The Gearbox Podcast

Jimmy Purdy [00:00:00]:
Foreign. Welcome to the Gearbox podcast. I'm your host, Jimmy Purdy. On this podcast, we're not just exploring the latest trends and technologies in the automotive industry. We're also getting real about the journey. Yes, the bumpy road of mistakes and lessons learned hard along the way. This is the Gearbox podcast.

Arun Coumar [00:00:33]:
So I think. Do we have to start off this one with just yelling at David?

Jimmy Purdy [00:00:39]:
Probably should. I don't know if he. He probably. I don't think he listens.

Arun Coumar [00:00:43]:
He has to at least edit something.

Jimmy Purdy [00:00:45]:
No, Braxton, he's the man. He's been helping me out a lot.

Arun Coumar [00:00:49]:
Okay. So not. Well, guess anybody else that knows David Roman just know that he somehow lost the last recording, and I'm offended.

Jimmy Purdy [00:01:01]:
Yeah.

Arun Coumar [00:01:02]:
And he. I've.

Jimmy Purdy [00:01:03]:
I've asked multiple times. Well, I had two at SEMA last year or at Apex last year, anyway. And because yours and then I did Kyle after that, and I've just never heard from him, so I'm like, all right, dang, that is a little offensive, isn't it? That was like a grand meeting, you.

Arun Coumar [00:01:24]:
Know, it was our grand meeting. It felt like, you know, my views, my experiences didn't carry any water, didn't have any value.

Jimmy Purdy [00:01:35]:
I could tell.

Arun Coumar [00:01:36]:
And I felt like I was being actively canceled and I did not appreciate it.

Jimmy Purdy [00:01:41]:
I would put. Triggered in that statement too.

Arun Coumar [00:01:43]:
Yep, all that stuff. So I tweeted about it, but nobody read the tweet.

Jimmy Purdy [00:01:48]:
Of course.

Arun Coumar [00:01:51]:
Now I know I'm shadow. Banned, but also actually banned.

Jimmy Purdy [00:01:58]:
I'm gonna make sure it makes you a participation trophy. I think that's what you need.

Arun Coumar [00:02:03]:
I mean, you would get it. We both live in California, so, yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:02:07]:
I need a little. Can you, like, at least tell me I did a good job? You know, give me a little scratchy, sniffy sticker, something, man, Like, I did a really good job. And you're not appreciating who I am.

Arun Coumar [00:02:17]:
As a person in all of my uniqueness.

Jimmy Purdy [00:02:21]:
Yes. You could probably throw something racial in there too, somehow. I don't know. We'll figure it out by the end of this thing. Yeah, in some way, shape or form. He was definitely profiling you in a racist fashion.

Arun Coumar [00:02:34]:
At least when I was on there. When I was on Changing the Industry podcast, they spelled my name right, but the Institute for the speaker series coming up at the summit next year spelled my name wrong.

Jimmy Purdy [00:02:49]:
Oh, nice.

Arun Coumar [00:02:50]:
So I think that was. That was. It was. It was racist because they assumed that my last name is spelled the common way when it's not and can't assume man, it. No, you know, it's just, it. It was hurtful. And I know they did it intentionally. I 100% know.

Arun Coumar [00:03:12]:
Yeah, it was intentional. And Kent and Cecil just don't like me and want to see me fail.

Jimmy Purdy [00:03:19]:
I heard that about them.

Arun Coumar [00:03:21]:
Yeah. That's why they selected me to speak.

Jimmy Purdy [00:03:24]:
Yes.

Arun Coumar [00:03:25]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:03:27]:
Because they know that a sick shop is a profitable shop. So they don't want to cure you. They just want to fix your ailments. It's like going to a doctor when he's like, every time you go there, you get a new medication and. And then you're like, I feel better today. And then the next day you feel twice as bad. And it's like, they come on back here, you want some more of those? They're on sale today.

Arun Coumar [00:03:50]:
You know what? This is? Okay. So I had to take my dog to the vet. When was it? Two days ago. And at that appointment, I also had to schedule a dental cleaning for one of my older cats. I have a lot of pets with my wife and they don't tell you how much you're paying up front. They only tell you on the back end. And it, it felt like. So my dog, the reason we brought him in or the reason I had to bring him in this week was it was a follow up appointment to a second attempt to cure his allergic reaction that he seems to get where he gets these very red, itchy rings around his eyes.

Arun Coumar [00:04:40]:
And we brought him in eight months ago or so for this issue and they said, oh, he is allergic to gluten. Take him off gluten food and put him on gluten free food. And we did, and it didn't really help initially, but then it cleared up after a couple weeks and we went to the follow up and they said, oh, great, must have fixed it. And then the same issue came up eight months later and they said, oh, it's seasonal allergies. So they gave him a shot of antihistamine and sent him home with steroids. And it cleared up the red rings again and went to the follow up visit and they said, okay, yeah, he's probably not allergic to gluten actually. And it felt like a parts cannon. I was quite offended.

Jimmy Purdy [00:05:34]:
Yeah, there's, there's, there's the parts cannon and then there's the. How do you do that in the automotive field with a repair where you fix it just enough so they come back six months later and they're like, wow, the last time you, like loosen it, you tighten this hose clamp and Then you loosen one over there, right? Like it. There's. You got it. You got to wonder. It's like, are you doing. Come on, Doc, you screwing with me here? What's going on?

Arun Coumar [00:05:56]:
Yeah, but it's. It felt like a scam when they then said, oh, he's not allergic to gluten. Yeah, you know, that's, that's like saying, I don't know, you have a check engine light on for an evap issue in the. Your inexperienced or unskilled, you know, repair shop says, oh, don't worry about it, you know, it'll be fine. You can drive without that. And, and you know, it only comes on sometimes, so you don't worry about it that much. And then you bring it in.

Jimmy Purdy [00:06:25]:
By the way, actually it was a misfire, not an evap problem. My bad.

Arun Coumar [00:06:28]:
And now you need a catalytic converter and now you're spending more than the price of your car to repair it. And it kind of felt like that. But also it's the fact that we paid for two repairs on my dog and only one of them fixed the problem, supposedly even in their own words. And yet somehow it makes sense that we paid $2,000 for all that. And there's no. Oh, yeah, you know, we'll roll the cost of the initial failed repair into yes, repair, not treatment.

Jimmy Purdy [00:07:01]:
Right. But there's no give backsies there. It seems to be we're the only ones that have to deal with that kind of stuff.

Arun Coumar [00:07:08]:
I don't, you know, it's the age old for people like us now, comparison of other professional or industries to auto repair. And yeah, we are just absolutely scrutinized to the highest degree, which I think just makes us better, I guess at, you know, building customer experiences and customer expectations for the future that are at the highest possible standard. And then others will have to catch up. That's my positive spin on it.

Jimmy Purdy [00:07:40]:
Yeah, no, it's true. I mean, if, if you have to meet those standards to survive every day, then there is no other option.

Arun Coumar [00:07:49]:
Yeah, we had a. This, this happened today. It was an interesting argument, I guess that I got the chance to witness between the service advisor at one of my shops and the lead tech who had just finished replacing a thermostat housing. And he's a little unconventional in the way that he will verify a coolant leak repair and it is by hosing off the entire engine and it probably needs to stop because it's a little too much water in the engine bay.

Jimmy Purdy [00:08:28]:
Yeah.

Arun Coumar [00:08:29]:
And he test drives it and you know, it heats Evaporates off most of the water and the rest of it runs off the bottom. But there's probably still some puddles in the engine bay. And then my advisor goes to move the car for final delivery, and it's trailing water across the parking lot. And he flips out at the technician about it.

Jimmy Purdy [00:08:54]:
I can see that.

Arun Coumar [00:08:56]:
But it was, you know, unless the advisor knows to say, hey, we verified the repair, there's no coolant leaking, but we did use a fair amount of water to clean off the engine bay. And you may still see some water puddles, but, you know, they shouldn't have any smell. They won't stain. If you do find any staining puddles, then come back to us or something like that. That way you're in a. You're positioning yourself to set customer expectations. Well.

Jimmy Purdy [00:09:24]:
Oh, yeah, yeah.

Arun Coumar [00:09:26]:
That goes such a long way.

Jimmy Purdy [00:09:27]:
Well, it just goes down to like, procedures. Right. So, like, that should be right, like a procedure. So every coolant repair is going to adjoin with taking it to the car wash or going it out, you know, putting it out back or, I don't know, wherever. Wherever it is you want to do it. Right. But the main thing is, like, this is the steps we do. We're going to go ahead and pressure test the system, then we're going to wash the system, then we're going to get it hot.

