From Mechanic to Shop Owner: The First Thing You Have to Fix Is You

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]Welcome to Repair Shop Reckoning. From chaos to control because too many shops today are running on chaos. Phones ringing, technicians frustrated, front counters overwhelmed, owners buried in problems with nobody to call. Kevin Brown has spent over 30 years in the trenches learning how to take that chaos and turn it into control. Shop owner, operator, consultant, leader through industry shifts, insurance games, bad hires, great hires, and lessons learned the hard way. This isn't theory. This isn't corporate training fluff. This is real shop experience. Unfiltered. On this show, Kevin breaks down what actually works. Running profitable shops, front counter control, training technicians, negotiating with insurance companies, building systems that make your shop run instead of burn. And the mistakes that quietly bankrupt shop owners every single day. No corporate scripts, no sugar coding. And yeah, somebody might get offended. That's okay. Disney's two doors down. But if you want the truth about this industry, buckle up. This is repair shop reckoning from chaos to control. Let's get started. Welcome back. Today's episode, we're going to talk about being broke.

[00:01:12]Starting at the beginning, how I was a technician, how I didn't make any money, I wasn't fiscally responsible.

[00:01:17]Um, I was in debt up to my ears. I couldn't pay my bills. And then I thought it was my boss's problem to make me make more money or pay me more money because I couldn't handle my finances at home. And then I want to take that into the ever growing conversation of these technicians that become business owners that everybody says it's two hats to wear, right? You're a great technician, but you're a terrible business owner.

[00:01:41]Well, my thought is if you're not fiscally responsible at home, how could you run a business and start paying taxes and stuff like that? Then these guys get into tax trouble and da da da.

[00:01:51]So I'm just going to simply tell my story how I went from the start of being a tech being broke, not responsible with my money in debt all the way up to the point of where I am today. Cuz everybody's like, "Yeah, this guy never [ __ ] turned a wrench in his [ __ ] life." And once again, I don't care about the haters cuz these guys are haters. And you know, >> you're not going to convert them either way, >> right? Would you take criticism for somebody you wouldn't take advice from?

[00:02:15]>> Okay. A lot of these guys on the other end of the keyboard, that's just all they are. There's another set of fingers that just [ __ ] was some [ __ ] up viewpoint on the world. Okay, >> some of their shit's pretty funny, but >> it is. I mean, just stupid.

[00:02:26]>> Just stupid, you know. Um, >> so we'll go from there. But one thing I wanted to talk about last uh week when I talked about the truck being at the dealer and the communication thing and all that. U, that podcast came out Friday morning at 7, 8 o'clock. I got a call from the dealership.

[00:02:42]>> I love this update. Yeah, >> the big boss uh freaking listens to my podcast and he made he made sure that truck got handled. Very professional guy. Kudos to him. And I already have the truck back.

[00:02:54]>> That's awesome. Wow. Because your big worry was how long it was going to be backordered. How long your >> Right. And and it got it was done in like a week.

[00:03:01]>> That's awesome.

[00:03:02]>> So, I'm pretty impressed with the dealership. Uh the truck so far is good.

[00:03:05]We put a couple hundred miles on it. No problems. And you know, it just goes to show you that people do listen the power of the podcast. Um, I didn't use their name.

[00:03:13]>> Yeah.

[00:03:14]>> Anything like that. He knew. He knew though. He knew. He knew cuz he knows my companies and stuff like that. But, you know, what a square guy to call me and go, "Hey, >> we want to take care of this." I mean, he was calling the shop at 8:05.

[00:03:25]>> That's so cool.

[00:03:25]>> And the podcast came out at 7.

[00:03:27]>> Yeah, I know. I put that clip out and I'm like, "Oh, man. I wonder I wonder cuz you talked about the guy listened to it or whatever and I wonder." And then you said right first you called me first thing in the morning and he called had called you already. That's pretty cool.

[00:03:37]>> Yeah. Some of the actual some of the professionals think I'm smart. It's all the freaking jack off techitions that are lube techs or whatever that hate me, but you know, some of the guys actually know what they're doing and and have a career in this industry obviously believe what I say because I get compliments all the time when I go to places. Man, I like your stuff. It's real world stuff. It's stuff we deal with in the shops, blah blah blah blah blah. So, you know, it's nice to know that you're helping some people, giving some people ideas of how you do it. and you're like, "Oh, you know, I got people going, oh, here, you know, the haters going, uh, you know, here's the best shop owner in the world and stuff like that." It's like, okay, whatever, dude.

[00:04:14]Like, it's my opinion. The podcast's free. If you don't like it, turn it the [ __ ] off.

[00:04:17]>> But there's also 30,000 people that obviously freaking like my [ __ ] and comment on my stuff, too. On the plus side, I get texts all the time going, "Man, thank you very much." And the collision industry part of it, I've been doing a little bit into that, getting into that. Them guys are like, "Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you." you.

[00:04:31]It's just not everybody knows everything, but if we put all these ideas out there, you can learn something from everybody. Whether it's right or wrong, you can learn something. And that's what these arrogant [ __ ] don't realize. Yep.

[00:04:44]>> Okay. So, it's kind of funny because a lot of the guys compliment or uh stuff I talk about, topics I talk about. You ever notice a lot of these other guys are talking about the same topics I am?

[00:04:54]All of a sudden, >> so concerned. So concerned, walking through fields all like tearyeyed.

[00:05:00]>> Yeah. It's just like come on, you know, and if you're >> every single time you put a topic out, all of a sudden there's a new guru that's like talking about what you're just what you just said.

[00:05:10]>> I I know. And it's crazy. And you know, the bottom line is everybody could say they're trying to change the industry. I go around to shops and help guys change their shops and change the way they do business.

[00:05:22]Now, one thing I will tell you, and I'll say this again, every shop I've gone to, they treat their technicians like gold.

[00:05:29]Not any of the shops I've gone to and I've interviewed the guys when I go there. They say they hate their boss.

[00:05:34]Everybody's like, "My boss is great."

[00:05:36]And I got five shops right now. I I got rid of one, six, but I have five shops right now. And every one of them people say the same thing. My people are really important and they treat them people like gold. Okay? So, everybody online going every shop owner everywhere in the world is bad. That's [ __ ] [ __ ] It's like saying every police officer is dirty or every painter is a bad painter or every mechanic's There's exceptions to every rule.

[00:05:59]Well, and I love how the what the topic for today because it's like reverse engineering and going back and and you said something like and it was my boss's fault the way you did things. It was your boss's fault and I think it ties into these all these haters. It's their mindset and you were in that mindset to a degree in like what happened in order to get you out.

[00:06:16]>> And I got a couple stories I'm going to talk about where I was being a little [ __ ] Okay. So, I'm gonna start the whole thing. So, in 1989 I graduated from high school. That was a hundred [ __ ] years ago. Right. right when you know the turn of the century.

[00:06:30]Um I got a I grew up on a horse farm and worked on equipment and stuff there you know backyard. I went to Slovak which is Oakland technical uh center Oakland technical center. I went to diesel mechanics for 11th and 12th grade and some of after I graduated from high school I went back um just for some more of it and I got a job at a place called Hail's Auto Clinic. That was my first job. I thought I was knew what I was doing. I didn't know [ __ ] Um, I started out at $400 a week salary. I worked 56 hours a week. Okay, do the math. That's not very much an hour. That was back in uh ' 89 or n late ' 89 after, you know, into 90. Um, I worked there for four years. Great guy. He's still friends with me today. Taught me a lot. There's a lot of guys I learned from there. Um, but the one problem I had starting out, nobody ever taught me how to manage my money. Okay? Okay. It was like you had $40 in your pocket, you go spend $40.

[00:07:28]You just make more tomorrow, make it back up because we used to get paid by the day on the farm. Okay, we're going to pay you $50 a day, whatever. Right. I don't remember what the end result was before I quit the farm, but I worked there my whole childhood and stuff. I So, you're making a couple hundred a week at the farm. You're not doing the math where you're making $3 an hour.

[00:07:46]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:07:47]>> Right.

[00:07:48]>> They pulled a car finance trick on you, >> right? Yeah. Exactly. So the only place I could go and me and Shane, my friend could go after work was to Myyers on 8 Mile in Hagerty cuz that was the only place open 24 hours to buy [ __ ] knives or whatever. Just waste our [ __ ] money. That never got any better. Um, >> you couldn't even wait. It had to be the 24 hours, >> right? Exactly.

[00:08:07]So I remember I used to take home $29610 after taxes out of my $400. That's what I lived on. And my tool bill was $50 a week. So it doesn't leave me very much for my rent, gas, and everything like that. Um, if I remember correctly, I I used to keep the 290. I used to keep the 96 and I gave my mom the 200. Now, remember, I'm just right out of high school, so I don't manage my money and I don't know what I'm really doing with money. So, as we progressed, as every young tech, I bought more and more tools. As I would buy more and more tools, the tool bill weekly payment would go up. So, I had the Mac man, then I had the Mac man, then you get financed through the Mac company, then Snap-on, right? So all of a sudden, if you're not paying attention, it's $150 a week. Now, keep in mind, I'm taking home $296, right? And $90 is, you know, my groceries, my gas back and forth to work to $9610. So 200 is going to my mom for my rent, my insurance on my car, and stuff like that. So think about there's no money.

[00:09:05]>> No money.

[00:09:05]>> No money. So what I ended up doing, I would get behind on the tool guy. I would pay one guy one week, then I wouldn't pay the other guy, and I would just go back and forth. Well, it got to the point where I remember this vividly.

[00:09:15]I bought two ratchets. I bought a quarter inch ratchet and I bought a 38 ratchet. They had orange handles on them. They were Mac and the guy came in and repoed them. I will tell you what, I felt like such a piece of [ __ ] when he came in and repoed them tools.

[00:09:31]>> I bet.

[00:09:32]>> Um I didn't change my way though. I just took my lips like, "Oh, [ __ ] it.

[00:09:36]Whatever." And away I went. And uh you know, I ended up working at Hal for like three years. got some state certifications and stuff because in Michigan you have to have state certifications.

[00:09:47]Then I went to one of the guys that worked at Sterling uh performance that was one of my mentors at HS. He was a pretty good mechanic. His name was Jeff.

[00:09:55]He said, "Hey, we got an opening at Sterling." And at that point I was sick of commission and stuff like that. So I went to Sterling. But I want to back up because I skipped a a good point here.

[00:10:06]So, when I was broke, I had the mindset that I guess I should I missed the point. I want to make sure I'm very clear on this. I got switched to 45% commission at some point in them three years. I don't really remember it. The first year or two, I was the $400. Then I'm like, "Okay, I want to be on commission." So, I would work harder and I would make more money on commission. So, that fixed my money thing. But I still didn't fix my money thing enough to go to the bar like I was and spending all my money and not giving my mom money after I cashed my check, getting behind on my bills and stuff like that. I remember I pulled a uh Otis Spunkmeer van. They did cookies in our state. Uh they were Connelline vans and back in the day the uh torque converters had drain plugs in them. And this thing came in for a leak, transmission leak. And I remember pulling it over in the pit in the one door and I went down there and I'm like looking around and I'm like sitting there thinking and uh I go out and drive it and I clean it off and I'm like, "Well, I think the front pump seal is leaking." And my boss Hal told me, "Check the drain plug on it on the torque converter. It's probably leaking. They always leak." I'm like, "Yeah, whatever." So, I write it up to pull the trans out to replace the front seal. So, keep in mind, I'm on commission, right? And I'm broke. So, I spend, you know, a couple hours. Back then, the crossmembers on the Ford vans [ __ ] suck. They had the pivots on them and stuff, so it was a lot of bolts to get out. I mean, it was still, you know, probably a couple hours to get the trans out. I get the trans out and Hal walks over to me and he's like, "Did you check the plug?" And I I lied to him and I'm like, "Yeah, I checked the [ __ ] plug." He's like, "Well, I'm looking and it's [ __ ] dripping right now."

