From Prison to Diesel Tech: Overcoming Challenges and Pursuing Dreams With George Wilkins

Swell AI Transcript: The Jaded Mechanic - Jeff And Georg.mp3
00:00 - 00:23 SPEAKER01 So your friend actually, like… Yeah, I recovered. I was told to recover two times through my buddy. But, you know, at the end of the day, I'd done that to myself. It's nothing to do with him. I mean, that's what brought me down. But either way, when you're in that kind of lifestyle, you're gonna go down either way.

00:24 - 00:50 SPEAKER00 Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome back to another exciting thought-provoking episode of the Jaded Mechanic podcast. My name's Jeff and I'd like to thank you for joining me on this journey of reflection and insight into the toils and triumphs of a career in automotive repair. After more than 20 years of skin, knuckles and tool debt, I want to share my perspectives and hear other people's thoughts about our industry. So pour yourself a strong coffee or grab a cold Canadian beer and get ready for some great conversation.

00:59 - 01:01 SPEAKER01 You know?

01:01 - 01:06 SPEAKER00 But. So your friend actually, like.

01:06 - 01:28 SPEAKER01 Yeah, undercover. I sold to undercover two times through my buddy. Right. And, yeah. But at the end of the day, I done that to myself. It's nothing to do with him. I mean, that's what brought me down. But either way, when you're in that kind of lifestyle, you're gonna go down either way.

01:28 - 01:32 SPEAKER00 So George, just give for the people listening, kind of introduce yourself.

01:33 - 01:38 SPEAKER01 I'm George Wilkins, quality control at L&M Performance.

01:38 - 04:46 SPEAKER00 Lucas Underwood. With our brother Lucas Underwood. Yeah. And you know, this is the first time I've met you. It was yesterday. Yeah, we talked quite a bit. We have, and we had an awesome dinner last night, and we just started talking about some of the things you're really not supposed to talk about, right? When you meet a stranger, you shouldn't immediately start to talk about religion. But I mean, you and I have talked all morning now, It's fascinating to me to come and connect. And for you, the question you asked me is, what's the question? Am I a man of faith? Yeah. Right? Right. And I said to you, I don't really know. Because I don't, you know what I mean? Do I have faith that there's something going on? 100%, right? The story you just told me a minute ago, and we'll discuss that. But I can't, my faith doesn't necessarily fit in a little box, right? Of I'm this religion or that religion, or it doesn't really align with anything. So many people that I know, I fish a lot, right? So there's so many mornings I've been out when the sun comes up. And I'm out there and it's just me, and I'm just fishing, and all the problems that were in my life that week are gone. And so Larry Fleet, a country singer, has a song called Where I Find God. Right? And in one of the lines is like, you know, on a Johnson outboard, on a boat. Right? I relate to that so much because I joke and I talk with my friend Paul Danner all the time. That's my church. Sunday morning when the sun's coming up and I'm already fishing. Like just the most simple thing in the world, just trying to catch little bass. Yeah. That's where I reconnect. Everything just goes away, just eases away. So can I, can I put myself in a little box and I say that I'm this or I'm that? No, because you know, I'm not reading scripture when I'm out there. I'm not, I'm not thinking about a particular hymn in my head or I'm not waiting to hear a sermon. I'm just trying to catch little green fish. But that is where I recenter, I recharge every week, right? When I can get a chance to get out there. So am I a man of faith? I think there's been too many miracles that I've witnessed in nature on the bow of a boat fishing at four in the morning as the sun's coming up to think that There, it's just all the way it was. There's obviously something has steered this to me. And then when I think of like how I'm, why I'm here right now. Right? We talk about people that come in and out of your lives. And how one person, our brother Lucas, right? Shapes so many people's lives. And so how did he shape yours? Like give us your kind of how you first met Lucas. You know, how that friendship started.

04:47 - 07:34 SPEAKER01 Well, the friendship started like 2000. I was a friend of one of his cousins, and he was just a little 16-year-old brat, kind of. Had a little diesel truck, and we was always car people. I worked for his dad. I met a little apartment in a little cottage at Mr. Hill there, and they invited me in, of course, and I was a carpenter, so he was building log cabins, and so yeah, that's how I met Lucas. He was definitely a hellraiser, driving, he loved to drive fast, and loved that diesel smoke, and was friends for a while, and I stayed there, I think, about 10 months, and then I moved on with life, and I want to say I think 2016 or 17. We'd moved to Wilmington. Me and the girls decided we wanted to go live at the beach for a while. We wanted to give it a try. We moved to Wilmington near Wrightsville Beach. We stayed there like five or six months. I was a carpenter and they stole all the tools out of the back of our truck. She was a server so they ransacked her car and stole all the chains. I come home one day, Lisa, my wife, she had a U-Haul in the yard. I was like, what's going on here? She said, we're leaving. And I was like, what? And she said, we're leaving. I was like, okay. And it wasn't big enough, so what we had, so we left a lot of things there and we packed it up. And so I came back to Booneville and we was homeless. I knew Lucas's dad had the cabins where the new shop is, all that parking lot was I think eight or 10 cabins there, little modular cabins. And so I asked, could we rent one for a little bit? And of course they wouldn't let me pay the rent. They're really awesome people. And we stayed there, I think, at least a week or two. and I kind of talked to Lucas, and I had went to Diesel Tech after prison. I got my GED in prison, I was telling you that earlier, and I went to Wilkes Community College, the Diesel program. I didn't finish, I didn't get the associate's degree, because I lacked a math and English, but I got my certification at Diesel and learned a lot, and the experience was different too. I was a carpenter. So, Lucas, when I got out of college, and he seen that I was doing that, he always said, hey man, you can come wrench for me, just like he told you. Hey man, you can come turn wrenches. He's always said that since then. And I decided to give it a try. Made it three years, so that re-sparked the friendship.

07:34 - 08:57 SPEAKER00 And we talked earlier about Lucas is pretty humble about it. Lucas doesn't talk about it, but Lucas is one of the few owners that you, like you said, You've seen him covered in grease and oil right in there up to his elbows in a six liter tearing it down. And I'm not trying to say that lots of owners aren't, but Lucas has a fantastic skill set. He's a very sharp, knowledgeable guy, right? And he doesn't even go around bragging on himself or That's what has always inspired about me is because like dude's super smart, like really smart. And yet he's not braggadocious about it at all. He's just like, he'll help anybody. And we talked because he gets that from his family, right? You talk about his mom and you talk about his father, you've known them both a long time, right? And been through a lot of things with them. And I mean, the family is just a, It's on a different level. You know, it's refreshing when I come down here and I spend time with him. And I mean, him and I talk every day, same as probably you guys do. But when I'm around him. It's, it's, you just, you, you feel it. You feel that energy, that, that, that positivity that he puts off. You said that's his father is like that too, right? Yeah. What? And so you were working with him. You came back and started working with him.

08:57 - 10:18 SPEAKER01 Yeah. Yeah. So, um, I worked there three years, uh, the old shop, um, when we was there, um, You had to do a little bit of everything. You had to write estimates, invoices, talk to the customers. If we could give them a ride, we would. Had to do the parts, find your parts, hopefully the right parts, and mechanic on the vehicles. You had to do it, the next guy had to do it, Lucas had to do it. Everybody done it. The shop was pretty cluttery. We helped motivate each other in different ways. He motivated me and as a friend, as a mechanic, I was into getting a place decluttered, so I motivated him and we started taking little steps. Getting rid of some junk or moving some junk here and there. Making it doable. So we kept pushing. Yeah, I've seen Lucas, like I said, just as greasy as I was, me being under 6.0 all day, he could have good clothes on. He would crawl right under there, and he will still, I noticed him the other day at the shop, I see him under a hood. I still thought that was cool, because he's a busy guy, he's doing life where he needs to be, but I see him under a hood the other couple times, helping one of the guys.