Jimmy Purdy [00:09:50]:
Then it's going to sit in the parking lot for 12 minutes, 15 minutes, 20, whatever, right. And then it's going to be. The coolant level will be verified. Once it's like, whatever it is, it should be written down and everybody should know exactly how to do it. Right. And I think that's the only way you can really. Because then you have a new advisor come in and that happens, right. They pull, they move the car and they're like, freaking out.

Jimmy Purdy [00:10:06]:
Like, did you read the binder? Did you read the Google Drive? Did you read what's written down? Like, and I think that eliminates a lot of that. Not eliminates, but it definitely, for most part, help out that situation.

Arun Coumar [00:10:19]:
Yeah, I think part of that is I'm. Tell me what your experience has been with. This is my binder, which is on Google Drive. It's, I don't know, 10, 11 pages of sort of the overarching. This is what happens on every single car process. And that in and of itself is difficult to get full traction of acceptance on. And I, as a result, take the sort of, the issues like this thing that happened today as like, okay, that's your more memorable learning lesson than going with this SOP manual. Not to say we should just roll with every mistake and adapt on it, but I guess I haven't been in business all that long to learn from every single mistake there is to make.

Arun Coumar [00:11:13]:
But every time we do, we implement something at least to be able to mitigate that same thing happening again.

Jimmy Purdy [00:11:20]:
Yeah, I try to learn from it. And it's interesting you bring that up because one of the things that, that you really interest me about is not having the tech background, right. And it's kind of, can I say unusual without triggering you?

Arun Coumar [00:11:34]:
Yes, you can say it pretty much anything without triggering me. I'll make that clear to everybody else just in case.

Jimmy Purdy [00:11:41]:
There was a lot of sarcasm in the beginning of this if anybody didn't pick up on that. So it's unusual because for the most part a lot of owners are techs that think they can do shop ownership better, right. Than who they working for. And for the most part they're probably right because the guy that they're working for probably also was a tech that thought he could do it better than. And on and on and on we go, right? And so it's interesting because you come with a completely different set of skills. And so for me, I can see, I can sit down even though I don't and I should do it more. I can take like repairs and I can go visualize it through my mind and I can write down the procedure of how that repair needs to go to my standards and I can give that out to somebody. Right.

Jimmy Purdy [00:12:24]:
I could take a transmission and do a disassembly procedure. Right. Like I can take those things and I think that helps a little bit. But also I think it's kind of a crutch for me because then I, I write these procedures and they end up being 15 pages long, right? And like no tech in their right minds going to read that. So it's really hard to get gain that, that, what do you call it when they want to do it? It's hard to get them to actually want to do that when you have 15 pages of stuff they want to read. And I've tried the binder I've got on the Go Google Drive now. I've tried to keep it easy. Start putting pictures.

Jimmy Purdy [00:12:59]:
The pictures helps a little bit. I think the mistakes help a lot because then it's like, hey, you know that's written down, right? And then they go read it like, oh man, this is here the whole time. Like, yeah, you remember, right? Or having one Tech, having one technician be really, really bought into it. And then they know where everything is, so they're constantly going back and reading through it. And then everyone else is like, what are you doing? I'm like, well, I'm reading the procedure. This thing's super helpful, you know, and having a green tech that does that, that helps the senior guys because even though they won't admit it, they're like, it is, huh? And then obviously you see them checking it out and you're like, yeah, man, like I'm not trying to call you dumb. I just, this is what's worked for me. And then I try to tell them, hey, and if you have something different that can help this process, let's add to it, right? And having their buy in, I think that's what I was looking for.

Jimmy Purdy [00:13:43]:
Having their buy in helps, but I don't know, I have the same exact struggle that you're talking about. Like, I don't know what else, what else to do, but just like daily reinforcement.

Arun Coumar [00:13:53]:
Daily daily reinforcement. And so for me now, this was something that, you know, I was always excited to face as a challenge of wanting to grow into being a multi store operator is I need other people to do that reinforcement for me. And so my job isn't, you know, going to the guy on the, on the ground floor and making him torque wheels or lug nuts. It's telling the manager of the store to make sure that that's happening and holding them accountable to doing it. And that is what I am working through now is just trying to kind of limit my intervention between levels. And you know, I can have relationships with everybody. Absolutely. But every time I try to meddle in the middle of, of a relationship or of a process that's in progress usually goes wrong.

Jimmy Purdy [00:14:52]:
That's. Yeah, I see. And on my side, I'm just really taking that in because I. On my side, I feel like that's kind of where we kind of excel. Right. Like, the more I feel like I get in between the lines, I feel like, like a glue almost where I can like pick up all the inefficiencies in between. And I'm probably 100% wrong in doing that. But, but looking at the numbers and seeing the flow and seeing the attitude and the, and everything in the shop, it definitely seems like, like a lot of the problems that I watch if I stay divorced from the situation disappear, right.

Jimmy Purdy [00:15:28]:
I'm like, looking at this, I'm like, come on man, it doesn't take that long to diagnose that problem. It doesn't take that long. Like, so I step in, hey, do this, that and the other thing. Or, hey, having a difficult conversation or writing up a hard estimate or. Or giving someone a quote without giving them a quote, right? Someone comes in, I need a transmission or a transfer case replace. Well, they're spending an hour just to figure out what they even are saying. Like, what is a. What's a 5R110 transmission? Oh, that's going to be in the 06 to 09 Ford.

Jimmy Purdy [00:15:55]:
You know what I mean? So I can step in like, oh, that transmissions in these trucks just look up, you know, an 09F350. That'll give you the, you know, so that's where it's tough for me. It's like, how does somebody manage that situation without having my technical background? You know, Like, I just don't understand that at all.

Arun Coumar [00:16:11]:
That's where. So, you know, from my perspective as a really good customer of shops, that's all I was before I became a shop owner. I was also, you know, management consultant to shops, but mostly I was a customer. And that's what inspired me to get into this. I look at it from that perspective and from the service advisor perspective more than I look at it from the tech perspective. Which probably means that you may have way more rigorously documented process and standard operating procedures for the technical aspects of how your shop runs. I have in those areas probably a deficiency where my service advisor and customer experience, angled documents and procedures and all that, is super robust because for me, I have this flowchart of how a phone conversation or walk in or whatever is supposed to go with regard to estimating. And I have the process down for.

Arun Coumar [00:17:17]:
Once a car comes into the shop, what is the customer experience going to look like? What is the service advisor? What should the service advisor be looking at? And I've brought in my best text to help me write the technical side of it, like how to do our DVIs. And me and my master tech in my first shop sat in my office for about an hour and just wrote it out of here's how he does it. You got to make sure when you go on your test drive that you roll up the windows, you turn the radio off, you turn the climate control off, because that's the only way that you might be able to hear vibrations or noises and squeaks and rattles that a customer might complain about or might be interested in fixing or might be a suggestion of some sort of suspension issue or, you know, brake squeak or something like that. And that was something I would have never thought of because, you know, I go on test drives occasionally for customer vehicles, but it's never this well thought out, you know, meticulous process. It's just I have a good eye for what's wrong with cars, I guess.

Jimmy Purdy [00:18:29]:
Yeah, just drive it to drive it and see what shakes out. And obviously, I mean, you'll want to like dig in and you know, oh, there's coins rattling in the cup holder or something like that. It's a little overbearing, but I think that's probably the better direction of like, because that, that is probably a problem I have with the technicians is, is it's hard to find them. Right. And then you don't want to hold them so much to their, to the fire that, you know, it's like you give them so many stringent confinements. You know, they just need to, they just need to be artists and do their thing. Right. They just need to be free and open and all that free earth stuff.

Jimmy Purdy [00:19:08]:
Right. To an extent. Right. And I think, I think that's kind of missed too when it comes to like procedures. Right. And I think maybe that's kind of a growing pain for me I'm having right now because I do really focus on having procedures for the technicians in the shop and we do have some good ones for the advisors as well. And Leanne, she's put up some really nice, you know, she's really good with keeping that aspect, but we haven't spent so much time on that. And I think maybe pulling back a little bit off the technician side.

Jimmy Purdy [00:19:35]:
Do you notice a lot of inefficiencies or problems with your technicians not having all those procedures in place.

