leaders. This is the Gearbox podcast. Yeah. The meetings is the, I guess, would they call it, what does everybody call that? Like the group process? Right. Is that kind of similar? But do you do it with everybody else?

Phil Leone [00:00:49]:
No. So I do. It'll be just me and like one of my other, one of the other employees that I have for my company that'll go like, we don't bring like all the members type deal.

Jimmy Purdy [00:00:56]:
Oh, I see. So you do an actual in person, personal visit to see how it goes and that's before you even start your whole process?

Phil Leone [00:01:04]:
Yeah, it's within a month to two months. So like we have somebody that just signed up last week and we're going to see them the first week in December. So it's about a month, month and a half out, you know, so we'll have a few, like little calls with them in the beginning and just kind of do some surface level stuff. And then once we go to the shop is when we really can dive in into operations and systems and marketing and sales and just cleanliness in the shop. Everything.

Jimmy Purdy [00:01:30]:
Right, let's, let's roll it back just, just a minute and see what, what's your background? What would you, what got you into the coaching and wanting to help on that side of it?

Phil Leone [00:01:40]:
Yeah, so I've, I've been in the automotive business since I was 18 and I always wanted to train and even help people. Before that, when I, when I was in school, I was actually in ROTC in high school and for two and a half years of that, I was actually the trainer for rotc. So training people and helping people and stuff like that, it's kind of always been like in me, I got an automotive business, started working at a used car dealership originally and became the manager of the used car dealership, who left that dealership, got into service and then I became a store manager at a franchise company that had 25 locations before I left them to get into like the independent area. I was doing training for the whole company, so all 25 stores. I was doing sales training and everything and I just, I loved it. I mean, obviously I like making sales. I like, you know, working with customers and achieving numbers and stuff like that and fixing, you know, fixing things. But it's, it's a lot of fun to be able to go in to you know, to a business and see the things and analyze the things that are failing and not doing well and help make them better.

Phil Leone [00:02:47]:
It's super fulfilling. And then at the same time, you're able to make somebody's business and life better. You're not just their employees.

Jimmy Purdy [00:02:54]:
You sound like a numbers driven kind of guy. Was there any sort of technician? Did you ever actually work on the floor? Is it more just numbers?

Phil Leone [00:03:01]:
So I did work on the floor. It was a couple years that I was working on cars. It was mainly when I first opened my shop, though. Um, so I had my shop for 10 years. When I opened the shop is when I was really fixing cars and writing service at the same time. But numbers are really kind of one of the biggest things that I was, you know, involved in.

Jimmy Purdy [00:03:19]:
Was that because you saw your biggest changes out of watching the numbers or because what exactly pushed you away from this? Because that's the hardest struggle. Right? Everybody starts as a technician. They open a shop, they want to do them. So. And it's so hard for everyone to want to get away from touching the cars and focusing on the business. Like, how did that transition for you?

Phil Leone [00:03:37]:
Yeah. So, I mean, obviously, you know, in the beginning, for the first couple of years, it was like I was fixing cars all day long, right. And I started to realize that, you know, I could bust my butt, you know, for 15 hours a day fixing cars. And that helped me that day, but didn't, I realized that it didn't help me long term. And the only way to help myself long term in my, you know, my business long term was to take a step back and start working, you know, on it instead of in it. And that's, that's really what started getting me focused on the numbers and, you know, in the sales and the operations and all those, that type of stuff. I also saw the movie with Michael Keaton, the founder. Have you seen that movie?

Jimmy Purdy [00:04:16]:
Mm, oh, yeah.

Phil Leone [00:04:18]:
And that really kind of sparked something in me where I, I started really analyzing systems in the business and how things are running.

Jimmy Purdy [00:04:26]:
Kind of like the E. Myth, like if you read the E. Myth book, same thing, right?

Phil Leone [00:04:30]:
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Jimmy Purdy [00:04:31]:
Yeah. And yeah, well, I, I, I look at repairs the same way too. As far as trying to make it as efficient as possible. I just think it's, it's really difficult for most to, like, sit at the desk and find something useful to do with themselves. Right. Instead of just getting up and like, what, I just going to go fix his car. Right. Because it's always the default.

Jimmy Purdy [00:04:55]:
Was that Was that a hard process for you or was it easily, like once you got away, you really hook, line and sinker and you realize, I need to spend my time in the office. And you made sure you stayed out of the shop.

Phil Leone [00:05:06]:
So in the beginning it was, it was hard. In the beginning, I would, I would say, all right, this is what I'm going to do today. I'm going to be, I'm going to be in the office. I'm going to be focusing on, you know, getting this procedure in place or getting this system in place or, or, you know, just focus on sales or whatever it is. And then I would find myself, you know, the day would start going, I'd be, I'd be on it, and then all of a sudden it's like, it's like a magnet pulling me back into the shop. And the next thing you know, I'm going home at the end of the day. And my, my dress shirt is like, filthy. I can't even tell you how many white shirts I have that are covered, covered in oil.

Phil Leone [00:05:39]:
So. But yeah, it took some time. I mean, and then once I just. It was really a self discipline thing though, honestly, you know, making sure that, you know, I told myself, hey, like, I need to, like, where, where am I going to make the biggest difference in my business? Is it going to be in the shop? No, it's not. It's going to be, you know, inside the office, paying attention to what's going on, helping everybody else see, you know, learn how to run the business.

Jimmy Purdy [00:06:03]:
Yeah, yeah. I guess I was trying to dig for some advice for those listening that might be in that situation. That's like really tough. And I think, I think you kind of nailed with like taking one task at a time, right? Like, even if you're only spending 30 minutes or 45 minutes or whatever, just make sure you dedicate that morning time or whatever time to at least get in there and do something.

Phil Leone [00:06:23]:
Yep. Yeah, the hundred percent, you know, and the biggest thing is, you know, try to be self. Like, what I found is I tried to become self aware of what was going on, like, what I was doing throughout the day. Like, I would stop, like every, every half hour, 45 minutes, I would stop and think about, like, all right, where are we at right now? Like, what's going on right now? And then I would, then a lot of times I started catching myself straying away from what I needed to do, being out in the shop. And then I was able to wrangle myself back in, but I had to get up in the morning and go to work and say, all right, this is what I'm going to do today. But I'm going to stop throughout the day and, you know, reevaluate where I'm at and then drag myself back in, you know, because it's, it's. It's almost like a. Like a focus thing, right? You lose focus and then you end up, you know, just going back to what's comfortable, you know?

Jimmy Purdy [00:07:01]:
Yeah. You think it was like a stress reliever, too? Do you think, like, getting out there and, like, fixing a car felt like you accomplished something? So you're like, oh, yeah, I'm. I'm worth something now.

Phil Leone [00:07:10]:
Yeah. You know, the biggest thing that I. And in hindsight, years, you know, years ago, it seemed like I was doing the right thing, but as time went on and I started analyzing things, I realized I wasn't. But, like, it was such a huge stress relief when a technician runs in and goes, you know, the spark plug in this Ford broke off and I'm using the tool and I can't get it out. And then you walk out there with the, with the spark plug tapper tool, and you get out in two seconds, you hand the spark plug back. All right, you're good. Like, it feels like it's like, rewarding, but, you know, it at the same time. You could have been doing.

Phil Leone [00:07:39]:
Doing so much more than that time.

Jimmy Purdy [00:07:41]:
I'm not, I'm not the God, but I'm a God, right?

Phil Leone [00:07:44]:
Like, exactly. Exactly. It doesn't matter if it was like a, like an entry level tech, and he's like, I can't balance these tires. And he's been sitting there for an hour and a half trying to balance one tire. You walk out there, spin the thing one time, throw a weight on it, tap it, spin it again, it's zero all the way around. He was like, what the heck did you just do?

Jimmy Purdy [00:08:00]:
Yeah, I rule this stuff, man.

Phil Leone [00:08:03]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:08:05]:
But like you said, I feel like that just a pat for your. On your own back, you know, just like stroking your own ego instead of focusing on what you should be doing.

Phil Leone [00:08:13]:
Um, it's tough. You have to do what's uncomfortable. You know, it's, you know, and for a lot of people, you know, trying to run the business is uncomfortable, you know, but then as you do that and you get more comfortable doing it and you see the things that need to be. To improve, it starts becoming second nature, and then you're comfortable doing it.

Jimmy Purdy [00:08:33]:
Yeah.

Phil Leone [00:08:34]:
And that, that, that was a, you know, I guess it was a little bit of a struggle in the beginning, but you know, I, as time went on, I mean my shop, we, we went from, in a course about a year and a half doing about 35 to 40, 000amonth to max out at 290, 000.

Jimmy Purdy [00:08:49]:
Wow. So that's impressive.

Phil Leone [00:08:52]:
About 18 months it took to do that.

Jimmy Purdy [00:08:55]:
That's quite a, that's quite a ramp. That's some serious, serious ser. That's some serious change there. And then, and then moving from actually running your own shop to getting more into the facilitating side. What was that push like and how.

Phil Leone [00:09:10]:
Why did you do that as far as like, like coaching and training and stuff like that?

Jimmy Purdy [00:09:15]:
Yeah, it sounds like you had a pretty successful shop and I don't know, the thought of training others that don't want to listen to what you're saying sounds just as stressful as moving from the floor to the, you know, the office in your own shop. So how did that go?

Phil Leone [00:09:30]:
So I did training for, you know, for, like I said, for years. I was with a company for a little while doing training and I loved it, teaching, you know, teaching like webinars and you know, doing some in person stuff and it was a lot of fun, you know, and I want, I would always, a lot of times when I first, and then when I first started doing everything on my own, I would try to get back into the shop and then do things. Even after I wasn't involved in the shop anymore, the new person is involved in the shop. I was trying to like always be involved, which was a struggle. Say, you know, same thing like going from being like out in the shop as a tech to you know, going into the office. But really I just, I buckled down, I told myself, you know, I'm going to help X amount of people. And you know, I said, this is what I'm going to do. And I sat down and started doing it and started talking to people and you know, I was offering people advice for free, you know, in the beginning because I, it wasn't really so much about the money for me as it was about helping make a difference, you know.

Phil Leone [00:10:26]:
And then yeah, you're right, there's some, some people don't listen. I mean you can have somebody that you can yell at until you're blue in the face or you know, and they'll sit there and tell you, yes, yes, yes, yes, I'm gonna do it. And the next thing you know, you know, six weeks later. So I've done a darn thing, you know, and then that does get frustrating sometimes a little bit discouraging. But, you know, when you have, when you, you know, it's the same thing with anything. If you stay consistent, keep doing the same thing over and over again to try to make sure that you do do what you can for that person, eventually somebody's going to be able to get something that sticks, you know. And, you know, once I got the first few people that, you know, went from doing like, you know, 40 grand in a month to had a month that popped a hundred thousand, you know, or, you know, we're not even just about money, you know, or one guy that I, that I've worked with, he, you know, was working, you know, 70 hours a week, and then now, you know, he leaves like 3:00 every day, you know, and, you know, for him to be able to say, hey, listen, you know, me and my wife are in the best spot we've ever been in, you know, in our personal life. Because I don't, you know, he's like, I'm making more money than I was making, you know, by a little bit.

