The Gearbox Podcast

Jimmy Purdy [00:00:13]:
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. The content you put out there, man, it's like, I feel like it's really directed towards, like, maybe industry professionals. I mean, could you just mention, you just kind of recently started it? So do you have, like, a direction, or are you just, like, putting stuff out there and see what sticks?

Ryan Stratemann [00:00:51]:
So, about two and a half years ago, I started a TikTok channel, and I had always had my personal Facebook that I would post random videos of, you know, off the wall stuff we would see in the shop, and, you know, my friends would comment on stuff, and I thought I was too old to use TikTok, but I downloaded it and got addicted to it. And I'd start uploading those. Those videos of the random things I would see in my workplace. And it kind of, you know, it took off. I got 10,000 followers, you know, within six months or so, and I was like, wow, they're actually starting to pay me to post content. And so then it. But at the time, TikTok had a maximum of, I believe it was 1 minute or three minutes on their videos, so I had to keep it short. And so there wasn't really any information going on.

Ryan Stratemann [00:01:33]:
It was just, oh, wow, look at this dumb thing that rolled in that was all messed up, you know? And then when they increased the time limit to ten minutes, that's when I started creating videos on how I would do tasks. And it's, you know, it's not geared towards the DIYer, actually. It just. It kind of shows just the caliber of the work that we try to provide and some things to watch out for if you are trying to do the tasks that we're doing. And, you know, how easily a technician can get sideways on a job if he doesn't look at all the things that we're doing. And so then it just, people really started to like the content and share it a bunch. And, I mean, we're getting to where Tick Tock's paying bills for us now. We're making, you know, on a good month, a couple of grand on tick tock.

Ryan Stratemann [00:02:21]:
And it's. If you look at it just from the aspect of time invested versus rewards on the income, it's a wash, right? Like, I invest way more time than I make on money, but then, sorry if I get off on a tangent here.

Jimmy Purdy [00:02:36]:
No, no, do your thing, man.

Ryan Stratemann [00:02:38]:
So we, it was right at about the time that we hit a hundred thousand followers on TikTok. And I knew that people would steal content. It's a known thing. I mean, the biggest channels on earth have all their content stolen and posted on every other platform, but I just don't have enough time. I run the business. I'm a technician in the shop full time. I have a wife and two kids. And then trying to do social media on top of that is just exhausting.

Ryan Stratemann [00:03:02]:
And I started getting comment or tagged in videos on Facebook of my content, and I was like, well, whatever. Like, it is what it is. I can't do anything about it. And so that went on for a few months, and then I got, I just happened to look at somebody that tagged me in a video, and it was one of my videos had a million views or whatever, and I didn't care. But the page that it came from said stratum and automotive, and it had like, 2000 followers. And I'm like, oh, crap, like, and they had it listed as a business. They had our address on there, our phone number, and I'm like, wow, this could really be bad because people could think they're messaging me and they're actually messaging somebody. That's just stealing my content.

Ryan Stratemann [00:03:41]:
They could say something inappropriate on the Internet that would reflect on me. And so I got the little blue Facebook check mark for my personal page, which you cannot get for your business. Like, that's a, that's a thing that they're rolling out, which seems ignorant to me. It's like, you just take my money and give me the check mark so that, you know, this is a legitimate page so people don't get defrauded on the Internet. And so I got the blue check mark, and that actually lets you talk to a Facebook professional or, like, somebody's support staff. It's an actual human. And so they took down the fake pages, but then they just reappear faster, and I can take care of them. Like, there are 30 or 40 fake pages out there.

Ryan Stratemann [00:04:20]:
So I was like, well, what's my options here? I said, I'm not going to sit around all day just taking fake pages down. And at the time, that one page had 2000 followers and my personal business page only had, like, 350. And this was four months ago, I only had 350 followers on Facebook. So I was like, whatever, I'll just start posting my TikTok content on Facebook because people are already posting it. And it's getting views and we'll just see where it goes. And the videos that were getting stolen were all short videos, so they were in the reels. And Facebook actually pays you for reels, so there was the incentive there for people to steal the content. Well, all my newer stuff is ten minute long videos.

Ryan Stratemann [00:05:01]:
Like, I'm striving my best to cut it down into a ten minute video. And so I was like, well, these aren't going to go anywhere on Facebook. I'm going to upload these ten minute videos and they're just going to fall on their face. I'm going to get two or three likes and that'll be it. And I'll be damned if we don't have 80,000 followers in the last four months. And it's all been the long form content that has taken off. I mean, my reels do good and I make a couple of $100 off Facebook reels, which I didn't even, I didn't even know I signed up to make money on Facebook. I just got a PayPal notification.

Ryan Stratemann [00:05:28]:
I made $200 the other day and I was like, oh, that's cool. But the long form content, I didn't think it would go anywhere unless I paid, you know, like an advertisement through Facebook, which I have tried, and that's an absolute waste of money for me. But I mean, these ten minute long videos are getting, you know, 10,000 shares and a million views, and it's all just, it just does it on its own. I don't pay anything extra. I don't share it to a bunch of, you know, mechanic pages for people to watch it. Just, it just organic, huh? Yeah, pretty much. And so that was pretty, pretty interesting to me. So now, obviously, we're trying to move into the YouTube platform because if there's any money to be made, it could be made there, but we only have, like, a thousand subscribers.

Ryan Stratemann [00:06:11]:
It's actually pretty hard to gain followers on YouTube, in my opinion. But, yeah, it's interesting editing the footage for all the three different places that we post, which is TikTok, Facebook and YouTube, because they all have different length, you know, TikTok's ten minutes and Facebook is 90 seconds, and YouTube, if you want to do a short, has to be 60 seconds. Well, trying to fit any of my newer long form content into a 62nd video is just insanely hard. YouTube, if you want your content, is.

Jimmy Purdy [00:06:40]:
Like, you need that longer. You need the whole story.

Ryan Stratemann [00:06:43]:
Yeah, and it's all vertical format because that's what TikTok is, is vertical format. And so if I take that ten minute video that I spent 3 hours editing and filming and I try and put it on YouTube, it goes nowhere because nobody's going to watch a vertical format video on YouTube that's ten minutes long is what I have found. So I have to refilm all this stuff. I wish they made a camera that took vertical and horizontal at the same time. That'd be cool. But they don't, they make a really crappy app that does it and it's like 240 p and that it's just not going to work.

Jimmy Purdy [00:07:15]:
Nah, yeah, it's got to be good. It's good, good quality. So I think that's a big thing. Everyone wants to see good video content, you know, like what it actually good quality video, not like the content, it's just like if it's bright and shiny, everyone seems to like it. Like that's not a lot of people that have valuable there, you know, I.

Ryan Stratemann [00:07:34]:
Get a lot of people that have no interest in automotive stuff and they're like, somehow you wait, you made me watch your ten minute video and I have like, I have no interest in doing this at all.

Jimmy Purdy [00:07:43]:
It just looks, I don't know what.

Ryan Stratemann [00:07:44]:
It is but yeah, I. They enjoy it.