Arun Coumar [00:19:45]:
So the way we have a process that is probably very similar to yours in terms of how every car runs through the shop and it gets checked in, we do inspection and. Or if it's also there for some sort of diagnostic first, basically no tools required except for what would be required as part of diagnostic work. We're not doing any of the services, we're not doing any of the repairs, parts, replacements that were requested as part of the initial drop off. We're only doing the inspection and diagnostic work so that we can get that done, send the job back to the advisor, we do an estimate and that part of the process is where we probably have more deviation than I would like because it's so heavily influences the customer experience. If a tech takes photos, if a tech writes good notes, if a tech is doing a thorough inspection and it's consistent across Technicians. That is what drives really strong customer experiences for us. And right now, I've got an issue where I have one guy whose average recommendations per ticket is like 1200 bucks. And I have another one that's $3,000.

Arun Coumar [00:21:01]:
And it's not just that the one that's pulling $3,000 a car is getting worse cars. He's just a little bit closer looking at everything.

Jimmy Purdy [00:21:12]:
Yeah.

Arun Coumar [00:21:13]:
Inspections and pulling out things that the other guy is just like, ah, it's not that bad. Or, you know, that I didn't even look that close at it. Those kind of things.

Jimmy Purdy [00:21:22]:
The different shades of gray.

Arun Coumar [00:21:24]:
Yeah. But when it comes to the repairs itself, I do just trust the techs will do the repair the way they already know how to. And if they don't know how to, then they're going to be supervised by somebody who does know how to.

Jimmy Purdy [00:21:41]:
Yeah. So I think, I think kind of pulling that back, the DVI process or the intake process, I think you're right. That needs to be the most documented and, like, procedure oriented part of the whole experience. Right. I don't think you need, like, a procedure on how to do a water pump or how to do a transmission service. Even though I've written those up. Right. Like, I have.

Jimmy Purdy [00:22:05]:
I have, I have a procedure like how I want the transmission service done.

Arun Coumar [00:22:08]:
Right.

Jimmy Purdy [00:22:08]:
Because a lot of guys, they'll drop it, put the filter on, put the pan on, drop it off the lift, fill it with fluid, and then pull it out. Like, no, no, I want you to fill it while it's the. The wheels are off the ground. I want you to run it through all the gears Right. While the tires are off the ground. And then once it's full, you can let off the lift and drive it out. Same with transmission replacements. I noticed a lot of guys would just throw the transmission in, fill it with fluid, drop it on the ground, start it up, and pull it out of the shop.

Jimmy Purdy [00:22:31]:
Like, what are you doing? Like, losing. Like what? Don't do that. Like, what do you mean? No, put it in reverse, put it in drive, make sure it goes through all the gears on the rack first and then pull it out. Right. And so once I realized, like, the disconnect between who I was hiring to do the job and how I. I was trained to do the job, like, all right, I need to write this down. So that's, you know, so I think it's still important, but maybe not so detailed that I need to get into, I think with the experience of what the client is getting, I think is way more important. I think that's where a lot of tech turn owners like miss, you know, because we're also, we're so invested in like what I was just talking about making sure that job is done the way I was trained.

Jimmy Purdy [00:23:12]:
Which is the best way to do it or the right way to do it or your way to whatever you want to call it, right? And we totally miss like how the customer feels. Like they don't care how. I mean they do, but they don't care how the vehicle is fixed. All they care about is that it was fixed.

Arun Coumar [00:23:27]:
And yeah, it's. Was it fixed? Right. And to a high quality standard and can I trust your warranty or whatever you have going on? You know, that that is all I need and you know, call it blissful. Like we're, we're perfectly capable of just creating blissful ignorance in people. That should be a good thing because a car is a very complicated and dirty thing that needs to be fixed sometimes. And so if you're getting them involved and you know, you, and this is a, you know, old fashioned example, but you crawl out from under the car and wipe your greasy hands off with a greasy towel and shake the customer's hand, you know, you're bringing them probably further into the process than they wanted to be. But that's what you think of greasy coveralls, greasy hands. Oh, hey, it'll be done soon.

Jimmy Purdy [00:24:31]:
Go, go wait over there and then smell cigarette smoke.

Arun Coumar [00:24:34]:
Yeah, that's, that's old fashioned, but you get the idea.

Jimmy Purdy [00:24:38]:
And you know what, it's really, really difficult though, is trying to meet all those different expectations. Because some people want that, right? Like that's what they're brought up. That's the shop that they want to go to. That was a shop the dad, their dad brought them to, right? So that's where they want to go. That's what they think it should be. And they go somewhere that's kind of cleaner, nicer and modern and they're like, what's going on around here? I'm just not, I don't feel comfortable here. Right? And then you got people that are so concerned with the check engine light, right? Like the check engine light comes on and it's like they're no longer going home. They're going to see who's open right now because the engine lights on.

Jimmy Purdy [00:25:13]:
Then you have other ones you do the inspection on and you tell them, hey, the check engine lights on, would you like me to look into it? And they get mad at you, hey, that thing's been on for six months. What are you trying to sell me? Right? Like, how am I supposed to make.

Arun Coumar [00:25:23]:
Everybody happy here with the process? Yeah, you just bludgeon customers over the head with process, and every. And your service advisors have horrible experiences with their lives, and everybody's happy.

Jimmy Purdy [00:25:37]:
No, you know, and that's. That's kind of the problem with a lot of these. Well, what do you call them? Coaching processes or Different. Different aspects that they want you to. It's like they want you to do this thing no matter what. It's like, there is no if, ands, or buts. It's like, this is what you need to do no matter what, every single time. And I just don't know.

Jimmy Purdy [00:25:59]:
It's really hard to buy into those kinds of processes because there is so many shades of gray. And sometimes you do need to, like, you know, retain a customer with a little bit of a discount. Or maybe they just do not want the inspection, but they want you to replace the air filter or do the brake job. Right. And I've. I've come to find I've had some really good clients that come in that spend money. Right? But he does a lot of this stuff himself, and he's got some really nice cars, but he legitimately just comes in and just wants to support the business. And so he just.

Jimmy Purdy [00:26:31]:
Hey, I just. Can you just. I want this particular brand of brakes put on my car. Will you do that? I'm like, yeah, but my process says that I need to have you come in, and I need to do a DVI on it. And then it's the 300% rule, and I need to do. He's like, I don't want any of that. I just. I want to give you $1,000 to put these brakes on my car.

Jimmy Purdy [00:26:48]:
Will you do it? And it's like, well, I can't, because my process says. Right. And it's like, so, like, in those situations, it's like, you got to bend the rules a little bit. And. Yeah, that's why it's so hard to say it's black or white.

Arun Coumar [00:27:01]:
No, I disagree.

Jimmy Purdy [00:27:03]:
Tell me why.

Arun Coumar [00:27:05]:
So there's a reason that those things exist for us. The mandatory DVI and 300% rule. And it is because of legal exposure.

Jimmy Purdy [00:27:17]:
True.

Arun Coumar [00:27:18]:
And it is our duty as the automotive professional to look over the car and deem it safe for the road. And if it is not, then tell the customer it's not. And from a business perspective, I see no harm in doing the absolute softest possible sell that. You could do but still follow the 300% rule on, you know, stuff marked in yellow, put it that way.

Jimmy Purdy [00:27:51]:
Sure.

Arun Coumar [00:27:51]:
And, and the reason for doing it is because as a very picky customer, I've gone to shops and said, I want you to put this brand of brakes on my car or I've customer supplied parts. I have shown up with racing brake pads for my track car and said, I want you to pad slap my racing brake pads on my car and that's it. And they came back to me and said, your rotors are done. Are you sure you want us to pad slap your car? And it's like that kind of thing where, you know, I don't really care if my, you know, my money is green and I have a strong opinion, like I would, I would still appreciate the professional opinion. And if they truly don't, then they're not your customer because they're always going to believe that you're out to scam them. And I've had, I've had those people. Yeah, I've had those kind of people and yeah, they just. I had somebody pull the car from our shop because the husband dropped it off.

Arun Coumar [00:28:57]:
He approved a bunch of work. Then I sent the DVI accidentally to the wife's phone number. They were a previous customer of the previous business that occupied my, my space here. And so I had their contact information saved but I didn't know who was who phone number wise. And I sent the DVI to the wife and next thing I know they show up and pull their car out because she thought our prices were extortionist and she had no clue how we were ever going to stay in business because we were ripping everybody off. Meanwhile we had, you know, 10 other cars in the shop that were all happy customers. But yeah, that, you know, they never came back and I don't blame them. And I, you know, I hope they have their, you know, 3,995 oil changes happily ever after somewhere else.

Jimmy Purdy [00:29:42]:
Yeah, there's always, there's always going to be one no matter what you're trying to do.

Arun Coumar [00:29:45]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:29:46]:
To make everybody happy.