Phil Leone [00:11:24]:
But I'm also enjoying my life now instead of just making more money and, you know, working a million hours, you.

Jimmy Purdy [00:11:30]:
Know, he met his level. He met his level of success. Whatever your success wants to be, right?

Phil Leone [00:11:35]:
Exactly. Yeah. Because it's not, it's not just money. I mean, for some people it's, you know, hey, I'm, I'm making X amount of dollars a month or a year already, and I'm happy with that. But I need to figure out how to make it to where my business doesn't rely on me because there's some shops where, like, they can make, like a lot of money. They could be, you know, netting 50, 60, 70. I've seen shops netting like almost $100,000 a month, like $300,000 shops, you know, that the owner is like the main cog that keeps it running, you know, and that's, that's in a lot of people's situation. They'd rather make half the money and not have to work as much, you know.

Phil Leone [00:12:07]:
But yeah, I mean, seeing the difference that that made for people is what really kind of dragged me in to be able to make sure I could keep doing it and focus on it.

Jimmy Purdy [00:12:14]:
That's cool. I think, I think you have to be, to be a facilitator. I don't think you can do it all just for the money. Right? There's just too much. And speaking of not listening and everyone has like their story is the most unique. Their story or their situation is like the most unique. And their area or their demographic is the most unique. Right.

Jimmy Purdy [00:12:34]:
You've probably heard it all, right. Like, there's no way that's going to work for me. So what is a trend that you see the most of when someone comes on as a client for you? You. Is there something that, like, you hear like almost every time from somebody?

Phil Leone [00:12:46]:
So I mean, as far, if it's somebody that's struggling with sales almost every time. The thing is, and it doesn't matter what their demographic is. It doesn't matter if they're, if it's a super, you know, demographic that has like a $20,000 average income or one that has $120,000 average income. It's. Oh, well, this, the problem with the sales is, you know, the, no matter, no matter what we do for marketing, customers don't come in and, you know, they don't want to buy. The customers don't want to buy. It's not us they don't want to buy. You know, and I have a guy that I'm working with right now and the demographic in his area, literally, I mean, I put it side by side with where my shop was and the amount of people in his area and a five mile radius of his shop is within a few thousand of the amount of people that are mine.

Phil Leone [00:13:29]:
Like, very, very small percentage. And then it's a very close amount of the average income as well. Um, I mean, even down when we looked at the penetration reports, even down to the average age, it's very, very similar, you know, and he's, you know, he's doing like $100,000 a month and he's got a very big facility. And he, he was like, yeah, he's like, you know, it's just, he's like, the thing you have to understand in my area, he's like, it's just the money. The people don't make, you know, they, they don't make a lot of money. And you know, he's like, I can't, you know, sustain an average ticket this high. And, and the quotes are low. You know, the average quote on the vehicles are low.

Phil Leone [00:14:00]:
And I told him, I said so. And just for reference, I mean, they have like a, like a $400 average quote on the vehicles. You know, so they're, they're not finding a lot of work on the cars. And I said, so let's look at my shop area. And this is, you know, our average quote was double or triple yours first off, I said, but. So you're trying to tell me that because your. Your average income is lower that you guys aren't finding work on the vehicles? I was like, if anything, it should be the opposite. You should find three times as much work because the cars are older.

Phil Leone [00:14:29]:
Yeah, but I mean, I think that that's the biggest thing is a lot of people just say that, you know, the. Because of my demographic or, you know, because of the, you know, the area that my shops in. The customers aren't buying when they're struggling with sales. It's. They don't want to look at their processes or look at the way the advisors are presenting the work or, you know, look at the fact that when the customer walks into their shop, you know, there's. It smells like cigarette smoke and it's filthy in there as to why the customers aren't getting their vehicles repaired. And, you know, they. They just think it's the customer, which isn't, you know, isn't the case.

Phil Leone [00:15:00]:
You know, nine out of ten times, it's something going on in their operation.

Jimmy Purdy [00:15:04]:
What do you think that is that they're looking from you then? Like. Because it seems like in most situations, they already have. They already know, right? Like, that's not going to work. So do you ever try to think about, well, what is it that you want me to do for you then? Like, do you want me to pull a magic, you know, a bunny out of the hat? Right? Like, do you think I have a magic trick? And when you get in deep and you just say, hey, look, you need to just work on your sales, and you're like. And they say, no, that's not gonna work. Like, well, what do you expect me to do right now? Do you ever have those thoughts and you're like, what? Like, what could you possibly expect me to do right now?

Phil Leone [00:15:39]:
Yeah, I mean, a lot of people, you know, they'll get on the phone and they'll be like, all right, so this is what I need. This is where my shop's at. This is, you know, this is where I want to be. What do I need to do? And I'm like, you want me to tell you right now what you need to do? It doesn't work that way. Like, I think a lot of people. And I. I don't think it's, like, intentional. I just think because of how much you have going on in the shop on a daily basis as an owner, because you're trying to wear so many hats, you get overwhelmed, and then you're struggling and then when you're struggling, it gets even worse.

Phil Leone [00:16:06]:
They. People think that they can just pay, you know, a marketing company or a coach or a trainer or whatever it is. I mean, all these different companies out there that offer services to shop owners that, you know, legitimately can help increase business, people think that they can just pay that one company and then all of a sudden all the problems go away, you know, and it's.

Jimmy Purdy [00:16:24]:
I feel that I come in with.

Phil Leone [00:16:28]:
That it's not the case. I mean, there is no magic bullet to it. You know, I wish there was, but there's not.

Jimmy Purdy [00:16:35]:
You know, it's like the same with, with vehicles when they go sideways, right? And everyone's looking online, try to find, you know, what the diagnostic is, what part do I need to replace? It's like, doesn't. Right. It's, it's almost the same thing. Right? But that's what your brain wants to do. Your brain, your mind wants to find the, the easy way out, right? So, yeah, I'll put this code in. I'll ask a couple of my buddies on these forums and maybe they'll just tell me what part that they normally replace with that. And I'm sure you deal with the same thing. What part do I need to fix in my business to, to, to.

Jimmy Purdy [00:17:04]:
To make money, Right?

Phil Leone [00:17:06]:
Exactly. Yeah, man, that's, that's literally what they say. It's like. And, and I have to explain, and that's, that's part of the reason why when, when I work with somebody, you know, and we don't try to work with a million people. I mean, we're, we're selective to an extent on who we work with as far as the training goes. But when we work with somebody, like, we tell them, like, listen, we need to do the shop visit. Like, that's so important because, you know, I'm not going to just pull up a book and just start training out of a book and say, this is what we need to do. Like, we need to look at what's going on, you know, and then, and then we can really say, okay, well, hey, you know, this is the case with this.

Phil Leone [00:17:37]:
I mean, and, you know, it's like, you know, advisors and, you know, joke all the time about how saying customers always lie about what's going on with their cars. I mean, it's, you know, and I don't think it's on purpose or whatever or vindictive, but they just say customers lie. Right. You know, and honestly, I, I'll say, you know, shop owners lie, but it's not on purpose.

Jimmy Purdy [00:17:52]:
People. People just lie, right?

Phil Leone [00:17:54]:
It's just people. I mean, you'll have a, you know, a business owner on the phone, and they'll say, hey, you know, this is going great with this, you know, whatever it is. They could say, you know, things are going fantastic with a specific process in their shop. And then, you know, you go to the shop and you look at you and be like, dude, what were you even talking about? Like, it's not even close to going good. Like, they'll. They'll sit there and say, oh, yeah, yeah, we're getting cars in and out right away, you know? You know, no cars are piling up. And then all of a sudden, you go back in their shop and there's like, in the back parking lot, there's like six cars that have, like, you know, trees growing through the side of the wheel. You know, they've been there for, like, two years.

Phil Leone [00:18:24]:
You're like, dude, what are you talking about? You haven't even diagnosed this car in six months.

Jimmy Purdy [00:18:28]:
Well, then it's all the. All the exceptions. Well, it's because that one has this pro, and this one I'm waiting on, and that one Johnny took off and I'm. And this was like. And they all have their own little private excuses, right?

Phil Leone [00:18:39]:
Yeah, exactly. There's always an excuse, you know, and. And I don't want excuses. I want solutions. You know, I mean, everything. Everything has a solution to it. And this, you might not always like the solution, right? And the solution is not always going to be easy. It's not like, okay, it's fixed, but like, you know, we need to find solutions to the problems.

Phil Leone [00:18:57]:
You know, why. Why we're not making sales, why we're not getting car counting. Why the. You know why Customers leaving us bad reviews, whatever. It, you know, it's not. The customers are jerky bad reviews. You know, 99% of the time, somebody will do a bad review because you did something wrong or there was a miscommunication or something. You know, let's figure out why and solve that problem, not just get pissed.

Jimmy Purdy [00:19:15]:
I've recently begun. Just recently. Really started to appreciate those negative reviews, right? Because they're giving you really, really valuable information, right? And some of it's just blowing smoke up up your ass, right? Like, some. Some of it's like, it's way off base. But I mean, for the most part, for someone to, like, take time out of their day and say, hey, I didn't really like this or this or whatever, like, most people won't tell you that and you got to pay. Like people pay you to come to their shop, tell you what's wrong. Right. So to look at it from that aspect is like you're getting free feedback.

Jimmy Purdy [00:19:49]:
Right. And most of the time, if it's positive, I think like a positive review is, is kind of, it's not always 100% honest. Like, you know, like, of course they like the service. Right. But it's like it's a little bit of fluff, right?

Phil Leone [00:20:03]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:20:04]:
The real value comes from the negative side.

Phil Leone [00:20:07]:
Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think I'm going to say, I'm going to say this, but I'm going to, you know, expand on afterwards. Like, I love when I would get a negative review. And it's not because, you know it's negative. It's because that's an opportunity, a to figure out what's wrong, but then also an opportunity to talk to that customer and say, hey, what can I do to make this right? Because the customer that you piss off, that leaves you a one star review that you turn around and fix their problem and make them happy. That customer is a customer for life. And they will brag about you and say the most amazing things about you than any customer that's ever left you a five star review before, in my opinion. Because they could say, hey listen, these guys are great, but also just they screwed up once and they like, oh my gosh, can you see? Let me tell you what they did, you know, and those customers are literally, they.

Phil Leone [00:20:56]:
I found out, I found so many customers have left us, you know, and I say so many, but I mean, we haven't had a million one star reviews and we had like 4.8 stars on Google with like 600 reviews. So. But I had so many customers that leave us a negative review and then we turn that around and then they'd be key droppers and just, you know, say, fix my car when it's done, fix my car, call me when it's done, drop the keys and leave. I mean, those were most of our customers that would drop the keys were customers that at one point we screwed up.