Jimmy Purdy [00:07:46]:
Yeah, yeah, I mean there's so much content out there, right? Like, and it's just interesting, like the different avenues and different social media stuff, right? And like this, is it short video? Is it long video? And you're like, you try to explain to somebody what will work and you just can't because everybody's content is different and it's like you just have to customize it for yourself. And I feel like watching a lot of yours is like, it's very, very detailed and like it's like next level skill level, right? Where I feel like I do a lot of content where I try to really break it down into like more of a layman's terms where like somebody who has been in the industry ten or 15 years to be like, yeah, of course. Like that's like common sense stuff. But I have a lot of luck with, you know, success with that, with just doing the short term, like very simple, basic stuff, you know, so it's just interesting to see the other side and the super, super technical stuff because it's funny, a lot of the time I try to stay out of that realm and not get super technical because I feel like I lose people, you know? But it's good to know that you have that kind of following because it shows that the industry is, like, absorbing it, which is needed because, like, your differential videos, we do a lot of gear sets, too, and I can't tell you how many other shops in the area, right? Like, how many times I said something comes in, I'm like, oh, my God, like, you should not be touching this stuff. And. But it's, it's simple, right? Like, a differential is pretty damn. I mean, I don't know, you get to a point where it feels simple, you know, you're like, when I first.

Ryan Stratemann [00:09:19]:
Started it, it was a daunting task and my boss just threw me to the wolves at the time. And I was like, you want me to build gear? Like, you want me to do a gear set for a customer that's paying you? And I have never done gears in my life. And thankfully, I had a guyenne that goes by name of Brian Sanchez and he owns got torque differential. And him and I were, we worked next to each other in that shop and he schooled me on how to, they kind of gave me the basics and then he just said, hey, you're either going to learn it or you're not. And there was a lot of growing pain in that. But now that I have essentially, in my opinion, mastered it, it's pretty basic stuff and there's not a whole lot to it. You got bearing, preload and pattern and that's it. And backlash.

Ryan Stratemann [00:09:57]:
I mean, it's just the process of getting all three of those set up properly, you know, can be daunting for some people, but it's.

Jimmy Purdy [00:10:03]:
You think it's the technical aspect of just saying you need a dial indicator to measure backlash. And then you put a number. Do you think just that sentence is what scares a lot of people off? It's like, I feel like anytime you have to, like, met, like, clutch packs in an automatic transmission, like, you need to check, you know, you clutch tolerances and add like eight to ten thousands per clutch. And it's like, you start saying stuff like that and all of a sudden like, oh, and I give it. How do I do that? Like, it's easy, man. It's like, you know what a feeler gauge is, right? Like, you get, there's like so many different ways of doing it, but I just. That technical aspect of having to measure something, I think that's when you lose a lot of technicians. You know, like, run out on rotors.

Jimmy Purdy [00:10:42]:
Like, how many people actually measure. Run out with a dial indicator on rotors. Like, I'm not doing all that. Like, it's not that hard. You know, but just having to, like, slow down and, like, measure something, it just throws everybody off, I feel like, for sure.

Ryan Stratemann [00:10:56]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:10:58]:
Which is, like, not that it's not that bad. Like, the. The gear pattern, the paint thing. I mean, that's definitely something I think takes a little bit of time. That's the hardest.

Ryan Stratemann [00:11:05]:
That would be the hardest thing, is judging the pattern. But Yukon has their pamphlet that I reference on a daily basis, or. Well, not a daily. Whenever I'm building them, you know?

Jimmy Purdy [00:11:14]:
Yeah.

Ryan Stratemann [00:11:14]:
It's reprinted information. Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:11:17]:
And then it's like you said, trial by fire. Like, you just learn it. Like, you're like, that doesn't look quite right. So you put. Take a shim in.

Ryan Stratemann [00:11:22]:
Take a shim out by fire was a. It was 2018, and I was working at that shop that threw me to the wolves on them, and I was. I was getting where I was pretty comfortable with him, and I had a, like, 50 miles Chevrolet pickup come in. The dude bought it brand new off the lot, put 35s on it, and wanted to regear it. And his thing was a brand new truck, and so we put 456s in it, and I made it about three quarters of a mile, and the truck just started to drag a little bit, and then the front tires locked up, like, as if I had hit the brakes. I thought there was something wrong with the abs module. I was like, what the hell is going on? And I had to find out that the lift kit points the pinion up like this. And so now the pinion bearings that are normally submerged in oil are no longer riding in the oil at all.

Ryan Stratemann [00:12:10]:
And you can't overfill the diff enough to make up for that. And it was an auto four x four truck, so the front drive shaft was spinning while I was driving at the highway. That sucked it. I was really. And at that point, I worked for a shop that made you pay for parts that you would mess up and eat your labor, and they would damn near threaten to backflag you, and, like, oh, God, it was terrible. I learned to be good that way, you know, and I I thought that that's how you're supposed to run a shop, and so are you. You're part of the Aso, right?

Jimmy Purdy [00:12:39]:
Yep, yep.

Ryan Stratemann [00:12:40]:
Yeah. So I found that because I was asking a bunch of local shop owners. I was like, man, I had a technician that put a hole in the radiator, and he doesn't think he should pay for it. But, you know, I was raised where you're supposed to pay for it, and you know, back flag hours and all this crap. And they were like, nah, man, you need to join the ASO, g, and they'll open your eyes. And I got flamed in there like really hard for, and I mean, I'm super grateful. I tell every shop owner about the ASOG that seems like they give a damn about what they do and it saved my shop and I probably make, I joined their, they had a little program for, you know, newer shop owners in the ASO and I joined that and it probably doubled our revenue and therefore allowed us to, I mean, I pay my technician, you know, or my brother, who happens to be my, my helper, he makes, you know, six figures working for me and we're in some podunk shop six or 10 miles from the nearest town. And I just never thought that was a thing, you know, and it's just, it's really cool to see what the industry is moving towards, paying technicians.

Ryan Stratemann [00:13:44]:
And so I tried to do that with my brother as well.

Jimmy Purdy [00:13:47]:
That's awesome.

Ryan Stratemann [00:13:47]:
Yeah, the SOG is really together.

Jimmy Purdy [00:13:50]:
Yeah. How'd that story manufacturer? I mean, and it's funny you bring that up because we all get like thrown into the industry for one reason or another, but we get kind of trained and we just, we're in a little like, like a bubble or like a, you know, like blinders. Like, this is the only way to run a shop. You know, like you're like trained or brought up wherever you work and you just think like, everybody's like that and you just have your head down, you're doing your job and it's like, until you, like, look up and look around, you're like, wow, there's like so many ways we can do this and it's not just like one path to, like, run a shop. How did that kind of evolve for you? Like, going from a technician, work for somebody and opening your own shop? Was that something you wanted to do, something you, like had?

Ryan Stratemann [00:14:31]:
I was forced into doing it, okay? And at this point, I don't care about telling the story because it just, it is what happened. In the end, the owner of the shop made some bad decisions and unfortunately I left as a result of that. But we had a guy who's a good friend of mine still, and he had a bad temper and I'd worked with him for going on four and a half years at that point, and I had just seen him progressively get more and more violent and his helper put a rubber snake in his toolbox and the guy freaked out and went and got a gun and brought it in the shop and started pointing it around and said, which one of y'all blah, blah, blah, you know, put this in my box? I bet you don't have the nuts to say who it was and this and that. I mean, actually, like, pointing the gun around at people. And they did not immediately can him. I was like, this guy should be gone, you know, I mean, I'm afraid of his. Yeah, yeah, it was just. It was.

Ryan Stratemann [00:15:24]:
And they brushed it off. They're like, oh, y'all just know not to mess with him. And I'm like, no, man. And I tried asking the upper management, because it was a bigger shop, we probably had ten technicians and two service riders, and it was a bigger operation. And I tried asking the upper management, like, hey, what are y'all gonna do about this? Because, like, you know, I was concerned about my safety. And they were like, oh, you don't have any business knowing what we're going to do about it. And I came into work the next day and he was still there. And I'm like, obviously they're not taking it serious.