Arun Coumar [00:29:47]:
You know, that was, that specific story was the first time that that had happened to me and it kept me up for like two nights and it's since happened another, I don't know, two, three, four times. But yeah, those people exist and it is what it is and I will sleep just fine. Yeah, you know, I realized that for, you know, every one of those customers, I have a hundred or more happy customers. So yeah, I'm not I'm not gonna care at all.

Jimmy Purdy [00:30:17]:
Yeah, it's, it's just as, as time goes on and you start counting those and then wondering how many other potential lost sales go with that. Right. It's tough to not think about it and not lose sleep over. I mean, we had a similar situation just last week with, with a quote, and it was the same thing. Told the wife and she freaked out and found someone to do it. A thousand dollars less. Okay, well, that sucks. But it's also great because I can take a look back and say, okay, well, can, can we, can we do something with our pricing? Are we overpriced? Where are we at with it? Like, because sometimes you, you just, you just do the increases.

Jimmy Purdy [00:30:54]:
You do the increases. You do the increases and you don't take a step back, you know, and take a look like, okay, where are we at in the market share place? Right? Because I don't really care what the guy down the street is charging. Like, that doesn't really matter to me. But as a whole, I, I have. And as you're probably aware, you got to keep aware of the market share. Like, okay, where are we at as far as the market price? Right? Because if you're at $300 an hour, you might start losing more sales, right? So there's like, there's definitely a cap you gotta like, watch out for.

Arun Coumar [00:31:24]:
You can't, you can't just go and say, okay, I'm $500 an hour now. Come and get it. Right, Absolutely.

Jimmy Purdy [00:31:31]:
I'll give you the best service ever.

Arun Coumar [00:31:32]:
Like, yeah, I don't care if you're serving caviar with it. I don't want it. You moved into a new building recently, right? Or. Yeah. Did you expand or did you just move?

Jimmy Purdy [00:31:47]:
It was an expansion.

Arun Coumar [00:31:48]:
Okay, so you have like a ton of space now then, right?

Jimmy Purdy [00:31:51]:
Yeah, we're at just under 10,000 square feet, nine bays.

Arun Coumar [00:31:55]:
Wow. Yeah. And so I'm asking that because hearing, hearing about Lucas moving from three to 10 bays and me now I've one shop that's nine bays and one shop that is four. And they do. Last last month the nine bay shop did just under 100,000, which is not enough, but it isn't. It is enough for 3 tax, which is what I have in there right now.

Jimmy Purdy [00:32:25]:
Okay.

Arun Coumar [00:32:26]:
In on six lifts, the Four Bay Shop did 65,000 in our second month in business. And it's, you know, combined we did, you know, over 150 grand and we made money across the board. Well, not including some big renovation and Equipment purchases in the new shop.

Jimmy Purdy [00:32:49]:
But right.

Arun Coumar [00:32:50]:
Overall, you know, I was satisfied with that. But my point is, is the big shop, you worry about the pricing and market share and competitors and unhappy customers a lot more than with the small shop. Even though I guess my point is, is the small shop, and this is my model going forwards, is the small shop should be able to put out really, really strong numbers. You don't need a big space to put out strong numbers. And you only need as many cars as it takes to fill the bays every day. And if you're doing it with a higher average pair, order fewer cars but happy customers. You know, I will, I will take that. And you know, for me that did mean kind of leveraging my skill set, which is more in the, you know, I want to run multiple locations and I don't need to be hands on with every car and I can't be.

Arun Coumar [00:33:50]:
And it just means I'm moving ahead but doing it with those smaller shops.

Jimmy Purdy [00:33:58]:
Yeah, and that's exactly why I brought that up, that sentiment up about following these strict procedures and these strict rules of operation, I guess you'd call it. Right. And the 300 rule, the five Cs, the four Cs, whatever you want to call them, we like to call them 5C's because we like to add the confirmation at the end of that. Right. I mean I'm all ballot. I mean it's pivotal. You have to do that. Like you said, there's a lot of not just making sure you're capturing the cells and all that stuff, but there's a lot of like moral responsibility that goes behind all that as well.

Arun Coumar [00:34:32]:
Right.

Jimmy Purdy [00:34:33]:
It's just every once in a while you have someone come up and, and they're a big spender. Right. And they just want what they want. And it's like, you know what, you're willing to spend money, that's okay. And that's only been enlightening for me in the last couple months here because I'm looking at these different processes. You had mentioned cheap oil changes, man, I'm against that. Like, I don't want that. Like you come in like you spend $200 and yeah, we'll put an oil change on there, but you're just going to pay me the oil in the filter.

Jimmy Purdy [00:34:58]:
I got no problem doing that. But like to market share a cheap oil change as a lost leader, I'm not about that. And it's just about two months ago. You know what, that actually kind of is starting to make a little bit of sense. To me, if I need car count, like.

Arun Coumar [00:35:12]:
Right, Yep.

Jimmy Purdy [00:35:12]:
Because. Because one thing, the guys, they start getting unmotivated. You know, you get six or seven bodies here and you have a day that you don't have 15 cars in the bays, they start getting on their phone and they're like looking around, man, I don't want to stand around all day. Right. And so. But if you got oil changes coming in the door, it just keeps their mind busy. Right. And even if you're losing, at least you're not losing your tax because that's way more important than losing a couple of dollars on an oil change.

Jimmy Purdy [00:35:40]:
So it's just thoughts that I've had. And I don't know, I'm. I'm completely 100% green in that aspect. And it's just, I mean, like I said in the last two months has been something that I've been thinking about. And you see the other guys doing the processes, right. And you see these other things and you start thinking, okay, so if they're doing it, there's some validity behind it. And what exactly is that? And instead of just like, no, I'm too good for that, you know, it's like, well, wait a second, why is that working for them?

Arun Coumar [00:36:11]:
Yeah. And it is that. Where do you want to discount for the sake of offering, like, a better value proposition to potentially good customers to get them in the door? And we had a painfully slow week last week. And my consideration was, okay, you know, I take a lot of pride in we. In our diagnostic testing guarantee, which is if what we recommend as part of our diagnostic testing does not at least incrementally make the problem better, then you don't pay for it. And so I wanted to make a video that explained that and then said for the month of November, it's going to be half off. And that could still be a thing that I do because the way I'm looking at it is, number one, I'll do the typical, okay, I'm going to make it half off of something that's more expensive than normal.

Jimmy Purdy [00:37:18]:
Which, yeah, there's always that game to.

Arun Coumar [00:37:20]:
Play that's just a pricing manipulation that I don't feel is unethical. I just feel is a tactic that I can utilize.

Jimmy Purdy [00:37:30]:
Yeah. I mean, Amazon, Amazon does it and they get called out on it, but it's like Black Friday, right. It's like everybody knows what they're doing.

Arun Coumar [00:37:37]:
Yep. So. So I can do that. And you know what is Normally right now $233, I can make $150, because my normal is actually 300. Now it's half off. So 150 bucks. So I lost, you know, 80 bucks on an hour of labor. And then I will more than make it up with the amount of extra cars coming in if we are that slow.

Arun Coumar [00:38:02]:
And so if I can fill the gaps, that's exactly how I would go about it. And I'm looking at that and thinking I am basically saying this is an opportunity for you to at least figure out what the problem is on your check engine light that's been nagging you forever. The drivability problem on that car you parked in your driveway six months ago that you kind of gave up on. Get in. Get it in here. It's a. It's one of the best offers out there for guaranteed diagnostic testing from the best technicians in the region. We got this for you.

Arun Coumar [00:38:40]:
And we're going to recommend exactly what you need to get this car roadworthy, happy, healthy, safe, reliable. And it's part of the package that we're doing the full dvi. And so that I think if I were to do something, that's what I've considered.

Jimmy Purdy [00:38:58]:
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, it kind of butts into the realm of free diagnostics, kind of. But half off. So the one thing that we do is, like, all our inspections are paid. Right. So we have a $99 DVI. That's what it starts with.

Arun Coumar [00:39:13]:
Right.

Jimmy Purdy [00:39:14]:
It comes in, you spend 99 bucks, we inspect the vehicle, we'll check the codes, we'll do the whole thing. Right. And then if they move forward with the repairs, we recently started waiving that.

Arun Coumar [00:39:25]:
Yep.

Jimmy Purdy [00:39:25]:
Well, if you go with the repair, we'll just go ahead and call that good. If you decide it's too much for. For you to do, then you owe us 99 bucks. So, yeah, we're doing the same thing because October and, in fact, September, both were, like, extremely slow. So for November, we're looking at just offering the free inspection. Like, we're just going to say, you know what? Come in. We'll just. We'll just do the free inspection.