Jimmy Purdy [00:21:20]:
Do you think it's like, for the, for the positive side, the, those people are always just kind of waiting for the other foot to drop. Right? So like once the other foot drops and you take care of it, it's like, well, what's the worst that's gonna happen? Yeah, they'll take care of me if it does. So you've eliminated that fear, right? Because it's happened. You Took care of it and you moved on. And the people that never experienced the, the other foot dropping, right, and like the negative side, they still have that fear, like, ah, what if, what if one of these times they actually, you know, screw up? And if that, when that in the back of their mind, it's like they could always just go somewhere else because they're kind of a little, they're always a little leery. Right?

Phil Leone [00:21:53]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:21:53]:
100 possibly. I don't know.

Phil Leone [00:21:55]:
Yeah, no, you're right. You're 100. Right. You know, and I, I have a, a thing where I talk to people about like, you know, I was big on, you know, an inexpensive oil change to draw customers. And I know that's super controversial and a lot of, a lot of shops hate it. Um, but you know, it's, that's what customers need more often than anything is an oil change. And even, even if you charge a lot of money for an oil change, we don't like, no one's gonna go retire off of doing oil changes in their shop, in their repair shop, unless you're like, oil change place. And at that point, you know, the place you're gonna make money off of is, you know, air filters and wipers and fuel, fuel injection cleanings, all that stuff.

Phil Leone [00:22:32]:
So. But you know, an inexpensive oil change gets the customers in the door. And then people, you know, people would say, you know, shops that were kind of against, like, oh, these are bottom feeder type customers. Well, they're not really bottom feeder customers. You did a marketing piece to get a customer in the door, you know, and you're mad and pissed off because you didn't, they didn't come in for your 20 oil change and then spend two grand. Well, they need to trust you. They need to come in your shop for, you know, X amount of time and trust you. And then once they, once they've come for however many times is two, three, four, five times and you've done the oil change coupon for them and then they're happy, then they spend money, you know, and I've seen that happen dozens of times, you know, where a customer will come for two years, three years, four years, you know, and they, they don't spend any money and they just get oil changes.

Phil Leone [00:23:16]:
And then the advisor would look at the, the history in the computer and be like, oh, this customer never buys anything, you know, and then all of a sudden, eventually the customer's like, these people are honest. They're giving honest recommendations. Because that's what it is. I mean, it's not like, like in a shop. We're not just trying to sell people stuff just because, at least in, you know, an honest shop, I mean, we, we're telling them what their car needs, educating them with their car needs and, and repairing it, you know, and a lot of customers don't think that that's the case. And then once they trust us, they, you know, they'll spend whatever it is because they know that we're going to do the right thing by them, you know, and, and advisors will give up, you know, but it's, they don't, they don't need to because it takes time.

Jimmy Purdy [00:23:51]:
Yeah. I mean, just like you or me going somewhere, right? Or anybody else, like, you're not just going to go somewhere and offer one coupon, spend a bunch of money like you. I mean, that's not what I do. If I see a coupon for a restaurant, I, I go in and just get the restaurant. I don't buy anything extra, right?

Phil Leone [00:24:06]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:24:06]:
But if I like that discounted meal, it sticks in the back of my mind. I'm like, you know what? That was pretty good. I'll go pay full price for that. I'm kind of craving that. Right. So I think, I mean, it just takes time. Right. And I'm, I'm definitely, I would say on the fence on the whole inexpensive oil change.

Jimmy Purdy [00:24:20]:
I was definitely 100% against it, like, for, for a very long time. And it's just recently, it's really starting to be one of those things that you really just start reevaluating yourself. Right. Like every, every quarter, you gotta, like, reevaluate what you're doing with, with your shop. And yeah, I think it's, I think it's the pull between the owners, operators. And then just like we were talking earlier, once you start really stepping out of the technician role and start focusing more on the business, you start realizing, you know what, that's really not a bad idea because I'm spending $60 per acquisition. Right. It's costing me in marketing, $60 for every new customer.

Jimmy Purdy [00:24:54]:
So why don't I just take that 60 bucks and put that on top of the $120 oil change that we're doing? So it's a 60 oil change, right. I mean, that's, that's what it is. And I'm, I'm still breaking even then, so I can even discount it further than that and still be okay, right. I'm still, I'm still at a zero. I'm not making money. But once I get them in Here they see the shop, they see what we're doing here. I mean, I guarantee one out of ten is going to spend 1500 bucks, right? Like if we like this, the odds are If I get 10 of them in there for a discounted oil change, one of them will spend 1500-2000 dollars. And that paid for the whole campaign.

Phil Leone [00:25:30]:
Yeah, exactly. You know, and it's, you can't, you can't take just anybody, any shop and just do a cheap, you know, cheap and expensive oil change campaign and have be successful. There's a lot of things that need to happen, you know, so first off, a waiting customer can't sit in your shop for an hour and a half for an oil change. And that happens a lot in shops. I mean, if you look, I look at negative reviews online for shops all the time. And like one of the biggest things is I went in for an oil change and an hour later they told me I needed, you know, $4,000 worth of work. Well, no crap, they didn't do it. They were there for an hour and a half.

Phil Leone [00:26:04]:
Why are they gonna do any work? You know, so you need to get customers done quick, you know, have a sense of urgency, you know, so that's number one. You know, you can't try to throw things down their throat. You know, you need to back it up because especially if they're a first time customer, they're gonna be already weary when you're trying to tell them they need a thousand dollars, two thousand dollars. Anyway. Use the DVIs. Show them. Pull up your tablet like, hey, look, there's this, there's this, you know, here's your brakes, you know, this is, this is what your brake pads are now. This is, you know, this is what it's supposed to look like when they're new.

Phil Leone [00:26:31]:
Pull up the little brake pad thing, you know, show them, you know, so they understand, you know, what's going on with the car. And then, you know, and then you'll start getting more sales from it. But, you know, that's what a lot of shops will do, the cheap oil change for a couple months and then they won't, they'll still spend an hour doing oil change and then they won't take the time to actually explain the ticket to the customer. There's a girl, yeah, we got some recommendations on the bottom, the ticket, you know, if you want to do it, just let us know, click it's, you know, $65 and swipe their card and send them on their way. That's not trying to Present the work.

Jimmy Purdy [00:26:58]:
No, and no one's smiling. It doesn't smell nice. No one's offered him a drink.

Phil Leone [00:27:02]:
Exactly. And then, you know, and then when the, when the, when the campaign goes on for three months and they don't, you know, they, they see their average repair orders going down and they see a whole bunch of just oil change only tickets, like, well, this doesn't work. Got to do something else. Well, that's not, that's not really what happened. You just, you didn't do the other things necessary to make it successful. You know, I, the, I did a full synthetic oil change for $27.77, and people would say I was crazy for it because I literally lost.

Jimmy Purdy [00:27:32]:
That was my first thought.

Phil Leone [00:27:34]:
Yeah, I literally lost money. But that, that was one of the key things that took my shop from under $100,000 a month to consistently well over $200,000 a month.

Jimmy Purdy [00:27:42]:
Wow.

Phil Leone [00:27:43]:
You know, I mean, and, and yeah, on each individual ticket, when the customer didn't buy anything, it was just an oil change ticket. If you hit the little graph, we use techmetric. If you hit the little graph and pulled up the, you know, the profitability report, yeah, it was negative because of how much money I paid my text every, on every single one that was just an oil change. But at the end of the month, when my bank statement showed a whole bunch more money in the bank and I looked at my P L and it was an astronomical amount of money on the P L for what we, compared to what we used to do, I was like, okay, these oil changes are worth it. You know, that, that, that proves it's, it's worth it, you know, but it, it came to the fact that, like, it was preparation. I mean, little things. Like, so, you know, we would, we would take customers when they called as quick as possible. I mean, we were doing 35 to 50 cars a day, you know, but when, when we had our schedule for the next day for the customers that called to come in the next day, we would write every single ticket.

Phil Leone [00:28:33]:
The night before we left about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, we closed at 5, 3 o'clock, we started buying all the tickets. We'd make sure we had every single oil filter. If we use a different type of oil that we didn't stock, we'd make sure we had the oil. You know, we, you know, we would have everything all together ready to go. You know, so when the customer showed up, it wasn't, let me write you up. It was here. Before we went paperless, it Was, here's your repair order. Does everything look right? Sign here.

Phil Leone [00:28:53]:
You know, obviously they were nicer, but you know, I mean, like it was like we were ready to go that, you know, the, the technicians knew exactly which cars they were going to get. Then, you know, that morning, you know, we'd have a morning meeting, they would know. Okay, you know, all right, Jimmy, you've got, you've got these 10 cars, you know, Steve, you got these seven cars, you know, Stan, you've got these cars. They wouldn't, they would know how many cars they've got, obviously pending any walk ins and what time they're coming in, you know, and so, and they would know. So like when we handed a repair order to you and today. All right, Jimmy, here's, here's this oil change in state inspection, you know, and it's, you know, 8:45 in the morning. You'd know at 9:15 you've got another car coming in, so you gotta bust your butt, you know. And you, and you would also know that you don't want to be doing oil, nothing but oil changes all day long.

Phil Leone [00:29:32]:
So you need to make sure you do a good inspection on the car and not just, you know, pistol with the inspection and send it up front. You know, because as the week went on, if work wasn't sold, you're going to be the guy that's, you know, on Friday that's doing 25 oil changes while the other guys are doing work. Because, you know, as their week got filled, we couldn't have them still do a bunch of oil changes. They had to do work.

Jimmy Purdy [00:29:51]:
So you only sold the jobs to the tech set that wrote up the work? Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, kept him in there on the majority of the time, right? Kept them in there.

Phil Leone [00:30:00]:
Yeah, we very rarely would we switch the job to a different tech after he's, after he wrote it up. So. But yeah, I mean it's so it. There were. But you know, and like I said, you know, if the customer was waiting, we had to get them that quote fast. I mean, we couldn't sit there and have a customer waiting for an oil change for an hour and a half and then go tell them they need breaks. I mean, hell, if they wait for an hour and a half, you could barely get them to buy an air filter.

Jimmy Purdy [00:30:20]:
Yeah, yeah, they're ready to go.

Phil Leone [00:30:22]:
Yeah, they're like, hey, I gotta get back to work. I gotta get, I gotta get my. Pick up my kiddo from school, whatever, whatever it is, like they gotta go, you know, so you had to be fast. I mean, we had little timers up and you know, the, you know, when they finished their dvi, the technician would run up at one point. This, you know, we change the process over time, but the technicians would run up, hit the timer, you know, and, but you know, we got a little more, you know, digital when that sped things up even more. But yeah, I mean, it's like we could do, we had, our technicians could do an oil change with the full write up and the DVI and all that in under 20 minutes.

Jimmy Purdy [00:30:52]:
Wow.