10:18 - 11:45 SPEAKER00 When I came up here for the 4th of July and I hung out for three days or whatever, I was amazed how he knows everything that's going on in the shop. At the same time, plus with everything he's trying to do with editing my podcast and getting this out and going back and forth with Mike or David or anyone else all the time, he's still knowing the status on everybody's customer's car, where it is, what's the parts, this and that and the other thing, right? You know, it's when the video that circulated where he escorted the young lady out of the building, right? I mean, but the thing is, is like, I mean, we all laugh about that, you know, he took a lot of ribbing on it and thank goodness he takes it in good humor. But there's a lot of shops that if that happened, the owner wouldn't even be in the building. You know what I mean? Like they'd be off somewhere else and they might be saying, well, you handled it wrong or you handled it right or whatever. He's there. You know what I mean? And that whole situation, we can all joke about it now. But it's you don't know how people are going to act, right? Right. Like you've you've met some some some individuals in your life that you don't know. Right. We can't go around assuming anything about anybody anymore, how they what they might be going through, how is making them feel the way they feel like the way that girl was not in in a good place. Right. She's not in good sorts. That's why the car wasn't released to her. So.

11:46 - 11:56 SPEAKER01 And knowing Lucas, he would still yet help that girl in any way he could in life. If she ever came to him and say, Hey, you know, I need to help my car or even, you know, mental stability. Yeah.

11:56 - 12:05 SPEAKER00 He'd, he'd help her in any way, you know, he's an amazing dude. So you're at Lucas is now working. What do you do there?

12:05 - 12:38 SPEAKER01 I'm quality control. I've been there about five weeks back on the team, which is a really good feeling. It's a total different atmosphere process than the old shop. It's very neat. Learned a lot of things in just the five weeks of seeing the new process. Can tell that we started this AST thing together some years back and can tell that he's put in work and grabbed a lot of knowledge from a lot of people.

12:38 - 12:41 SPEAKER00 You first came to ASTE way back in what year?

12:41 - 13:36 SPEAKER01 I can't remember the exact year. It's got to be around 2017. Me and Lucas came together. I guess he learned it through ASOT group of meeting people and he said, hey, we're gonna go try this training. And I was like, okay, cool. And then we had good suppers and we was kind of shy because we didn't know nobody. I was new, you know, as a technician, so definitely a lot of information coming in that, you know, that I thought was neat and, you know. find the goods and bads on the new stuff and learning about steering and suspension and how to detect brake noises. Then we went to Kansas City Visions and it was cool, the tool shows. It started there and then of course Lucas made some friends and David Roman.

13:36 - 16:20 SPEAKER00 He talks about that first And again, so that's way, like I knew Lucas back then, right? I probably know Lucas now 10 years it seems from talking on Facebook and whatnot. But I mean, my Facebook thing got so big that you know how people just sometimes like they're still in your friends list and they're still seeing them. But the algorithm is always showing you different things, right? So, I can remember engaging with him way back when, but then there was this point where I didn't even know what ASOC was, right? I didn't know. It wasn't shown to me. And it was like, so when he talks about that first trip up to AST and like, probably like you said, 2017 or something, he'll correct us if we're wrong on the year, he came away from that like a changed man on how he was going to handle his business and essentially how he was going to live his life because he was ready to like plug here. He said, I was going to I was just going to go and be an employee for somebody else. Right. And he could have like we've talked about it. He could he could have gone back to work with his father like he had. He could have gone and got a job at a shop and been a fantastic mechanic for somebody else. But it was coming to this show that completely changed his directive. And I so resonate with that because he brought me here last year, right? And I was like, and we were sitting here last night, remember? And he was like, it took him three months. It was, I beat him on him three months before Jeff would finally agree to come because I felt like I wouldn't be in my element. I felt like all these people were way, way more advanced than me, right? What am I going to, what am I going to offer them? Because last year I wasn't doing this podcast. right? I had recorded an episode with Changing the Industry, I actually recorded two and but I was like man you know this is it's expensive and what am I what am I gonna have to offer and but I came anyway I trusted him and I came down and did it and changed my life right because you meet people like I didn't meet you last year I just met you yesterday. I quit talking sense. Right but the amount of people that I met last year that are now so supportive of what I'm doing and the conversations I'm having. I owe it all to AST. I owe it all to Lucas and David. But I mean, if I hadn't come to AST, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing right now. You and I would not know one another. I wouldn't be sitting here having these conversations with so many people. So, I mean, it's, God bless Lucas and AST for having that vision to say, I'm gonna bring this guy down and show him this. So, what's it like to work at his shop?

16:20 - 17:31 SPEAKER01 It's a super chill environment. You walk in the morning. Hey Jorge, good morning, what's up guys? We meet up, there's a printout, each tech, each quality control, up to the ladies and the service riders. Got the plan for the day, pick up from yesterday. I come in, and you asked me earlier what I do there, I do quality control. So when the cars are done, we have a checklist, I take it on, it's got a short service, or a full service. Short service, three mile test drive. Full service, 10 mile, I think it's shop wear. I look up and I see what has been done to the car, oil change, or a leak, or brakes. And so I can, when I'm driving, I can think about those areas more, you know, as I'm driving. I drive 10 miles, which is a beautiful trek, because we go across the parkway, and Thunder Hill, you know, we come around. I drive it and I bring it back to the shop, I pull it in, pop the hood, I check all the fluids, fill up the washer fluid, you know, anything that needs to be topped off, engine oil, coolant, you know, top it off.

17:31 - 17:33 SPEAKER00 Torque the wheels if the wheels have been off.

17:33 - 18:21 SPEAKER01 Yeah, we always re-torque the wheels, even if nobody's touched the wheels, it's always a re-torque. Then I open the driver's side, passenger side doors. I vacuum the car, I hit the dash, do the windows. I even do the door jams. I do the door jams. We just make it look really, really nice. We hang a little warranty sign up in there. We just try to show as much love as possible. Let them know we care. I really believe it goes above and beyond to pay a guy to just do that to somebody's car. Definitely don't have to do that. Definitely takes a little bit out of the pay, the income, good money, but yeah, I wipe my fingerprints off when I'm done, like we try to keep it as sanitary as possible. As I get out, I got a rag in my pocket, I hit the gear shifter at the steering wheel, you know, try to just make it way better than it was when it came in.

18:21 - 19:19 SPEAKER00 And you know, I think it's so many shops miss, I mean, because it's an important role that you're doing, right? It's quality control and it's, yeah, it's making sure that when you drive it and they did brakes that there is no brake noise. But we hear so many times that the customer comes back and they pick up the car and they're like, there was a smudge or a fingerprint or something like that, right? All my years when I worked at the dealer for so long, they always would wash the car when they were done with the car. It didn't matter what it was in for. I didn't have to wash the car, but we had people that did that. That kept so many customers coming back, even if they weren't satisfied with the necessarily, they didn't feel like they got the best service, but they got some service. The fact that they always picked up a clean car outside made them just be like over the moon. You know what I mean? You could get away, I guess what I'm trying to say is they would forgive a lot of things that maybe weren't right because they picked up a clean car.

19:19 - 20:10 SPEAKER01 I joke around a little bit with that because I'm like, I wonder if some people bring their car in for an oil change just to get their interior cleaned up, you know, because you don't have time to do it. So, hey, I could get my oil change at Lucas' or L&N and my cars will come out pretty clean, you know what I mean? And it's amazing that some of the nicer cars you know, really nice cars are kind of dirty. And it's really because they just don't have time in a day to take out to do that. Yeah. So doing that, like, I've never, I've just been there five weeks, but I just wonder, I would like to see some, some of the people's reactions, like first time with Ellen in and don't know that's going to happen, right. And then because they don't really, they definitely don't talk about or boast about, you know, they just do it. And I just wonder what they think when they get in their car like, You know what? Hey, floorboards clean, you know, trash is gone. Yeah. Hey, my dash is shining. You know what I mean? Like, I just wonder, you know, how they feel. I'm sure it's a good feeling.