Jimmy Purdy [00:39:46]:
Get your vehicle in here. Let's see what it needs. We'll write you up everything it needs. And that way, you know, kind of what you're talking about, like, let's get it in here. Let's see what it needs before you just, like, let it sit in the driveway for the next six months.

Arun Coumar [00:39:56]:
Yeah. And I think the only delineation is. So we actually always have free inspections, and we. We charge for diagnostic testing. And we charge. We have various different types of testing. So if you. If you tell me you have like a intermittent overheating issue or a vibration or some sort of, I don't know, weird noise or coolant leak or something like that, we'll throw some sort of testing on there.

Arun Coumar [00:40:30]:
Coolant system pressure testing, oil leak. If it's like severe oil leaks, it'll be, you know, cleaning and idling to see if we can identify the source of the leaks. If it's some sort of exotic noise of vibration, then there's an extended test drive product that we're adding on there. If it's anything electrical or drivability, you get what we just call level one or level two testing, depending on the magnitude and complexity of the issues. And that helps us a lot with the monetization of. I'm just going to look at it for you, quote, unquote. The inspection that we have is purely a lift and a flashlight. And, you know, it takes, depending on the condition of the car, somewhere between, you know, 15 and 40 minutes.

Jimmy Purdy [00:41:23]:
Right.

Arun Coumar [00:41:24]:
And I'm okay giving that away. For what? For. And we call it a confidence inspection. The point of it is, we want you to leave here with confidence that you know everything you need to know about the safety and reliability of your car. And whether you're, you know, given the keys to your kid or your mom or whatever, you can be confident that you know what you need to know about its safety and reliability. And, you know, whether you chose to do the work or not, you at least know about it.

Jimmy Purdy [00:41:52]:
Yeah, that's fair.

Arun Coumar [00:41:53]:
And then. And then after that, if you did choose to do the work, we've, you know, expertly advise you on what you need versus what you can defer, versus the maintenance that'll make your car the happiest. And, you know, we just had a very interesting car leave today. It's a 2000 Toyota Solara that had the worst paint I've ever seen on a car. It was cracked all the way around. Not sun faded, but cracked just everywhere. And it had clearly been parked under a tree for three years or something like that. And it had 200,000 miles on it, 215,000 miles on it.

Arun Coumar [00:42:36]:
And this guy brought it in and said, take your time. I don't need it back urgently at all, but I want to just make it safe for my mom to relearn how to drive. Which I didn't actually ask, you know, kind of how that circumstance arose. But nevertheless, this guy's mom was relearning how to drive. And they were expecting, you know, a thousand miles a year on it. And they brought it in, and it had zero power steering fluid. The whole power steering system was just soaked in fluid. The pump was destroyed, and the brake booster and master cylinder were damaged, and the pedal went straight to the floor.

Arun Coumar [00:43:19]:
We sold him $4,000 on that car, and he's a very happy customer. But there was more to the list that we just said, look, if you're driving a thousand miles a year, don't worry about it. Yeah, you know, you don't. You don't need to worry about the transmission fluid necessarily. You may. You may think otherwise on that one.

Jimmy Purdy [00:43:39]:
Well, no, I mean, it goes back to the adage of, like, if you drove it in here, you don't really need anything. Right? Like, and obviously in this case, it probably wasn't drivable because I needed brakes and need power steering. But, like, that's the one thing about the inspections, right? And you write up these estimates, and I go through and see constantly four, five, six thousand dollars worth of estimate, like, over and over and over. And it takes a long time for me anyway to like, see those estimates and be like, man, it really feels like we're selling stuff that they don't need, right? Like, especially when you come from, like, just fixing what's broke and you start adding in these processes and the dvi and you're like, oh, my God, why are you estimating these people? $7,000 worth of maintenance on a Toyota Solara. Like, it doesn't need any of that stuff. It needs tires, it needs gas, and that's pretty much maybe engine oil every once in a while, you know, like, those cars just go forever. So it's tough. It's tough when it's like, what does it actually need versus making sure that it's safe? But it goes back to the same thing I said about the two different people.

Jimmy Purdy [00:44:35]:
Some people want not one drop of oil. They don't want anything at all wrong with their car. And you have. The other ones are like, oh, the wheel bearing. Don't worry about it. I only drive it 100 miles a year. You know, like, I can. I can manage it around my property with it, like.

Jimmy Purdy [00:44:49]:
Like, whatever, man. And so that guy gets mad at you because you up trying to upsell him in quotes, all these other things. And the other lady gets mad at you because she went somewhere else and you didn't tell her that, you know, she's got this minor power steering seep, you know, so what's the Right answer.

Arun Coumar [00:45:06]:
You know, sell it all now.

Jimmy Purdy [00:45:11]:
But no, it's just take, it's taking every vehicle and like, and just being transparent about it.

Arun Coumar [00:45:15]:
Right?

Jimmy Purdy [00:45:15]:
Like, all you can do is just give them the facts. Like, here's the facts, this is what I found and you make the decision. I'm not making it for you, but here's my opinion.

Arun Coumar [00:45:24]:
Have you, how many advisors do you have?

Jimmy Purdy [00:45:27]:
2. And then including Leanne.

Arun Coumar [00:45:30]:
Okay, yeah, that was my next question. So the two that you hired, have you, have you done like personality tests on them or do you have an idea generally of like the type of. Okay, so what, what were their, you know, personality types?

Jimmy Purdy [00:45:45]:
I don't remember the exact terminology of it. I have like super, super hip on that stuff. But we definitely found the pairings and like, we found the. Not aggressive but like the more like me. Like he has, he has. Kevin has a very, very straightforward personality. And then Melissa, she's very more caretaking, more thinking and more. I don't know what the word for it is, but just definitely.

Jimmy Purdy [00:46:14]:
But when you read it and you see, you're like, oh yeah, that is you and that's definitely you.

Arun Coumar [00:46:18]:
So yeah, I found, I found that the successful. So I've one advisor who tested it was a disc personality test, but they came up with like a word to kind of describe the overall profile. And I had one that was a teacher and I had one that was a socializer. And it totally, totally fit them perfectly, each of them. And I would also say the teacher is quite a socializer. He's super chatty. Both these guys, if you get them going on any subject, they just won't stop. And then I look like a dick because I'm over here trying to like redirect the conversation to like work, you know, because that's what we're here to do.

Arun Coumar [00:47:09]:
But that's me and my personality being super task oriented and focused and direct and all that. But they both are loved by customers and I think they have this skill set of adapting to understanding, you know, a customer's desires for being upsold and how much they care about their car. And I think it does go a long way in terms of what I mentioned about, you know, is this a super soft sell or not? Is this a, you know, I'm going to do a high pressure. I got rid of everybody that did high pressure sales. That, that never worked for me. But you know, this person, you know, if you, if you emphasize the importance of a repair, they will do it. If you emphasize that importance to another person, they would take their keys and run away. And the advisors have to be aware of which is which.

Arun Coumar [00:48:09]:
And yeah, they can still follow the process 100%, but they're adapting, I guess, the delivery of the process.

Jimmy Purdy [00:48:16]:
Well, it's really important just to find that out for themselves and for you too, right. One of the big kind of eye opening moments when we did the personality test, um, was as. As I'm fairly, fairly task oriented as well, right. So I'm like, we're here to work. I'm not here to socialize. And if you let me, I'll just keep my. I'll just put my head down and just do my thing all day, right? Like, I'm like, I have a list, right? And you probably have the same problem, like, you're just checking boxes off in your head of like, what you need to do that day. And the last thing on your list is like, oh, why don't you go check in with so and so and see how their weekend was, right? Like, that's not even on, like the next page.

Jimmy Purdy [00:48:52]:
Or like, it was. It's not on the back of the page, it's not on the next page. It's nowhere near on your list. So one of the things we noticed when we did it was so Kevin, he's. He's had the same personality I did. So when Melissa came on, we were both of us. When I come in, I direct something or he would do the same thing as he's taking a car and very direct. This is what we're doing.

Jimmy Purdy [00:49:12]:
This is the process over and over and over. And well, after about a week or so, she had come up to us and asked and she was like, hey, so, like, do we get to talk about anything else but work while we're here? And I'm like, yeah, of course. Like, what do you want to talk about? She's like, no, I just. I just feel like, like it's not okay to socialize. I'm like, oh, man, my bad. I missed that one. Right? Because you can't just eliminate that altogether. So that was a pretty interesting concept where it was like, we're both here, like, hustling, like we're doing a thing and we're both okay with that.

Jimmy Purdy [00:49:46]:
But she was like, no, I just want to, like, have a five minute conversation about how my weekend was. Like, yeah, you can absolutely do that. I'm sorry. Right? Like, it makes you feel kind of bad. And then you do the personality test. You're like, oh, I see why you're like the way you are.