Phil Leone [00:30:52]:
You know, and, and my texts were quoting all the work too. They were quoting, you know, quoting the labor, quoting the parts, all that.

Jimmy Purdy [00:31:00]:
Yeah, that's, yeah, that's. I mean if, if you get it down to a science that says when it makes work. Do you think a lot of the, there's, there's, I mean there's tons of coaching companies out there. Right. Do you think a lot of them get stuck in the weeds with trying to make sure you have certain percentages versus looking at the shop? So I really, I want to take it back to when you said you have to do the shop on site visit. Right. I really appreciate that. Like, that really resonates with me because the co, the company we were just recently with, you know, after a year, they still asking us what town our shop's in.

Jimmy Purdy [00:31:30]:
They're still asking us how many bays we have. They're still asking us the names of the techs. Right. And I feel like to really do a good job, you have to be involved in the shop that you're coaching. Right. And, and also what you said with the oil changes, it's like, I don't know what you would call it. It's, it's, you're, you're trying to track percentages and that's how you get money in your account. But you do things like that where you're going all in the red but your bank account's growing.

Jimmy Purdy [00:31:54]:
So isn't that all that's really important?

Phil Leone [00:31:57]:
I, I mean, yeah, obviously the bank account growing is important for sure. Yeah. But I mean I, I think you need to pay attention to everything. I don't think it's just tracking numbers, you know.

Jimmy Purdy [00:32:09]:
Right. And I guess, I guess my point was like a lot of the time it's real strict on making sure that your parts, your parts GP is 55. Right. And that your labor is hitting your 60. Right. And like, and, and if you don't hit these numbers, you're going to fail. Right. But there's like certain things you can do that really have, they'll negatively affect, say, your parts gp, but you're still have an overall gross, Gross profit.

Jimmy Purdy [00:32:33]:
That's phenomenal. Right?

Phil Leone [00:32:34]:
Yeah, I get what you're saying. Yes. I mean, I think a lot of people get hung up on, on specific percentages, and it's different. I feel like in a sense it's different for everyone. I mean, some shops will run a 60 gross profit, but then their overhead will be higher. You know, maybe there, maybe the rent is three times the price as another shop that only runs a 50 gross profit, but their rent's way less money and they do the same revenue. So that shop that has a 50% gross profit actually makes more money, you know, so, so that, that's one thing. So I, I don't really, at the end of the day, yeah, there's, I, I have different percentages on a P and L.

Phil Leone [00:33:09]:
And I mean, we could have a whole nother call about what I think is other good percentage on a P and L. But you know, that you should try to hit with different things. But at the end of the day, what's important is, you know, you, you know roughly how much, how many dollars it costs to run that shop. You should know how much it costs to run your shop every single month in dollars. Forget percentages. How many dollars do I need to make to cover that? And then how many more dollars above that do I want to make in a month? You know, and that, that's really the way I like to try to look at it, you know, because you can't, you can't just the percentages don't matter. That's not going to cover your rent. You know, what's going to cover your rent is you're making more money, you know, and that's, that's, that's the way I like to look at it.

Jimmy Purdy [00:33:43]:
Do you think that's an overwhelming concept for a lot? Yes, because. Good answer.

Phil Leone [00:33:51]:
Yes, 100%.

Jimmy Purdy [00:33:54]:
Right to the point. Yep, definitely 100%. Yeah.

Phil Leone [00:33:56]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:33:57]:
Because you, because you start, and you start racking all this stuff up, right? And you're like, oh, it's thousand bucks here, it's 800 bucks a month here, it's 4,000 bucks a month here. And then to actually see all that together and it's like, oh, it cost me $18,000 to keep this place open every month. It's pretty daunting.

Phil Leone [00:34:13]:
Yeah, I, I think it's, I think it's a lot easier for somebody, especially somebody that's already Running around like a whirlwind, like a chicken with their head cut off. A lot of times, like a lot of shop owners are. I think it's a lot easier for them to say, all right, it's, you know, it's 46% of my sales is overhead. Then for them to say, it's $67,352 and 46 cents.

Jimmy Purdy [00:34:34]:
Yeah.

Phil Leone [00:34:37]:
You know, once. Once they add it all up, you know, I mean, because it's. It is. It can be overwhelming, you know, for sure, because it's just such a higher number. And then you have to add all the things up where, you know, if percent percentage is just so much easier to look at.

Jimmy Purdy [00:34:49]:
Yeah.

Phil Leone [00:34:49]:
You know, but, you know, I feel like in a lot of instances, just looking at percentages can also hide things, too, when you're looking at, you know, operations and profit. I mean, because I can't tell you how many times. Like parts, for example, you know, we were running really good parts margins, really good. You know, part parts margins were great. And, you know, but I sat there and I'm looking at it. I'm like, I feel like it should be better, you know, and the guys were like, what are you talking about, dude? Like, we're making profit. I'm like, no, I feel like something should be better. So then I found that we had to have a better process on auditing and reconciling our bills.

Phil Leone [00:35:22]:
So then we ended up having somebody that reconciled the bill every single day. And we found that the. The part stores one specifically, which I won't mention that they are. We're screwing up our bill all the time. But our margins were accurate. Or not accurate, but our margins were good. But we were literally leaving a couple thousand dollars on the table every single month. A core.

Phil Leone [00:35:40]:
A core here and there that they forgot to credit or, you know, labor. They were forgetting labor claims. Labor claims weren't coming in accurate. All sorts of different things where, like, they were things that, you know, should have been credited the right way and would have made us make a lot more money. But the percentage looked good, so, you know, they weren't looking at it, you know, and then when I saw that, I was like, holy crap. Like, we need to come up with a better process to make sure things are getting audited better, you know, and then that's how I fix something, you.

Jimmy Purdy [00:36:04]:
Know, and that was all looking at raw numbers versus the percentages. I guess I'm trying to wrap my head around exactly what. So you're basically your resell on Your parts was good but you were actually missing the line item as far as the number when it came to the profit and loss.

Phil Leone [00:36:19]:
Yeah, yeah. So the, the percentage looked good and even, even technically I guess the dollar amounts, real good. But when I was looking at like the costs like, like actually opened up the quick, you know when you go into QuickBooks and you click the percentage and you, it pulls up every single transaction. When I actually started looking at all the transactions, things were off, you know and a lot of, you know, a lot of bigger shops, you know, they have, you know, bookkeepers, you know, that keep. But a lot, a lot of, honestly a lot of the smaller shops, you know, they don't really, and it's unfortunate but a lot of small shops don't get trained, don't really pay attention to that stuff that much.

Jimmy Purdy [00:36:49]:
Right.

Phil Leone [00:36:50]:
I mean they, they click order in their shop management system and then when the bill comes, they pay it.

Jimmy Purdy [00:36:54]:
Right.

Phil Leone [00:36:55]:
You know, and then if their margin looks good, they know, they don't think anything else.

Jimmy Purdy [00:36:58]:
Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Phil Leone [00:36:59]:
So, but, so when I actually sat down and looked at, I said okay, we now, now I know that we need to audit it. So it's a, it's a whole heck of a lot easier. Even at 50 cars a day, it's a whole lot easier to audit all those parts on a daily basis, which would sound daunting but we had one, one employee that were able to shift some of the things they were doing and they started auditing that and they would audit the tickets every single night to make sure all the bills were right. And then so literally when the parts bill came, it wasn't like, oh, parts bill's here, let's pay it and hope that maybe everything's right. Or take three weeks to pay it. It was like, okay, once the parts bill comes we can just write a check because we already knew that everything was right up to that day.

Jimmy Purdy [00:37:33]:
Yeah.

Phil Leone [00:37:34]:
You know, and then you know, because things can fall through the cracks. I mean think about it, I mean, you know, how long have you been involved in shops for? I guess question, good question to ask me personally. Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:37:44]:
Involved in shops in which way?

Phil Leone [00:37:47]:
Like working in a shop or.

Jimmy Purdy [00:37:48]:
Oh, it's been close to 10 years now.

Phil Leone [00:37:53]:
Okay, so that's a long time. I mean so. But how many times throughout the day do parts come wrong? Do parts come that you don't need? Do you need to order more parts? Do parts have to get returned? It's all the friggin time.

Jimmy Purdy [00:38:05]:
Oh yeah, yeah.

Phil Leone [00:38:06]:
You know, so it's it's super easy at the end of the month, even if you audit at the end of the month, to have things fall through the cracks. You know, we started doing that throughout the. You know, every single day, and it changed everything. Was saving thousands of dollars a month. It literally. It literally got to the point where I looked at it one month, I was like, we could have paid a whole other employee aside from the person that was doing it to do this, and we still would have came out ahead, which we didn't do because we had it. We had the system together. But.

Jimmy Purdy [00:38:28]:
Right, Right. Well, that's like the nuances of, like, trying to find what's wrong. You're right. When people ask you, you know, why am I not making money? It's like there's the microscope that you just looked through, right? Like, that one thing right there just pulled in another two or three grand a month. But what else. What other things are we missing? And then. Well, then you can sit here and you can listen to this podcast. You can have a talk with you or talk to anybody, and they'll tell you these things and these stories, and then you show up to the shop the next day and you do absolutely none of it because literally no one's holding you accountable.

Jimmy Purdy [00:39:02]:
Right? So even if you learn and, you know, and someone tells you about this stuff, it's like no one holds you accountable for it. You know what I mean?

Phil Leone [00:39:10]:
Can. Can we pause this for two seconds?

Jimmy Purdy [00:39:11]:
Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll edit this from.

Phil Leone [00:39:14]:
Okay.

Jimmy Purdy [00:39:15]:
We don't have to pause anything. I'll just edit it on the other side.

Phil Leone [00:39:18]:
Okay, cool.

Jimmy Purdy [00:39:19]:
Yeah, no worries.

Phil Leone [00:39:20]:
No, it's okay. He's recording to edit afterwards, so.

Jimmy Purdy [00:39:23]:
Okay.

Phil Leone [00:39:23]:
I just need my laptop.

Jimmy Purdy [00:39:24]:
Okay. Yeah, it's not. We're not live, so it's all good.

Phil Leone [00:39:28]:
Okay.

Jimmy Purdy [00:39:29]:
It's no big deal. That's. That's what you have editing for, I guess.

Phil Leone [00:39:34]:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think for. For owners of shops, one big thing, man, is you're in it all day long, that it's very hard to, like, step back and look at everything from above, you know? And, you know, that's why, like, I feel like every single shop or business owner should have a coach. Whether it's somebody that they pay or, like, just another business owner that they know that's going to give them unfiltered, no bs, like, opinions on things when they look at it, look at what's going on to really help them evaluate things. Because it's so. There's so many things that can Be uncovered when someone else is looking at it other than you because you're just in it, you know.