20:10 - 22:44 SPEAKER00 Oh, I think it's it's like I said, because we all know how this sometimes goes. Like I thought it was talking to Eric last night. And it's like, you know, Eric had a car that was kicking his butt, you know, an intermittent thing. It took forever to try and finally figure out what was causing the check engine light and going to reduce power. I'm sure that customer would have had even more frustration at the fact that every time that car came in for this intermittent thing, and it was just, it was just kicking his butt. It was a complex thing. It was hard to recreate, hard to duplicate. Lucas had hours into driving it, trying to get it to happen. Eric had a ton of hours trying to get it to happen. They finally got it licked. That customer, at least when they come and pick up the car, The fact that it's clean, and there's no fingerprints on the gear shifter, there's no grease on the steering wheel, all that kind of stuff, that helps when you're dealing with a customer on a difficult car. That customer, you can tell, he's frustrated, I'm sure, with the fact that they're not narrowing it down. They're beating their head against this wall trying to get this car to act up to duplicate it. But the fact that people are still, continuing to take pride in that customer's car. Because lots of shops, we'll talk about that, lots of shops if it was already like making them as frustrated as they are, then I think their standard starts to slip on how they give that back to the customer. It becomes more hurried and more hurried and it's like before you don't know, the customer comes and picks it up and the seat cover and the floor mat are still in it. That to the customer looks like, did you really do anything at all? Whereas if you come back and you get a clean car, you know that somebody probably did something to it. Because let's be real, they're not going to be able to lift the hood and tell that the techs necessarily did anything. But if they come and pick it up and the floor mat is still in it, the seat cover is still on it, there's fingerprints around the top of the door jamb where the guy had to squeeze to get in between the hoist and the door. Just little things like that. And I think that's what he's so, Lucas is so good about is because he pays so much attention to what customers wish this industry was better about. And then he implicates it, right? And he implements it. And he hires people like yourself to put the processes in and do it. You know, we hear all the time, but people want to make excuses. I can't afford to do this or I can't afford to do that. he's paying you very well to do this for him, because he has such faith in the process, right?

22:44 - 25:13 SPEAKER01 Yeah, and I do want to speak on the quality control, as the clean car is very nice, but at the end of the day, the more important part of the quality control is I checked on one of the checklists, it says, check under the car for leaks. Okay, so had two incidents in the five weeks that this is why we do this quality control and it pays off. Well, three, because a lot of times I torque all the lug nuts, I always find one a little loose. You know, hands down, I always at least find one that's, you know, kind of looser. I was pulling a car out, it was a Mini Cooper I think, and it was hot so the AC runs and drips water on the floor. I keep the floor clean so I can look for leaks. Well it happened to have an oil change and the crush washer didn't seat. And I pulled it out, and I parked it, but when I came back, I looked under, the car was low, and I seen a puddle, but it looked like the water, where the oil and the water was together. And I looked, and I said, whoa, oil. And I talked to Eric, because I seen him working on the car. And he said, pull it back in, let's pull it back in and get on the lift right now, because we'd already, you know, I'd already signed off on it, because I thought it was good. So we pulled it in, jacked it up. Well, actually, I went in the parking lot, looked first, and seen another little drip under it. And I was like, I know, so I went, ran right back to Eric, and he says, get on the lift. Got on the lift, pulled it up, he'd seen, you know, a crush washer, you know, on the oil plug didn't seat. So, you know, that, I mean, that would've been terrible, you know, to send that car out. And then just the other day, I think it was a Subaru. We got a lot of rust in the mountains and they done some brake work and I pulled it out and got it over there and then it was on the back wheel. back passenger wheel, and I didn't, I didn't, I couldn't see the puddle at the time. I would've seen it on my way back in, and Eric had automatically seen it. Hey, George, did you, you know, and I said, whoa, you know, brake fluid, you know, so he said, get it back in. Got it back in, it just happened, you know, on the test drive that the, I can't remember if it was the brake line or the bleeder, was it, they hadn't even opened that bleeder, but something had went bad. and how bad, one, could have been terrible for a customer to lose brakes or the fluid, and two, send a car out after we'd done brake work, even if it wasn't on the back brakes, to have that situation.

25:13 - 25:53 SPEAKER00 So that paid off within itself, just to… And how do you find that the guys, because I know some shops, and I've talked to different guys, when you get that involved in the quality control, a lot of shops detect, sometimes look at the quality control person, you, like you're, ratting them out, you're snitching on them, right? You don't have that in your shop though, in Lucas's shop. Nobody's feeling like that. It's a team thing of, you're just as important as the tech that did it because he's got five more cars to bang out today, right? And he can't spend necessarily the time that every car should deserve to make sure that it's A1 before it leaves.

25:54 - 26:17 SPEAKER01 And the guys will let me know, especially if they've had a little problem, or, hey, George, pay attention to this, or I've done this, just to let you know on test drive or whatnot, or report back if you don't check this, ain't no leaks, let me know, just know things are good. They've already checked it themselves, but then I do it again to finish it off, you know what I mean?

26:18 - 27:48 SPEAKER00 I think more shops are going to start to adopt Lucas's type of way of doing it. And I know at my new job, my new shop that I'm just at, we're trying to discuss how to do that, right? How to get it to that next step. And we're short on manpower right now and women power. I should be more politically correct. And so we're trying to think how do we implicate that, right? So we're getting some young people that come in from our co-op program. And they're going to be able to try and help us get some of the oil changes done, some tires done, so that us techs, when we're done the car, can actually spend a few more minutes on it doing what you were speaking of, making sure that it is perfect before it leaves. And it's the same thing. I don't want to, it still makes me a little uncomfortable if I end up going and driving something else that somebody else worked on, and I might come back and I might find something on it. Did you hear that squeak and rattle when you first brought it in? I realized it wasn't here for a squeak and rattle, it was here for a check engine light, but did you hear it? And on your inspection, did you happen to notice anything? I don't want to be doing that as I'm brand new because I'm going to feel like, am I being a second boss, right? It's not a second boss, it's just a situation of, because then I can go to them and say, oh yeah, it's documented, we made a note of it, the customer knows they need a strut, they don't want to do the strut right now, they just were concerned about why the check engine light was on. And that's covering your butt, really the way I see it.

27:48 - 27:55 SPEAKER01 And we see it at the shop like, hey, you know, jackals, did you hear this? Or, or sometimes?

27:55 - 27:55 SPEAKER00 No, I didn't hear that.

27:55 - 28:24 SPEAKER01 You know what I mean? Or yes, it's like you said, it's documented. And you know, when I drive on the test drive, you know, if I feel brake pulsation or any kind of rattle, you know, a lot of sway bar in links up there always rattle, you know, and I write it down too. I make a little note even if they have you know I you know because you know customer could say oh my car didn't make this noise well the tech when he first got it in it made that noise and at the quality control it still made that noise so I write that down you know to cover our our area too you know.

28:25 - 30:19 SPEAKER00 And I think it's more important, and it's going to continue, as prices keep going up, unfortunately, with everything the way it is. Inflation, and prices, and parts, and whatever's going to happen. I think the average return time, turnaround time, on a vehicle is going to take longer now. Because you see it, right? It's taken longer sometimes to get the parts. And then there's some issues with the parts. So if we keep going back to the quality control of catching this kind of stuff, The customers are going to understand, right? And I would rather them, like the drain plug gasket, I'd rather that gets caught before the customer ever even picks up the car. Or the worst case is the customer standing out front, somebody's catching it and you're trying to fix it. You told them it'd be done by four. It turns out that, oh, well, look, we thought we had a water pump leak. We got a water pump, but now we got a clamp leaking. That doesn't make you look very professional in front of the eyes of the customer and it makes them even more paranoid because when they're waiting for their car and you're having to do another repair on it, they know you're rushing that repair. They know you're burning through that sucker as fast as you can to try and get it. That makes them feel a little nervous. I think the right way to handle that is like, it should already be QC'd, and everybody knows that it's leaving better than it was before the customer's even on the property, right? Because think about how we look to the customer. We don't look like professionals when we're scrambling to maybe fix something, because the customer immediately is like, well, did I really need that water pump then? Or maybe I only needed that hose clamp. Right. The reality is you and I know it needed the water pump and it needed the hose clamp. But to the customer, because all of a sudden we're having to go in the second time and do a second repair, definitely creates some doubt. And we want to avoid that. That's the whole point of quality control is to give confidence back to the customer.

30:19 - 31:03 SPEAKER01 And not bragging on what we do, but just little things like, and it's so funny, Lucas was like this at the old shop when I first met him. He always liked to put a little cleaner on a rag and hit the wiper blades so they wouldn't squeak. Just that kind of detail really speaks volumes of, but I just, The little things like that, people don't realize, but it could be a big deal, a squeaking wiper blade, or it doesn't get all the water off the windshield, and that's part of the process too, and I do it outside when I hit those plates, and it just, coming back in the new process, and then it's still in that process, it just kind of cracks me up a little bit.

31:03 - 31:18 SPEAKER00 So what, Lucas has a rule or something that I want to say, is it by three o'clock in the afternoon, is that the time frame that if it can't be QC'd, by, is it three or four? It doesn't leave that day?