Arun Coumar [00:50:00]:
And that was actually. That was respectable of her to do that because.

Jimmy Purdy [00:50:05]:
Yes.

Arun Coumar [00:50:05]:
You know, without. Without that she's either bitter and staying or she's leaving. And neither of them are. Neither of those options are good with, you know, somebody you. You brought on to succeed with your company.

Jimmy Purdy [00:50:16]:
Yes. Yes. I would have never known. Right.

Arun Coumar [00:50:20]:
Yeah. Yeah. I think. I think I struggle with being approachable in that way because it only seems like it comes up 20 minutes into a conversation where I've taken the time to suppress my desire to do something, to just talk with somebody about nothing. And It's a painful 20 minutes, but you get through it. And then all of a sudden they're comfortable enough to tell me what they really think. And it's usually very constructive. And, you know, we learn something and we both come out of it better for the conversation.

Arun Coumar [00:50:57]:
But, man, I'm working hard to get there and I probably don't do it.

Jimmy Purdy [00:51:02]:
Well, being 7ft tall doesn't make you very approachable either.

Arun Coumar [00:51:05]:
But, you know, people have said that to me my whole life. I went to. So on Halloween, I dressed up as James Bond because I own an Aston Martin dbs and I took it to a car show and it was a bring your kids trunk or treat kind of a thing at a car storage facility. And it's a super high end place and they have Koenigseggs and Paganis and I'm. I mean, it's the big money part of. The. Part of the area here. And I show up in what is a relatively cheap car compared to all of them in a suit I haven't put on in four years.

Arun Coumar [00:51:49]:
And I'm walking around just talking to people and whatnot, looking at all the cool cars. I had three people come up to me and ask me if I owned the place.

Jimmy Purdy [00:52:01]:
Wow.

Arun Coumar [00:52:02]:
Well, I guess I'm doing something right if I look like that. But no, I don't. I don't have, you know, the probably $40 million needed to cover the insurance on this place.

Jimmy Purdy [00:52:15]:
I just assume, you know, like the tall guy must be the owner.

Arun Coumar [00:52:18]:
The tall guy in the suit. Yeah, that was. Yeah. So I don't know, I feel like most business owners don't wear suits today. And there I was talking to a guy, and this guy, he rattled off he owned something like 30 cars in the last four years. And he was like, oh, yeah. And then I had this 2021 GT3RS and then I had this Rolls Royce Wraith, and then I had this Urus, and then I had this SF90. And then I had, you know, an F8, but I hated it compared to the SF90.

Arun Coumar [00:52:47]:
And I'm like, and. And you would really like an 812. And I'm like, how many Ferraris from the last three years have you owned? And this is a guy who was in just like a white T shirt and camo pants. And it turns out he owns multiple private security companies.

Jimmy Purdy [00:53:03]:
It's usually that too. Yeah.

Arun Coumar [00:53:05]:
I was like, yep. All right. Yep. Okay. That. That all tracks.

Jimmy Purdy [00:53:09]:
It's like the. They say the difference between rich and wealthy, right? Like, when you're rich, you want to show everybody. When you're wealthy, you try to hide it.

Arun Coumar [00:53:15]:
Yeah, yeah. And then. And he parked his SF90 on the street instead of in the car show.

Jimmy Purdy [00:53:21]:
Oh, of course.

Arun Coumar [00:53:22]:
Yeah. And I was like, yep, okay, I get it.

Jimmy Purdy [00:53:25]:
He's like, that's just my. That's my going out car anyway. I don't really care about it.

Arun Coumar [00:53:29]:
Yeah, exactly. That's how it felt. That is absolutely how it felt. And it's a car worth four times what mine is worth.

Jimmy Purdy [00:53:36]:
Yeah. It's crazy, isn't it?

Arun Coumar [00:53:37]:
And I, like, babied. I washed mine before going, I'm not a cooler.

Jimmy Purdy [00:53:42]:
Oh, look, it's cute. He's got the older Aston.

Arun Coumar [00:53:46]:
Exactly. Yeah. It's 12 years old. Sorry. At least some people just go, wow, it's held up so well.

Jimmy Purdy [00:53:54]:
That's almost. That's almost like a backhanded compliment.

Arun Coumar [00:53:57]:
Yeah, it's like, oh, that's an old car.

Jimmy Purdy [00:54:00]:
Like buying a Porsche Boxster. Like, oh, you got the poor man's Porsche.

Arun Coumar [00:54:03]:
Yep. Oh, it must be so fun to drive because it's so light and underpowered.

Jimmy Purdy [00:54:12]:
Man. Shots fired up.

Arun Coumar [00:54:14]:
Whoops. You had. You had some interesting cars for sale on Facebook. Marketplace. I wanted to ask you about those. How did you. You had a Lexus rx.

Jimmy Purdy [00:54:25]:
Oh, that thing's sweet.

Arun Coumar [00:54:27]:
How did you get that?

Jimmy Purdy [00:54:30]:
Good friend of mine, he actually owns the Jiu Jitsu gym here. Locals. His wife's car. And we were doing a lot of service on it. She take the 300,000 miles on it. And then one day she calls me. She's trying to leave church. This thing won't.

Jimmy Purdy [00:54:45]:
It won't move. So I go there and the transmission is just. It's done. I mean, it's. You put it in gear, right? And it, like revs up and then it wants to catch and the whole thing starts jumping around and starts crunching and munching and all that. So I'm like, yeah, you're done. Like, that was an easy diagnosis, right? Like, you need the transmission. Oh, I'm not doing that.

Jimmy Purdy [00:55:03]:
So she's like, you want it? And I'm like, do I want it? Not really, no. She's like, well, I don't know what I'm gonna do with it. I'm gonna have to pay to get it towed in my house. And she lives. You know, they live 20 minutes out of town. And she's like, man, I just. I don't want to pay for a tow to just have it sit at my house. I'm gonna get rid of my.

Jimmy Purdy [00:55:21]:
All right, I'll take it.

Arun Coumar [00:55:23]:
Wow.

Jimmy Purdy [00:55:24]:
So I came back with the trailer from the shop and just towed it down to the shop. Ended up one. One after or one weekend, pulled it out and rebuilt the tram. That I was actually a whole story in itself because I bought a used one, and they sent me the wrong model because the U140s, the U240s, they have different gear ratios that are inside anyway. So that was a whole debacle that I couldn't return the used one, and so I wasted a lot of money. It just turned. So I ended up just rebuilding the stupid thing and put it in and that's it. And it sits.

Jimmy Purdy [00:55:54]:
I kind of put it around for a little bit. I'm like, huh, Maybe I'll get. Maybe at least get my transmission rebuild cost out of it, right? So like, 3,000 bucks. Yeah. Crickets.

Arun Coumar [00:56:03]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:56:03]:
2,000 bucks. Nothing. So I have it posted for a thousand. I'm like, just get it off my property, please. It'll drive away. And it's still sitting there. I think it's been at least. It's been at least four months.

Jimmy Purdy [00:56:13]:
Thousand bucks for an 01 Lexus RX300 with 300,000 good miles. I don't know how else to put that in somebody.

Arun Coumar [00:56:24]:
Okay. So I, last week, bought a Ford Escape. 2004 Ford Escape.

Jimmy Purdy [00:56:32]:
That's a good one.

Arun Coumar [00:56:33]:
With 263,000 miles on it.

Jimmy Purdy [00:56:36]:
Oh, it's just broken in.

Arun Coumar [00:56:37]:
Just broken in. The thing is mint. I have multiple employees that want to buy it from me, and they brought it in, they towed it in because it started shaking and bucking on. The wife driving it around running errands. And it turned out to be an ignition coil, and it was going to be the whole repair. We proposed spark plugs and one coil to start with. I said, you could. You should probably do six, but you know you're going to at least need one.

Jimmy Purdy [00:57:09]:
Sure.

Arun Coumar [00:57:09]:
And it was like 900 bucks at V6. And they said, nope, too much. You want to buy it? And I said, oh, well, it's in excellent condition, so sure, I'll buy it. And I proposed $200 plus my diagnostic fee. So it was going to be like 430 bucks. And they said, no, we want $400. And I fought them for a week over that $200. And then eventually he called me and he just said, look, I got two other offers for.

Arun Coumar [00:57:48]:
From a radio station that would take it as a donation.

Jimmy Purdy [00:57:52]:
Wow.

Arun Coumar [00:57:53]:
Or the junkyard. And I want $400. I was like, well, that was a terrible negotiating strategy, but okay, fine, I'll give you $400.