Jimmy Purdy [00:40:17]:
Yeah. Or just actually doing it and like having someone tell you, did you, did you look at that yet? Have you gone through your parts? Oh, what's the word? Reconciliation. Have you, you know, have you done it yet? Did you, did you. No, I haven't done it. I haven't done it like third or fourth times. Like, all right, I'll freaking do it. Right. Find the holes.

Jimmy Purdy [00:40:38]:
Right. Plug the holes is all you can do from that stuff. So with your style of, of, of coaching, I want to kind of go back to that a little bit because I really like the uniqueness that you bring to the table with that stuff. So you like to get in there, get involved right away and then moving forward, how does that process work and what is it that you really focus on as far as helping shops? Is it really custom tailored to what you find in that first visit or what, what is it you like to really dig into?

Phil Leone [00:41:07]:
Yeah, so the, it really, I mean.

Jimmy Purdy [00:41:10]:
I know it's a vague question, but.

Phil Leone [00:41:12]:
Yeah, I know it's fine. It's, it's, it's not a big deal. So I, I mean I, I love systems. I love, you know, procedures and all that type of stuff and, and make a shop real smooth. So that's obviously something that no matter what we're working on, I try to like piece in to it to help make a shop run smooth. But really, I mean, we, I don't have a, a given curriculum for, because I do stuff with service advisors and with owners and I don't have a given curriculum for anything. You know, it's literally, it is, Most of it, 90% of it is tailored off of. When I go to the shop, you know, I don't want to get too involved into saying exactly what I do because I don't want to give stuff away because like, we do some like, not sneaky, but we do some like recon work on the shop before we get there.

Jimmy Purdy [00:41:50]:
Sure.

Phil Leone [00:41:51]:
But, but we, we do some investigating.

Jimmy Purdy [00:41:53]:
Secret shopper stuff.

Phil Leone [00:41:54]:
Yes, kind of. Yeah, but we do some of that type of stuff and you know, we go to the shop and we do a full, full on evaluation and look at things and, and beforehand we find out like what the shop owner's goal is. Like what is it that they want, what success, like you said before, what's successful back to them, you know, is success for you. You know, making, you know, $30,000 a month in net and working 20 hours a week is success for you. Making, you know, $100,000 a month in net and working and working bell to bell, open to close all day long. Like, do you not care about working? You just want to make as much money as possible, like, what success look like, you know, so we can try to come up with a plan on what we need to do, you know, and that's part of that is also where the numbers come in. Because when they talk about how much money they want to make, I have, you know, we then sit down and look at, like, you know, where their average sales per hour are, what the gross profit per hour is, and how many lifts they have. So how many texts they need, how many, you know, and how many cars they need to get based on the numbers that they have come, you know, right now to get to the numbers that they want to be at.

Phil Leone [00:42:49]:
But we, you know, we sit down and we tailor the plan and say, okay, cool, here's what we're going to do. We've got. I try to do. I try to do, like, the initial, like, no more than 10 things that we're going to try to knock out in the beginning, but sometimes I've gone as high as, like, 15 to 20. If there's a lot of stuff that needs to happen to get them or. And if they want to do it quicker. So I'll say, all right, these are the items that we're going to do. We're going to start with these ones.

Phil Leone [00:43:11]:
And a lot of times, unless it's a glaring thing that I'm like, you need to fix this first. A lot of times I talk to the person, I have them pick what they want to do first. Because really, in most cases, a lot of the guys, they just need to win. They need. They need to figure out what they need to do, and they need to actually achieve it and kind of get that pat on the back, like, all right, I won't. I made something happen for. For several reasons. For their.

Phil Leone [00:43:35]:
Like, for their ego and for their mindset, and then also for their employees. Because when you have a shop that's failing, the employees, like, they need to see that, hey, Jimmy can make it happen. If they see, all right, Jimmy said that we're going to do XYZ and we actually did it, then they'll start building more confidence in the owner and see them as a leader and start following them and all the other things you try to do. They'll be easier to accomplish when you have a team behind you. So, you know, so we come up with that plan. And we say, okay, here's the things you're going to do. You're going to start with this. This is the one you decided on.

Phil Leone [00:44:04]:
So they start with this. So it might be two items, you know, so we'll, we'll have a call and we'll say, all right, these are, this is what we're going to do. You're starting with these items. So then cool. And then unless they have another questions until our next call, we don't really talk. They might pop in and say, hey, what do you think about this? What do you think about that? And then we get on the next call and literally I've had, it's funny, I've had calls, last three and a half minutes because we get on the next call, but hey, how's it going? They'll spend a minute or two, tell me, you know, what's been going on with them, and I'll be alright. Jimmy. So on our last call we said that you were going to do X and Y.

Phil Leone [00:44:36]:
How's it going with that? And then one of two things happens. Either they start saying, man, I killed it, I started doing this or that, or they start trying to tell you a story or what's the story time, you know, that they didn't do a damn thing. And then sometimes I let them tell me the whole story. And then sometimes like, all right, man, listen, Jimmy, we're not going to do anything else until you can get these things finished because we're trying, we're trying to build a pyramid here to get to the top, you know, and, and we can't build a pyramid straight up. It has to be built out and then go up from here. So you got to get, start putting these blocks down. And once these blocks are down, we can move to the next ones and we hop on the, hop off the phone. Almost every time that happens, the next, the, the next call, they usually ask to have it earlier than they originally scheduled it.

Phil Leone [00:45:24]:
And they did the things they were supposed to do and usually did one more item after that because they're like, well, crap, I'm paying this guy. And I literally had him on the phone for three minutes. Like so, so they, they, they, they're, they're kind of mad at me because I, they didn't get their money's worth for the call, but they really did get their money's worth because they got off the phone and I kicked them in the ass and they went to what they were supposed to do, you know, so, you know, like I. I tell them, like, hey, like, you're not paying me to be your friend. You're paying me to help you fix whatever it is you want to fix.

Jimmy Purdy [00:45:50]:
Yeah.

Phil Leone [00:45:51]:
So we need to do it, you know, and if you're not, you know, somebody has to hold you accountable. So. But yeah, it's kind of like the style. And some people like it, some people don't. Some people, they. They want a cheerleader and they want, you know, somebody that's going to stand there and say, good job and pat them on the back. And there's. There's a time for that, right? I mean, I'm.

Phil Leone [00:46:08]:
I'm not always, like, I'm not always mean or anything like that, but, you know, it's. I feel like from a training and a coaching aspect, you know, a lot of those, like, you know, hey, I'm just going to pat you on the back every time we get on the phone, you know, and celebrate something, even if it's not necessarily a win. Those are the people that don't really help shops improve, is my opinion. A lot of those type of people, like, you need to, like, kick somebody in the ass sometimes. And a lot of people that look for coaching for the first time, that's what they need, you know.

Jimmy Purdy [00:46:36]:
What would you say to. To be. Play the devil's advocate if you had someone that said, well, if they're paying me for a program, I can't force them to do anything. Right. So if some. So if a client was to come in and, and pay you, and now you feel obligated to keep them as a client, Right? And. And it's like, well, if they're paying me for my program, how do I force them to do anything?

Phil Leone [00:47:00]:
Yeah, so if you go to my website, you can't sign up for my program on my website. And the reason for that is the way I do things doesn't work for everybody, you know, and. And that's fine because, like I said earlier, like, yeah, like, I want to make money, right? Who doesn't? But that's not why I'm helping people. I'm helping people because I want to actually help them. So I don't want to just collect money from somebody, you know, every single week, every single month, you know, or whatever. And just because, like, I want to do that and actually help them. So if they're not, you know, if. When we.

Phil Leone [00:47:37]:
We have like an entrance, like a interview call, and when we go through that call, I tell them, I literally tell them a lot of times what my style is. I'll say, hey, this is how I do things. You know, we're gonna, we're gonna do a shop visit, you know, and it's not an astronaut come out of me. I'm out of money. Like, the other places charge for shop visits. You know, obviously you have to pay for my time and the flights and all that stuff, but it's, it's not crazy. But we're have a shop visit and we're going to go through a plan, and when we put this plan together, we're going to execute it. And if we don't execute it, I'm going to ask you why.

Phil Leone [00:48:06]:
And we're not going to move forward, right? The only way we move forward is, is finishing items. So if that's not something you're okay with to get to where you want to be, then this, you know, this isn't going to work. You know, and I don't say that portion until somebody usually gives me a rebuttal, says, oh, well, what if I don't like it? Or whatever, you know, and I'm, you know, obviously at the end of the day, it's their business. They can do what they want, you know, but that's why after our shop, after the shop visit, we have like a, almost like essentially like a brainstorming coaching session. And I go through all the things we found and I tell them what I suggest, and then we come to an agreement on that call. So they might not like my idea on how we, you know, if we've have, say we have 10 items and maybe they like how I want to fix eight of them, but the other two they don't like. We brainstorm together on what could be a, a good idea to do, you know, because it's not. I said I don't have a curriculum.

Phil Leone [00:48:55]:
It's not like I'm teaching out of this. Like, this is the one way you have to do it, you know, so, you know, if they don't like how I say to do something, we say, okay, let's figure something out. Well, you know, and we'll bounce things off of each other. And then at the end of that call, we say, okay, these are the things that we're going to fix and this is how we're going to fix them. You agree to it, right? So they've already agreed by the time we get past that shop visit in the next call, how, how it's going to be done.

Jimmy Purdy [00:49:16]:
Do you have like a graduation or what's, what's the, your term link length? What is what is a. A. A fair amount of time you want to see them in the program before you can send them out on their own.

Phil Leone [00:49:28]:
The graduation's at their funeral. Not just. Just kidding.

Jimmy Purdy [00:49:32]:
Fair enough. Lifers, if I can get them. Right.

Phil Leone [00:49:35]:
No, Just kidding. But I. I don't really have anything like that now. I. I just built out the beginnings of like a. Like an online course so as that'll have like a graduation type thing. But I mean, truthfully, I mean, like, even if I was in a program, like, I would feel like I never graduate. Like, you, literally, you never.

Phil Leone [00:49:55]:
Because you're. There's always more to learn.

Jimmy Purdy [00:49:58]:
That's true. Yeah.

Phil Leone [00:50:00]:
It's not just like, oh, this is a magic bullet fixed. The industry is always changing, you know, and coaching, there's a lot to it. There's. There's mindset, there's leadership. I mean, you know, you're. You're a therapist, too. At the same time, there's so many different things outside of the shop. So it's.

Phil Leone [00:50:12]:
It's a. It's an ongoing thing, you know, and there. There may be a point where somebody's gotten to the point where they say, hey, listen, like, I think everything with you has been great, but I need to try to do something different, you know, and because that happens with people, they need somebody different. So maybe they need, like, we have a few coaches, so maybe I have to put them with a different one of our coaches, you know, or whatever the case may be. But I don't really think that, you know, there is a graduation for anybody.