Ryan Stratemann [00:15:51]:
So I went up to the office and confronted the business owner about it and him and I just agreed that parting ways was the mutual thing to do. And it threw me to the wolves. I had no intention. I had a one year old kid at the time. My wife was in college, and I got a lot of overhead to pay for. And so I had a little one bay shop that I'd been doing side work out of for forever. Seven years at that point, probably, you know, if you're a mechanic, people hit you up outside work. And I didn't have a what? My wife was in college and I didn't have a kid before that, so I just had all this free time, so I was like, might as well make some extra money.

Ryan Stratemann [00:16:24]:
And so I had built up a client base, you know, and that kept me busy. Just word of mouth has literally kept me busy until probably six months ago whenever we first started, you know, really getting customers off of advertising from TikTok and Facebook. And so that that one bay shop building with one car lift fed my family for a year before I was able to build my newer shop that I'm in now.

Jimmy Purdy [00:16:47]:
That's awesome.

Ryan Stratemann [00:16:49]:
I was definitely throwing the wolves, but it was for the better. You know, I'm able.

Jimmy Purdy [00:16:54]:
Yeah, you got. I mean, safety comes first, right? Like, you can't. That's not, that's not cool. That's quite.

Ryan Stratemann [00:16:58]:
Yeah. And everybody in that shop carried a gun. I'm imagine. I'm amazed that somebody didn't get hurt that day. It was just nuts.

Jimmy Purdy [00:17:06]:
But, yeah, that's a crazy situation. That's a quite a turning point. But you made the best of it. Seemed like it was the right thing. I mean, obviously, hindsight, it's probably what needed to get you out and to do your thing. Yeah, you're doing the right thing. Right. So, yeah, you're in a pretty remote area.

Ryan Stratemann [00:17:24]:
Yeah, I'm not as remote as some places. San Antonio is a short, like, 30 minutes drive, so we get a. A lot of folks from the San Antonio and Austin area, but a lot of hometown people. We just put up a billboard. I didn't even know those were attainable for my income level. But our local town apparently doesn't charge much for billboards. They're only 450 a month, and so we put one up last month, and because work just seems to come in waves, it's like we have nothing to do, and then we're just swamped. We went.

Ryan Stratemann [00:17:54]:
We're normally like a week and a half out, and I like to keep it that way because it just. It's where I'm most comfortable is a week and a half out. And we got down to where we had one job left, and we got, you know, two and a half technicians standing around with nothing to do. And I'm working on my lawnmower and my personal trucks and stuff. Like, man, how are the bills gonna get paid? And. And then it just. The floodgates open, and now we're almost a month out on work. It's just insane.

Jimmy Purdy [00:18:19]:
Yeah, it's riding the wave, man. It's like, yeah, no rhyme or reason either. And you try to get to the seasons, and it's like, I don't know what the seasons are.

Ryan Stratemann [00:18:28]:
Yeah, no winter. Well, February seems to be our last three years has been our slowest month, and that was true this year as well. And our price increase has definitely caused less people to come to us because we are definitely the most expensive shop in the county. But that's just what I have to charge to do what I want to do with the business and provide people with service that we do and warranty and paying my technicians what they ought to be paid. I think my brother, he's an absolute genius. I think that he could go and make more money somewhere else, but I think he likes the environment that we work inwards. We have an interesting situation because my brother is also the service rider and the technician and the parts guy, just as I am too. And that's what works out best for us, because there's no middleman to lose communication between me and the customer, you know, of.

Ryan Stratemann [00:19:20]:
Hey, your front end clunk. Was it going around the corner? Was it going over bumps? And I just. I mean, a lot of shops have to have service riders, and I have nothing against shops of service riders. This is just works what works best for me because there's no lack of communication or loss of communication there.

Jimmy Purdy [00:19:37]:
So, yeah, I mean, there's so many different ways you can set it up. And I think there's, like, that stereotypical kind of, like, you have your advisors and you have, you know, two or three texts per advisor, and, like, you kind of set and build it that way. And that's a model that works like it's proven, but it doesn't mean it's the only way. Right? Everyone has a unique situation.

Ryan Stratemann [00:19:55]:
You know, when I was in the Asoji, that group, I ended up leaving the little Aso g group because I didn't, I didn't think I could charge what they wanted me to charge. I was like, y'all are nuts. I'm gonna go bankrupt, try and charge what y'all are. And turns out I should just take in their advice.

Jimmy Purdy [00:20:09]:
I want you to say that for, again, for the people in the back.

Ryan Stratemann [00:20:13]:
Because, yeah, no, if somebody tells you you should do something and they own a bigger, much more profitable shop, you should probably just listen. But one of the things that they told me I had to do was get a service writer, and they want to meet up. At the time, I had this girl working for me, and she was not very good at her job, but she would have just wrecked our program. But they were like, oh, yeah, make her the service rider. I'm like, nah. And so I put my foot down and said, I'm not going to have a service writer. And so we just agreed to disagree on that. I still think that that's a good decision, but we're a small operation.

Ryan Stratemann [00:20:45]:
It's only me, my brother, and a shop hand, and I intend to keep it that way. I don't plan on getting to where we have ten technicians and, well, your.

Jimmy Purdy [00:20:53]:
Your type of work, you do a lot of really, really specialized stuff, though.

Ryan Stratemann [00:20:56]:
Yeah, we specialize in light duty diesel and.

Jimmy Purdy [00:20:59]:
Yeah, but, like, you know, gear swaps and, like, getting into, like, really technical stuff. I feel like that's, that's where it changes a little bit from your gen, your general auto. Right. You have, like, maintenance work like that. Makes sense. Someone comes in for oil change or needed an alignment or they need ball joints, whatever. Like, yeah, you need an advisor. Sure.

Jimmy Purdy [00:21:18]:
Like it's easy. You can look that. Not easy, but you can list out the labor, you list out the parts, you sell the job and that's it. But when you're talking about doing a gear swap, most people that are interested in that, they want someone with, with a little bit more background in that specialized area, right. To say, hey, what gears should I do, right? And I'm sure you get that question a lot. And it's like the most difficult question for me to answer too. Like, well, I don't want to recommend a gears. And then you're upset because you can only do 25, you know, 65 miles an hour at 4000 revolutions per minute, right? So you're like trying to balance it out and you can do the calculations and all that, but ultimately it's like almost picking a color for their house.

Jimmy Purdy [00:21:57]:
Like I just, I'm not going to pick the color for you, right. Like you gotta, but so you got to give them that information so they can make an educated choice, right. And that's, and that's difficult for anyone that's not specialized in that field of work. Does that make sense?

Ryan Stratemann [00:22:11]:
I think, yeah, we had a guy at the old shop that worked at, that's where I pretty much gained all my experience. But service rider sold some gear sets on a jeep JK. Pretty routine stuff. They ran a special. It was outrageous. It was like $1,600 out the door, front and rear gears and of course technicians getting boned for like 6 hours for the whole front and rear gear set. And I just, it was what it was. I could get it done in a day and I was like, whatever, I'm helping the business get, you know, business, so.

Ryan Stratemann [00:22:38]:
But we had a JK come in, they wanted to like 513. And I went to fire this thing up and it had a diesel in it. I'm like, that's odd. So I opened the hood and it had a Cummins, little four Bt Cummins in it. And I called, I was like, hey, why do these people want lower gears? And they're like, well, it won't go over 55. And I was like, okay, so let me go around the block. And it was just the engine didn't have the power to go any faster and putting lower gears would have just. Or, well, without getting super technical, the governor inside the injection pump wouldn't allow the rpm to go any higher.