[00:11:47]And I'm like, "Oh." And he [ __ ] go get a wrench. So, I go grab a wrench. It was [ __ ] loose.

[00:11:55]So he's like, "Fucking tighten it up and put it back in. You're, you know, you're not getting [ __ ] paid." So that was a big chunk out of my paycheck that week.

[00:12:02]And I remember being mad at him.

[00:12:04]>> Yeah.

[00:12:04]>> Like what a [ __ ] [ __ ] Not going to [ __ ] pay me to take the transit now. Nobody will know. But that taught me a [ __ ] lesson. Number one, it was my responsibility when he said, "Check it out." He had more experience than me.

[00:12:15]His name was on the front of the building. But me being the arrogant little dick I was, well, I'm going to take the trans out of it because obviously it can't be leaking, right? I should have checked. So instead of me getting a half an hour and moving on to something else or an hour, I could probably nowadays you could probably get an hour for that, right? Um I end up spending probably what four or five hours doing that. And back then that would have been, you know, quite a bit of money in my paycheck. And and like once again, I remember to myself like me being mad at him.

[00:12:42]>> Yeah. It was his >> that's a mindset, right? I'm broke cuz I can't run my finances. I had a guy that was more experienced than me that owned the business telling me to do something.

[00:12:51][ __ ] him. I'm not doing it. Okay. And after it was all said and done, I got taken to the office. My ass [ __ ] reamed. You will [ __ ] do what I tell you when you're in my shop. You [ __ ] work for me. You [ __ ] [ __ ] Basically, you're arrogant. You're this.

[00:13:07]You're that. You know, you think you know [ __ ] You don't know nothing. You only been doing this a couple years.

[00:13:11]Just you berated me. Did I deserve it?

[00:13:14]Yes. Now, today, that would could never happen. You could never correct somebody. Even if you took them in there and held their hand and said, "Okay, you didn't do this and this is why." It would still be you're an [ __ ] boss.

[00:13:27]>> Y >> nobody takes personal responsibility ever. And I was that guy when I was younger.

[00:13:34]>> Okay. I think everybody does to a certain point. Oh, >> for sure.

[00:13:37]>> But nowadays, it's so much worse because we have this entitlement disease going on with these young techs.

[00:13:41]>> Yep.

[00:13:42]>> Okay. They need me. If they're tech, they can't fix cars. Well, did you ever notice the dealerships will fire [ __ ] people quick as [ __ ] and they'll find somebody else. They don't even worry about it. They have 20 more techs. So, if they're down one tech, they'll find somebody else. They could get somebody else for a dollar or something more an hour flat rate. They'll move dealerships. They move all over the place. Independence is a little bit independent shops. It's a little bit harder. So, at HLS, I ended up getting sick and tired of, you know, the commission game and all that stuff like that. Um, I was working hard. I was working a lot of hours. I was doing heavy engines. I was doing two or three engines a week at this point. By the time I just said, you know what, Sterling offered me more money and they offered me hourly. I'm like, okay, I can go work on race boats.

[00:14:25]So, we worked on Don Q Crystal, Victory Team, um Wonder Bar, you know, the guy who invented the guns on the bar with the buttons. Yeah. Wonder Bar, they did uh cars, race cars, V6 uh cars. Um we had the boats, you know, Donu Crystal did rum distillery. victory team is a shake in Dubai. Shake man of Ben Khalifa El Maktum is his name. Um, you know, I went over >> pronounce that right?

[00:14:48]>> Yeah. Crazy. Holy [ __ ] >> Yeah. I just remember cuz we start to write it on the boxes and you know, we were dynoing these high performance engines and stuff. It was pretty cool.

[00:14:57]You know, I was in the part in the engine. We were in the part where after they dyno the stuff, me and Jeff would take them, we would dress them before they went out. We'd put all the coolers on them, all the stuff, all the, you know what I mean? Get them ready to ship overseas. Um, so we would build the motors after they were done far as dyno them, putting all the accessories, drives the crash box on it and all that stuff. And I did that for three or four years, actually three years. And uh, I learned a lot there. I rebuilt a lot of carburetors and stuff like that. But um I got to the point where I got kind of sick and tired of that because when you're dealing with these engines that are lots of money with people lots of money, there's no downtime and you work on these engines all week or whatever and then dyno them and they ship out and then here comes race day Sunday and you'd worry about [ __ ] like here comes Monday, what are you going to get nicked for? Like I remember one time um a couple plug wires got crossed on an engine and they went to start it up in the boat and it blew their intake off it and it backfired. Like you did the plug wires wrong. Well, we had a sheet back then. I did not do the plug wires wrong, but right by one of the hooks was plug wires. If you weren't careful when you're dropping the straps on to pick it up, you could pop the plug wires off.

[00:16:07]Somebody might not been paying attention. Switch a couple plug just [ __ ] like that. You know what I'm saying? Once again, I was young so it was never my [ __ ] fault. I still had that. I'm broke. I don't make enough money no matter what. My boss doesn't pay me enough even though shit's getting screwed up. Um the plug wire one I won't believe, but I did leave [ __ ] loose that was blatantly my fault, but once again, not my [ __ ] fault. Um all the way through this whole thing, you know, it was never my fault up to the point where I quit and I and I went to Garrett Auto and Truck in 1995.

[00:16:42]So the timeline you have to kind of figure it was like two and a half maybe three years at house and two at uh Sterling whatever you know it was from what I said like late ' 89 to y >> 1995 I started at Garrett Auto and Truck y >> I started at Garrett Auto and Truck as a mechanic hourly mechanic for 1150 $11.50 an hour >> and I could work all the overtime I wanted because the shop was such a [ __ ] show. I was the first legit mechanic they ever hired. Um, so I could work all the hours I wanted and we used to work I used to work 60 I used to work 20 hours overtime easy. Like one thing my wife never gave me a hard time about um was I would work >> work hard work.

[00:17:21]>> I would get home 9 10:00 at night the kids would be in bed or whatever and I would just come in, take a shower, eat and go to bed do it over it was like rinse and repeat rinse. You know what I mean? To the point where >> it it got old. But, you know, my thing was I there was a way there was a light at the end of the tunnel that if I could work more, I could pay my bills. But once again, now we bought our first house, me and my wife did. We lived there for probably eight months before we got married. And she was terrible with money, too. So, the deal was when we moved in the house, she was going to pay the utilities and I was going to pay the house payment and stuff. Now, the house payment was $61343.

[00:18:03]I remember it thinking to myself, "How the [ __ ] are we going to pay this bitch?"

[00:18:07]>> Yeah, >> that's a [ __ ] nut.

[00:18:11]>> Probably 6 weeks in, we get a shut off notice on the Edison.

[00:18:17]>> Like, what the [ __ ] She's like, I didn't pay it. We didn't have I didn't have the money. I said, but the deal was She's like, yeah, but where the [ __ ] do you think going out to dinner money came from and [ __ ] that I was paying for? Oh [ __ ] Yep. So, I was like, [ __ ] So, we just were terrible. We would always have to I would always have to hustle or work more to get the kids school closed.

[00:18:40]Like, it was always a [ __ ] nightmare because we never had any money. We'd spend it. You know, you you you got 20, you spent 40. You got a $20 raise, you went and raised all your payments a hundred. Like all the classic [ __ ] stupid [ __ ] young people do. Credit cards maxed out. your credit cards maxed out, you know. So, we lived there for 3 years and my wife was going to get a job Detroit Diesel Corporation. We had to go through training and that was going to like double her income. Now, back then, I think she was making $9, right? So, she's going to double her income going to the work on the assembly line at diesel, >> which back then 90s $18 an hour is probably a lot of money.

[00:19:25]>> Correct. So my dad was the shop chairman. So he said, "I got you an inn. You have to go through all these classes and stuff like that at um Detroit Diesel." So I'm like, "Okay." She's like, "Okay, I'll do it."

[00:19:38]So she goes through all these classes and towards the end of it, NLB Corporation comes through and say, "We want to freaking give you like a 75% pay raise and keep you. We can't live without you." So my wife's like, "Well, I'll stay there. I've been there for 15 years already. Why wouldn't I stay? So, she stays there.

[00:19:58]In the meantime, we start looking for another house cuz the neighborhood we were in was like kind of getting shady.

[00:20:04]We had our truck by truck broken into and my stuff stolen, some tools stolen and stuff like that. So, we bought our house in commerce. That house payment was $1,3 like$24 and some change.

[00:20:16]>> More than doubled from the >> more than double. And I'm thinking we can't swing this.

[00:20:22]But once again, we'll figure it out.

[00:20:25]It broke up to our [ __ ] ears, but [ __ ] it. We'll figure it out. So, moving this house, we get Now, at this time, our credit's getting better because we just pay our credit card bills, right?

[00:20:36]It's not like we have money. Well, they give us [ __ ] American Express cards.

[00:20:41]Well, back in the day with American Express green card, when you bought at the end of the month, they're like, "Pay up, [ __ ] There's no interest, but you're a member. you need to pay us back when the credit card comes.

[00:20:53]So what we would do is we would short other bills to pay our American Express.

[00:20:57]So we move into this house and we might we moved into this house I believe in like April.

[00:21:05]We live pretty much like kings on our credit cards and you know they're maxed out. Robin paid her to Peter to pay Paul back and forth to the point where Christmas comes.

[00:21:17]And she and she's like, "What are we doing for Christmas?" I'm like, "I don't know. We have no [ __ ] money. I've sold everything I have of any value to pay these [ __ ] American Expresses out. I'm spending. You're spending.

[00:21:27]We're spending a house payment each. We don't have no [ __ ] money. We can't pay American Express. They [ __ ] shut the cards off. I don't know what to [ __ ] do. I don't know what to tell you. We have no [ __ ] money for Christmas."

[00:21:39]So, we got in a huge [ __ ] fight. And I've told this story, but not in depth.

[00:21:42]We got in a huge fight. And I remember sitting in downstairs in the corner where my computer was. And uh I start searching, you know, financial this, you know, coaches, whatever. Dave Ramsey came up.

[00:21:57]So, I started looking at Dave Ramsey. I went on YouTube and looked at it and I'm like, it was $119 for the total money makeover.

[00:22:05]So, I call her down there. She's still pissed. I go, "What do you think of this?" She's like, "I think it's a [ __ ] scam. It's this and that." I said, "But people, they say they follow it. It works."

[00:22:14]I said, "How about I borrow some money off my mom and dad for Christmas?" Cuz her mom was a [ __ ] [ __ ] and still is. Would not loan her money or me money. Um, my mom and dad would. I'm like, "Hey, will you loan me some [ __ ] money for They're like, "Absolutely."

[00:22:27]They loan us money for Christmas. We get Christmas handle, but I'm like, "If I borrow the money, you're doing the Dave Ramsey thing. We're not doing it half ass. if we do it, we're [ __ ] doing it. So, I don't know if they do it now, but you would find a church around you and they would they would have, you know, twice a week or once a week, whatever it was. It might have been twice, they have you go to the church for a class. There's a guy teaching the curriculum and you do the, you know, you do the checkbook and stuff like or the books and stuff like that. And, uh, you know, he teaches you to basically sell everything so the dog thinks he's next.

[00:23:00]Like, you sell everything on eBay to try to get yourself out and they do the debt snowball. You start out with your smallest bill. You pay that. Then you take the money you were paying on the smallest bill, put on the next bill and the next bill till you get to the big bills. Then all of a sudden you're paying five times the payment on the big bills, right?