Jimmy Purdy [00:58:07]:
Whatever, man.

Arun Coumar [00:58:08]:
Whatever. I'll give up the 200. And we fixed it. We got all the monitors set on it today. It's going to be one of our loaner cars.

Jimmy Purdy [00:58:15]:
Oh, perfect.

Arun Coumar [00:58:16]:
Yeah, it's a good testament. All of our loaner cars have extremely high mileage, and it's a great testament to maintenance.

Jimmy Purdy [00:58:24]:
Those freaking Ford escapes, man. The only thing that every time I hear that is I think about replacing the damn alternator on them. Oh, my God, What a freaking nightmare. Like seven hours to do an alternator on those things? Yeah. You haven't done alternate on one of those?

Arun Coumar [00:58:36]:
Oh, no, I've never done an alternate. I've done an alternator. On what car? I've done one alternator in my life. I think it was on my race car.

Jimmy Purdy [00:58:44]:
Yeah, no, that's.

Arun Coumar [00:58:45]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:58:46]:
It is miserable. And you know what? Really, like, will twist you when you're doing it. It's like, there's plenty of space to get it out, and it sits between the back of the. Like, the engine and the firewall.

Arun Coumar [00:58:56]:
Okay.

Jimmy Purdy [00:58:56]:
Or whatever we call there. And it just kind of. But the subframe. You can't get it out between the engine and the subframe, so you have to lower the whole subframe down. The whole engine cradle. It is very, very, very frustrating. I'm like, I'll get that out. Nope, nope.

Jimmy Purdy [00:59:10]:
There's just. Yeah, it books out for, like, seven hours because you're supposed to, like, drop the whole engine cradle and all that crap down. I'm like, oh, my God, dude, Ford, I hate you. So I never, ever. It was a bright yellow Ford escape, too. It's like, this is, like, 12 years ago, and it's still, like, so fresh in my mind. An alternator? Are you serious?

Arun Coumar [00:59:32]:
We had a starter on an X5 that was like that. No, it wasn't a starter. It was a Crank position sensor and all. Data screwed me on this one because it said two hours or something like that. And I led the customer to believe that we were going to be able to get his car done on a Friday afternoon. And I go to my tech at 3:30 and he's like neck deep in the bottom of the engine bay, upside down with his legs sticking up out of the engine bay. Like, what is going on here? And he's like, well, we're pretty much gonna have to drop the trans to get to this. It's like in the bellhousing and.

Arun Coumar [01:00:12]:
And we did not get the car out that day.

Jimmy Purdy [01:00:17]:
Long story short, he wasn't driving though.

Arun Coumar [01:00:19]:
You brought.

Jimmy Purdy [01:00:20]:
You might want to make a phone call, boss.

Arun Coumar [01:00:21]:
Yeah, that was one of those where, you know, you had the service procedure for, you know, slightly different variation of the car and the vintage won't give you the right one. So is what it is and you just eat it and move on and.

Jimmy Purdy [01:00:35]:
You learn from that one.

Arun Coumar [01:00:36]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [01:00:37]:
Hey, I want to ask you on the, on your loaner program. You know, one thing I've, I've thought about is, is adding loaners. But I also look at like the cost of just like doing Uber and just like giving clients like an Uber voucher to get where they need to go. And obviously some people need a car to like to actually get around. They just don't just get home. Right. But it brought up a really good. I met someone up when we were up in Alaska actually.

Jimmy Purdy [01:00:59]:
We're at this bar at Chain of Hot Springs, and this guy was sitting across the bar and he heard us talking automotive or something. And he ended up. And just we're up in the middle, you know, middle of Alaska. And he's like, hey, I'm actually a technician in Iowa. Like, what? And so he's like, yeah, I'm actually looking at starting a program for shops where it's like Turo, but they will loan loaners to auto shops. Right. So if you needed to get your customer a vehicle instead of getting an Uber, you would just use like, like Turo, you know, Remember Turo? Yeah, I think it's still around, right?

Arun Coumar [01:01:30]:
Yep, yep.

Jimmy Purdy [01:01:31]:
Yeah. So you can just rent them a car through the app and then you can. And then have. Give them a car so you don't have to worry about storing the vehicle or repairing it or all the insurance and documentation. I thought it was a pretty good idea. I'm like, you know what, that would probably be something. So I don't know if that's something you you've looked into to get rid of the loaner program or if, if it's, if it's working for you and ends up being sustainable, it, it's working for me.

Arun Coumar [01:01:55]:
I think that that's what it comes down to is, you know, I have, the most money I have spent on one of my loaner cars is $3,000 purchase price and they've needed some significant, you know, repair and maintenance over time. We had a Subaru that needed a head gasket. We had a pilot that needed a timing belt, water pump, oil pump job. So that was another, you know, pretty minor stuff though. Priced out at like four grand or something like that. But my, my thinking is these things are so cheap. Once they're, once, once you've 300% yourself, they are really, really solid cars because they just work, they're simple. You don't, you don't buy a Land Rover for a loaner car.

Arun Coumar [01:02:44]:
But I have exclusively, besides this Ford, I have exclusively Japanese and Korean loaner cars. They're all 10 plus years old, 200,000 miles and we've just made them nice. Put new tires, all the maintenance, wiper blades, absolutely cleaned the interiors, made the exteriors look as nice as possible. And there's a range you could say of condition of exterior. So as long as you, you kind of plan ahead and you've got the higher end discerning customer that wants to maintain appearances in the nicer cars. They're all, they all love it. You know, if, if you have the opportunity to, to give somebody a car to borrow and it's free of charge to them, they're going to appreciate it and they're going to say, oh well in that case, you know, logistically I can make the rest of those repairs work and then we get more repairs out of them.

Jimmy Purdy [01:03:42]:
That's true. I don't think I've come across enough of the opposition for me personally. But I mean it's just a matter of time, right? Like it's just, you can't always be closed minded about anything. So I've always, I've looked into different things and yeah, I think for me I just look at the real negative part of it and have something like bad happen like an accident or someone not return the car or I just see that happening to me sooner rather than later because that seems to be my, my, my going rate. Right. Like when the first like three years of owning the business I had a tech like total vehicle head on collision like ouch. So yeah, it's like I just Think about the worst cut. And, like, for me, like, having all these loaner cars and then having three or four of them out, it's like, definitely one of them is going to come back in worse condition than it left.

Jimmy Purdy [01:04:30]:
Yeah, but it's not always in a hat. Work that way.

Arun Coumar [01:04:33]:
Yeah. I think the one thing that really slapped me in the face was one time one of our loaners went out for in the morning on a Friday, and we upsold the customer on work that was gonna need to wait through the weekend, and he needed to get, like, his garage door opener and toll pass out of the car. Out of his car. And so he came back, like, right before closing, and his entire family was in the loaner car. Like, his mom and his kid and his wife were all in the loaner car. And I saw that, and I thought, man, I really, really have to make sure these things are safe. That was what I thought. And that made me.

Arun Coumar [01:05:21]:
I went full blank check on the loaner car. I was like, yep, anything they need, just do it. I don't really care. Yeah. You know, and we bring them in very regularly for inspections. That's more of a concern to me than losing one of them, because I do. I mean, we have liability insurance, which it only covers, you know, that, God forbid, something, you know, something happening that we caused.

Jimmy Purdy [01:05:43]:
Tragic.

Arun Coumar [01:05:44]:
Yeah, yeah. That wouldn't be covered by the customer's insurance, but the customer's insurance is supposed to cover damage, anything like that. And I've never had to make a claim, but I have had to, you know, run. A customer basically knocked a mirror off one of our cars, and he owned up to it. And I said, all right, I'm gonna ding you for, you know, 200 bucks. We're gonna get a new mirror and slap it on there. And, you know, nobody. Nobody really cares.

Arun Coumar [01:06:09]:
And the car's down for a week.

Jimmy Purdy [01:06:11]:
But, yeah, that's minimal stuff. Yeah.

Arun Coumar [01:06:13]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [01:06:13]:
But it's the bigger ones, like losing a wheel or having them get in an accident and something real tragic happens. It's like, man, the way. And being we're both in California, it's like they just, like, right up the behind with both of us with anything they can find to put the blame on who gave them that car. Right. And they're like, oh, you and you own an auto shop. Wow. Okay. We're really gonna find something now.

Jimmy Purdy [01:06:35]:
It's like, oh, I don't even know if I. Like, just the thought of that alone. I'm like, no, we're gonna go ahead and wait on loaner cars as long as possible.

Arun Coumar [01:06:42]:
Yeah, yeah, that's, I think, not to.