Jimmy Purdy [00:50:34]:
Yeah, I guess that was a poor. A poor question as far as what I was thinking. So one of the things I've always heard, or I've heard lately is in coaching programs is a sick patient is a good patient. Right? And I think a lot of people get stuck in, like, a coaching program, and they. They don't know how to get out of it, right. Or. Or it's like going to a doctor. And every time you go to the doctor, they give you something that makes you feel better, right.

Jimmy Purdy [00:51:01]:
But you never get cured, right? So they're treating the symptom instead of solving the problem. And I'm not by any means saying that's what you're doing, but in that kind of mindset, you always kind of want to say, well, how long should I be in this program before I see the results that I need to see? And obviously, it's ever changing, and we're all. We're students. Every day is a learning day, right? But Sometimes this gets a little stagnant. It's like, so what are we doing here? What's the next step? You know?

Phil Leone [00:51:26]:
Yeah, yeah. So, well, a few things with that one. I mean, like, you know, sometimes, you know, if somebody's got their shop together, they've got their life together, I mean, they, maybe it's not. They need coaching anymore. Maybe they need, maybe at that point they just need to be in some type of a program, almost like a 20 group type deal where it's just, you know, you, you actively stay involved with other shops so you can still keep trying to grow and, you know.

Jimmy Purdy [00:51:50]:
And it's hard to cut you off. But do you think, do you think the 20 group. So 20 group would be like the. That's like the high end. That's like where you, I guess, would graduate to. Right? That's like the end of the line in a sense.

Phil Leone [00:52:01]:
Yeah. I mean, because at that, at that point there's some groups out there and we're probably going to have one in the future and it would most likely be like a free or a low cost thing when we do it, because it's really just going to be like a community for shops once they've hit a certain level and they don't really need help.

Jimmy Purdy [00:52:15]:
That makes sense. Yeah.

Phil Leone [00:52:16]:
Consistently anymore, you know, And I mean, I'm also, for me, you know, if you like say you were a shop with me and you're with me for a year, two years, whatever it is, and then you said, hey, like, I'm not, I don't think I really need coaching anymore. Okay, cool, Jimmy, no problem. And then if you call me in, you know, in, in six weeks or six months and say, hey, man, what's going on with this? I'm like, no, you guys signed back up for the program. I'm not talking to you. You know what I mean? Like, it's, that's, that's not what's gonna happen. Yeah. I'm gonna say, all right, let's, let's talk about it. Let's figure it out, you know?

Jimmy Purdy [00:52:44]:
Yeah. Probably the fourth or fifth call is like, are we gonna keep doing this?

Phil Leone [00:52:49]:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, maybe. I mean, if it got to the point where you're texting me every day. But, but yeah, I mean, it's. I, I definitely don't want to see, you know, people be a sick patient all the time. You know, I want to see people get better. But you know, at the same time, a lot of, a lot of people, like, when you own a business, the the hard thing for people to understand is you're your own boss now. You.

Phil Leone [00:53:12]:
You think they'd understand it. But like, when you work for somebody, you've always, you know, no matter, even if you're the manager, you've got that person that's above you to tell you, hey, Jimmy, you screwed up with this. But when you own your own business, you usually don't have that unless you're. Unless you're married and your wife is heavily involved in the business, Something like that. I've seen that before where, you know, that, you know, the wife will yell at the husband all the time, but a lot of times the husband doesn't listen to the wife, so it doesn't matter.

Jimmy Purdy [00:53:35]:
Right. You know, it's the negative Google reviews that are your boss.

Phil Leone [00:53:40]:
I guess a lot of times they don't really handle them the right way. So I feel like a lot of people want to stick with some type of a coaching program in general. You know, it'll be positive for them just because they're going to have that person, if it's the right type of coach or person that can help, be that. That second set of eyes and that second set of ears to help listen and help. Help them say, like, when they don't know what they're supposed to, like, hey, where do I go from here? You know, and. And I think that that's more like when the people graduate from needing, like, coaching because, you know, like, when somebody first starts working with me, I mean, even though we say we have, like, you know, two calls a month, I might have six or seven calls in a month with somebody, and then a couple months in, I might talk to them once a month, you know, because it. They don't need. They don't need as much conversation.

Phil Leone [00:54:22]:
It's. Hey, like, they're. They're out there just knocking stuff out and doing things, you know. But in the beginning, it's like, all right, I. I took three steps, now what I do next, you know, and so it's. It's kind of like a progression, period.

Jimmy Purdy [00:54:33]:
Do you. What do you see as far as your own personal win for them as. As a shop grows, is there a certain, like, income that they get to that you're like, all right, I got this shop in a good place. And you start thinking about, maybe it's time for you to go to like, a 20 group or maybe I've kind of hit my limit. Is there a number there for you?

Phil Leone [00:54:54]:
There's not really a finite number for me. A lot of it Is like I said, we come up with what their goals are and then if, when somebody's hit all of their goals and then, then we start trying to come up with more goals. And then if the, if the goals are trying to come up with after they hit all their goals are like crazy, like to the moon goals, which I love. I mean, I think that's awesome to have things like that. But if they have like a huge, huge goals, and I'm like, you're going to do that. You're going to hit these things no matter what. Like if, if, if I sit there and look at, look at things that they come up with next that they want to do, and it's like something insane. Like, I want to make this amount, you know, $150,000 in a week.

Phil Leone [00:55:26]:
You know, I'm like, well, dude, you're probably going to do that in three months, like without me even telling you anything. Like, that's kind of like, you know. And I'm not, I'm not saying it's $150,000 a week. I'm just saying, like, if their goals are so insane that you would sound crazy to a normal person, you know, that, you know, the, the people that think a million dollars a year for a shop is like the end all be all, you know, in revenue, you know, if the, but if the goal is crazy and it's like, yeah, I know he's gonna hit that. I know Jimmy's gonna do that. And I don't even need to do anything. I could just say, hey, go ahead and do it. You'll make it happen.

Phil Leone [00:55:53]:
And it happens, then I know that they're, they really don't need consistent coaching every day or every week or whatever.

Jimmy Purdy [00:55:59]:
Okay. So measure it based on their own performance of their own goals. Really?

Phil Leone [00:56:03]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:56:04]:
It's funny you brought that up because I, I definitely thought a million dollars a year was the end all be all. Like, that was, was my goal for the first five years, right? And then once you hit it, you're like, well, if, if you subtract inflation, right? It's like, well, we've just basically kept pace.

Phil Leone [00:56:18]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:56:19]:
Yeah, it's compared to 2018 to now, like 600,000 or 700,000 back in 2018 is a million now. So it's like, ah, oh, cool. But I think it's still a feat in its own.

Phil Leone [00:56:29]:
Yeah, I mean, for sure. I mean, having a million dollar businesses, but it's like, you know, for the first several years, it was like, all right, $83,333.33. That's why I kept telling them, that's what I need to do. That's what I need to do.

Jimmy Purdy [00:56:40]:
That's when it's right down my wall. 19, 230 a week or 2,739 a day.

Phil Leone [00:56:45]:
Exactly.

Jimmy Purdy [00:56:47]:
Sitting right down the wall.

Phil Leone [00:56:49]:
That was the thing. And then, you know, I remember the first time, like, I couldn't hit the 80 grand in a month. I. It was like. And this is probably a little off base, I'm sorry, but no, no, no. I. I spent so long, I couldn't hit. I couldn't hit.

Phil Leone [00:57:01]:
I couldn't hit it, you know? And, you know, we had one day where we, in the same week, we did a thousand dollars and we did $10,000 in the day. In a day, in the same week. And this is also at the same time when I started learning how to like, fix processes in the shop. But can you guess which day seemed busier?

Jimmy Purdy [00:57:23]:
I would assume that the thousand dollar day was pretty damn busy and everything left the next day.

Phil Leone [00:57:28]:
Well, no, what I'm. What I mean is like, we actually, we sold a thousand one day and sold 10,000. Not completed, like, physically sold.

Jimmy Purdy [00:57:34]:
Oh, I see.

Phil Leone [00:57:35]:
Yeah. So the day we sold a grand seemed like the craziest, busiest day ever. And then I went, look at the numbers we sold. I was like, dude, what the hell? And then we sold $10,000 and it was like, smooth. It was like, like the key was in the door at 501, locking the door. We're going home. And. And then that.

Phil Leone [00:57:52]:
That's when I realized I was like, holy crap. Like, I need to, like, really, like this thing needs to be like, coin operated. Like, like everything needs a step, you know? And then. But that week, we did 25 grand that week, and it was the first week of the month, and we'd never done 80 grand. 72 or something like that at the time was our, our record. And I turned to my manager and I said, dude, we've never done 80 grand a month. He said, I know. And I was like, we're into a hundred grand this month.

Phil Leone [00:58:21]:
And he was like, we're here. We might as well, right? And we buckled down and we focused and we started really digging into how we were doing things throughout the day and trying to make. Trying to shorten the time it took to do things and all that stuff and focusing. And when things seemed crazy, we take a step back and slow down and say, all right, let's not rush through it, because not that slow and Steady wins the race. But sometimes we run around too fast and just start screwing up. Like a bowling china shop. Like a Tasmanian devil, you know?

Jimmy Purdy [00:58:50]:
Yeah.

Phil Leone [00:58:51]:
And, you know, we did 20, 25 grand, and then I think the next week, we did, like, 28. Week before that was. You know, we got to. That was a little slower. We ended up finishing, like, 107,000 that month. And then we never turned back. We never looked back after that. And things just kept improving and we kept.

Phil Leone [00:59:05]:
You know, and, you know, there was a lot of factors in it, but, you know, it was. You know, that month is when I realized that, like. And we had never done a million dollars in a year either. I was like, a million is like, nothing. I was like, a million sounds great, but, like, that's just what people say, like. And I started. Then I started doing math, and I'm like, all right, I've got this amount of lifts. This is what our average ticket is.

Phil Leone [00:59:24]:
I was like, holy crap. If we do this many cars, we could do a million and a half, 2 million. Hell, we could probably do three, you know? And then I was like, this is like, this is insane. And I opened my eyes. It was like that, like, you know, explosion where you're like, holy crap. Like, you could see everything. So that movie with Bradley Cooper, Limitless. Yeah.

Phil Leone [00:59:44]:
When he. When he takes the. The pill, and all of a sudden, it's like, I can see everything.

Jimmy Purdy [00:59:47]:
The veil's been removed.

Phil Leone [00:59:49]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:59:51]:
So, yeah. It's quite amazing once. Once you hit that, that becomes natural after that, right. And you're like. You set these bars and you hit that hundred.000 in that month, but you never quite. It never goes. I mean, it does. Like, it goes back, but your own personal standards, you're like, oh, have been leveled up, in a sense, and you're just not okay with, like, an $80,000 month or a $90,000 month.

Jimmy Purdy [01:00:14]:
Right. Which at one point was, like, your standard, right? You're like. You're sitting there doing 60k a month, and you're like, 90,000 a hunt. There's no way, right? And you have, like, this metaphorical ceiling, and it's just such a bizarre feeling to, like, like, literally break through that ceiling and then realize, like, like you said, then your mind's opened up, and you're like, oh, man. Like, we can do more. It's not just me.