[00:23:14]>> Stop your contributing to your 401k.

[00:23:17]Just pause it right now because you need all the money you can get with Gonzale Gazelle intensity to pay off all your bills.

[00:23:25]Put $1,000 in your savings account as quick as you can. And they call that an emergency fund. That way when you're paying all these bills off, if something happens, you have $1,000.

[00:23:35]So I'm like, man, look at this is some [ __ ] confusing [ __ ] She's like, yeah. So we start doing the classes and we start, you know, like, okay, we got the $1,000 in the bank in the savings account. I And I'm going to tell you something now. You got to remember, no, a guy with no savings account saves up $1,000 back in, you know, 98.

[00:23:55]>> Yeah. $1,000 in the bank. When you're a guy that's been living [ __ ] paycheck to paycheck and can't come up with $20, having $1,000 in the bank, you're looking at property, investment properties and [ __ ] you're like, "Yeah, I might need to buy." You know what I mean? It changes your mindset.

[00:24:09]>> Yeah.

[00:24:10]>> So, we start doing the total money makeover. I went outside the lines a little bit. I took that $1,000 and went bought would look online and go buy a four-wheeler. And I would fix the four-wheeler at one run. I would paint it and all a sudden I would make money on it. I would put the $1,000 back and then I would pay the other that I made on the bill.

[00:24:30]>> So, I kept doing that and we did that for two years. Two years. We did not go out to dinner with our friends. We did not do concerts. We did not do nothing.

[00:24:38]And my wife said something the other day. She said that was the start of our financial freedom and our success. She's like, we had everything under control.

[00:24:46]Now, he takes he he doesn't want you to live like a bump. So he's like, "Okay, if you want to go to the movies, take your envelopes and say grocery cash. Put the cash in there for gas. Put the cash in there for entertainment. That way you have cash. You're not tempted to swipe the debit card. Every dollar has a name and has a purpose. So you take your paycheck, you write out a budget where everything goes. You get x amount of money for this a week, right? And when that money's gone, it's gone." And he said to us in the class, I remember it.

[00:25:14]If you you have a mental string hooked to a dollar bill, think about it. He said when McDonald's and all these fast food places came out with a credit card, their sales went up like 30%.

[00:25:25]>> Because if you're standing at the counter at McDonald's and you have $3 in your pocket and a Coke is a dollar, a hamburger is a dollar and a fries is a dollar, >> you're going to be very careful not to go over, right? But if you're swiping with a credit card, give me two of them, give me two of them, I don't have to pay for it. There's no mental connection when you swipe.

[00:25:43]>> And that's how people get in trouble because it's not real money.

[00:25:45]>> Now you tap. It's even easier.

[00:25:47]>> Yeah. Now you tap, right?

[00:25:50]So, I lost my train of thought. I kind of went off on the McDonald's thing, but the the whole thing was we kept paying.

[00:25:57]>> Every dollar had a name.

[00:25:58]>> Every every dollar had a name. And you know, we when the envelopes were empty, you had to wait till next week. So, what that taught you do is is okay, do I really need this?

[00:26:07]>> You know, this is entertainment money.

[00:26:08]Marilyn, do we really need to do this or we could take this $40 and go do this or right? It would teach you to clip coupons at the grocery store. Say you had a $100 bill for groceries. Well, if we get everything we need and we don't buy anything extra, we might be able to save $30. So, it taught you to manage your money and to really watch where it was going. And inadvertently, he you're doing this, but you're not thinking you're doing it.

[00:26:31]>> Yeah.

[00:26:32]>> But you start to become a little bit more frugal, a little bit smart, like, okay, this it goes here. Okay, I'm not going to waste this.

[00:26:39]So, we did that for two years, and by the time we got out of it, when we were done, uh, we had nothing. We owed on nothing but our house and we started to pay our house off quite a bit. After two years, we paid off pretty much anything.

[00:26:52]And I will tell you that was a point where it taught us discipline with our money.

[00:26:57]And it also taught us that when you get to keep your paycheck and you don't give it away every week, you feel better about your life.

[00:27:05]Now, I will say it seems to be harder nowadays for people because everything's more expensive. But but but but the money goes the same way. inflation wages have gone up. Now here people are gonna say, "Oh, that's [ __ ] Mechanics still don't make money." Good mechanics make good money. Smart people make in our business make good money. My guys all make good money. I know the guys I know a bunch of people in this business that make people. If you don't make good money in in this business, probably because you [ __ ] suck >> or you don't know how to write a repair order or you're at the wrong place or you just think you're better than you really are and you think you should be paid more than you are getting paid, but you're really not that good.

[00:27:44]Yep.

[00:27:45]>> I don't know if that makes sense, but I hear other influencers starting to say that now. A lot of these mechanics think they're way better than they really are.

[00:27:52]>> Yeah.

[00:27:52]>> They're like a sea level tech. They think they're a tech.

[00:27:54]>> Think you're better. Yeah.

[00:27:55]>> Okay. They think that shop can't live without you. And let me tell you something.

[00:27:58]>> The shop can live without you.

[00:28:00]>> Yeah.

[00:28:01]>> Okay.

[00:28:01]>> The problem is a lot of these guys have the entitlement thing. So now let's go ahead and let's go ahead and hook this together. So I'm a kid that was never told no. I'm of the tro trophy generation. I got a trophy for being third and fourth place. You go to a tournament, if you remember correctly, when we were growing up, it was first, second, and maybe third, right? And then runner up got dick.

[00:28:23]>> Y >> Now everybody gets a trophy. Everybody that goes to these tournaments and plays gets a trophy.

[00:28:30]Okay, that's a problem, guys. That is a problem. Now, the comments are going to say, "Well, your generation gave us the trophies." Let me tell you something. My [ __ ] generation did not give my kids the trophies. Maybe other guys did, but my I didn't. Okay, I made my kids all tow the line. We can have them all on there. They're like, "Dad made us tow the [ __ ] line." And I still make them tow the line. Okay? My son is more successful than most people at 18 years old and he's not an arrogant dick at all. He's a nice kid because I make him I keep him grounded. You know, I'm I'm like, "Listen, you could be successful, wealthy, but you don't have to be a dick. You don't have to be arrogant. You don't have to put people down." Okay?

[00:29:05]So, let's back this up to these guys are not fiscally responsible.

[00:29:10]They have two or three baby mamas because they can't keep their junk in their pants. They're a mediocre mechanic. They have a bad attitude. They won't take anything into consideration.

[00:29:21]Nor did I when they were younger because they knew everything. So, but when we were younger, your boss could take you in the office and freaking light you on fire. and you'd walk out with your tail between your legs and say, "Yeah, I need to keep my job because I don't have time to go find another one because I can't afford not to have one paycheck one week." These other kids live in their mommy and daddy's basement because their mom and daddy never kicked them out. So, they could job hop. So, the minute somebody gives them a hard time, even though they might be right or wrong, the boss, who knows, they flame out and they quit and go somewhere else. So, they never grow roots and they never get anywhere far. They just literally jump job to job. like the dude that cried and quit.

[00:29:59]>> Yeah, they do the cry. Yeah, they you just see it happening all the time. So, you know, these people need to stop and think about like managing your money is the start of having a good life. If you manage your money, I know like my uncles, they were Detroit cops. I got one uncle that's a Detroit cop. I got two uncles Detroit Detroit cop. The one uncle is very smart with his money. Always always saved, always, you know, did without. But he always seemed to be okay. Had the nice house, nice car as it went on, right?

[00:30:32]The other uncle, terrible with his money, gamles and stuff like that. Broke all the time. Okay, there's two guys that made the same amount of money and lived in the same neighborhood because if you remember correctly, Detroit police officer had to live within the city limits >> for a long time, right? So, they live on Lamp Pier and stuff like that on the other side of the Rouge Park in the decent areas. But you have two guys that made the same money and you look at one guy always had money to do everything he wanted. The other guy's always broke.

[00:30:58]That was They all had the same amount of both had the same amount of kids.

[00:31:01]>> Actually, the broke guy had one less kid.

[00:31:04]>> Wow. Wow.

[00:31:06]>> Okay.

[00:31:06]>> Yeah.

[00:31:06]>> But it's all about managing your money.

[00:31:09]So, let's take this and put it with a guy once again that's a a okay mechanic who thinks he should be making way more than he should that has no financial literacy. How's that? He doesn't manage his money. He just blows everything on the tool truck like I used to. And here's the thing. I am not sitting here preaching like [ __ ] need to do that. I'm telling you, I was that guy.

[00:31:31]>> Yep.

[00:31:32]>> Right. I was broke. Broke is a [ __ ] joke. I told the story the other day, yesterday to Nick.

[00:31:39]Uh we were joking. There's a truck that came in. He said, "The marker lights aren't working. The headlight switch is the pin in the headlight switch is bad."

[00:31:45]I go, "Just hook the [ __ ] hook a wire from the low beam headlights over to the marker lights and it'll turn everything on." He looked at me. I said, "I had to do that. My Buick Sentry cuz I couldn't afford a headlight switch back in the day. was 80 bucks. I didn't have 80 bucks for a [ __ ] headlight switch.

[00:31:57]>> Find a way to rig it.

[00:31:58]>> So, I had to find a way to rig it, >> you know? They were all laughing and stuff like that. Like, I've been there.

[00:32:04]Yeah.

[00:32:04]>> I'm not sitting here being arrogant on a podcast. I've been there. I've been broke. Okay. So, fast forward to me going through Dave Ramsey and all that stuff. It opened a lot of stuff up. You know, we didn't go buy fancy cars. We didn't do that. We started saving money.

[00:32:21]We started saving money. Things got better. better. I ended up becoming a partner at the shop. So, I started making a little bit more money. We didn't go blow it. We didn't When I started making more money, we didn't say, "Okay, we need to go buy the Cadillac. We need to go buy this. We none of that [ __ ] happened." You know, when we were doing the total money makeover, we sold our cars and bought beers and all that [ __ ] Had no car payments. Like, we were [ __ ] we were committed.

[00:32:42]>> Yeah.

[00:32:43]>> So, what we did after we got through that, we changed our life so much, we started [ __ ] sponsoring people. I told all my all my guys I worked with I said at this time you know when I got out of there I became partners at the shop. So I'm like listen the shop will pay for you to go through Dave Ramsey.

[00:32:59]>> Wow.

[00:32:59]>> Jim Heind the guy that quit that worked for me for a long time went through Dave Ramsey. So did my brother. Both of them became debtree. Jim He retired left me quit a couple years ago but he said he had enough money where he didn't have to work anymore because he had been uh investing and putting all his money in investments for years. My brother's gone through a couple divorces and stuff like that. So, he's a different story. But, um, you know, these guys that went through the total money makeover, all of a sudden they had they they had financial freedom. They weren't beholden to work. They go on vacation and stuff like that. So, they see this, you know.

[00:33:32]So, we kept going. So, once I got to the point where I ended up needing to buy my partner out, I talked about the story of everything, how um, you know, I had to get into the books and build the accounting system and stuff like that.

[00:33:47]What would have happened if you would have turned me loose? Not now, man.

[00:33:50]>> I already said there's no money in the shop if you remember correctly because Vicki made the mistakes because of the brain cancer and stuff like that. There was no money in the account. But start thinking about this. All of a sudden, I'm in charge of this company. I have no financial literacy. I spend every dime I get and all of a sudden cash jobs are coming in and stuff like that. Okay, I would have started stealing taking cash.

[00:34:11]Literally stealing cash from the company. Not stealing but you know, taking the cash, right? Yep. I never did because I'm like I knew the importance of getting the business healthy.