Ryan Stratemann [00:23:13]:
So adding lower gears would have made the vehicle slower. I'm like if anything, you want to go numerically lower so that it, you know, and so all we ended up doing was turning up the injection pump, and they were tickle pink. And I didn't do a gear job after all. But the service rider didn't think to ask those questions of, why do you want to lower gear? What is your end goal? And so, yeah, and that's the point.

Jimmy Purdy [00:23:33]:
Of, like, that tech having that technical background. And I, and as well as the process works, that's the stuff that gets slipped through the cracks. So that all of a sudden, I get a lot with transmissions, right? They come in, they think the transmission slip and ends up being an engine misfire, you know, and they're calling around getting quotes on transmissions and, and you just book the appointment. You buy the transmission, you order it, they show up, the transmission is there on a crate, or, or we're ready to pull it out and rebuild it, right? And you do all. It's got the same problem. It's like, well, you know, well, how to misfire, you know, so it's like being able to have a process that stops it at the front. And I've, I've ran into that before, being transmission specialty, having that problem. You know, everyone's all gung ho that we need a transmission.

Jimmy Purdy [00:24:13]:
We do this and that and the other thing, like, hold on, we're stop the stop for a little bit. We're going to inspect it first. Let's like, see if there's any underlying issues, right? Especially with GM's, with mass airflow sensors. If it keeps burning up third gear and it's got a bad map, it's like, well, we need to find the root cause first before we still pull this thing out and rebuild it. I can put, I can put all the parts in the world in it, but if something's not right, it's just going to burn up again. But on the note of, like, that misfire, thinking it's a transmission slip and it's the same thing without having someone who's specialized in transmissions up front, you start listening to the story the customer's telling you, like, that's not a slip in transmission. Like, I go down the road and like, if it feels like it falls out of gear, then it goes back into gear. Like, that's not what an automatic transmission does when it's railing, you know, so it's like, it's important.

Jimmy Purdy [00:24:57]:
I like your concept of having someone who's technically able to be in the front because that's what most people want, right? They want to go in there. They want to talk to the guy that's got the experience, and then immediately like, yep, I'm good here. You know, a little bit of technical jargon. And they. And they feel so much more comfortable about spending their money there because they're talking to someone who, with that intelligence that's on that level, obviously, it's got to kind of be, in layman's terms. I have the problem with going way too technical, and you see the stars in their eyes a little bit. Like, I lost it, didn't I? Yeah. Sorry.

Ryan Stratemann [00:25:29]:
Yeah, I really like that. We, thankfully, Starlink came out, and we got good Internet now because even though we're close to San Antonio, there was no Internet options. And so we didn't have the ability to have recorded phone calls and mainly dvis. And so joining the Sog, they were like, hey, Dvis are pretty badass. And so I started looking into them, and I decided to start doing them because we had an unfortunate situation where a customer, who's still a customer of mine, bought a truck from another customer of mine. And we had gone through that truck front to back. Dude spent $30,000 on this truck with us.

Jimmy Purdy [00:26:05]:
Wow.

Ryan Stratemann [00:26:06]:
And. But he was planning on taking it straight from us and going to a custom build shop where they were going to put different axles under it, custom suspension, all this stuff. So we just, we looked at the suspension, told him, yeah, it needs some work, but we weren't doing dvis at that point. And so that customer ended up backing out of the whole Sema build thing, and he sold the truck for pennies on dollar. They sold for like 15,000. After he had 50 invested, he sold it to another customer of mine, and that customer picked it up, and we weren't, we didn't do Dvis at that point either. And he was driving it, towing a trailer, and the tie rod fell off going 70 miles an hour. And how that truck didn't get total and how he didn't die and other people injured, it was just amazing.

Ryan Stratemann [00:26:46]:
Like, somebody's watching over me. And so I paid. It was up in Michigan, and I was, like, looking at flights to, like, go help this dude out off the side of the road. And I found a mobile. I was calling every shop in the, in the area, trying to get somebody to go over there and fix that truck. And we finally got a mobile technician went out there and bless those mobile guys. I mean, that's not a thing for me. But, yeah, yeah, I paid.

Ryan Stratemann [00:27:09]:
I paid for the repair. I paid the guy, I think I gave him a $1,000 on top of that for, like, you know, future repairs. Like, I totally felt like an ass. I felt like I did a disservice to the customers. Now, we do very thorough DVis on every vehicle that comes in the door, and sometimes it pays off really well. Sometimes we'll sell ten or 15 grand worth of work, and sometimes it's a complete waste of time because, honestly, a solid DVI where you're checking the front end, checking ball joints, wheel bearings, brake pad thickness, fluid levels, all this stuff, checking codes to make sure that, you know, there's not an abs light on before you pull the. The cab off. And then you put the cab back down.

Ryan Stratemann [00:27:42]:
Now you got an abs light. You're like, what was that there before I did this job? You know, so it saves our ass on that. But it can take 2 hours to do a solid DVI for us, and. But if we. You know, every time I think, well, you know, I don't need to check that differential fluid. I'll check it, and it'll be completely bone dry. And it doesn't look like it has a leak at all. And I'm like, okay, no, no skipping procedure here.

Ryan Stratemann [00:28:03]:
You know.

Jimmy Purdy [00:28:03]:
Yeah. Every time it's like that, it seems like, yeah, yeah, that's.

Ryan Stratemann [00:28:08]:
DvI's are really handy.

Jimmy Purdy [00:28:10]:
Everybody knows it's unfortunate for most part. It kind of takes something like that to happen before you enact. You know, it's kind of like working reactive instead of proactive. And, I mean, hopefully the story here, you know, promotes people listening to, like, do it now before something bad happens, because that's a terrible feeling, right?

Ryan Stratemann [00:28:30]:
It's like everybody.

Jimmy Purdy [00:28:32]:
And it's like. It's just front of mind, right? It's just total up in your head space. All you're thinking about is getting out. Like you're trying to run a business, but you're focused on this one person, and that's not a bad thing to do, right? You have empathy and sympathy and you want to help this person, but you have a whole business you're trying to run. And so it just screws your whole. I mean, your whole week, two weeks, probably a month, right? Like, it's just. It's just occupying that headspace. And all it took was to just take an hour or two and just look that vehicle over before you did anything, right? And I have the same kind of story with transmissions.

Jimmy Purdy [00:29:02]:
We used to come in, we're a transmission shop. That's all we do, right? So it comes in, we're going to pull it out, we're going to put it back in. That's it, right? We don't look at the rest of the vehicle because we're transmission only. We're expecting that the shop that called out that trans has a good inspection or they're taking care of the rest of the vehicle. And it's not until you put the trans in, then you're going down the road and the rear end starts howling or the front end starts making noise, and you're like, wait a second. Was like, was that before or after? And then what really gets you is like, well, I thought the transmission was going to fix that problem. What? Well, he'll told you you needed a transmission, right? Like, all right, that's it. We're inspecting it ourselves.

Jimmy Purdy [00:29:39]:
I don't care who you had it, where it was, like, before we spent any your money, we're going to give our stamp of approval before we touch it, right?