Phil Leone [01:00:38]:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and. And really, I mean, though, I like to always say that, like, you're like, the. Your ceiling should be, like, ever changing. It should be like, you should get through your ceiling. And then now there's another ceiling up there. Let's try to get to that one, you know, And.

Phil Leone [01:00:51]:
And sometimes it's cool to, like, get through your ceiling and hit a goal and hang out there for a little bit. Like, I'm not saying things, I always need to be like, push, push, push, push, push, push. But, like, I don't feel like you should ever try to stay stagnant and just stay at that ceiling level. And you should always try to go up at some point.

Jimmy Purdy [01:01:07]:
You know, that brings up a good point as far as, like, building and progressing. And this is probably something that you've seen is when shops get to that point and they get too big too fast, that's also another one of those idiosms that we hear a lot, right? Same with the whole a sick patient's a good patient, like, stuff like this that really scares shop owners to, like, for one, sign up with a coach and then two, to grow. Right? Because they're so afraid of growing too big too fast and then losing everything. Because that's like one of those things you hear, right? Do you ever actually see that? Do you ever see someone actually move through those steps too fast to actually create a house of cards?

Phil Leone [01:01:42]:
Yeah. So I've. I've had friends of mine that have done it. Nobody that I've personally worked with, but I've seen people go from doing like, you know, 15, 20, $25,000 in a month to doing 150k plus and not building the foundation below it, and then it just crumbling. And then there's a guy I know that he was. He had a shop that went. They weren't doing a lot. They got up to 150 to $180,000 a month.

Phil Leone [01:02:08]:
And he didn't have the right staff. He didn't have the right leadership. You know, he. He wasn't able to actually lead his shop, you know, and. Because even though they were doing big numbers, it was. The place was still chaotic, you know, so, like, for, like, for example, in my shop, when things started getting busier and busier and busier, we were. We were getting busier, but we were make. As we were getting busier, we were building that foundation and making things smoother.

Phil Leone [01:02:33]:
So it got to the point where, like, we sold $34,000 in a day once, and it was like. It was like nothing. It was like, holy crap, this is like, easy, right? You know, and, you know, where some people would struggle to do that in a week, you know, we would. And you know, we sold it in a day and it was, it was like nothing. It was just smoother, smoother, smoother. So this, you know, and, and with that, my guys, you know, I could go in and tell them we're going to do $600,000 in a month, and they would believe me. Even if I, even if I didn't even think it was possible, they would believe me and do everything they possibly could to do it. Because every time we did the next level, it was easier, you know, and they had faith and they believed.

Phil Leone [01:03:07]:
And, you know, believing in something is one of the biggest things that makes it happen. You're being able to manifest it and have that, have that faith in it. But back to the guy that everything crumbled on him. So he got to like 150, $180,000 a month. But he hadn't built that foundation. His guys didn't have faith in him, all that stuff. And one of the biggest reasons why he did that amount of money is he was doing a bunch of marketing. And he had one guy that was really, really good at quoting and looking over cars and, but couldn't do all the work.

Phil Leone [01:03:34]:
So that guy, that one guy was doing like most of the inspections and most of those DVIs and all that stuff. He'd be working on a car and one of the guys would come over and say, hey man, come look at this. And he'd look at the car, help write him up. And that guy got pissed because he was making great money. But everybody else that was not really that good of a technician was making really good money too. And he felt like he was carrying everything. And somebody heard about him, whether it was, I think it was, might have been through the snap on truck or something like that. Somebody heard about how good of a technician he was.

Phil Leone [01:04:02]:
I know the shop scooped him up. And this guy wasn't constantly trying to recruit. And you know, you know me, I could have a technician on every single lift. And I'm still interviewing technicians. And my texts are like, what the hell are you doing, dude? Like, we have no room for them. I'm like, listen, you never know what's gonna happen. I was like, maybe we get another location one day. I was like, if we find an amazing technician, I'll pour concrete, pad out, pack back and put a roof over it if I need to, you know, like.

Phil Leone [01:04:30]:
But you always need to be trying to plan the future, no matter what it is. You never know. I mean, I said it's not even necessarily because they would say, oh, well, what, are you just gonna fire one of us? No, you never know. Your wife, your wife might get a promotion at work and then say, yeah, move halfway across the country, but you got to do it in 60 days.

Jimmy Purdy [01:04:45]:
Yeah.

Phil Leone [01:04:46]:
You know, and, and she might get a promotion making twice as much money as you. So you do it, you know, and then if that happens with you, then we're screwed. So I need to be planning for, need to be planning for that, you know, and I, this guy didn't do any of that. So he had no potential technicians in the pipeline. No nothing. This guy left his, that tech was quoting like $2,000 a ticket. The other guys couldn't even quote five, six hundred dollars a ticket. So his average quote dropped.

Phil Leone [01:05:07]:
His average, average, average ro dropped. So he was just doing a ridiculous amount of oil changes. He took, and he, he took too long to turn the, to dial the marketing back while he was trying to find another technician. So he was just doing oil change after oil change, oil change. And the guys weren't quoting things. So he, next thing you know, he's doing 60 grand a month because he didn't build the foundation around it.

Jimmy Purdy [01:05:31]:
Wow. Yeah, that's the horror stories that scares everybody, I think. But I mean, it's good to know the nuances, right? Because that's, that's important. You just hear the stuff, you let it sit in your brain. Then you go home and you can't sleep at night and you're just like, oh man, I'm gonna lose everything, aren't I? Like, no, just, just relax.

Phil Leone [01:05:47]:
Yeah, exactly. Just chill out and, you know, growth. That's one of the reasons, you know, like the way I've got my business structured in the different platforms is like, so for the coaching, I'm not going to take a lot of coaching clients, you know, I mean, the, you know, because the type of service we provide is not sustainable. If I've got a thousand, two thousand clients under, you know, that I'm coaching, you know, between, If I have 40 coaches, it's not sustainable because I'm not going to find 40, 50 people that have the same mentality that I have, that I'm going to be able to manage and make sure that they're doing things the same way that I would to help the shops and give them that personal service, the tailored plan. So for the coaching, we have to keep it on a little more, more personal and like, you know, exclusive level, you know, whereas like the service advising thing that we're doing, the remote service advising that I, I, we Started, you know, getting big. We just got a. A partnership agreement with a large distributor where we're actually. We're selling engines and transmissions for their clients for free.

Phil Leone [01:06:50]:
And I saw how big that this was starting to get, and I said, well, we need to figure out how to scale this. And that, I found was scalable because every single amazing service writer wants to work from home. So, you know, I'm able to recruit great service writers. And then we have our calls recorded so that we can manage and we can scale. So we've decided to scale that part of the business, you know, quicker and larger than the other part of the business. And it's similar to in a shop. So, you know, because I could very. Could have very easily gotten to the point where we've gotten several thousand shops that were doing remote service Advisor for.

Phil Leone [01:07:21]:
But if we didn't scale it properly and grow it properly, it would crumble, you know, just like that guy shocked it. But we've been building it the right way, and it's, you know, we're. We have a strong foundation with a bench. I mean, I've got. I've got about another 20 or 30, you know, service advisors that are ready to come in once. Once we need them, as that grows.

Jimmy Purdy [01:07:37]:
Well, yeah, that's an interesting concept too, because you sell something and then they come into the shop and then the person's not at the shop that they were talking to. I don't know. I mean, obviously, anything. In this day and age, anything can work and everything. Everybody's into the digital age. Right. But I just, I find that intriguing for that purposes. Like, you want to go in and, like, talk to the person that you've been talking to on the phone.

Jimmy Purdy [01:07:59]:
You go there and the keys are just handed over to you, I guess, by the. Whoever's on staff. Right. I don't know.

Phil Leone [01:08:04]:
Yeah, so it's. We have a very specific process in which we do it, you know. You know, I won't get into everything, but, like, one of the things is when the. When the customer comes in, they drop the car off. And then, like, so, for example, say you're the service advisor at the shop, you know, and I say I'm the. I'm the remote advisor, you know, that calls you. So when I call you, I'll say, you know, when I call the cash, I'll say, hey, how's it going? My name is Phil. I'm with, you know, Bob's Auto Repair.

Phil Leone [01:08:33]:
I know you were dealing with Jimmy. You know, you know, Jimmy gave me a Repair order, you know, technicians got everything, you know, did the, you know, diagnostic on your car, test your vehicle out. We know what's going on with it. Is now a good time to talk? So I connect, obviously, I say I'm from the shop. I connect your name. So they know that me and you know each other, you know, so that I've already kind of showed them, like, hey, like, I'm not just some, like, call center guy. And. And also our people are, you know, American people.

Phil Leone [01:08:56]:
It's not like we've got, like, a bunch of people overseas making phone calls. I mean, we're. We have, like, real service buyers that have worked in shops for years, too. So. Yeah, so that. That there's that piece. Then they. They go through the ticket with them, you know, and they, you know, but they.

Phil Leone [01:09:08]:
They make sure they try to build that personal relationship. And we. We usually have them take the beginning of the call to kind of just ask them about their day, talk to them a little bit, you know, try to connect on a level, you know, try to see if maybe they. They. Maybe they've had the same type of car the customer has or they know somebody with the car. So try to, you know, try to build some type of rapport.

Jimmy Purdy [01:09:25]:
Yeah.

Phil Leone [01:09:26]:
You know, and then, you know, they'll try to follow up with them one or two other times throughout the repair process, depending on what they're good get done, you know, and then when they pick it up, we.

Jimmy Purdy [01:09:36]:
You.

Phil Leone [01:09:36]:
We usually have that advisor call them and say, hey, your car is ready for pickup. You know, you can go. You know, Jimmy will have the keys ready for you at the shop. So they're. So they're not expecting to come back and talk to Phil. They're expected to come back and talk to Jimmy, because I've already. Phil's already told them, jimmy's gonna have the keys ready for you.

Jimmy Purdy [01:09:52]:
It's interesting. Yeah.

Phil Leone [01:09:54]:
You know, and in the beginning, I heard a lot of people try to do it in the past, and it just. It. It failed. And I was like, how can I do this to make it work? And I came up with a lot of different things and tried stuff. It was me on my own trying to do sales in the beginning. And, you know, I had customers, you know, that got pissed at one point, you know, when I. And I tried. Figured out how I needed to, you know, make that connection to where it was.

Phil Leone [01:10:15]:
Like, all right, it doesn't seem like I'm just in a call center type deal. And I mean, I have a shop that I Saw that I personally sold 200 grand for in one month from my Larry Nerve.

Jimmy Purdy [01:10:30]:
Well, I guess. I guess you have to have. As long as you have the processes. So the technicians are writing good notes, taking good pictures.