[00:34:21]But if I didn't have, think about it. If I was behind on all my bills and stuff like that and a $800 eight or $900 job came in, I'm like, well, I can make that money disappear. Tell my partner, whatever, hey, here's here's your half and let's put this in our pocket. Think about it because all of a sudden, you just start feeding the beast. So start you start feeding the beast by taking cash out of the business because you have no control home financially, right?

[00:34:42]You're behind the eightball at home. You need to pay this. you need. So that money starts coming in, you start taking it from the business, right? So you're taking it from here, which this company's not doing very good because we had our problems, remember? And we start taking it out of here. We were pay and start paying the bills here. Yes, that's going to get better. What's going to happen here? This is going to get worse.

[00:35:01]So you have to get your personal life in order financially before you become a business owner. or if you are a business owner, you better get your life in order at home. So, you don't take every [ __ ] dime out of your company because the company's not going to last.

[00:35:15]>> Yep.

[00:35:16]>> And I think that's where we run into the problems with these guys where they just think, "Well, I'll just take this cash job. I'll just take this cash job. They don't even know the numbers and they're just taking from the company, taking from the company, and all of a sudden they bankrupt the company."

[00:35:30]>> Well, you don't just earn these skills just because you're a business owner.

[00:35:34]like you still see the world and your money the way that you would have thought it as a broke person and you again to your point you would have just been taking the cash because you owed bills or you wanted to go to the movies or you wanted to go to dinner you know there's times when we were going through the total money makeover we weren't shy about we're like yeah we're going to Dave Ramsey you're paying off our debt people our friends laughed at us you can't go to a [ __ ] concert you're that broke >> man yeah >> I'd be like yeah I'm that [ __ ] broke I was [ __ ] stupid with my money >> yep Okay. I I would But one thing that I that that strikes me now when I think about it, I was thinking about uh there's a couple a family that grew up with my older kids and they lived in these the subs down the street and they're big houses and stuff like that.

[00:36:20]When we got debtree, we lived in Commerce and Commerce. Our house was on like 3/4 of an acre. It was like 1300 square foot. It was a nice house. Had a garage, a nice yard and everything. Um they kind of like looked down on us, right? But, you know, I gota remember the only thing we had was a a house payment at this point after we got through laughed at and everything. But we would go over their house. They would live in these houses that back then in the 90s were half a million dollars.

[00:36:43]>> Yeah.

[00:36:43]>> Okay.

[00:36:44]>> And we'd be like, "What's going on?" We went over the one thing. I'm like, "Where's all the furniture?" "Oh, we don't we don't have the money to buy the furniture right now after we bought the house."

[00:36:52]>> And you look in their driveway and their [ __ ] cars leaking oil. I remember it was like a old um what is the thing Walter White drives? Aztec.

[00:36:59]>> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:37:00]>> Okay. an Aztec and a [ __ ] old like a Bonavville in the driveway, you know what I mean? Like [ __ ] muffler dragon, but they live in a million half a million dollar house, right? But with no furniture in it. And I remember getting in the car, my wife, and we're driving home and I'm like, "Did you notice they had no [ __ ] furniture and they could can't go to the concert with us and you know, da da da." I go, "They were the opposite of us. They went and bought a house they couldn't afford."

[00:37:24]>> I go, "Now we're looking at them going, look at [ __ ] people like they can't go to a concert. They're in debt up their ass." That was us, but we decided to do something about it.

[00:37:33]>> Wow.

[00:37:34]>> You know what I mean? So, we we dove in and and and I'm going to tell you that couple years, the first six months of that was hell, >> I bet.

[00:37:41]>> Cuz think about it, you're used to buying whatever the [ __ ] you want. Whip out the American Express, go to Circuit City, over to Circuit City uh credit card to buy this or that for 90 days same as cash. You go over here, 90 days same as cash. 90 days comes due. Sooner or later, then all that interest is there. Boom. You're [ __ ] Yep.

[00:37:58]>> Um, you know, but we got past all that and we were upside down on our cars.

[00:38:04]Like I remember my wife's Explorer we were upside down on. I think we had to like pay three grand on top of selling the car to back us motors and how to get rid of the car, but we had the money because the total money made. You know what I'm saying? We're getting rid of this [ __ ] right? That how that car payment was like 600 bucks. Like >> we're doing all this this stuff to get to get by.

[00:38:22]>> And you know, you have to sacrifice.

[00:38:24]That is a true statement. At some point in your life, you're going to have to sacrifice for the better good that's coming. But see, the problem is right now, we live in the right now. We're in the church of right now, the Amazon right now. I get four more dollars. I hit it be in three hours. So, these younger kids have a lot more against them than we did. I don't want to sound old, but I'm going to. Life is a little bit easier in the 90s, in the 2000s.

[00:38:48]After co shit's [ __ ] through the roof.

[00:38:50]>> Yeah.

[00:38:51]>> Okay. Yeah. Now, if you're a mechanic and you're good and you keep your training up and you keep your nose clean and you find a good a place where they'll treat you well, you could do very well.

[00:39:02]But the problem is nobody wants to stay places long enough. They want to sit there and and you know, uh sit there and hold it over the owner's head. You know, I'm this, I'm that, I'm the other thing.

[00:39:11]Great. I'm talking about two different topics here. I'm talking about finances, you know, and I'm I'm talking about how you should act as a mechanic. You know, you got to find a place where you're valued. It's no different. I use the water bottle analogy, right? At water is a dollar at Walmart in the cooler, but you go to the freaking kid rock concert, it's $18 for the water. You know what I mean? I started out at Geared Auto and Truck at 1150 an hour. I should pull out my sheet. It went my raise went like every 40 days, every 30 days. He kept giving me more and more money because I was just making him more and more money doing working, working, working, working, you know. So, I made myself very valuable. Then once I started getting other guys in there, we started getting other mechanics in there. All of a sudden I said, "Okay, I need to do this. I'm gonna start writing the estimates because you guys aren't writing." And I did. And I only had this much experience at writing estimates from House. But I had that much more experience than writing estimates than the owners of that Garretts did, Steve and his dad. They never wrote estimates.

[00:40:04]They would just be like, "Oh yeah, your car dealer breaks. Here you go." Their customer was like, "What the fuck?"

[00:40:07]Well, I don't know. You owe me $400.

[00:40:10]And then they would never pay. It just they were always broke. So when I started doing the billing, I started doing estimates and selling these jobs.

[00:40:17]I talked about the one time where the old man I sold a break job, we'll just say it was $400 and the customer came in and to pay and he looked at said that's ridiculous and took the bill and cut it in half >> and only charge a guy $200.

[00:40:31]>> And I talked about on the podcast with a Jed mechanic, >> you know, you know, stuff like that.

[00:40:36]Like >> but once I once he retired and then Steve let me start doing it, I worked my way into running the shop. Now all a sudden I'm doing the estimate. I'm doing the service advising. I'm selling the jobs. I'm helping the mechanics. What did I do? I built value into myself. At that point he could go on vacation. He could do this. He could do that. And I kept going to the point where I said, "Listen, I need to be the guy that buys a shop from you and I need to become partners with you. So how are we going to structure this?" Okay. And this is where I was telling these guys. If you get to a a a shop where there's an older gentleman that's just tired and you go in there and you prove to him that you could do the work and you can help him run the shop, you can make a deal like I did and then you end up becoming, you know, a minority owner. Then you get a more more percentage every year. However you structure it, there's lawyers out there like we have good lawyers. I've done this what three times now, me and my two guys that uh you can start, you know, getting ownership in the business and every year or more or however you structure it to the point where that guy retires. Scott, >> you could be a trustworthy employee when he he sells it to you, you could do a land, he could be a owner fin do an owner finance and you could start paying him out of the business so you don't have to come up with a big chunk of money. Or there's SBA loans. If the business is doing well, you put it together, it's it's good. You can get an SBA loan. You might have to take a 10% uh note on the business, but the SBA will pay the other 90% to you. So, you're only on the hook for 10%. There's lots of different ways you could do it.

[00:42:08]A lot of these older gentlemen own their buildings. So, you could sell them the building or I mean, you could sell them the build or keep the building, but charge them rent. They can make you a business payment.

[00:42:19]Nobody's going to want to buy a lot of these shops, these smaller shops, they're hard to sell. But if you have a guy already that's already in there working and already a face that's well known and you know, all of a sudden Kevin was there, but now you know Bob's there. Bob's been there with Kevin for 5 years. Bob bought the place. It's not a different face. Y >> So you just keep dealing with Bob. The business keeps going. Y >> but you cannot turn your business over to a guy that's financially irresponsible and broke because he will take every dime out of that freaking business and break it because he's not stable at home. So you have to find the right person that's stable financially, personally before you can just start giving them your business or selling your business and then turn your back.

[00:43:02]Cuz how many of these second or third generation shops that the father built or the grandfather built? Third generation kid comes in that never had to work for a [ __ ] thing in his life, takes all the money out and bankrupts it 100%. Yep.

[00:43:15]>> You see it happen all the time. This is not me talking [ __ ] I've seen it happen. Worldwide appliance happened.

[00:43:21]Norm Pollson uh he made freaking millions. He turned over to his two kids. They bankrupted that thing in five years. They came to the bankruptcy auction, Steve Garrett was telling me, or bankruptcy hearing with [ __ ] alligator, you know, shoes on back in the day and the briefcases and the gold chains and [ __ ] but they they took everything out of the company they possibly could.

[00:43:40]>> The company can only sustain so much, right? Yeah.

[00:43:43]>> So, if it's structured right and the guy's financially responsible, he's going to have a budget >> like we talked about. He's going to look at the P&Ls and say, "Okay, I could afford to pay this is a business payment. I can afford to pay this. Now, the salary that the owner was taking out of that could be the business payment.

[00:44:02]So, say the business payment would be $4,000 a month and the owner was making $1,000 a week. All of a sudden, the owner's gone. That $4,000 is left there.

[00:44:11]You could structure it so the $4,000 is the payment with interest.

[00:44:15]You know what I'm saying? I'm not going to get into all that, but yeah, you could structure it so the business could substain >> and go on and you at that point you bought the shop, >> b fiveyear note, six-year note, but you have to find the right shop. And I'm going to tell you something, guys. If you're a good mechanic, there's plenty of independent shops out there that the owner is tired that you can make a deal if you're if you're a smart guy and you work hard and you're trustworthy. But I'm going to tell you, if you're a piece of [ __ ] that your credit cards are all maxed out and you're a terrible person and everything is everybody else's fault and never your [ __ ] fault, and you cannot believe the three baby mamas you have all got pregnant three different times, you know what I'm saying? Like these guys are a [ __ ] disaster.

[00:44:58]>> Y >> So take it from me, it can be done, but it's a slow process. And the problem we have right now, I'm going to say this again from the church right now.

[00:45:09]Everything has to happen right now.

[00:45:11]Think about this. This my journey started in 1995 and I can't remember. I should probably go pull up the paperwork. I'd have to say I was there 10 years, seven years before this all happened. So, it took me that long to get to the point where he would go on vacation for two weeks and I would run the shop. I couldn't do [ __ ] payroll because I couldn't get any QuickBooks, you know? He would have his kids come in there and do it in the later years.

[00:45:37]Like, it just got to the point where I was like, you know, [ __ ] this. So, how I ended up becoming to the point where I could got him off top dead center on the becoming a partner. His wife and me didn't get along and he really didn't want he wanted me to be locked in there, but his wife didn't like it. Why you >> they went on vacation for two weeks and I remember like I couldn't do payroll and I didn't have no checks to write p for parts or stuff like that and I didn't have a credit card back then and I said you know what this is [ __ ] [ __ ] I'm killing myself getting [ __ ] sick working all these hours I'm getting paid yes but I I'm kind of going above and beyond right I'm not partner I'm not profit sharing I'm not getting anything besides yeah you I could be out in the shop making the same money have no headaches versus I'm running the shop running the crews dealing with customers.