Ryan Stratemann [00:29:46]:
Yeah. I found at least three or four customers of mine that have bought some unfortunate used vehicles. Used vehicle inspections should be done before the purchase of the vehicle. But my customers don't know that, apparently. And so I found several customers vehicles where they came in, they bought a used vehicle, and they were like, hey, I want the AC fix. So I bring it in, and if all they wanted was AC fixed, I could have fixed it. But the truck doesn't even need to be on the road because the entire suspension is going to fall out. And the transmissions got this problem, and they ended up all four of those people, or however many I found, decided, hey, this truck's not worth investing a dime.

Ryan Stratemann [00:30:17]:
And so they just pay the 175 for 1 hour diag and they go on down the road, you know, and. And it saves them from putting AC in a truck that needs 20 grand worth of repairs.

Jimmy Purdy [00:30:28]:
Right? Yeah.

Ryan Stratemann [00:30:29]:
Kind of grateful for that. They feel a little salty about their purchase, but at least, you know, they keep from putting money on something that's spending good money.

Jimmy Purdy [00:30:37]:
Yeah. Then you, well, you become the bad guy, right? Like, if you charge them, you know, 1500 to replace the whole AC system or two grand whole AC system. And then six months down the road, the front ends falling out of it, it's like, well, why didn't you tell me that? I just spent all this money and I can't drive my car. And, like, you become the bad person, not the person they bought the car from. And I don't know why it works like that, but it seems to work like that, right? Like, you're the last person to touch it. So it's all your fault, you know, and I don't think everybody's like that, but obviously, you have to build the systems and processes to kind of, like, make sure you're staying in front of that kind of stuff because that's what creates the bitterness right in the. In the industry and makes us all kind of look bad and then makes you not want to come to work the next day because you're like, what's the next asshole I got to deal with? And it's really about setting expectations. At the end of the day, I.

Ryan Stratemann [00:31:27]:
Can'T believe I get a lot of customers from bigger cities and stuff, and they have all, like, the DVis are like brand new things to them. They're like, I've never seen something. This is cool. You know, you explain what you found with the vehicle and you know what exactly. And it builds trust, too, because if it comes in with a mass airflow code, you can show them via either the lab scope or, hey, we found this tear in the intake booth that's causing air to bypass. You know, you can explain the problem, and they feel like they're not just throwing a sensor at it and hoping that it fixes it. And so that's where you know, and that, that adds value to us being able to charge Diag by the hour, too, because we don't do just one flat. Diag would tell people, hey, if you got oxygen sensor codes, there's a lot of things we got to run down to check that out, and it's going to be three or 4 hours with time, but we're not just going to throw parts at it, because I would say the better part of 90% of codes are unrelated to the thing that they're saying the code is.

Ryan Stratemann [00:32:23]:
So it's, if it's got a mass airflow sensor code, it's never just a mass airflow sensor. It's got something else that's causing it. Or if it's got o two sensor codes, it's got an exhaust leak. Or, you know, there's just. It's never just the sensor, right?

Jimmy Purdy [00:32:34]:
Or a $0.20 piece of wire versus a $200 mass airflow sensor, you know, oh, I've put three in. The last one I did was that was the. Was the Oem one. And it's still not fixing it. It's like, well, you just spent $1,000 on mass airflow sensors, and I can fix this one little piece of wire in about five minutes. Right, but it takes me 2 hours to find where that break in the wire is. Right. It's one of the things I always like to say, like, you want, you want to spend the money on, on benefiting these parts companies or do you want to like help my shop and pay my diag fee and my techs and my guys to like use their skill and knowledge to find the problem? You know, it's, it's really tough because.

Ryan Stratemann [00:33:13]:
What'S that was 10 hours on a battery draw on a brand new super duty is actually a friend of mine and he had a long story short, it was aftermarket tire pressure sensors were causing the TPMs module to wake up after like 6 hours of sitting. And it took a long time to find that. And oh my God, if you took the tires off, rolled them outside, battery draw is gone. You roll them back in the shop and the battery draw come back.

Jimmy Purdy [00:33:37]:
How do you. That's a good one. Walk me through that. How'd you even come?

Ryan Stratemann [00:33:42]:
So if it weren't for my brother, there's. I wouldn't have figured that out. Paul is just, he's a lab scope wizard and he's single and he's single and he really enjoys learning new stuff. And so he's definitely a wizard when it comes to lab scope stuff. So he bought a can bus sniffer and that's how we ended up finding which module is waking up first. And it would take like 6 hours he bought a laptop just to leave it on the seat of the vehicle all night and I, and have that can bus sniffer on there. So we found out TPMS modules waking up first via the identification code or something like that. And so we were like, well, we'll just disconnect the TPMS module and, you know, kick it on down the road for a few months and see what happens.

Ryan Stratemann [00:34:25]:
And it's the keyless entry module too, so you can't just disconnect it. And so we ended up using four scan to turn it off and that fixed the problem. The customer wasn't interested in having the TPMS sensors anyways, so.

Jimmy Purdy [00:34:40]:
Yeah, most people aren't. They don't care about those.

Ryan Stratemann [00:34:42]:
Yeah, he was like, that thing has been screwing up from day one. Turn that crap off.

Jimmy Purdy [00:34:46]:
Yeah, easy's way. That's a, that's. Yeah, every time. I think the parasitic draws are going to be simple because they typically are, right?

Ryan Stratemann [00:34:54]:
Yes.

Jimmy Purdy [00:34:55]:
Those ones pop up and you're like, what in the hell is going on here?

Ryan Stratemann [00:35:00]:
Yeah, I've seen, oh man, some crazy stuff. But yeah, I like the simple ones where somebody put a relay that's got constant voltage or something. It's always the aftermarket stuff that somebody else added that. You disconnect that and the battery draws gone. You're like, okay, cool, easy.

Jimmy Purdy [00:35:14]:
Usually, usually the radio, usually that aftermarket radio, every time or someone left, I had one, they left a stream light charger plugged into the back, the cigarette lighter. And it was like, I was like, I looked in the back and seen the little light was on on the stream light charger and it was like, unplug it. Boom, done. And he's like, I spent like three days trying to figure out what it was. I'm like, oh, that was easy.

Ryan Stratemann [00:35:37]:
Yeah, I had a JK come in that was like heavily modified, got big radio and all that stuff. And I disconnected the negative terminal. I put my battery or my leads in line and something just looked off on the voltage reading or the parasitic draw reading or whatever. And it had another battery for the radio underneath the rear seat. And the battery had failed and was draining the main battery. I was like, why? When the battery is disconnected, I still have voltage here.

Jimmy Purdy [00:36:04]:
Oh, I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah, those are fun. A lot of fun with those.

Ryan Stratemann [00:36:10]:
Hey, with your, I don't believe in flat diagraph fees, you know, it's really cool to see that people are like, hey, if you got this crazy problem, we're going to charge you $500 right off the hop, you know, and then we're going to call you for more if we need it. So that's, that's kind of cool to see the industry actually charging properly for diet because the shop I used to work at just 1 hour diag flat rate. And so as a technician, you know, you're, you tend to cut corners. I never did because I just knew it would come right back and I'd have to diagnose it for free and get complained at by the boss. So. But it doesn't, it doesn't incentivize the technicians to want to do those hard to find jobs when you're only going to pay them 1 hour. So shops got to start charging appropriately for that stuff so that they can better their technicians and.