Phil Leone [01:10:36]:
That's key. The text has record notes. You know, and obviously, and don't get me wrong, there's some times where we have to call and talk to the tech or get the advisor back on the phone because we need that stuff, you know, and. And that happens. But, you know, you know, really, as long as the shop is picking up the phone when you call, there's not much difference in picking up the phone and calling the advisor and having to hand the phone to the tech than there is as the advisor. If you're the advisor of the store walking outside and talking to the tech, it takes an extra 30 seconds to do that.

Jimmy Purdy [01:11:04]:
You know, we lost that part cut out on me.

Phil Leone [01:11:07]:
We usually in the. Oh, I said it's. It doesn't take too much more time for a technician to get on the phone with the remote advisor than it would for a regular advisor to walk out in the shop.

Jimmy Purdy [01:11:18]:
Oh, right, right, right. And go find the tech wherever he's at.

Phil Leone [01:11:21]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [01:11:22]:
And in the bathroom or out back or wherever they go.

Phil Leone [01:11:24]:
No, exactly.

Jimmy Purdy [01:11:26]:
Shots fired to the technicians.

Phil Leone [01:11:28]:
But, yeah, the notes are super important. There needs to be good notes on the ticket, and you know, it. But it's. It works. You know, one of the big things is a lot of advisors get scared to sell big tickets. You know, they think the car is not worth it. Or, you know, they, you know, they. They look at the car as like, oh, well, this is a.

Phil Leone [01:11:47]:
A $3,000 car. Kelly Blue Book. And, you know, it needs an engine. Customer's never going to fix it. You know, it's not unethical to. To explain the value in what you're doing, you know, and sometimes, yeah, it might not be worth it to fix it, but that's up to the customer to decide.

Jimmy Purdy [01:12:03]:
Right.

Phil Leone [01:12:03]:
I mean, I have a perfect story of this lady. She had a 1999 Toyota Camry. Sweet old lady. Her name was Kathy. She's like 90 years old. And if you look at that cardboard now, it's probably worth 800 bucks. I mean, at this point now, it's probably got 300,000 miles on it. And she came in, and the first time she came in, she's back a thousand dollars.

Phil Leone [01:12:27]:
And then next thing I know, six months later, this woman's put like nine grand in this car. And one of my advisors is like, dude, what is going on? Like, why is she spending this money on this car? Car, you know? So I, I go down in the office with her, and we've got a couch, and I sit down like, all right, Miss Kathy. I'm like, here's what's going on with your car. And I tell her, I go through the whole thing with her and I, I say, you know, you spent about nine grand on this car this year. And she's like, I know. She's like, are you telling me you're not going to fix my car anymore like the last shop did? And I'm, I, I kind of got stepped back. I'm like, what do you mean? She's like, well, I was taking it to another shop, and they told me I was spending too much money on my car. And she's like, so I stopped going there because they said my car wasn't worth it.

Phil Leone [01:13:12]:
And I asked her, I was like, well, why is it that you're spending this money on this car? And she said, well, I'm 80, whatever years old at the time. She was, she's like, I bought this car brand new. I'm only going to be alive so much longer. I don't want another car payment. She's like, so I'm just going to keep paying to fix this one so I don't have to go buy another car for 30 grand. I was like, all right, it's a little morbid, but the, the, at the.

Jimmy Purdy [01:13:33]:
End of the day, she's not wrong.

Phil Leone [01:13:35]:
She's not wrong. And there's a lot of fact, there's a lot of things coming to play here. The advisor is not the one that's paying for the car.

Jimmy Purdy [01:13:42]:
Right?

Phil Leone [01:13:42]:
So they don't know why the customer has the car. They don't know why the customer wants to keep the car or if they want to keep it. And also, you know, every car has got a payment on it. You know what I mean? So do you, do you want to have a monthly car payment that's 3, 4, 5, 6, $800 a month that, you know, and it's a newer car, or do you want to have a used, A used car? Do you want your car that's, you know, that, you know the history to it that your grandmother drive, your aunt drove, whatever. There's a lot of factors that come into play, you know, on that from a personal side. And then also, you know, cars are not really assets. I mean, they're, they're tools. You know, I mean, very rarely does the car actually appreciate.

Phil Leone [01:14:25]:
I Mean, usually cars depreciate in value. I mean, unless it's a classic car, you know. You know, unless it's 2020 again, you.

Jimmy Purdy [01:14:30]:
Know, but, but, yeah, yeah, right.

Phil Leone [01:14:32]:
But you usually, you know, you buy a car and then the second you leave the dealership, whether it's new or used, it's worth less than it was when you left the dealership same day. You know, nine out of 10 times, you know what it is, is you buy a car because you've got kids, you got to get to school, you got to get to work, you got to go to the doctor, you got to do this, you got to do whatever it is. That's why you have your car and you're paying for it for that. So you're paying for, essentially you're paying your car for a service. You're paying your car to take you places, you know, so. And that's kind of the mentality that I train my guys with. And like, hey, that's the reason why people have cars, 90 of the people that you're your everyday daily drivers. So we need to figure out, is it, do they want to.

Phil Leone [01:15:14]:
Is it just that they want a new car or do they not understand the fact that from a financial aspect like, that car is not going to be. It doesn't matter. Like, like if you take a car and you put $5,000 into it and it's not going to make it worth more money. That's true.

Jimmy Purdy [01:15:27]:
Yeah. It's not worth 5,000 more dollars. Right.

Phil Leone [01:15:30]:
Yeah. But when you go buy a car from the dealership and you're making the payments on that car, it's not making the car with more money either.

Jimmy Purdy [01:15:35]:
Right.

Phil Leone [01:15:36]:
It's. It's the same exact thing that car. You're paying for that car to take.

Jimmy Purdy [01:15:39]:
You places and you still got to maintain and do repairs on the new car too.

Phil Leone [01:15:43]:
Exactly. You know, and, and a lot of times it's a customer talking about buying it, you know, either keep fixing their car, buying a used car, if they want to buy a brand new car, that's a whole different story. But if they're talking about buying a used car, I mean, nine out of 10 times the amount of money they're gonna have to pay to fix their car, that's that they already have, or buy. Or buy the used car, they're going to pay less money to fix the car that they already got.

Jimmy Purdy [01:16:03]:
Yeah.

Phil Leone [01:16:03]:
And then, and then they know the history. It's not a question mark like a used car would be. Yeah, we've got Carfax, all that kind of stuff. But I mean, you don't really know. Carfax doesn't tell you if, you know, if. When Jimmy had that Toyota Camry, he, you know, he put the pedal down to the floorboard every time the light turned green. Yeah. You know, you don't know.

Jimmy Purdy [01:16:20]:
Yeah. When the oil, how many oil changes, if they were, I mean, who knows? I mean, there's too many, too many unknowns.

Phil Leone [01:16:26]:
There's too much with it, you know, so a lot of advisors, they make the decision for the customer in their own head whether it's worth it for the customer to fix the car.

Jimmy Purdy [01:16:34]:
That's true.

Phil Leone [01:16:35]:
Those larger tickets go unsold all the time and most of the time a customer will leave the shop and then they'll end up getting it fixed somewhere else anyway.

Jimmy Purdy [01:16:43]:
Yeah.

Phil Leone [01:16:44]:
I can't tell you how many times in the past I've, you know, at other people's shops, even in my own shop in the beginning years, I saw a car leave that needed an engine or transmission and six months later came back for an oil change with a bright shiny engine in there. You know, and you know, you know, you pull the cabin air filter and you know, a receipt happens to fall out of the glove box and you, and you see the receipt for the engine and the engine was the same price or more money than you were going to charge them.

Jimmy Purdy [01:17:08]:
Yeah.

Phil Leone [01:17:08]:
Just the other shop did a better job and explain to them why it was worth it.

Jimmy Purdy [01:17:12]:
That's true. It's a strange concept because I mean, obviously they're not either being, and I hate incentivizing an advisor on, based on what they're selling. But I mean, that's what it's got to be. Right? It's got to be a win win for everybody. And what I mean for everybody is the advisor needs to get their, their pay to present that information and the client needs to have that information presented to them so they can make an informed decision. Right. Like that's a win win for everybody. Like, because like you said, if not then they're just going to go down the road to the next one and you're not doing your job.

Jimmy Purdy [01:17:42]:
And yeah, it's interesting, but it's, that's why you're there. Right? Like that's your job as, as far as being at the shop and answering and being an advisor, being a technician, like you're there to find problems with cars. We didn't buy it, we didn't break it, so don't at me about it, huh?

Phil Leone [01:18:00]:
Yeah, but Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. I mean, they, they're, they're doing the customer disservice by not presenting the work to the customer, you know, and not explaining to them what the car needs.

Jimmy Purdy [01:18:09]:
Yeah.

Phil Leone [01:18:10]:
You know, and people don't realize that, you know, and it's, you know, it's very easy for a customer to, you know, to feel like they've been, you know, ripped off or, you know, lied to. If, if they were told to, you know, that the car didn't eat anything and they drive down the road and the car breaks than if they were told that they did need something and it really didn't. It's, it's, it's almost the same thing in a sense.

Jimmy Purdy [01:18:31]:
Yeah.

Phil Leone [01:18:31]:
By withholding stuff that the, that the car needs.

Jimmy Purdy [01:18:33]:
Yep.

Phil Leone [01:18:34]:
You know.

Jimmy Purdy [01:18:34]:
Absolutely. Well, Phil, this has been quite insightful. And if anybody wants to find you, where do they look you up? How do they find you?

Phil Leone [01:18:44]:
Yeah, so we've got a Facebook and website. They go look us up on Facebook. It's my shop rescue. Our website. Website's My Shop Rescue.com.

Jimmy Purdy [01:18:53]:
My Shop Rescue.

Phil Leone [01:18:54]:
My shop rescue.

Jimmy Purdy [01:18:55]:
Like you need to be rescued. Yeah, that makes sense. I like that.

Phil Leone [01:18:59]:
Yeah. And you know, right now, and I can say it because it's a, it's a public thing now. We, the, we partner with Go Powertrain. They do engines and transmissions and differentials, transfer cases, all that. So if there's any shops really anywhere in the country that uses them. But we're, we're focused on North Carolina right now that want to try out the remote advisor. I mean, they can do it risk free because Go Powertrain is paying for us to sell engines, transmissions for their shops. So.

Phil Leone [01:19:23]:
Which is, it's an awesome thing. I mean, they saw the advisors struggle to sell the repairs. So we came in and we said, hey, we're going to, we're going to help your, your shop sell it. So they can, you know, they can sign on with us for free to try it out, you know, and then any shop for their motorbisor portion, I mean, we'll, you know, I'll go and I'll present a ticket for them. For any shop is like a demo for them to see, you know, see what the difference is and see how we do it.

Jimmy Purdy [01:19:44]:
That's awesome. Well, cool, man. Appreciate your time and all your insight.

Phil Leone [01:19:51]:
Yeah, thanks a lot, man. Hope you have a great night and talk to you soon.