31:18 - 31:40 SPEAKER01 Yeah, yeah. Like I said, I'm still getting in, learning everything with their times and all. But I've heard that. And I know, like you say, for rushing and purposes of rushing things through, I need to talk to him about that.

31:40 - 33:39 SPEAKER00 My point with that is that he puts so much emphasis on the fact that the quality control is just as important as the repair. So if we can't have the quality control done to the vehicle, by a certain time and we know the customer, he calls the customer and says, it's not going to be ready today, right? We have to, we have to quality control it. That's how we, I've, I've heard him say, he's given us, we have to quality control it. It'll have to be tomorrow morning when we call it quality control. And I think when we start to use that terminology and it sounds very professional and I think that puts the customer's mind at ease. It's like, yes. Okay. They want to do QC on it. It's an interesting, because you know, We always talk in the industry about, well, it's just an oil changer, it's just a brake job. But this quality control of these, let's call it what it is, simple, repetitive jobs, it still deserves a level of attention to detail. And I think that's what that QC does. I'm seeing more and more shops realize that it's like, it can do a lot to smooth that conversation and the relationship between the customer and the shop, build that trust, especially like new customers, right? We talk about that all the time. Lucas has a method to how he approaches a new customer, right? And I was there when I was there and it's like, he seems to know everybody that are established customers, right? But he's very good about everybody gets the same level of service. Whereas we see some shops and it's like, well, that's a really good customer, make sure you QC that car. Then we've seen other shops in the same shop, maybe that customer's like, he just wants it this way, get it in, get it out, get it done. I've always struggled with that because like, Just because that customer doesn't spend as much money or hasn't spent as much money or has not been coming here as long doesn't mean that they should get less service. It should still get that process of equality control.

33:40 - 34:10 SPEAKER01 Yeah, and saying that everybody gets the same treatment, I mean, it could be a five minute testing and that's it. He still pays me to take that car and show it the same amount of love as a hot-air Mercedes with a couple thousand dollars of work, hands down. Or if it's an older car full of cigarettes or whatever, I'm gonna clean it up. I'm gonna clean it the best I can with the time I have. I'm all cleaned up, what it needs to be.

34:10 - 34:22 SPEAKER00 Do you think that giving the customer back the car in a much cleaner condition than when they got it, do you think that kind of helps the customer sometimes that before they bring it in, they bring it in maybe in a cleaner position?

34:23 - 34:37 SPEAKER01 I think so, I know it makes me feel better just pulling the car in, it's dirty, and then when I park it, I wipe my fingerprints off, I'm like, man, it's cleaned up, fixed nice, you know what I mean? It just even gives me a better feeling.

34:37 - 37:13 SPEAKER00 We had a Mazda in this week that somebody's lunch pail was on the back seat of it, and whatever had been in the lunch pail had been in there a long time. Oh, right. And it had a smell. So as we're waiting to work on it, and I mean, we didn't have snow or rain or anything the last couple of weeks. So it sat outside with the windows down. But I think we still ended up like taking that lunch pail and like disposing of it. And then I think we probably threw an air freshener under the seat and tried to get the smell out of there and told the customer. The customer, I don't know how they get used to that smell. Right, right. But, you know, he brought it in. He's there because the thing is running poorly and check engine lights on and everything. We got through the diagnostic and got the repair done. I'm amazed sometimes with what people bring in, in the kind of state that sometimes they bring a car in. I can still remember years ago, I was at the Nissan dealer, and this lady was, you've seen them, what they call hoarders, right? She brought her car in like that, and it was like the back seat was piled level to the headrest of the front seat. And then the passenger seat, you could see that she's constantly having to like, scrape stuff off the top of pile on the passenger seat so she can see out her passenger side window. Right. And everybody is like. feeling like that's just nasty. And I'm like, this is sad. Because she's got, I think at the time she had like 30,000 kilometers, not miles, kilometers on her car, and the brakes are completely shot. She can't understand, why are the brakes so bad at only 30,000 kilometers? Because there's probably 1,000 pounds of extra weight in this car. You know what I mean? Right. So I never saw her again. I don't know what happened to her. I don't know what happened to the car because I moved on. I went to a different job. But I mean, thankfully, I haven't seen other cars like that since. But I've seen guys post for years in the Facebook groups about some of those cars when they come in. People are like, what are you? How would you? And I look at that and I go. Like I think that needs to be cleaned out before before somebody should work on it, you know It's a funny thing a like how people can get accustomed to to their vehicle and all of a sudden somebody that's outside of the realm of that vehicle gets in and we drive it and we're like Do they not hear that? Do they not smell that? Right, right. You know, like this is one of those cars that something could have crawled up in there and died and they might not even notice because of the smell of his lunch from last month still in the car.

37:13 - 37:17 SPEAKER01 Well, don't ask me how I call you, control that one.

37:17 - 37:21 SPEAKER00 So what's, you talked to me this morning about Lucas has got a plan for you.

37:22 - 40:16 SPEAKER01 Well, yeah, so, you know, like I said, I was still I was a beginner tech and I felt like I'd done pretty good. You know when I was there, you know, I helped put heads on a six. So, you know early on, you know, really we've done whatever we need to do in the shop and he trusted me and I was definitely not confident myself. So I definitely took a lot longer because I would triple check things. I was really scared, just to be honest with you. I come from a carpenter background, so I'm used to framing and seeing something come up walls in a day, like seeing some work happen. Working there made me feel like I wasn't really making him money, to be honest with you, because under 6.0 all day and then there's times that you can fix something and pull it out and something else goes. And it's still your responsibility, because that vehicle's in that shop, you're under the hood. But I left Lucas's, definitely on good terms and all. I wanted to try some other things, and I knew when I left there, I was making a mistake, like I told you earlier that I told him I'm making a mistake. Lucas is not just a boss, but he's a friend, motivator, family member. Not just to me, anybody he comes in contact with. So I knew, and that motivation was very important to me in my life at that time. It still is now, but it was helping me rise up in some areas of my life, and it felt good. But anyway, I left, and we definitely stayed in contact, this and that, and, you know. As I was telling you this year, me and my wife split in March, and it's been a pretty rough year. We've been doing the Airbnb cleans, hot tubs, yard maintenance, all that, always chasing money, schedule sporadic, seven days a week, day or night, whatever needs to happen, you've got to make it happen. And as I was over in the Long Rock area, I'd stop in and see him. And as a great friend of mine, I talk about my private life. He listens and he gives his perspective, a couple encouraging things. He knew that Kamara, my eight-year-old, was getting ready to start school, and her mama kind of moved off the mountain, and Kamara wanted to stay in the same school, so I was gonna stay there and take her to school. And he's like, George, you probably just need to get a real job, get some structure, get a real job. And that hurt, because I didn't want to, because I liked that this free time I got. And I made okay, but definitely wouldn't run the business properly to, if I was running it properly, I wouldn't probably make as much, for sure. And I knew that. So he was right, but I didn't really want to hear it. Yeah, I didn't want to hear it. He's going to tell you straight up, and whatever he feels is best, that's just him.

40:16 - 41:29 SPEAKER00 We talked about that this morning, right? He's had lots of conversations with me and said some things that I didn't want to hear. And we've heard some of the recent episodes and me knowing the backstory of so many people that I've got to know. And him, he has those conversations with everybody. And he is a hard guy to, like you feel like I never want to let him down. That's how I always feel when I'm around him. Like I don't want to let him down. I don't want to embarrass him. And I don't even work for him, right? But it's what he's given me. what he's seen in me, the potential, that I don't want to ever screw that up. And it's tough sometimes. It can be, like I said to you, it can be a weight sometimes you feel. And this is not me ragging on him. He doesn't even realize he brings it into the room though. You know what I mean? He's such a force when he comes in. He's so upbeat and so positive and everything he wants to do well and he wants to see everything go smooth. You can't help but feel like that. But man, he's had some conversations with me, and it's like, no dude, you're wrong. And you and I talked this morning. It's tough to hear sometimes.