Jimmy Purdy [00:36:54]:
Yeah, and that rolls right back to like the inspection process because if you don't start with an inspection, you don't really know what you're up against. And that's one things I try to explain to a lot of clients that come in, like when we charge for inspections. Right? Like, I don't, I mean, of course I care, but, like, I don't really care what it's coming in for until we do our inspection. Like, and you pay for that, right? So we have a flat fee. It comes in, we spend an hour with it, and then we, and then we can move forward, right? If you got something that comes in and he's like, oh, I've had this engine light and I had autozone check it. And, uh, they say I need an oxygen sensor or whatever. Autozone said, you know, parts supplier, they wanted to sell parts to fix. Right? Like, I don't care.

Jimmy Purdy [00:37:32]:
You do the inspection, you start noticing there's like mice everywhere and there's a lot of chewed up wires. That's a totally different diagnosis fee than something that comes in. And it's spotless and it's clean and it looks like it's a maintenance vehicle, right? And like, and that what comes into, like, variable labor rates with those too. It's like, like the one with the wiring issues. Like, you know you're going to be spending two or 3 hours on it, right? It's like, it's. There's going to be some problems with the wires being chewed up and who knows what else you're going to find. And so it's another important part of like, the aspect of doing the inspection before you do anything, right? Like, and you probably, it works for everybody. And it doesn't matter if you're specialized in one thing or another.

Jimmy Purdy [00:38:11]:
If someone comes in, they want gears, it's like, well, you just need to inspect it first, see what's going on. Like, you, you check the fluid and there's no fluid in the diff. That's a totally different gear swap than, uh, than if it looks like it's been maintained the last ten years. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, probably gonna be. We're probably gonna need a lot more stuff than just your standard gear set.

Ryan Stratemann [00:38:28]:
People don't realize how much time is involved just cleaning a housing. They're like, you wanna charge me an hour and a half or 2 hours to clean the housing? I'm like, yeah, it's a bunch of damn work and a whole case of brake clean.

Jimmy Purdy [00:38:40]:
That's where all the damn brake clean goes. Yeah, I like those brushes. Those, that last video, you know, I've been doing it for a while and I've, I've always tried to find different ways to clean those. And those brushes were like, oh, man. And I got bench buddy brushes, you know, for valve body bores. I just did not made them for axle tubes. So we always took, like, rags and just made, like, a huge ball of rags and then, like, shove it down with some rebar or whatever. We had, like, a pipe or whatever and just do that over and over and over till the rags run clean.

Jimmy Purdy [00:39:08]:
I'm like, oh, freaking brae rush. Oh, my God.

Ryan Stratemann [00:39:11]:
My brother was a commercial h vac technician for several years before getting into the automotive trade, and that's where he learned about those, was for cleaning boiler tubes or something like that. And, yeah, they have wire ones and spring ones and nylon. Because if you have an actual bearing failure where you've got metal in the housing, it's just nearly impossible to get it all cleaned without one of those and just a boatload of time and a boatload of brake clean. And. And then some people, if you got, like, a rusty housing, they'll run like a ball home through there, and a lot of people don't know that that puts super fine metal particulate in the housing, and you have to clean it out with warm, soapy water and one of those nylon brushes so it can be done. You just have to clean up after yourself. Otherwise, you're just creating more headache than you fixing.

Jimmy Purdy [00:39:55]:
Yeah, yeah. Especially the next time you go to change the oil, and you're like, oh, there's metal in this. The rear ends failing, and you're like, no, that's just. Someone didn't clean it up. Yeah, like the ones that don't flush coolers when they put a trans in, it's like, there's a bunch of metal in the pan. I'm like, yeah, as soon as you started it, it all pumped out of the cooler because you didn't flush it. Yeah, you got to be clean. Yeah, those brushes were pretty.

Jimmy Purdy [00:40:16]:
That's pretty rad. I mean, you always. There's always something to learn, you know? Like, it's just amazing. I love the content out there because you always learn something. And one of the things I wanted to ask you is your thoughts on that, because a lot of guys and girls, people in the industry think this content in these videos are like giving away trade secrets, right? Like, you're giving away this information that we retain to try to, like, you know, make money on. I mean, what's your thoughts on that?

Ryan Stratemann [00:40:43]:
I've had. I've had people, they're like, yeah, I watched all of your videos pertaining to a differential, and I rebuilt it. I still screwed it up. I'm like, yeah, I mean, there's. I put out as much information as I can, but it's it's still. There's lots of learning curves, and if you don't exactly pay attention to what I said, you know, you're gonna screw it up. And. But there's a lot of specialty tools.

Ryan Stratemann [00:41:04]:
I got a press, I got pressed sleeves. I got $2,000 Yukon bearing driver set. I got, you know, just loads of tooling to be able to do all that stuff. The rotational drag gauges are like $300. You know, I think at that point, people are gonna see the tooling process is gonna cost them so much money, they're just gonna take it. Somebody knows what they're doing.

Jimmy Purdy [00:41:25]:
Yeah. To try to tool up like that and then know how to use it, because you can't just buy the tool and, like, use it. You have to know how it works, you know, and, like, a lot of those rotational drags, and one thing I try to. I've tried to explain is, like, doing it by hand and knowing, like. And it's so hard to, like, set preload on those bearings by hand. But if you do it and you know it, it's like knowing what 20 or 30,000 is, but even if you do it a hundred times, you're still going to be off a little bit.

Ryan Stratemann [00:41:51]:
So it's like, really guessing game of, like, oh, that feels like ten. And I put my gauge on there, and it's three or something. Oh, my God.

Jimmy Purdy [00:41:57]:
Yeah. Depending on what day of the week it is, you know?

Ryan Stratemann [00:41:59]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:42:01]:
So you got to have it, but then you got to know how to use those damn tools, you know? But it just blows me away. Like, I don't know, the ignorance that some. That I've heard online, you read, you know, you start reading the comments and people post stuff and, like, all the negativity they spew out there, I'm sure you know. Paul Danner.

Ryan Stratemann [00:42:16]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:42:17]:
And it's like, the amount of, like.

Ryan Stratemann [00:42:19]:
$11 a month program that I never have time to deal with, so just giving him free money. So enjoy it, Paul.

Jimmy Purdy [00:42:25]:
Hey, man. Support the man. You know, he's doing a lot of.

Ryan Stratemann [00:42:28]:
Good things, really good things for the industry, so.

Jimmy Purdy [00:42:30]:
Yeah, but, like, the negativity he gets, you know, like, as much as. As much information and, like, valuable stuff he's given to better the industry, the amount of negativity that he gets and a lot of social media content creators, it's just. It blows my mind. It's like, I don't understand the thought process. Like, do you really think, like, what you do as a profession can be, like, explained in a ten minute video. You know, it's like you're so ignorant to the whole thing right now, you're missing the point.

Ryan Stratemann [00:42:57]:
Yeah. I hate, I'm not trying to make excuses, but I, you know, Paul, I subscribed to Paul Danner's, you know, deal, and I had every intention of watching his videos and trying to better myself. But between doing all the social media and running the shop and having a family and stuff, there's just no time or not a lot of extra time for me to sit down and watch his videos. But if I ever want to feel dumb, I just go watch some of his stuff because he's extremely smart. And even as a person has been this industry for a decade, I still don't know half of what he does. And so, you know, people may think that I'm smart by my videos, but there's, there's a lot of things I don't know and a lot of stuff.

Jimmy Purdy [00:43:35]:
We all don't know, you know?