Jimmy Purdy [01:06:44]:
Scare you or anything. No, those are the thought, the intrusive thoughts that I have in the middle of the night.

Arun Coumar [01:06:48]:
For me, for me, some of it is, you know, talk about blissful ignor of. It's on myself and it always has been, of, you know, if, if the car, if my car is fixed right by my own shop or by one of the shops I used to be a customer of, then I'm happy. And it wasn't until I felt, and I've talked about this a fair amount, the three Ds that I'm trying to avoid, of delay, deceit and disappointment. If I pick up my car and it's not fixed, if I feel like the service advisor is lying to me or if the original time expectations are far exceeded, those are the things that are going to make me find a new shop. And if we can do everything in our power to avoid those things, then I'm just going to keep going and I'll be a happy customer. And I may be none the wiser to a bunch of sins going on behind the scenes. And that's, that's true until something comes out, but that's where the risk of those, you know, whether they're intentional sins or not, you know, a wheel falling off the loaner car or whatever, you have, whatever mitigation you possibly can to make sure that you'll survive those kind of situations. The one instance where I don't necessarily have a good answer.

Arun Coumar [01:08:00]:
I don't know if I should even talk about that. I don't want to speak it into existence, but, like, this is an area where I have a lot of exposure. I think I'll stop there.

Jimmy Purdy [01:08:10]:
We can talk about it when I stop recording.

Arun Coumar [01:08:12]:
Yeah, but, yeah, I do, you know, every mistake. We've made a lot of tuition payments in a short amount of time. I've also not been in business very long and I could have made a lot more money had I just not opened the shop.

Jimmy Purdy [01:08:31]:
Yeah, that's. I mean, there it is in a nutshell, right there. Right?

Arun Coumar [01:08:34]:
Yeah. But I love what I'm doing and I think that's what that makes this possible is just the fact that I'm excited to continue to create happy customers, create careers and fix cars. And I love cars probably a bit more than I should. And I think all of the interactions that I get to have on a daily basis around cars just makes my life really satisfying and I'm in the right place for It.

Jimmy Purdy [01:09:07]:
And then since someone was nice enough to lose our first recording. So I got to ask you again, what's your goal? So we got on to the end of this, this recording here. What's your goals for the perceivable future that we can get on in the next year and we can talk about what you've achieved.

Arun Coumar [01:09:24]:
So the long term goal for Driven Auto Care is to sell the company for a billion dollars. And what I believe I will have accomplished by doing so is I will have made a dent in changing the perception of Automot away from delays, deceit, disappointment, the greasy guy, you know, rubbing off his hand with a greasy rag and then being gruff and throwing a cigarette in your face. We are professional, we are high quality and we don't delay, deceive or disappoint. And as a result, we can create happy customers. We can be consistent with that image. And if we do it on a widespread enough level with the necessary business operating practices to assure that all of those things happen, we will be successful. And in the process we will be able to change that perception.

Jimmy Purdy [01:10:20]:
That's awesome.

Arun Coumar [01:10:21]:
So the original goal, which we'll see how naive it is, this is where we can check in in a year. The original goal was to have every shop make enough money every year to buy another shop. And that works when you have the sort of smaller shop model that I do, where I am perfectly happy to buy out the retiring tech turned shop owner. And the second shop I bought, I paid very little money for the business, but it came with good customers. It came with a fair amount of tools and equipment in the shop already a phone number that started ringing from day one. And I was able to expand to that second location. So a year ago when we talked, I was five months in business. Now I'm a year and five months in business with two shops.

Arun Coumar [01:11:13]:
And it's been a hairy year to say the least. But to be here, and that is actually quite a good full circle summation of the fact that we talked A year ago. I was wrought with stress and mistakes and problems and issues and all of those have been resolved. And now I have new, bigger problems and issues and mistakes and stress and every, every new shop and every, you know, manager put in place and all of that just will continue to build on that for me. But it is in this pursuit of changing the perception of the industry which, you know, I think pretty much all of our listeners get.

Jimmy Purdy [01:11:59]:
And if they don't, they will.

Arun Coumar [01:12:00]:
If they don't, they will. And you know, we, I like how in, in this conversation, we've, we've still had plenty of divergent opinions that, that can get us to, you know, what is the right way to do things? Is it discounting Diag? Is it cheap oil change? Like, if you have a big shop and you need car count, what's it going to take to, to convince a customer that you're, you're valuable despite the fact that you're discounting?

Jimmy Purdy [01:12:26]:
But our main, But I think for both of us, our vision is to create an old. The ultimate client experience. Right?

Arun Coumar [01:12:34]:
Yeah, yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [01:12:35]:
And it's like all those nuances are fine. You can disagree about them and you don't have to do one thing or another. One will sync one shop and one will sink the other shop. Right. Like, you have to find what works for you and what you're doing, how you're growing and what size. Like, there's so many different, you know, ways to skin a cat, I guess, is what they call it, Right?

Arun Coumar [01:12:51]:
Yep.

Jimmy Purdy [01:12:52]:
But I think the main thing here, the main takeaway is like, our vision is the same though, like creating a better industry for all of us and, and, and getting rid of that old auto, automotive industry. What do you call it? You know, the stigma. Stigma. There you go.

Arun Coumar [01:13:11]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [01:13:11]:
See that? We're on the same page here. We got that at the same damn time. That was pretty good.

Arun Coumar [01:13:17]:
Gotta love the delays of remote podcast recording. We think we're having a live conversation, but I don't.

Jimmy Purdy [01:13:25]:
It's pretty close, huh?

Arun Coumar [01:13:26]:
Yeah, I got, I mean, what episode number are you at now?

Jimmy Purdy [01:13:30]:
I couldn't even tell you. I don't keep track.

Arun Coumar [01:13:33]:
I think when I checked right Before, I had 141, but half of mine were the short form, me yelling at the microphone for five minutes. And now I haven't published a podcast in eight months or so, something like that, because I wasn't seeing any traction. But I think it's very, very hard.

Jimmy Purdy [01:13:55]:
It's very. I don't know what you call it, but it's tough because you're just. We're just sitting here talking to each other. Right. And even if you look at the listener trends or whatever, it's just, it's impossible to know who's listening or what's going on. Right. So it's almost a fetus in a sense, where you're giving out really good information. Right.

Jimmy Purdy [01:14:13]:
Like, this is very valuable information that's free to anyone listening. And it doesn't feel like anybody's listening or doing anything with, like, why am I doing. Right. So but then it's like, you know what? Just keep doing it. Right? Because I learned more about having this conversation with you than I can in a coaching program over six months, you know?

Arun Coumar [01:14:28]:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [01:14:30]:
So.

Arun Coumar [01:14:31]:
Well, except I stole most of this stuff from a coaching program I've been taking over the past six months.

Jimmy Purdy [01:14:35]:
Yeah, me as well. But for those listening, you just got six months worth of free coaching, so you're welcome.

Arun Coumar [01:14:44]:
I want to get paid for this. I don't know.

Jimmy Purdy [01:14:48]:
Well, if you're interested in listening any more about my guest here. Driven is your podcast.

Arun Coumar [01:14:58]:
Yeah, it's still up. It's the We Are Driven podcast.

Jimmy Purdy [01:15:01]:
We Are Driven. That's right.

Arun Coumar [01:15:02]:
Yeah, the We Are Driven podcast. And then if you're in the Bay Area right now, San Francisco Bay Area Driven Auto Care is the. If you want your experience at a repair shop, which you don't, because you probably are affiliated with one already. If you're listening to this. But let's say you're not, and you want an experience like Jimmy's Shop but somewhere else. I got you.

Jimmy Purdy [01:15:25]:
I like that. Or if you have a family member or friend that's driving through California, which is possible, and you get stuck up in the Bay Area. There you go.

Arun Coumar [01:15:35]:
Two convenient locations for you.

Jimmy Purdy [01:15:37]:
There it is. I love it. Well, I appreciate your time, man. Thanks for coming on. This is great. Again, I'm gonna keep looking for that episode. I'm gonna talk David and Lucas at the we're in SEMA next week, and I'm gonna. I'm gonna see if I can track it down, because that was a good one, too.

Jimmy Purdy [01:15:53]:
But that would make more sense. Like, once we. If we did that one after this one, it wouldn't matter because, oh, everyone be like, oh, I get it now. I see what he's saying.

Arun Coumar [01:16:00]:
Yeah. Well, yeah, I'd be interested to hear how far I've come.

Jimmy Purdy [01:16:05]:
Yeah, right.

Arun Coumar [01:16:06]:
Yeah, both of us.

Jimmy Purdy [01:16:08]:
Well, cool, man. Appreciate your time.