41:29 - 44:22 SPEAKER01 One May, he took, I think, five or six of the crew. Well, I wasn't even the crew. And one of the girls that was on the apprenticeship program from the high school that stayed in connection, but doesn't work now, he took us to the beach. He took us to the beach and we had a good time and definitely I needed that. I hadn't been around him in a while, going through what I was going through, but the family split up. We talked all the way there and back, straight conversation of goods and bads in life and everything. And, yeah. At good times, we walked the beaches. That was the best weekend of this year for me. Like I said, I came over to the shop to see him. He said, you probably should get a real job, George. Get some structure. I kind of in my heart wanted to ask him about a job, but I didn't, and I didn't know. So I didn't ask him, and after I left him, I worked for VPC Builders as a punch-out partner. It was a great job, too. And I thought about asking them for my old job. I had still on good standards with them guys, too. And one day I come over just to talk a little bit about my life or just say, hey, and then we always, he asked, how you doing in our house? I said, you're way, you're going, and if it's going a little bad, I'll tell him. And he said, well, why don't you come work for me? And of course, I thought about it, and I was like, well, I'll think about it. And of course, how he says, why don't you come wash cars for me? That's just how he said it. And I was like, OK, well, I'll think about it. And I thought about the money. And then I don't know how many days, maybe a week came back, and no. I don't remember the timeline, but then one day, he just, I think, sends me texts, says, when you coming to work? And I said, well, I think it was that week. And I said, well, I'll be there next Monday. He said, cool. And then I came by that Friday just to talk and get a little feel on what's fixing to happen. and then we hadn't even talked about pay, and I had a certain number that I thought would be, and he offered a lot more than that number, and I was like, okay. That was just a blessing in disguise itself. I was gonna take it either way, because I knew I needed a job, and I had, as a great person he was, period, if it wasn't still a whole lot of pay, as I was expecting, I would have took it anyway just to be back on a great team with the great people. And I've been for like five weeks. It's helped me mentally just being in a structured atmosphere with chill people. You know what I mean? It's been really awesome.

44:22 - 47:52 SPEAKER00 You're immersed in a bunch of people there that are just absolute crackerjacks, right? They're just on the ball sharp. I've gotten to know Eric pretty good. I know Eric quite good. and Terry and everybody and Jackals and they're all, they don't even realize how good they are. You know what I mean? Like they are, in that group, they're all awesome. But they would be a superstar in a lot of other shops. And they're still superstars, don't get me wrong. But it's that unit that they have Right. And I think I think Lucas is still the motivating factor. He's the one that sets that culture down. And we talk all the time about culture and shops. You know, people are always like, I didn't quit the job because of money. I quit the job because of the culture in the business. Some of that is true. A lot of us still do chase money, and I'm not trying to say there's anything wrong with that. But I can tell you from my experience right now, if I was making the same money that my previous employer was paying me at this new job, I would still be over the moon happy with how different the culture is. The fact that the culture is better and the money is better It's just like, it's the cherry on top, right? It's what makes all the difference. Culture is a thing where it comes back to, I think, it's just you have to see the quality and what you want to try and give to the customer. Lucas doesn't think about things as repairs, right? He thinks about things as I'm giving quality back, I'm giving value back. Right. And this is the thing like, you know, yes, you're you're giving them you're selling them a repair vehicle. That's what you're doing. You're selling them a service. You're selling them a a skill set that they don't have that they need done. But he's about showing them value and and. Just a different way of thinking, you know, and it trickles down. When I was up here and I was spending, you know, I hung out at the shop for like three days and just kind of sat around and watched how things were done. I'd never witnessed anything like that in my life in terms of how everybody approached the car. Eric and I, when we were talking last night, he's like, I approach every car the exact same way. When I'm doing that DVI and I'm going about it, it's the same car. It doesn't matter if it's a Mercedes. It doesn't matter if it's a Ford F-150. Everything starts off with him and his phone, taking photos, doing his proper inspection, and then going through the process. I beat that word all the time, process, process, process. I'm still not as good as where Lucas is, and you guys are. I struggle with, I came into this new job, this is the first shop I've ever worked at in my life, and we do a DBI. Right. And I'm like, there's still so many things I forget to do. I forget to take a picture of the master cylinder so that there's a picture of the reservoir level. I forget to take a picture of the belt. I know I checked it. It doesn't need a belt. It's not cracked and it's not split and it's not making any noise, but I forgot to take a picture of my phone because the customer wants that reassuring picture that says belt is okay. It's not. And I'm learning it through Lucas is that the customers anymore don't just want to check in the box that says it's okay. because anybody can put a check in the box. They want proof that the tech actually, physically looked at the component that is checked off as okay.

47:52 - 48:02 SPEAKER01 In my eyes as well, as say that belt broke, you took that picture, it looks great. It's gonna happen though. Things can break.

48:02 - 49:48 SPEAKER00 We had one four weeks ago. I had a car at my old job. It just got towed in. It was in one of our own fleets. I hadn't worked on it in months. They towed it in. AC just stopped working. Excuse me. So they didn't tow it in. That's right. They drove it in, but the complaint was the AC is not working. Well, I get to looking on it and it's like a Hyundai something. The bell had broke. Now, that's what we call an EPDM, electron polymer belt. They don't crack and split the way the old school belts do. So really, if you want to know if the belt's worn, you're supposed to get your special little tool and lay it into the ribs, right, and see exactly what that is. That's a pretty involved inspection versus the old way. We used to just shine light on it and count the cracks and go, it needs a belt. Right. But the fact for me was is like, there's so much more now that's going into a proper inspection of a vehicle. It's becoming harder and harder to do. There's more things that you have to remove just to inspect stuff. So for these people that are pushing these DVIs and everything, let's be realistic about the timeframe that we expect people to get them done in. You know, um, because that belt gave us no warning that it was going to break. It had never been noisy. It's not like the AC compressor seized up and caused the belt to break. I literally put a new belt on that car, went through all the pulleys were good. The tensioners were good. I went through that whole car and found nothing wrong. It was just the original belt. It was six years old. It had like 150,000 miles on it. And it, it was past probably the point of interval of where maybe it should have been replaced. But we never replaced it. Because again, for where I work, if it wasn't broken, don't fix it.

49:48 - 50:24 SPEAKER01 At the same time, I feel like it helps cover in the tech because, hey, you got a picture, the belt looks great, but it broke. You know what I mean? It was a freak thing. And also, in the industry, got a lot of reputation of rip-off guys, hands down. And it's kind of a proven fact, hey, it was a great belt, it was a freak accident, or what have you. And maybe it helps that person not doubt the industry and the shop as bad as it would without the picture and the proof.

50:24 - 52:42 SPEAKER00 Because what I love about this is it's all documented. So now if the customer has a failure, we can go back and go see three months ago we took a picture and this belt was dried and rotted and cracked and we recommend it and you declined it at that point. Now you're here with a towed end and the belt's gone. and you're upset but we did we followed our process you declined the repair we didn't we didn't hate on you for declining that nobody lectured them and said hey you really should get that we'd let the customer it's still ultimately end of the day is their car right they're in charge right they get to make the choice what they want to spend their money on i'm good with it but i think about how many times the dvi would have been implicating it in my processes years ago for different employers how many Discounted repairs and bad feelings we could have avoided right because we had proper documentation that showed Yeah, it was starting to crack. It's one thing to say Belt is getting cracked, should be replaced. It's another one we have a photo and you can see, oh my goodness, that's pretty worn out, pretty cracked. And the customer still declines it, right? Because you can say, well, you guys tell me every time that that same customer, you know, suspicion of us. Well, you tell us all the time it's cracking. It wasn't making any noise, it probably wasn't that bad. The other thing we do is we do a battery test on every battery, within reason. Some of them now, they're putting them underneath the front seat, they're back in the trunk. So I was asking, how do you guys do it? If I can't get to it within the time frame, I write down, could not check because of labor required to just get at it to physically check. But I mean, if they're right there, we check them all and we take a screenshot of that machine saying it's good and we give it back to the customer. Because right now, like we're coming up in Canada, we're going to get them cold, we're already getting those cold nights. And that battery that tested good in August and started the car, come November, halfway through that first cold war, it is not going to start the car. So it covers our liability again, because we can say, see how the machine said it was marginal and you just, you chose to keep, unfortunately this is why you had to get it towed in.

52:42 - 53:22 SPEAKER01 And on the DVI situation, we live in a college town, kind of retirement college town, so nobody's really local. So always on Facebook, looking for a shop, looking for somebody to fix my car or somebody that's not pricey or somebody that's not gonna try to sell me a bunch of stuff that I don't need. End of the day, the way I see it as I've been in the field with LNN and learning, one, it's the DVI and all that is, for your safety. It's to let you know what's wrong with your car, that is your investment, to protect your investment or keep it up. We live in the mountains, suspension and brakes is a big deal.