Ryan Stratemann [00:43:36]:
Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. I can feel dumb real quick watching some of his videos, but especially the lab scope stuff. I wish that I would have known lab scopes for a thing ten years ago, but nobody I worked with ever used one. I was the first one to use lab scope in our old shop and we had ten technicians and, uh, so, but I'm very, uh, very, uh, not seasoned when it comes to lab scope operation. But that's where my brother comes in. So if you have any hard stuff, I'm just like, I pay you really good money, you take care of it.

Jimmy Purdy [00:44:09]:
The important thing is to be able to direct it to the person that can fix it. Right.

Ryan Stratemann [00:44:14]:
That's the only guy that has to deal with the shop headaches. You get to deal with the technician headaches. But he likes that stuff. He really, he doesn't enjoy just the day to day basic stuff. He enjoys the difficult diagnosis, which he's, he's definitely one in a hundred, you know, people out there. So. Yeah, I got really.

Jimmy Purdy [00:44:33]:
Yeah, I know, I know. I know that thought. And it's tough to put yourself in that position as like the shop owner because now you're trying to run your business, but then you also have this like, technical assessment that you need to deal with and like, you want to do that, but you need to run the business. And like, that is the most frustrating freaking thing I think I've ever dealt with my entire life. You know, and you just get, huh.

Ryan Stratemann [00:44:59]:
There's just not enough hours in the day.

Jimmy Purdy [00:45:00]:
No, no, but it's just occupy just frustrate and then you're, like, not having fun anymore. Like, this isn't like, why am I keep doing this to myself? So it's nice. And if you're a really, really skilled technician and you really enjoy that, I always like, just go find a good job. You know what I mean? But, like, the comment to begin all this was like, you have your blinders on. You feel like that's the only way to do it. You don't realize there's, like, really good shops like yours that would, like, benefit having someone that just wants to do a high level diagnosis and not deal with the day to day operations of running a shop, you know what I mean? And they just, it feels like a lot of guys get backed in this corner. Like, well, I can't work for this guy. So my only other option is to open a shop because I'm a really good diagnostician.

Jimmy Purdy [00:45:46]:
Oh, man, you're. That's not the, that's not the answer. You know what I mean?

Ryan Stratemann [00:45:51]:
There's a lot that comes with owners shop, for sure. I got extremely lucky, uh, because the land that I built my shop on is my own, and I already, it's already paid for. Um, I got an extremely good deal on the land. Somebody's getting foreclosed on. I've had bought it for pennies on the dollar, and it just all happened to work out in my favor. If I didn't have this land, I might not have opened the shop. And I just, I got really lucky when it comes to a lot of things. And my dad's my CpA.

Ryan Stratemann [00:46:17]:
He owns his own CpA firm. That helps me a lot, having somebody that cares about the numbers. My wife went to school for accounting, so she does our bookkeeping. I was able to hire her. At two years in, I was able to hire her. I just had so much stress on my plate that I was just like, man, I need somebody to spread this load with because I'm sitting here doing quickbooks at 11:00 at night, trying to make sure that the numbers are going where they're supposed to be. And I'm like, what's balancing books? You know? And just, I'm a mechanic guy, you know?

Jimmy Purdy [00:46:46]:
Yeah.

Ryan Stratemann [00:46:46]:
And so having people to make sure those, all those processes get done correctly is really beneficial, too.

Jimmy Purdy [00:46:55]:
Yeah. They're all full time jobs. They're all. And they're all skilled laborers, you know? Like, you can't just think that you can be proficient at, like, five different people's jobs, you know what I mean? Like, will you say with CPA and bookkeeping, like, I'll figure that out. Like, that takes, like, a degree. Like, you gotta go to, like, you gotta go to, like, school to learn that stuff. And it's like, I'm just thinking, I'm gonna do it on my own for 3 hours at the end of the day, and I'm gonna do it right, you know? Like, what was I thinking?

Ryan Stratemann [00:47:22]:
Yeah, it's a. It's a nightmare. Quickbooks has a live bookkeeping service, which is actually pretty decent. And that saved my tail for a couple of years until I was able to actually hire my wife. I was just like, yeah, now you can come do it for us professionally, you know, and, well, that makes it.

Jimmy Purdy [00:47:38]:
Better, too, because it's like, your tax liabilities go from, like, owing 20 or $30,000 a year to, like, half. Right? Like, and it just drops it significantly when you have someone that's actually knows what they're doing and putting it in the right spot, and then you get a profit loss statement. That makes sense.

Ryan Stratemann [00:47:54]:
Yeah, that's. Yeah, I. Making money is half the battle. Telling the government where that money went is the other half. And if you got somebody that doesn't care what they're doing or doesn't know what they're doing, you're going to end up paying a hell of a lot and get yourself in or not paying enough and get yourself in a pickle. And I think a lot of people overlook that. They're like, oh, well, I'll just worry about it later. It's like, no, you need to worry about it now.

Ryan Stratemann [00:48:14]:
You got quarterly tax payments, and every month you got to pay sales tax, and there's a lot of tax that go around. It is what it is. Part of the business.

Jimmy Purdy [00:48:23]:
Yeah. Or if you're looking at hiring somebody. Right. And you need to pay them 120 or $130,000 a year, which we should be. Right? Like, technicians. We all started as technique, or most of us started as technicians that moved into, you know, the seat of owning the company. And you know that what you wanted to get paid. And part of the reason why you probably opened your own shops, because you weren't getting paid enough, and then you want to open a shop and hire guys and pay them what you were getting paid.

Jimmy Purdy [00:48:50]:
And, like, wait a second here. How long do you think they're gonna last if you're paying them what you were getting paid and you left to open your own shop? It's like this vicious cycle that just keeps repeating itself.

Ryan Stratemann [00:48:59]:
Yeah.

Jimmy Purdy [00:49:01]:
And then technical training and cars getting more difficult. It's like it just goes on and on and on. And if you're not constantly evolving, and that's like, kind of back to the comment about the social media stuff, like, the content that's out there, it's ever evolving. Like there's something new every single day, you know? So it's like, if you're not staying on top of your game, if you think this content out there is just going to be the end all, be all, like, you're so lost when it comes to the process of an evolution of automotive repair. It's like, what? How? I don't know. It just, it just absolutely blows me away. And it's like, I haven't been doing this for a long time. It's been maybe close to two decades now, like, wrenching.

Jimmy Purdy [00:49:39]:
And it's like I'm at the point now where I realize there is just so much out there. Like, I need to be involved in, like, every part of technical, you know, training, business, ownership. Like, I just need to have, there's just, there's not enough content. I've come to realize, like, as much as there is, there's still not enough. Like, I need more, you know? Because you realize, you just keep picking stuff up. There's just golden nuggets everywhere. And unless you take the time to watch it and, you know, influencers and content producers like yourself don't keep putting the stuff out there. Like, then how do I, how do I obtain it? I gotta spend money, right? And it's like, I don't know that it's great to spend money on technical training, but it gets costly, right? And then you, you've probably gotten to the point, too, where you, you pay money to go some of these training events, you're like, I've already heard all this.

Jimmy Purdy [00:50:28]:
You know what I mean? Like, and maybe you pick up one gold nugget. Okay, cool. Made it worth it. But how many events or seminars that you've gone to, you spent two or 3 hours and a, you're like, I've already heard all this. I already know all this, you know, and not, not sound ignorant about it, but it happens, you know? And it's like, so without the free content, you kind of get burnt out. And you're like, I don't want to go to, I don't want to spend another money. And it's not even the money's the time. I gotta spend all this time again to go hear something that I've heard a hundred times before.

Ryan Stratemann [00:50:57]:
Yep.

Jimmy Purdy [00:50:58]:
You just need more content, man. That's what helps.