[00:46:31]>> You're probably already doing a lot of things that the owner would do. Like to his point, your point, he could go on vacation and do all these things. You're running it. He doesn't have to worry about it. But you're it's not your shop.

[00:46:39]You're running it like it's your shop, but it's not your shop, >> right? And so the MCO man came in and I got talking to him. He's like, "We're looking for people to buy routes."

[00:46:48]I'm like, "Huh? Really?" He's like, "Yeah, you have to be sponsored." I go, "Would you sponsor me?" He's like, "Yeah, I'd sponsor you." So the both ball This has happened in a two-eek period. So I didn't think it would happen this fast. So, I reached out to MCO. They know who I am. I talked to them. They said, "Yep, you're pretty much you're you're good. You have a great credit score, stuff. How about we get you on the route? You would end up I would ended up on the route uh it was over on Square Lake Road and stuff like that where all them dealers were and all in that area out there.

[00:47:15]>> Um Rochester, I think out that way. Y >> if you're in Michigan, maybe by Great Lakes Crossing, all the dealers around there, >> you could have that route >> and we could finance you for the Suzu truck. Your payment would be this. You we get you started. They So, he went through the whole thing. So, he came back and I'm like, "Hey, listen. I, you know, I'm going to give you two weeks, but I'm going to become a macro tool man." And he looked at me, he's like, "What?" I'm like, "I'm going to become a macro tool man." I said, "I'm not going to [ __ ] sit here, run this shop, and do all the stuff that owner would do, and I'm not getting profit sharing so bad. I get paid hourly." And, you know, I don't remember what I made back then.

[00:47:51]Maybe $1,300 a week salary.

[00:47:53]>> Yeah.

[00:47:53]>> Which was decent money back then, right?

[00:47:55]I think I was making like 70 grand a year. Um, and but I was running everything. Running five guys, running the shop. The only thing I wasn't doing is paying the bills, doing estimates, selling jobs, you know, troubleshooting shops with blah blah blah blah blah.

[00:48:11]He said, "Well, I'll go out of business without you." I said, "Well, I don't know what to tell you. This is your business. I can't sit here and kill myself." Well, how about become you become, you know, we do a deal where you become 10% da da da. I'm like, okay. So, we kind of squashed the macro thing. I didn't really want to leave anyway. I like what I do. And uh a year came around. He's like, "The lawyers are working." I said, "I'm [ __ ] done. I'm done with the lawyers [ __ ] working on it. Either you need to get it [ __ ] done or I'm out of here." So, within within 30 days, guess what happened? It was [ __ ] done. and his wife was so [ __ ] mad that I was a partner. She could not [ __ ] stand it. But she was so nearsighted. She wasn't realizing I was [ __ ] doing >> doing everything, >> all the work. Now, don't get me wrong, he took all the risk, right? It's his business still. But I'm doing all the [ __ ] work. Now, you might say, "Well, you're being an [ __ ] You're being this. You're being that. Like, you're being like you you're mean to tell me you're running that whole shop." I could bring my guys in here. They thought I owned the place when I would hire them.

[00:49:13]I did so much when the day-to-day operational things came up and I wasn't there for whatever reason. Steve would be like, "You need to wait till Kevin gets back so we can make the decision." I made all the decisions when I was not the owner. I would come back from vacation. The whole shop would be plugged right the [ __ ] up with jobs.

[00:49:33]Nothing would be done because we had to wait till [ __ ] Kevin gets back. When the guys were on flat rate, when I'd be on vacation, they hated when I went on vacation because they would make no money because he wouldn't write any estimates, wouldn't do anything.

[00:49:45]Or he would just tell them to [ __ ] do it. They'd end up putting five grand into a guy's trailer was worth $1,200.

[00:49:50]>> Wow.

[00:49:51]>> That happened several times. And I could bring the guys in there to tell you this story because I all still work there.

[00:49:55]>> Yeah.

[00:49:56]>> So, if anybody thinks, "Oh, yeah. Here we go. You know, he's doing everything."

[00:49:59]I was literally doing everything. The only thing I was not doing was paying the bills once again because she was I didn't have no way to go into the checkbook. So after all this I become 10% owner and you know I went on for 10 more 10 another 10 years to the point where when I end up bought them out I own 20% of the company >> but I was at that point I was running it 100% of the time. We had started carried crane company which is in was in this building we were refurbishing cranes and stuff like that. Um, so that was 2010 because that's when this bit uh 2010 is when Ky Cranes was in business.

[00:50:37]>> You got this building.

[00:50:38]>> Yes. We ended up renting this building, the warehouse. We ended up renting the warehouse for $700 a month. It was into a mason company and I ended up renting an office over here for 250 and Steve rented one for 150.

[00:50:51]About a year and a half, we're doing good, rebuilding cranes. Garretts is going good. My brother's running Garretts. All the same guys that are there now except for one were there.

[00:51:00]Everything's going good. And uh actually no, there's one guy left there, Nick and Jody and all them are new. And uh we got we bought a paint booth. We financed the paint booth. It was 150 grand. We had it bolted to the floor. We got it. Everything's going good. The landlord comes to us and says, "Uh they they ran their business in here. Uh we can't afford the building anymore. We're going to sell it." We're like, "Fuck, we just put this paint booth in."

[00:51:27]>> Oh my god. So, they're like, "We'll sell it to you." We're like, "Perfect." So, we call the banker up. The price they gave us on this building was [ __ ] stupid. Like, they built this building for a million dollars worth of property and did not sell it nowhere to us. We sell the building. So, in the meantime, once again, me being me, I'm like, "Okay, now we have this building payment coming up. How are we going to manage it?" Well, this is on three and a half acres. So, one of my clients, one of our customers needed storage. I went over there and made a deal. I rented that whole yard side of the yard for like four grand a month, which covered our building payment before we even closed on it. They're moving in. These people are like, "We could have [ __ ] did that." We're like, "Why didn't you then?" They're like, "Well, we, you know, you don't own the building." I'm like, "We I don't know what to tell you." So, that went on for like a year.

[00:52:14]They rented this and we rented some of the upstairs to them and stuff. So, I had this place making money paying the building payment and stuff before we even owned it. So, once we owned it, the building payment wasn't a problem. You got to remember when you're rebuilding cranes, it's very labor intensive. You might take four months to build a crane.

[00:52:28]You're putting money out, putting money out, putting money out, and you're getting started. So, you sell one, you put the back, you >> It's kind of like redoing a house.

[00:52:37]>> Yes. And the problem with that was I kept telling Steve, I go, "We have a flawed business plan here. We only could do eight cranes a year.

[00:52:43]>> So, no matter what, we can't we can't scale this place.

[00:52:47]>> We can't add more guys. We can't add more cranes. There's no more room. We just cannot do this."

[00:52:52]So, it got to the point where I said, "You know what? We need to start a collision shop." I don't know if it was my I think it might have been Steve's idea. He's like, "We have the paint booth. Why don't we do a collision shop?

[00:53:02]You have collision experience." I'm like, "Okay." But not much, but okay.

[00:53:06]So, we started a collision shop. We had the paint booth. That's where Motor City truck collision came from.

[00:53:12]So, as he got older, his wife got sick.

[00:53:15]That's when she got sick and all that stuff. He started being here less and less to the point where I'm like, "Okay, it's time for you to [ __ ] go." So, in the meantime, his wife dies.

[00:53:26]About a year, he comes to work. Then, he finds another lady, starts dating her, and then, you know, they're going to get married and stuff like that. I'm like, "All right, it's time for you to go."

[00:53:35]So, I bought him out of Garrett's in 2019.

[00:53:41]In 2020, I bought him out of this place. 2021, I bought Garrett's building. 2022, I paid him out of this building.

[00:53:55]So, I've been busy.

[00:53:57]>> Yeah.

[00:53:57]>> And I'm going to tell you something.

[00:54:01]You know how people say old mindsets are a problem? Conservative mindsets are a problem. I'm a conservative guy. You've seen the house I lived in, my first house, my house. now to the house I just bought.

[00:54:12]>> Yeah, >> I'm 55 years old. I finally bought the house I wanted cuz I knew I was comfortable at buying that magnitude of a house right at 55. Most people say, "You're [ __ ] crazy. You should be downsizing. [ __ ] it." Right?

[00:54:25]But I did not start making all my money till I had no partnersh >> because we had two different mindsets.

[00:54:34]>> He used to always say to me, "You're always moving the goalpost. If you make 80,000, you want to make 160,000. If you make 160,000, you want to make 300,000.

[00:54:43]You're never happy. Well, when you read any book about entrepreneur mindsets, you're always have to grow. If you're not growing, you're dying.

[00:54:52]>> Yeah.

[00:54:53]>> I'm always going and pushing and pushing. And I expect my guys to make more if I make more. If I make smart decisions, okay, I mean, look at the consulting thing, okay? I started coaching people and I've changed their lives. Y >> okay. It's not like I have some magic wand where I know what I'm It's like you have to be smart with your numbers. You have to be smart with your money. So once I got rid of him out of the business, I could do the things I wanted. I could advertise I want because I was like, you know, we need to do this with the website. Ah, we don't really need to spend that money. And he owned more of the company than I did. You know, h now I owned half of Motor City and half of Carat Cranes from the beginning. We each put $50 bill in. So we were good there. I I had say, but we would still fight because he always still wanted to be like, well, you know, we shouldn't take this paycheck right now. We got to keep growing the company.

[00:55:43]I remember going to his office. I go, I'm [ __ ] done coming here every day and working for a [ __ ] hobby. When you keep saying, "Oh, well, we can't really take a paycheck." I go, "I'm [ __ ] done."

[00:55:54]So, we had something happen at the other shop towards the end. I'm kind of jumping around here because it's kind of coming to my mind.

[00:56:01]um that we ended up uh losing a key employee down there. So, I went back down there to run that shop. And when he ran this shop, this shop crashed. My wife called me in the meantime. She was doing payroll for this and getting involved in this. She said, "There's only $900 in the bank at Carried Cran Motor City. We don't have enough money for payroll."

[00:56:21]>> Holy [ __ ] >> And I'm down there at the other shop.

[00:56:25]It's [ __ ] killing it because I'm down there working the front desk. All the customers are happy, the techs are happy, everybody's happy, right? Yeah.

[00:56:31]>> And I call him up. I'm like, "Dude, what the fuck?" He's like, "Well, we got this one engine. You know, it's giving us a hard time. I don't have the parts to finish." I go, "What do you need?" He's like, "Well, it's oil pressure setting unit." So, I'm like, "When the [ __ ] did you know you needed that?" Well, a couple days I haven't got around to doing it. I go, "Got around to [ __ ] doing it? We could have did this." And so, we get the oil pressure sending unit. Then they start up and the head gasket is [ __ ] up. It's leaking coolant out of the side of the Continental engine cuz they didn't put one of the seals in it. So, the one company had to loan the other company money to pay payroll. And I'm like, "You know what? this just isn't [ __ ] working. So, you're not into this. So, you need to [ __ ] just retire. I'll handle that. So, I'm I've end up hiring people down there, getting that going in the next few months. Then, I start coming out here, getting this going. Um, I had a really good guy here um towards the start of Motor City and the body shop was going good. We had a big customer and we went out of town to a training thing and he got drunk and told me what a piece of [ __ ] I was and how I can't believe uh the deal I gave him to be 10% owner. I [ __ ] him um and all this stuff. I said, "Well, when you get back then you could buy," he said, "I got a guy to that'll buy you out right now." I said, "Great." I said, "When I get back, [ __ ] tell him bring his checkbook and you could take over [ __ ] you know, next week."