53:22 - 53:23 SPEAKER00 The rust and brake line, all that's a big deal.

53:23 - 53:47 SPEAKER01 And so, you know, I get it, in the past, mechanics, the rip-off guys are trying to sell you stuff you don't know about, and the DVI is picture-proof, and they prioritize it on the DVI. Need something now? All the way down to the green. can be fixed later or addressed later.

53:47 - 53:56 SPEAKER00 That's what we do. Green is good. Yellow can wait three to six months depending or so many thousands of kilometers, right? And red should be done right now.

53:56 - 54:08 SPEAKER01 But just people's mindset of it because of the past. And now, those guys out there that do rip people off and the untrust in the situations, it's…

54:10 - 56:05 SPEAKER00 And we're never going to eliminate that completely. Right. Of course. Right. It's just the nature of the people and the customer and their relationship with their vehicle. Everybody's heard me for years talk about it's very few anymore that you get a customer and they love their car. Right. Now, you see it with the enthusiasts, right? They might have an old car or but even some people with like a nice Mercedes or whatever, they still hate putting money in a car. Right. So I'm not so in la-la fantasy land that I'm gonna start to create these relationships with people where they love their car. But what we can do is make it a lot more professional so that they feel more confident about having to repair it, having to service it. It's begrudgingly, I mean a car is one of them things that's just constantly costing you money. You put 100, you said your fuel bill alone every week is over 100 bucks to travel around. People hate that as it is. When all of a sudden you go in and you say, Hey, um, that you didn't even know you needed breaks. Cause they're not making noise yet, but they're only there at like, you know, two 30 seconds. It's time to get some brake pads on there. The customer's like, are you really sure? That DVI being able to show them, this is your car, right? We've all seen the old times, and I've worked with, I've seen it, where somebody says, they come out with a set of brake pads and they put them in front of the service advisor. Service advisor says, the customer needs brake pads. Customer goes, okay, I better get them brake pads. We all know there's been shops in the past. Those pads weren't even from that car. Right, right. And the customers have got wised up to that and said, how do I even know that's on my car, right? When you've got a picture and you can see it's the side of their car, right? And then, or a video and you scroll in and there's their brakes, that's their brake rotor all chewed up in a mess. What can they argue with you at that point? Nothing shady going on.

56:07 - 57:05 SPEAKER01 And on that subject, the other day I kind of got tickled. It's been a while, I've been around. Eric was taking shocks off of a Chevrolet 1500, replacing them. And there was one on the floor, I'm the babe beside him. I grabbed it up and took it to scrap pile. And I forgot. at the shop. We got a bin up front that the customer parts go in, old parts, to show them what they look like, the failures. Lucas or anybody in there will educate them why or what's failed on that part. And then I seen the two struts and the two shocks on his cart. He went and dug that shock out. I'm like, Oh, man, I'm sorry, Eric, you know, I forgot about Yeah, that, you know, but he went and got that, you know, shock and put it back in his cart to take it up front, you know, when it was time. So, you know, that's a little bit more reinsurance, trying to build a little trust back, you know, trying to, you know, rebuild the industry back from from the bad, you know, some customers don't care, right?

57:05 - 01:03:47 SPEAKER00 When they've got that level of trust, like they have with Lucas, they don't need to see the old part, right? But they're there, though. But they're there. And it's like, and we still are using it as a learning tool, still using it as a learning aid to say, hey, see how this is starting to leak oil out of it? That's why we changed it. We're not just doing it. I have a famous line I say all the time. The customer is like, I'm not just doing this for practice. I got all the practice I need. I'm doing it because it legit needs to be done. I don't like putting a lot of belts on a lot of cars, I hate doing belts. It's hard some of them to get at, the times suck on some of them, your hands are getting cut up trying to get my big mitts in there, but it has to be done. It's one of those things that if that sucker breaks, that customer's either, the worst is just going to wind up on the side of the road and they need a tow. If it breaks and they're going down the road and they don't realize it, that engine could be gone. So, I mean, I say all the time, I'm not doing this for practice. I'm doing it because your car legit needs it. Now, you don't have to do it with me if you don't want to. Right right that's up to the people out front to be able to sell the job But I still have to do my diligence and letting them know Everything that the car needs to be done. It's like you've heard Lucas and David talk about that 300% rule, right? I Still to this day and I couldn't recite it, but it's You do a thorough inspection on 100% of the cars. You do a thorough detailed estimate on 100% of the cars. And then you sell or do a 100% of all the repairs it needs. Something along that line. So many places don't even still grasp what they're trying to say. The customer comes in and says, I have this complaint. That's it. That's all I want addressed. And that's all they do. Well, I've never been that way. I'll drive the car and it's like, okay, so they're here for a sway bar like this noisy, but the brakes are making noise. The check engine light's on. When I go down the road and I turn my air conditioning on, it's not blowing cold. It's under power going up a hill. I'm writing all of that stuff down and I used to just write notes on the work order and nobody probably did anything with it. But now, with the DVI, it forces us Even if the customer is only there to just get that sway bar link noise, we still do the DVI, we still do the thorough inspection, let them know all the other stuff, because just like you said, to cover our butt, so that they can't say, well, you put a strut in and now this thing's low on power. Right. It was low on power before, it's documented. You just chose not to do anything about it, which is cool. It, it, I like the reassurance of having it because it makes me feel then like my boss is willing to look out for me. Right. Because then it's like, we've all, if a lot of us have, you've been in the shop, the customer says, well, was it doing it before or not? It's hard to remember, man. Like I, by the time you asked me a week later, what that, I can barely remember what I worked on last week. There's so many cars. Right. Was it doing it before? don't remember right like so now my process is to just drive every car you know if the customers there for an oil change I still I leave my parking lot I go up the road about a mile and I come back right just because I want to drive it and see doesn't have a wheelbarrow noises the tires choppy like am I hearing the tires because the tires look a little sketchy But it looks can be one thing. And then, but when I drive it, I'm like, no, there's definitely a tire noise there. Right. Then I can bring it back and say, Hey, because that same customer might come back next month and somebody else borrowed their car. Uh, we had a situation, dad borrowed the car, drove it, and then comes back and says, who's daughter you got a noisy wheel bearing. She comes in and gets a wheel bearing checked out. She doesn't have a bad wheel bearing. She just has choppy tires. Right? But she was willing to spend, go and change my wheel bearing out. You didn't need wheel bearing. Your just tires are chopped. All of a sudden we tell her that your tires are chopped. That's your noise. she rest assured because we're coming up on winter she's going to put her snow tires on here in another month and those tires are going to go in the garbage. Right. But she was ready and willing to go and get a wheel bearing installed on this Honda which wasn't going to be a cheap repair because somebody told her that sounds like a wheel bearing. Meanwhile we've been telling her this is the last year that you're going to be able to run those tires because they're getting low and treading and starting to chop. That is doing what we're supposed to be doing for the customer. Is making them aware that just because somebody else says it sounds like this and they put the bug in your ear. Doesn't mean that I should immediately bring that car in, sell a wheel bearing, plus sell tires. We know that happens all the time, right? The customer still leaves with a fixed car. Shop made some really good money. But me, I just want to tell them what's going on with the car. I don't even to the point now where I used to get really stressed out. And again, when you're working flat rate and you're working on an incentivized or commissioned plan, you want to see that every repair get done. Correct. Because that's your money, right? I just do my thorough inspection. I give it to the customer. I'm being the advocate for the customers Lucas taught me to do. And if they don't fix it, it's okay. Right? I'm on to the next one. When he first started talking about being the advocate for the customer, when I was where I was in my career, I was like, and I'm still not the advocate for the customer that he is. Because I'm still like a lot of the time when we were sitting here talking last night, I'm not the most sympathetic person to a lot of customers. I look at it as like they so begrudgingly hate to do any repairs. They have such a stereotype a lot of the time about what we are and what we do that I don't necessarily always feel sorry for them. But at the end of the day, I understand now when I'm advocating for them, I'm trying to keep them safe and reliable. And you know, I'm not in charge, they're in charge. But when I do my due diligence, my process, however it happens, it's gonna happen the right way. Because I have the people in my shop that are all on the same team, we're all on the same wavelength. I've worked in so many shops where There's different levels of care, right? My give a damn is busted, right? Some people came to work every day and their give a damn was busted. They did not give a crap about what they were gonna, they were there to make money. They were there to get cars moved through. That's how they're gonna go. It's refreshing now to be around people that it's like the number one thing is we're a team to advocate for that customer's car. Where do you want to see yourself go at L&N?