Ryan Stratemann [00:51:02]:
I didn't build industry. Yeah. Yeah. I try and find something else besides differentials to build content on. That all got all leaking dodges and differentials to build, apparently.

Jimmy Purdy [00:51:15]:
Well, the one on the mustang with the Powershell, that was a good one. I enjoyed that.

Ryan Stratemann [00:51:18]:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. That was our buddies over at Holden Brothers. Diesel built that must. What? Ranchero, actually. Was it a ranchero? Yeah, it's a ranchero. It looks just like one from the front.

Jimmy Purdy [00:51:32]:
Okay, that makes sense.

Ryan Stratemann [00:51:35]:
Yeah. They built that for that demolition Mac guy, which is a huge YouTube guy, you know? So it's kind of cool to be a part of that and. And figure that out, because that was. It was pretty wild, you know, it was something so simple. But getting to the point of knowing why it didn't run was interesting.

Jimmy Purdy [00:51:51]:
Well, being able to stop and, like, get your stuff set up and, like, start in video, that. That's the problem. That's the problem I have with putting content out, is, like, I get through. I'm like, that would have made an awesome freaking video, right? And then you're like, so, do I, like, go back, like, everything back to where it was and then work? No, I gotta.

Ryan Stratemann [00:52:09]:
That's what we did on that one. We didn't know if we were gonna be able to fix it, and we. We. We just. We got it to where we figured out the problem, and then we're like, oh, this would make a cool video. So let's go ahead and start over.

Jimmy Purdy [00:52:21]:
Oh, you did? Okay, well, that's. I always think about that. I'm like, no, I'll just move on. But it's like, maybe I should go back because that would make pretty good content. Or I like Paul Danner because he just, like, puts it out there, gets all frustrated, and, like, works through it, and then, like, figures it, like, damn, you got cajones, man. Like, yeah, he's. He knows he's gonna figure it out, and, like, he just. You see how frustrated he gets and he's like.

Jimmy Purdy [00:52:44]:
And it's like. But he just keeps on going, and it's like, oh, man, I just. I can't do that.

Ryan Stratemann [00:52:49]:
I've tried doing videos like that, and it just. It's not as easy as he makes it look. He's extremely smart and. Yeah. And when he opens the. The scanner, he knows he's gonna fix it. It's. I mean, he's very smart individual.

Ryan Stratemann [00:53:02]:
Yeah, yeah. I'm like, I'll take a video or a picture of the codes and maybe. Why it came in, and then I'm not gonna video again until I figure out what's wrong with it.

Jimmy Purdy [00:53:12]:
What's the editing, man? It's like, that's, like a whole day. And it's like, if you can just do the video without having an edit, and it's like, that's what I try to do, is like, okay, I'm just gonna. I'm gonna film this so I don't have to edit it at all. Then you watch it, and then you start editing it. Like, who are you editing it for? You know? Like, when do you stop, like, making changes? And it's like, then who really even, like, cares about, like, the small changes you're making? That's what drives me. And like you said, like, spending three or 4 hours making this video, and it's like, you probably just get to the point. You're like, you know what? That's probably good enough. Like, that gets my point across.

Jimmy Purdy [00:53:44]:
I need to stop right now, because I'm gonna spend half the day on this thing for, you know, for no pay, you know?

Ryan Stratemann [00:53:49]:
Yeah. If it weren't for cap cut, people would hear a lot of ums out of me. You know, I cut a lot of those out, so I don't sound so dumb.

Jimmy Purdy [00:54:00]:
That's the stuff people like to hear bad.

Ryan Stratemann [00:54:02]:
Oh, yeah. They see my screw ups. I don't hide any of that. I mean, I set a truck's engine on fire the other day, and it's on the video. You know, it's just. I forgot about brake clean fumes that were in the oil pan. It's pretty explosive stuff. It just, you know, so can't be perfect, man.

Jimmy Purdy [00:54:20]:
That's point.

Ryan Stratemann [00:54:21]:
And I show that we make mistakes, too, and how we fix them.

Jimmy Purdy [00:54:25]:
Yeah.

Ryan Stratemann [00:54:25]:
I think people, you know, I don't know if they enjoy seeing it, but people watch it, so.

Jimmy Purdy [00:54:31]:
Well, I appreciate your time, man. This is a. This has been awesome.

Ryan Stratemann [00:54:35]:
Yeah. Me on.

Jimmy Purdy [00:54:37]:
Yeah. And again, Ryan Strodaman.

Ryan Stratemann [00:54:42]:
Stradaman, you nailed it.

Jimmy Purdy [00:54:43]:
Got it. And you're located in.

Ryan Stratemann [00:54:47]:
We're just south of San Antonio, kind of in between Florida and Pleasanton.

Jimmy Purdy [00:54:50]:
Okay. And you're. How do. How do they find you on your TikTok? Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, on every.

Ryan Stratemann [00:54:58]:
Well, YouTube, it doesn't have anything linked, but on TikTok and Facebook, our address is there, our phone number's there, our emails there. So one of the things that has come out of the social media thing is we get customers from everywhere. I had a guy call me from Pennsylvania about. I mean, that's the opposite end of the continent. Wanting me to work on his Ford transit, and he's very serious about it. I guess. He builds custom transits for, like, multimillionaires. And he's like, I got a bunch of them in Texas.

Ryan Stratemann [00:55:26]:
I want you to work on all of them. I'm like, who? Okay, like, I got another guy from Oklahoma been screwed over, allegedly, by a few shops, and wants to bring his truck to us. He's like, I took my truck to a shop and it sat for six months. And I, you know, I just, I'm like, that's pretty bad. But, I mean, there's always two sides. That story. He could be a bad customer, but it doesn't sound like he is, you know? And it's nuts. We get, we got our first three out of state customers are all from Louisiana, and it's.

Ryan Stratemann [00:55:55]:
It's nuts that people are willing to drive that far for just people doing their job correctly, you know? And I'm like, I tell people, I'm like, I know there we're not the only shop that gives a damn about the quality of the work that we produce, but, you know, ask around on your local pages and see if there's somebody in your area that maybe they just don't post as much on the Internet as we do, you know, because it takes a lot of effort to post the videos we do. I could make more money if I just stuck to turn and wrenches, but it's good advertising for us at this point. I actually know that it's actually working as advertisements. So that's another. That's awesome, cool reason to do it.

Jimmy Purdy [00:56:31]:
Well, and it, and it betters the industry as a whole, right? Because some people that are in those, on those situations, they just feel like, oh, this is just how all auto shops are. And then they run across your content and they see what you're doing. Like, oh, there is someone that's different. There is someone that's going to do it, right, you know, and that's what's the most important thing, because you don't want them to just scrap these cars and go buy a new one. Like, let's keep the older ones on the road, right? Like, there's people that are educated, that are professional, that want to fix these vehicles, right the first time, you know, and take care of the people and, yeah, that's, that's what's lost. So, yeah, if. If anybody's looking for you on the socials, what's your, uh, is it just strataman auto across the board. That's awesome.

Jimmy Purdy [00:57:16]:
I highly recommend anyone listening to to look up his content because it's awesome. It's good stuff.

Ryan Stratemann [00:57:21]:
We try to keep it interesting. Throw a little comedy in there occasionally. I'm a part time shop owner, full time comedian.

Jimmy Purdy [00:57:29]:
I love it. Awesome, man. I appreciate your time again.

Ryan Stratemann [00:57:34]:
Yes, sir. You have a good one.