[00:57:45]>> Yeah. Soon as the paperwork is done.

[00:57:47]Well, that we were in New Jersey when this happened and we were with our one service adviser, Sarah, and he goes off on me and she's like, she basically stopped him. She's like, "You're a [ __ ] [ __ ] He's [ __ ] my life's been better since I worked for him. He made you 10% owner of that other company. You're acting like this. You're a [ __ ] piece of shit." So, you know, everybody's drinking and stuff like that. So, it was a long ride home from New Jersey.

[00:58:11]So, I'm kind of like, "Okay, what the [ __ ] do I do?" And he's like, "Yeah, and by the way, uh, when I leave, everybody in the shop's leaving, too." I'm like, "Oh, [ __ ] I have to do this [ __ ] by myself, I guess." You know?

[00:58:24]>> So, we drove home that Sunday and nobody talked. You only imagine how [ __ ] tension it was like. You can cut a knife.

[00:58:33]>> No kidding. Long ass drive.

[00:58:35]>> And uh, we got back Monday, I'm thinking to myself, well, here we go, right? Monday he comes in and I'm like okay so we got where's the guy? Oh there ain't really no guy. I was drunk running my mouth and this and that and I'm like okay. So I'm like thinking to myself I'm going to keep this guy keep everything intact right now and keep the place going.

[00:58:59]So this is where Jim Gray's son calls me James and says my dad quit his job at the dealership. He had enough. He's a manager. Can you come by for an interview? And this was like maybe two weeks after all this happened. And he called me on a Saturday. I said, "Have him come in tomorrow morning. I'll meet him here Sunday." I called Chris. I said, "I'm going to uh come in and uh have you uh we're going to interview this guy." So, he came in Sunday. I interviewed Jim. And Chris is like, "He told me that I was uh I was hiring my replacement. You're you're interviewing my replacement?" My wife told me. Said, "No, I really don't have any plans of that." And then uh Jim came in, started getting to know the place, and Chris just kept doing less and less to the point where I'm like, "Here's the money.

[00:59:44]Here's what I owe you for the stock on the buyout. Here's some more money for severance package. You need to sign this. You need to [ __ ] get lost." And he did. And I thought, "Well, the rest of the guys are leaving, right? The rest of the guys stayed. He was he treated you pretty bad the way you treated him."

[01:00:00]So they stayed for a while. And in the meantime, I cycled new guys in here.

[01:00:04]They quit eventually. You know, the one guy I still deal with, great guy. He [ __ ] gave me everything he said he was going to just he said, "I just want to live closer to home."

[01:00:12]>> It was an hour drive for him. I'm like, "Cool." I still deal with him. He still brings his stuff for us to do, painting stuff at the company he works for. Um, you know, and here we are, >> you know? I mean, it was my point to this whole story. You just never know where you're going to end up. But, you know, the one thing I never changed, I never changed. I never [ __ ] did anything dishonest.

[01:00:32]>> Yeah. I held my integrity and I worked hard. And you know, problems present theirel, but often solutions present theirel too. They might not be the solution you're looking for. It might be hard. You might have to get dirty.

[01:00:46]>> You know, like Henry Ford says, opportunity knocks. Just might be wearing dirty overalls one day when it knocks on your door. you know, um I can't tell you how many times that I've lost guys at the other shop and I pulled my toolbox out of my barn at home and took it back down there and worked in the shop for six months or so with the guys when I had a good service advice.

[01:01:03]Like I've done it all of my companies.

[01:01:06]So for me to sit here and everybody, you're a [ __ ] blowhard. You're this.

[01:01:09]Okay, I am a mechanic by trade. I did collision. I did trucks. I did I did I'm a mechanic by trade, right? I learned how to be a business owner secondhand.

[01:01:20]Okay? It wasn't [ __ ] easy.

[01:01:23]There was a lot of nights that I was up thinking and there's still a lot of nights like the guy was sitting there saying, you know, we were talking to Eric the other day and he's like a lot of times I wake up in the middle of the night and sit there and think about the shot. I'm the same way.

[01:01:35]>> Okay. I always still feel like I'm one like one problem away from going out of business even though I'm not. I you I have money in my savings, but you know what I mean? Like >> you just never stop worrying when you're a business owner. When you stop worrying, you have a [ __ ] problem.

[01:01:49]When you stop going to work, you have a problem.

[01:01:51]>> Yep.

[01:01:52]Now, I haven't been to work in like three weeks, as you know. Okay. The shop's been on autopilot with the guys.

[01:01:59]You know, they call me if there's a real big problem. Like, that's in my job description basically as owner. Besides that, my shops have all been on autopilot for the last three weeks.

[01:02:08]>> I set up my new house and I had problems. Just pool [ __ ] you name it, >> you know?

[01:02:14]>> You know, pool problems, >> pool problems, the auto cover was [ __ ] up, you know, uh just whatever. You know what I mean? But a lot of guys want to start a business, they want to pay peanuts, then they want to not be there, then they want to call and blame it all on somebody else. Like I told you before, the problems in your business are usually caused by you at top because you're the ones that set the tone. You're the one that sets the policies and everything like that. Okay?

[01:02:41]You can't pay people penis and expect them to do what you would do. Now, nobody's going to do what you would do at your business at your business. You can get them close by training them.

[01:02:50]Mhm.

[01:02:50]>> But if they were as good as you, they would own their own business.

[01:02:54]>> Yeah.

[01:02:54]>> Yep.

[01:02:55]>> You should be working on your business, not in your business. Like here it is, it's May, so usually at the end, right after Memorial Day, I don't work Fridays. I take Fridays off. I go up to my house up north on the boat. D, right?

[01:03:08]Um, but my guys are all taken care of.

[01:03:12]They're not mad at me. They don't [ __ ] hate me. They didn't get mad when I bought the [ __ ] new house.

[01:03:17]They helped me move. They're all coming over for a barbecue in a couple week like because I treat them good. So anybody sitting there in the comments going, "Oh, you're the blowhard. You're this." Listen to me very carefully. I started at the [ __ ] bottom and worked my way up. I'm no different than that guy that talked about starting making fries at McDonald's back in the day and ended up owning franchises. It takes hard work. The problem is nowadays a lot of guys don't have the [ __ ] balls.

[01:03:40]Okay? They're always Do you ever notice these guys always give me advice? You know what I always say back to them all the time? What's the name of your shop?

[01:03:46]How many of these [ __ ] people answer me?

[01:03:48]>> Yeah. It's either what's the name of your shop or like I'll let your mom know when I see her tonight.

[01:03:53]>> Right. Depending on the tone level, >> right? You know, and I have no I have another mobile guy going, you know, you're charging people for this, you're charging people for that. Yeah, we are.

[01:04:02]We have [ __ ] overhead. We take care of our customers. Yes, we charge them for this. You can't tell me that we He's like, you're nickel and dime them to death. I'm like, it's a flat rate post.

[01:04:11]Me telling people they need to learn to write a repair order when you're on flat rate. so you could actually pay your bills as a tech. That was the [ __ ] theme of that whole thing. If you do not know how to write a repair order and you don't make any money on flat rate, it's probably because you don't know how to write a repair order. Meaning, if the water pump's going to take you two extra hours, you need to convey it. It's going to take me two extra hours. He's saying it's nickel and diamond people. I'm saying that you need to get paid for what you do when you're on flat rate.

[01:04:38]>> Nobody gives a [ __ ] if you can't pay your Edison bill.

[01:04:40]>> Nope.

[01:04:41]>> Do you think the customer is going to call here? another 200 cuz you didn't charge me for that water pump. They don't give a [ __ ] about you. They will [ __ ] you over and leave to go to another shop to save $10. So you you know what you got to charge. You don't rip people up. You got to charge for what you're doing and your time. That's what my shirt says.

[01:05:00]>> Maybe for my experience in my time.

[01:05:02]>> Love it.

[01:05:03]>> You know what I'm saying? It's like dirty hands, clean money.

[01:05:06]>> Yep.

[01:05:06]>> It's like that's what these guys need to start realizing. It's like you only have one life. maximize it. Do smart things with it. Okay? Don't abuse alcohol.

[01:05:16]Don't abuse drugs. Yes, drink beer.

[01:05:18]Whatever. I get it. I do. But I don't [ __ ] sit there and sit here and preach like I'm on my soap box that it was just so [ __ ] easy. And I will tell you one thing with closing. My mommy and daddy didn't give me a [ __ ] business. There's a lot of guys out there that get on [ __ ] line that are shop owners that run their mouth.

[01:05:34]They're third generation. They stepped into their daddy's shop or their mommy's shop that already had the money. I started out with a broke ass [ __ ] job that couldn't pay its bills.

[01:05:44]>> And I'll say because you said you you uh you started off as a mechanic, you grew into a business owner, but going back to even like the tie at the very beginning is that you had to master your money in your personal finances or you never would have been able to step in that role no matter how good how good you were with the other things, the sales and everything else. You had to have that that that personal finance in order to carry that over into business finance or you would have never made it, >> right? Like once again, you have to go be a business owner that you're [ __ ] so broke at home you can't pay your house payment. You have no credit. How are you going to get a credit card in today's world? If you have no personal credit at home and you're a business owner, how are you going to get a credit card with a $50,000 limit, $20,000 limit or whatever?

[01:06:22]>> Yeah.

[01:06:23]>> A lot of these small companies now that sell parts have gone to corporations that bought them. They run your [ __ ] personal credit and make you personally guarantee the paper or the the bill. So, what happens if you don't have no personal credit and you're Jason Tracy that opens Jason Tracy's? Hey, I'm opening a shop. I need $10,000 worth of credit. They run your credit. Go. This motherfucker's got a 600 credit score.

[01:06:46]We ain't loaning them [ __ ] money. So, all of a sudden, you're going to have to do a job, pay for a job, do a job, pay for a job. That's not that's not efficient. You have to have trade credit.

[01:06:55]>> Yep. So, if you're broke and you can't pay your bills and you have all kinds of late payments on your credit report when they pull it, >> are they going to give you credit? Maybe you could have got away with it back in the day when it was Bill from Glendale, Dan for [ __ ] Great Lakes or, >> you know, relationship Dale from Rad Hospital, right? When you knew that they knew you, but nowadays you're numbered to the corporations. You have to have a good credit score to have a business.

[01:07:20]>> Y >> it's just the way it is. The banks won't loan you money. When you want to buy equipment, you have no credit, personal credit. What are they going to do? Do you know that I don't have debt, but when they pull my credit report for my new house, from the start to finish, it was 15 days before I got to clear to close.

[01:07:40]>> Wow.

[01:07:40]>> 15 [ __ ] days. Now, granted, a lot of that is the new electronics, the way [ __ ] happens nowadays, but 15 days from start to finish.

[01:07:49]Do you know when I bought my cabin it was 15 days start to start to finish and that was a cash deal.

[01:07:55]>> Wow.

[01:07:56]>> So a mortgage was 15 days too.

[01:07:58]>> Wow.

[01:07:59]>> That's crazy.

[01:08:00]>> Great credit score.

[01:08:01]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:08:01]>> Clean credit report.

[01:08:02]>> Thought process to it, >> right? They just it's the numbers. He fallen here. Your debt to income ratio was like he's like I don't remember what it was but he was like yeah most people are here and you're like like you had nothing cuz our house was paid for.

[01:08:14]>> Yeah.

[01:08:14]>> But why was our house paid for? Because when we bought our [ __ ] house, we paid for it because we saved money. We had equity in our other house. So, we lived there for 22 years.