01:03:48 - 01:07:17 SPEAKER01 Well, going back to that, so Lucas was gone for a week in Colorado. And one point was you said Lucas knows what's going on. Most of the time, a ride down the road or he's gotten back and he's asking the guys, what about this car? What about this customer? He's been gone a week. And like you say, he still knows what's going on. I mean, he's kept up with it. I'm in the shop daily. Yes, I'm getting back in the groove, but I'm not even knowing this car is around. Want an update or how did this customer handle this situation or feel about things? So I work after work right now. I still do more yards with these Airbnbs and I do hot tubs. So I work after work, I get off at five, get to Yonge at 5.50, so it's 8.30 when I get home. I mean, that's cutting out on family time with me and her. But it's getting by for now. The extra money before winter or whatever, Christmas, starting to save, all that's good. And she's my little buddy, she's hands on. She gets to make her little $10 a night. So she's about making a little money. But I'd like to eventually not work after work like I was telling you. I seen where Lucas had an ad for a tech and I was like, It's kind of early on, but I was thinking, I'd like to be a tech again. Things are different now. Like I said, in the old shop, you had to do a lot of different jobs, and we made it happen, but now you can focus on just being a tech. And I was thinking, well, maybe I can give myself another try. So I thought about all week how I was going to talk to Lucas about it. And he gets in, and he's, you know, checking up on the shop and everybody, and I'm like, hey man, I need to talk to you about a couple things. He said, all right, let's go, talk about it. And I was trying to talk, and he's like, why are you so nervous? You know how he is, why are you so nervous? I said, I don't know. I was like, so I'd like to be a tech in the future. He said, or can I? Or how do you feel? He said, OK, well, let's do it. And then on the way here, on the ride here, a three-hour ride, he's like, well, let's talk about how we're going to do this. We're going to do it slowly. and how we're gonna ease our way in. And he said, start working with the fleet cars and the loaner cars, service them, take complete care of them. And then I talked about tools. Tools is a big expense in this industry. And I was working on, I got my little bit, the three years I worked there, but you know yourself personally what it cost in life to get those tools. He's like, well, I don't want you to go out and start buying a bunch of expensive tools. I don't think it's a need for them. You can wrench out my box. Slow, small steps. He said, you can definitely wrench out my box anytime. Harbor Freight, for the most part, has some good tools. The tools that don't do a lot of strenuous work that you're not going to break. you know, use them. And then he said the more expensive tools the shop's going to, you know, provide for you. So when I heard that, you know, I was like, wow, you know, he's really trying to help go in all areas to help, you know, the techs, you know, not have to stress as much because, you know, the tool bill is a big deal.

01:07:17 - 01:08:55 SPEAKER00 It's huge. It's huge. If I'd have been able to find an employer way back when that would have been able to help me not only just help me with being able to borrow and not don't get around. I've worked with lots of people that I could borrow their tools. But if I'd have had more guidance on what to buy, that's huge, right? Because otherwise we buy a lot of stuff sometimes that, you know, you see the joke and the guy walks out to the snap-on truck and he walks back in with a pocket knife. What are you going to do on that car with a pocket knife? Not a whole lot, right? Sure, it's cool to have. I tell the story all the time. I had a young apprentice with me, and he was on a Snap-on truck, and he was using the shop's impact gun and the shop's torque wrench, and he was doing a lot of tires. Well, he goes out to the truck one day, and he walks back in, and he's got a little three-eighths drive electric ratchet. It's a $500 tool. I'm like, what are you going to do with that? Oh, it's really neat, look it out. And I'm like. Really neat. I said, how many rims are you going to be able to take off with that? Well, none. He said, don't you think you should be maybe thinking about what you're doing every day. Right. And getting the tools for that. And then I went and had a talk with the Snap-on dealer. And this is the other thing I think, and it's not always a popular thing. I went with the Snap-on dealer and I said, that's not okay. You need to be guiding them a little more about this is what you do in the shop every day, you're going to need this tool. They definitely know, yeah. And so what he ended up doing is he took the tool back from the young lad. Just took it back. Nice. And then we got him into a torque wrench and an impact gun.

01:08:55 - 01:08:59 SPEAKER01 Well, maybe the Snap-On guy learned from that too as well.

01:08:59 - 01:11:40 SPEAKER00 Yeah, because I mean, their attitude is the customer is always right, whatever he wants. But I know there's also good dealers that have sat down with guys and said, you're starting out? Okay, you're going to need this. Right. Right? And then you go to that. And I'm not trying to say that tool trucks, that there's no place for them. That's a popular opinion that was passed around last month with another YouTube guy. And he's like, is there really a sense for a tool truck? Do we really have a need for that in the industry? He's kind of makes some good points. But what I want to see is that Yes, and you're building a relationship with that young apprentice or that young tech that you want to have that, you know, but people move around, they might go somewhere. But they need to be doing their due diligence to make sure that they're setting them up for a successful career and putting in the tools in their place, in their hands, so that they can do their job. Because we know that sometimes you may not work in a shop where there's a toolbox like Lucas's that everybody can work out of, and you're constantly having to borrow from everybody. That can strain the relationships. that you have with your co-workers. Because some guys, and I've done it, they're like, what are we paying him for if he's not buying tools? Right? So I liked Keith Perkins was here last night and he was talking and he's like, his guy, he literally says if the guy shows up with a pair of pants on, he's ready to work for me. I'll give him a pair of boots. I'll put a t-shirt on him. All the other tools he's going to need is already in the shop. That's a massive undertaking, right, when you think about it. I wish somebody had done that for me. I mean, I've had lots of guys that I was able to work out of their toolbox. I was able to borrow certain things, but it was just expected that, like, you're going to spend $100 a week at least on tools for the next 10 years of your life as you try to build your tool set up. So I mean you're very lucky to have Lucas. Oh, yeah, we talked about that all morning We've been talking about him, you know, I love how he just says well, let's do it man He says all the time and he's like, why are you so nervous? he's asked me that a hundred times in the last three months if he's asked me at all because he doesn't realize the what his words, the weight they carry, right? It's his attitude is, well, let's just do it. There isn't an obstacle that he doesn't see a way around or a way over or a way through. He just sees the obstacle as I'm going through it, right? I'm going over it. It's not going to be an obstacle. It's just going to be a challenge and I'll go on to the next one. He doesn't realize that some of us are not as confident as he is. And he's such a motivating force.

01:11:40 - 01:13:11 SPEAKER01 We're blessed to have him. When I first worked for him, I screwed some things up. I crashed a couple cars. Man, I come from a carpenter world and pop's pretty strict. I work for my dad most of the time and you mess up, you're gonna pay for it. You're gonna catch hell and it's what it is. And so I'm beet red in the face like, man, I gotta go there and tell Luke I just put this dent, I mean I gashed a car on the corner of a guy's flatbed one time and I've tore a few things up under the hood. I mean, I'm tore up. I'm going there and I'm like, Lucas, I gotta tell you something. He's like, what is it? And I was like, man, I screwed this shit up, man. Might be 1,000 bucks or something before. And he laughs at me. He says, it's just a car. Fix the damn thing. You know what I mean? I don't know, it's hard to accept that from where I come from, but he really meant it, like, ha ha, it's just a car, fix the damn thing, move on, it's gonna happen. That really speaks volumes of, you know. of, you know, a screw-up and understanding it. And like, you know, a lot of people take that to heart, get a cussing, then you go back to work, you're feeling terrible. You know, you might be mad because they're mad, but more you're feeling terrible, guilty, then, you know, then you're feeling as less like in your job or even doing the good job when you're working on the car. You know what I mean?

01:13:11 - 01:14:32 SPEAKER00 Like it- When it kills your confidence like that, I don't think so many owners don't get it. When you kill the confidence, when you beat that person down over that mistake, and I'm not saying, listen, that there shouldn't be a process and there shouldn't be a reprimand, because that's the only way we fix it is we go, okay, how did it happen and the why? How do we avoid that happening in the future? But when you just absolutely, or the worst is when they say, okay, you're going to pay for that. Right. Now every time you walk out there, how many days it may take to pay it off, how many weeks, paychecks, whatever, however you want to work it down, it's always in the back of your mind that I used to make this and now I'm making that because I'm paying for that mistake. So you already crushed the confidence. because like we're all still no matter how big and tough and you know what we do for a living there's a lot of us that are still we lack confidence sometimes and we're trying to tackle something that's that's complex or we're trying to you know a job's kicking our butt because it's rusted and seized and and you know somebody didn't make it a good enough note of that when we're doing the estimate so it's fighting us you know some cars just fight you When your confidence is already that, and then it's like, now you're going out there and you're actually paying for the mistake. Right. Do you really think that that employee is giving you a hundred percent anymore?