[01:08:24]Our house is almost paid for in commerce when we sold it, >> right? So, we got all this money when we bought we built our new house. It was already built. It was a speck. We moved into it. We put all that money down with some money we saved. We paid for it. The only reason I had a mortgage on my house that I just paid off again is when we had to buy this building, >> I had to get come up with a down payment. I just took it out of the house. Yeah. then paid it. You know what I'm saying? Paid it back. But that was not all me just like, uh, [ __ ] it. That was also like planning. We planned. We did, you know, we made smart money decisions. Once again, I'm not being arrogant because I started at the bottom. It's just a matter of your earning potential and stuff like that.

[01:09:05]Here's the [ __ ] thing. Me, Lincoln, and Jason were sitting in my office today. We were going over all the numbers because I haven't been there for three weeks. And I was telling what a great job they're doing. And we started talking about different people in our lives. And I said, 'You know, the people in this office and the guy up front, which is Phil. I said, Jason, you're the lead tech here. You're 10% owner. You have a shop in your barn. You go home after work and you work on cars till 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock at night. Why do you do that? Well, I want more for my family. I want to make more money. I want to be financially successful. I want to put money in my savings account every week. A lot of money for retirement.

[01:09:47]>> He has a boat. He has an RV. He has a You know what I'm saying? He has a nice ass house.

[01:09:52]Lincoln, my son is 19 years old.

[01:09:54]Lincoln, what are you doing? Well, Dad, I take the money I make here and I put in my savings account. I'm saving for a house. All the money I make after work going to detailing. Um, you know, I live on, I save that. He Lincoln has a pretty sizable He has annuities already. He's 19. He's going to be a millionaire here in the next five years because he's been putting money. He got an inheritance. He invested it, right?

[01:10:14]>> He bought Tesla stock. Like, okay. The reason I'm saying that, these guys are all after work, they go do something for extra money just like I used to, right?

[01:10:23]>> Then you got other people in your life.

[01:10:25]I [ __ ] doing that. I worked my eight hours. I'm going home and I'm going to sit on the couch and watch Mary with Children and pick my [ __ ] lint out of my belly button.

[01:10:33]Okay. Then they wonder why they're in the position they're in. You see some of these guys that [ __ ] hustle all the time.

[01:10:40]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:10:40]>> You know what I mean? It's like, okay, now I know why they're in the position they're in.

[01:10:44]>> Yeah.

[01:10:44]>> If you start to take a look at people's lives and you look at where they're at, what they have, then you ask, "What do they do? What do you do after work?" Oh, I don't go do this. I go do that. And I'm not saying you're not supposed to I'm not saying you're supposed to go after work and every day and go work because Jason has a balance. His daughters are in dance. They do this.

[01:11:01]They they travel. They do whatever, right? But when he can, he's out there in that barn working, making money. He has a life. He doesn't overdo it. I never overdid it at my house. I would just buy stuff, paint it, fix it, sell it, buy it, pay it, Craigslist it back in the day, right? eBay. I would buy cell phones that were broken. I would fix cell phones. I would sell them. I would just do a lot of different stuff to make a couple hundred dollars at a time to keep, this is after we got financially, even after we got financially stable, to keep the extra money coming when I wasn't making it.

[01:11:31]And we would save it. we would pay [ __ ] off like we were debtree so later we were just saving it right so we moved around a new house we took an equity you know what I'm saying like you have to hustle >> nobody's going to give you anything nowadays unless you get an inheritance from your wealthy parents >> you know that for that >> you know that if you don't [ __ ] earn it you don't respect it I'm going to give you an example the [ __ ] house I just bought that kid was >> that kid was in his 30s he had that [ __ ] house. Why did he have that house? His mom bought it for him. His mom not only bought it for him, she gave him a stipen every [ __ ] week and gave him a credit card.

[01:12:13]The heating and cooling guy came over to fix the thermostats and stuff like that.

[01:12:18]That whole thing was all [ __ ] up. He said, "Yeah, that guy would call me up."

[01:12:21]He's like, "Yeah, I want a mini split in my garage." He's like, "That's 10 grand." He's like, "That's fine. Come and do it. When can you do it?" "Well, we're booked a week. How much more to come tomorrow?" "Well, I can't really do it." Yeah, you you got a number. What's the number? The guy would tell him, "Yep, come and do it." So, my garage is air conditioning and [ __ ] heated.

[01:12:38]>> What the [ __ ] >> I have this [ __ ] security system that [ __ ] has AI.

[01:12:43]>> You said it like wakes you up in the middle of the night. Like, >> if you if you came walking down my driveway with a [ __ ] ladder, be like, "You with the ladder. If you're not well, if you're not allowed here, you need to leave now. You're being recorded." It [ __ ] can tell you what you're carrying. You with the bucket. My wife was pushing uh carrying a bucket home. you with the bucket. She's like, I will walk around with the leaf blower.

[01:13:03]You with the leaf blower. Like this guy just spent stupid [ __ ] money on [ __ ] But it wasn't his money.

[01:13:09]>> Yeah.

[01:13:09]>> He would sit. So the neighbor was telling me he was moving out of the house.

[01:13:14]There were so many Apple products that were in boxes, never even opened. He was carrying out of the house. This guy had so much [ __ ] money that wasn't his, he just bought whatever.

[01:13:24]>> That's so crazy.

[01:13:25]>> When it's not your money, who do you [ __ ] care? But then like there's no respect for anything. One >> there wasn't.

[01:13:35]>> And you got to be so bored because you can just do whatever.

[01:13:38]>> Yeah. They said that like when I went and looked at that house, there was so many trailers around there. I thought, man, this guy must own a construction company. I'm not even exaggerating.

[01:13:45]There's probably 12 trailers around there and they're all different types of trailers, like one for everything.

[01:13:52]And I asked the neighbor, he said, he just went, he said, well, he needed trailers to move, so mom bought them.

[01:13:58]Um, he had a John Deere tractor delivered with every [ __ ] implement known to man.

[01:14:03]Talk about a guy did not care. He rented a skid steer and that place on 10 acres.

[01:14:08]He went through the woods and mowed trails and he even went on to the neighbor's property and mowed [ __ ] down with neighbor wasn't even there. Pushed big BMS of dirt up. Had $20,000 worth of gravel or $10,000 worth of gravel delivered. Pushed it all over everywhere. [ __ ] everything up to made this driveway. I mean, just spending money like nothing. Why? It's not your money.

[01:14:29]That is insane.

[01:14:30]>> And you don't respect it because you didn't earn it.

[01:14:32]>> Yep.

[01:14:32]>> Do you know what I'm saying? Like >> Yeah.

[01:14:35]>> I guess I Nobody's ever given me anything. I've worked for everything I had. I am self-made 100%. I started out at house at $400 a week. I was that [ __ ] number 17 horse in the race that everybody talks about. I was the guy that just won a Kentucky Derby. Yep.

[01:14:50]>> That came from the back. Nobody seen me coming. I swear to God to you. I had problems in school. You know, he's [ __ ] broke all the time. He has a [ __ ] mouth. He does it. The one thing that he couldn't take I worked hard all the time. That's one thing people said, "This [ __ ] guy works all the time." Like they, you know, even working. I'm 55 years old. My kids are like, "Holy [ __ ] Dad." My wife's like, "I feel like I'm at the concentration camp." Cuz I worked. I'm like, "We have x amount of time to do this move." And >> yeah, >> but that's one thing people don't do. I just outwork everybody because that's what I do. Sunday mornings I get up, I do all the numbers for all the consulting clients, send them all the emails. Like, I get [ __ ] done a lot quick, but I have never stopped doing what I do. I've never gone outside the scope of repairing stuff. Yes, I had the martial arts schools u just because I [ __ ] like martial arts and we did taekwondo. Me and Shane opened that school. Then I did jiu-jitsu. So, I opened a jiu-jitsu school and they were both successful.

[01:15:45]>> Yeah.

[01:15:45]>> I end up selling the one and closing the other one. We me and Shane sold the one and closed the other one. He reopened it in a different name, but he's doing it.

[01:15:52]I don't want to do it anymore. But what happened there? We would go from 4:00 to 9:00 every night of the week in work.

[01:16:00]>> So, you'd leave here.

[01:16:01]>> I would leave Garretts and go there. Oh, I would leave Garretts at 3:00. I would go to jiu-jitsu at uh Scorpion Fighter Systems. I would take me 45 minutes or a half hour depend on traffic. I would train with him for an hour, private lessons three times a week. Then I would drive back to commerce to the school and do private lessons. If I wasn't doing private lessons, teach class, then teach taekwondo class, and then go over to the other parking lot and teach jiu-jitsu class for three hours. I would get done at like 10 o'clock, 9:30, 10 o'clock every night.

[01:16:29]>> That's crazy.

[01:16:30]>> Yeah, but it's the hustle.

[01:16:31]>> That was the hustle.

[01:16:32]>> And I love it because it's like it's it's coming down and you're you're telling from the beginning is like you could do this, too. Somebody listening can do this, too. that person that's like that the stupid people in the comments that are never going to change or learn and they're not listening to this anyway so it doesn't really matter but they're not they could change if they wanted to. Well, and a question keeps on popping in my head as uh as as we've talked about this is at what point did you sit and you realize like your mental how your mentality was broke when you were blaming Hal or whoever for your response for your for you being broke?

[01:17:04]At what point, you know, being a business owner, at what point did you was there a point where you remember thinking, "Wow, wow, that was >> I could tell you exactly where it was."

[01:17:11]I was sitting there staring at the wall at my computer downstairs, couldn't pay for Christmas, had that argument with my wife when she came down there, started [ __ ] me and everything. It was a big blow up. And I started looking at the Dave Ramsey thing. I remember thinking to myself, you're the [ __ ] problem. You're the [ __ ] leader of your household. You're the guy that controls everything in your life. Nobody controls you. You pride yourself in saying, "I'm not listening to any motherfucker." But you're sitting here broke, can't pay your [ __ ] bills, and you're the guy in charge. You've been arguing with everybody. They're a [ __ ] [ __ ] getting on me and stuff. You are the [ __ ] problem. I remember, think of yourself, you are the [ __ ] problem. And I can tell you another pivotal part in my life that I've never said this out loud. I'll say it now. I was sitting in the front room at Willowbrook Farms in the chair when you walk through the kitchen right to the right of the thing and I had just got motherfucked by one of the borders down there. I was like 14 or 15 and I was ready to cry and I was sitting there upset and I wasn't saying enough. I thought to myself, I will never let another [ __ ] talk to me like that again at any cost. The [ __ ] switch flipped that day. I've I've been me since.

[01:18:18]>> Wow.

[01:18:19]>> Somebody would say something, I'd be like, "Fuck you." Yeah. And it was way worse. Right after that flicks, it was like over the top. But I was just like not dealing with it anymore. That [ __ ] year. That was in summertime. I remember it was over a horse. Now, anybody's in the horse business understands this. When you bring the horses in from the pasture and you put them in their box stall during the day, you have morning chores and night chores. Morning chores, you clean the stalls, bed them, put hay in for night, fill the water buckles. A lot of times, a horse would come in and drink the [ __ ] water. They come in at 5:00, right? The borders come out at 7:00.

[01:18:51]Their water bucket's empty. They're knocking on your door. You didn't fill up my horse's water bucket. I filled up the horse water bucket. You ever think he [ __ ] drank it? You need to come out here right now and fill it up. You [ __ ] fill it up. I already did it once. The horse drank it. He'll get more tomorrow. I don't know the [ __ ] to tell you. That was a big fight. I don't remember. I think the lady's name was Dena and she came and treated me like that. I was like, "Fuck this." And ever since then, >> that was it. I went after that summer and I got in a fight. That was in middle school. Right out of middle school, I remember a kid named Chris Umlaw came up and started teasing me. Him and Ricky Drink. I punched that [ __ ] right in the mouth. The year before and the year before that in the locker room, they teased the [ __ ] out of me and never said a thing. He came in and started teasing me. I [ __ ] decked him.

[01:19:32]>> He's like, "Who the [ __ ] is that?"

[01:19:33]>> Yeah, I knocked him on his [ __ ] ass.

[01:19:35]And the gym teacher jumped on my [ __ ] back to stop me. I [ __ ] flipped him over. Now, you got to remember, I was sewing hay, cleaning, solved, and I got suspended for 10 days cuz I [ __ ] threw the teacher over. At that point, my mom's like, "What happened to you?"

[01:19:46]I'm like, I am done with people's [ __ ] >> That was the So, that was the other pivotal point in my [ __ ] life.

[01:19:53]>> That's That's awesome. That's [ __ ] awesome. You got to make a decision.

[01:19:56]>> Yeah.

[01:19:57]>> And I I didn't I didn't That's so cool because I didn't know, you know, obviously I didn't know the answer to that question, but that's so cool. It was in that moment. You're sitting there looking, you know, just get into the huge fight with your wife. It's like, I'm the problem. Because I don't think you can make a change until you realize that you're the problem. It's looking at the man in the mirror, right?

[01:20:13]>> Yeah. I say that [ __ ] all the time. Now, you hear me say it all the time. Yep, I'm [ __ ] wrong. Okay, let's switch gears. What about that insurance guy the other day?

[01:20:21]>> Yeah, that's what I was just thinking about too in that conversation. Yeah.

[01:20:26]>> Tell me what you were thinking outside.

[01:20:28]Let's break down.

[01:20:30]>> Switch over to your camera. Let's break down what you were thinking about the control like we tal like we're teaching.

[01:20:34]>> Yeah. So this was funny because you know I've been spending a lot of time in in the training and building out the training and the framework and everything and and my first thing is I was sitting in here and I heard you and in Jim like all right get ready he's coming in and I'm like oh [ __ ] I'm about to hear some [ __ ] All right this is going to be fun. So I'm like listening to the uh listening to it and as you're going through it I'm literally going through my head like oh there's the C.

[01:20:56]Like you took control right away. Like you said you know he didn't sit down but like you you took control.

[01:21:01]>> I didn't let him sit down on purpose.

[01:21:03]>> Yeah. Yeah. You controlled whether he was going to He said he stood there uncomfortable the whole time.

[01:21:07]>> Yeah. I blocked the chair so he couldn't sit down. Jim's like, "Why are you blocking the chair?" I said, "Cuz he needs to be uncomfortable for this. He ain't going to come in here and show me what's up. I'm going to show him what's up." And the thing I think honestly Jason and that adjuster, everybody bootlicks him. And then all a sudden he came in all a sudden I took control of the conversation. And a couple times you remember I said, "You're not listening to me. How many times do I need to repeat myself?" And I want to reiterate is because like um I think a lot of people, you know, people hear you and they think that you're probably always [ __ ] this or [ __ ] that, but like you take control of that situation. And like if I was just listening to you, I would think that like you guys were having a pleasant conversation. Like you you at one point said, "You don't listen very well, do you?" But it was like it wasn't like [ __ ] you don't listen very well, do you? It was like the way you said it >> was like kind of a joke, but true. Yeah.

[01:21:54]And >> he just I don't know what he said, but he was like, >> "Oh, no." Because I told him, he's like, "Well, I need your receipts." I said, "I'm not giving you receipts anymore.

[01:22:01]We're done. What my receipts are are my is my business. My markup is my business." Well, we'll only pay this. I said, "That's fine." I said, "You write it for what you think is right." I said, "And the customer is going to pay the difference." Period. I already got a commitment from the customer. You have a commitment from the customer. Abso fuckingutely. You're not setting my prices at my business. Well, uh, you really can't do I could do whatever I want. That's what's going to happen.

[01:22:26]Well, I need the toll bill. You're not getting the toll bill. I said, they already paid the toll bill. They did?

[01:22:31]Yeah. I said, you're not involved in that. It's none of your business.

[01:22:35]And I went right down the thing. Then he said, then towards the end, yeah, he told me he's not getting receipts. He says to me, well, we just need your receipts. I said, obviously, you don't listen very well. We are not getting the receipts. Then he came back in. I think by that time he had the door closed.

[01:22:48]Yeah.

[01:22:49]>> He came in. He said, we can repair that hood. And then Jim said, "We are the professionals here. We are the ones with the licenses on the wall that have to stand behind this work. You are the guy that's writing an estimate to save the insurance company money, but we're the ones have to to warranty it. We're not fixing it the way you want it. We already told the customer you're going to try to hack it, and here you are trying to hack it." Well, this is a matter of opinion. No, you have no opinion. You're not a professional. You don't do body work. You write estimates.

[01:23:16]We do the body work. We have to stand behind it. He was like freaking the [ __ ] out by the time he left.

[01:23:22]>> Yeah.

[01:23:22]>> He didn't know what to think.

[01:23:23]>> Yep. Did he What ended up happening?

[01:23:25]>> We haven't got the estimate yet. So, today we send an email. Yo, Mr. Customer, Mr. Adjuster, he was here x amount of days ago. Your truck is still sitting in limbo because we have not got the receipt back. So the the the delay in the job getting done is due to his poor performance in getting a >> Yeah.

[01:23:47]>> I'm not kissing their [ __ ] ass. [ __ ] them.

[01:23:49]>> Yeah.

[01:23:50]>> You know, and I did not yell at that guy. I raised my voice. I said completely calm. This is what's going to happen.

[01:23:55]>> Take it or leave it.

[01:23:57]>> If your estimate comes in at three, ours is five.

[01:23:59]>> The customer's paying $2,000.

[01:24:01]>> Yep.

[01:24:02]>> You know, and a lot of guys online going, "Yeah, I do that all the time."

[01:24:05]Bull [ __ ] [ __ ] Because a lot of these body shops, not a lot, there's good ones and there's bad ones, but a lot of these body shops can't afford to freaking say, "Fuck it. I'm not going to do it." I uh was talking to um Grock today and I was asking about collision shops. Gerber, for instance, they said they uh do a 1% net. They make about $18 million a year profit, but they're doing like $3.6 billion.

[01:24:31]So, think about that. How chiseled down they are to 1%. Now, don't get me wrong, 1% on 3.6 six 18. It was $18 million or some change. Don't quote me, but it was like it was $18 million I know was the net at 1% it said.

[01:24:45]>> Yeah. Yeah. At 1%'s nice. 18.

[01:24:47]>> Can you imagine though how bad the [ __ ] insurance company has their finger down to get through they're doing that kind of sales.

[01:24:53]>> You know what I mean? They're only netting 1%. Now, if you're GM netting 1% that's wonderful, right? But do you know what I'm saying? Like 18 million, >> it's crazy.

[01:25:01]>> The insurance company must really have their finger on them pretty hard because their DRP, you know, they're in bed.

[01:25:05]Let's face it, all these big crash kings and all these guys are, >> you know, they want to get rid of us, you know, little guys. So anyway, you know, once again, the the moral of the story is guys, if you start at ground zero and you work hard and you work your way up and you're smart with your money, you could do whatever you want to do.

[01:25:23]It's just a matter of how much you want to put up with. So, my suggestion, if you're in your 20s and you a go-getter and stuff like that, and you're smart, get your finances in order and start looking for an independent shop that you can work your way up the ladder to be the man. And once you're the man, when the older man gets tired, you could possibly buy into that shop. Now, guys are going to say, "Where are them shops?" I don't know.

[01:25:43]>> Okay. [ __ ] in your hometown, go around and look at these some of these shops. I don't know.

[01:25:49]>> But it can be done.

[01:25:50]>> Yep. You didn't know.

[01:25:51]>> I didn't know.

[01:25:53]spot this out and be like, I can get this.

[01:25:54]>> Yeah. What did you like? What did they say the what would the 18-year-old Kevin say to the 55year-old Kevin today?

[01:26:01]>> Oh my god. Yeah.

[01:26:03]>> What do you think?

[01:26:04]>> I was the dead. I was the [ __ ] like there's no way I thought I'd be this far along.

[01:26:08]>> Like if 55-year-old Kevin came to you and was like telling you what you're you just moved into this house like you know like what would you say?

[01:26:15]>> I'd be like I can't [ __ ] believe it.

[01:26:17]I can't [ __ ] believe that I made it this far. You know, I've outran all the haters.

[01:26:23]>> Yeah.

[01:26:24]>> You know what I mean? And like I don't even care what these [ __ ] online say.

[01:26:28]Like like I give a [ __ ] right? I probably shouldn't say [ __ ] Tik Tok's going to get me now. But like like I care. Like you know what I'm saying?

[01:26:35]Like you look at me and my life and where I'm at and how everybody in my life their life gets better when they're when they when they hang out with me. It just does because I just I help people out that work for me. I take good care of them. You know that. You see it. I see it.

[01:26:48]>> Look what we did.

[01:26:48]>> Yeah. No, I was to say, yeah, >> Jason, that [ __ ] [ __ ] you got going on over there, let's just open our own. Here we are.

[01:26:54]>> I told I've told the story like three times in the past 24 hours.

[01:26:57]>> Yeah. It's just like, you know, um I'm respectful to people are respectful of me and I'm a dick. They're people are dick to me. And you know, I do the mom [ __ ] cuz that's how [ __ ] much I don't care when these guys say something like that's not what your mom said. That's how much I don't care what they have to say.

[01:27:09]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[01:27:10]>> That's like the mobile guy today going, "Yeah, you're nickel and dime people to death." No. I'm trying to get people to understand if they don't they got to get paid for going to work. You can't go to work as a flat rate technician going, "I'm getting [ __ ] on flat rate. It's a scam." Did you ever think you might be the problem? No, I'm not talking about the dealers because the dealers, you're getting [ __ ] Everybody, in my opinion, should quit the dealer and go to an independent shop, a good independent shop where they would take care of you. There's guys that hire retired from Hal's Auto Clinic that worked there for 25 years. H was a great guy to work for. Uh my grandpa, Bill Brown Auto Clinic, he had guys that worked for him for 20 [ __ ] years, 25, 30 years that retired from them. There is good independent shop owners out there. You know what I mean? The dealerships, you're just another number.

[01:27:54]>> There's been guys on our post, Jay, that said, I seen a guy next to me died and two days later they had another guy in his bay.

[01:28:00]>> Yeah, we've we've said that so many times. That's crazy. That's crazy.

[01:28:04]>> You know, um so that's kind of where we're at. Um >> this is a good episode.

[01:28:09]>> I hope so. Well, I hope it helps somebody that you know you could do whatever you want and it's going to be hard cuz I did I didn't even get into Vicki dying because I already went into that story of how I had to rebuild the accounting system and stuff like that.

[01:28:20]This has been such a [ __ ] journey and Steve Jobs said it the best, the journey is the reward. Everybody has this great facade of here comes retirement. The journey is the reward. The things you're doing every day to get to where you're at is the [ __ ] reward. I'm going to look back at my life and I'm not going to be I'm not beholding anybody, but I am proud of what I've accomplished and the people who know me closest know the struggles I had coming up and look where I am now. You know, I passed a lot of these [ __ ] haters up.

[01:28:51]>> Y >> and it's great feeling. You know what I mean? So, you guys can do it. You just got to put your mind to it and stick to it. And it's going to be hard, but you can do it.

[01:29:00]>> So, change isn't easy. Have a good day.

[01:29:03]>> All right. That's going to do it for this episode of Repair Shop Reckoning.

[01:29:06]If this helped you, please make sure to subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. We drop real conversations, real systems, and real solutions every week. We'll see you back here next time on our pair shop reckoning.