01:14:33 - 01:14:59 SPEAKER01 And of course, I've tried to offer to pay even some, I couldn't afford to pay some of the screw-ups I've done. But I tried so hard, and he's like, no, laughing at me. I'm trying to be all serious, and he's not that guy. And it's just, I guess it spoke volumes to me as where I come from, my background, and I mean, he had all right to be mad. I mean, he could've accepted some money. I would've tried to pay what I could've paid. But he just,

01:15:00 - 01:17:58 SPEAKER00 Was it going to do it? No. It's it's I've I damaged the door once and and they pretty much said to me like if you don't pay for that you ain't going to be working here. Right. And I thought about the what that was going to cost me and I needed the job and I paid for it. But I wasn't given a choice. It was like you don't have to pay for it. You can just lose your job. So it was. So what do I do? Right. I paid for it. In hindsight, it was a dead-end job anyway, but I needed that job then. It didn't make me feel very good, but I was the same as you. I had done a stupid mistake. I was hurrying to try and get it out and didn't have the door in the right position, back the car out, scrape the door. It killed me. Because all the profit that I was going to generate that week, you know, for my paycheck was going to be a big chunk of it was going to go back to fixing a mistake. And dude, was I really mad about the fact that they were charging me? No, no, I wasn't. I was more still mad about the scenarios, the situation that came into place as to why I had to rush in the first place. Right. Correct. That's what made me more mad. Right. I should have still not made the mistake. But what sometimes when you're in an environment where it's go, go, go, go, go, get it done. Fuck, what's wrong? Why hurry up? Why is it blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile, it's could have been like you could have stood at the parts counter for 10 minutes because they couldn't find you the part. You're not getting paid for that time. You could have spent 10 minutes looking for the special tool that you're gonna need to get the job done. You ain't getting paid for that time, right? And all of a sudden, and then so when you're trying to rush to get that thing done, because I promised it for nine o'clock and it's 945 and you're not done it yet. That's how mistakes happen. So the people that are listening that are all on the ball about let's charge these techs for their screw ups. If you're ever going to charge me again for a screw up, you better be 100% perfect in your processes before I'm ever going to give you a nickel back of my money. And I haven't seen a shop, too many shops, that are 100% perfect with their processes. So if you think I'm going to pay you, don't count on it, bud. Because to me, it's just not fair. There's things that we can do to make everything go smoother. I'm only in control of the car, and I know it's a big portion of it is being in control of the repair. But if I'm always having to fight the time and the time is how you pay me. I'm going to rush, you know. So what? long-term goal for George, what is it?

01:17:58 - 01:21:45 SPEAKER01 Long-term goals, well, like I said, I definitely wanna get, work-wise, I wanna get back into making better money, not work after work. As a carpenter and loving nice houses, I'd love to own a house, still rent, and I'd love to have me, I live in the mountains and I'd love to have an acre or two, just back in the woods. I live in town, I'm out in the city and it's great. And from the beginning of our conversation, you said you love the fish, so I already know why we magnetically drew to each other, because I love the fish. I just haven't, a few years where the business consumed all our time, and I believe, I'm stepping back, but just talking about that's your piece and kind of your church and all. I relate to that as the last two or three years, I like to hunt too, and I've not been in the woods, I've not been out there in the lake watching that steam rise, the water and the little brim popping, making the popping noise on the water, just those little details, man. I've been doing that since I was five years old. My dad, every summer we went fishing, every winter we went hunting, he took me. So I was a teenager, I was too cool to hang out with daddy. So that was, until I've been stripped of that, life stripped me from that the last two or three years, I see how more important what it done for me as inside my heart and my mind. And I believe that's, I'm getting back to that now, because that was my piece. Long-term goals, I just want to be as best as I can. I turned 45 the other day, and I want to live my best years out. I've wasted some time, wasted a lot of time. I definitely have a good job, a good friend, a good motivator. I've met you. I mean, the connection with you last day or two. I met Eric Bach a couple of years back at AST. He's from New York. we had conversations just like you did. I haven't seen you since. But just meeting new people at these events, like conversation at dinner last night. You met Paul Danner last night. I did, I did. And always heard of him. So back when I started with Lucas, the training videos that he wanted us to do was through Paul Danner. He definitely has a great way of teaching and getting his points across. And I was back to me talking to Lucas about the tech job and being nervous. So I thought about the conversation while he was gone. Part of it was saying that to prove to him that I wanted to come back and be a tech is I've always struggled with electrical. I've never grasped it very, very well. That's a big deal in the industry. If you don't know that, you're not gonna get very far. Even testing light bulbs, just to know if the light bulb's bad or the wire's not. So I said, so in my mind, as I made this conversation up in my head to approach him with while I was nervous, I was like, so I told myself I would get in scanner data program, I'd get myself in there. And I would go through the electrical again. And I would take either scanner, or, you know, scanner data test, or if Lucas want to give me a test to prove that the drive that I want, right to get back into it. Yeah. And then he's like, all right, good. And then he's like, wait a minute, because he knew a couple other classes and gonna find the ones that are best and ones that are coming up soon. And so we talked about it and of course he told me to maybe talk to Paul while I was here, see what's best, to get back on board. But yeah, they didn't know each other back then. He didn't know Paul or none, it was just he learned his techniques and his teachings and knew, I mean even Lucas, Learned through him.

01:21:45 - 01:22:54 SPEAKER00 Yeah, I mean, that's where it started It was it was so cool last year because like Lucas and I both talked to Paul for years but we both got a chance finally to to to meet him last year together the same time and To see where the the relationship now that is between Lucas and Paul because I mean, you know Paul talks about I recognize the name and But it wasn't like we were talking every day. Right. Him and Paul now talk as probably as often as Lucas and I talk. Right. And Paul has such a newfound, I mean, he always had a ton of passion for this industry. Right. But now he is so, when him and I were talking last night and he was in here in the room, you know, and we didn't have any mics turned on, we're just sitting around talking. He has such a renewed vision of how he wants to change this industry that It's just like, it's just like Lucas, it's infectious. And that's why, that's why I'm here for these three days, right? As I'm trying to bring people that I connect with, that Lucas is connected with, that Paul is connected with that haven't necessarily connected with each other, right? But if through me, I get them to connect,

01:22:57 - 01:23:17 SPEAKER01 When he came in, I was hearing your conversation. You was wanting to have a conversation with him here. And I heard, he's like, man, I don't want to talk about Skinner Danner. And he said, I want to talk about this industry and how we're going to make it better. I heard he say that. That's what I want to talk about. And I follow him.

01:23:17 - 01:23:50 SPEAKER00 So, you know, when he gets on there lately and he's talking about, you know, you know, he's been such a proponent of of my podcast and what I'm doing. I can never repay him. I can never repay him for what he did for me as a technician before I ever had a podcast. But now the way he is, is putting me out there for the people to see, to hear the conversations that we're trying to have. There's nobody like Paul Danner. There's nobody like Paul Danner. The only one close to Paul Danner is Lucas Underwood.

01:23:50 - 01:24:29 SPEAKER01 And our boys out to these conventions, these trainings to network and get together and meet. Everybody needs to come to AST. Yeah, Lucas has been always, since this started, we started that. He's tried to get the guys around our town, you know, there's a lot of small shops, you know, and he's tried to get them to come or, you know, if you can't afford it, he's going to help you or somebody around here at ASOC or somebody's going to help. That's just how they do right now. And they kind of think it's funny or goofy, or like you say, some of them, you feel like it's too big of a deal for you. Like you said, your personal experience for you, like I can't go there, it's not for me. You know what I mean?

01:24:29 - 01:24:31 SPEAKER00 I can't hang with those guys, is what I think.

01:24:31 - 01:25:05 SPEAKER01 Like I said, I was a beginner tech, and I'm learning. I mean, even if I'm in a skilled class still, there's bits of information. you can catch on to, take home with you, and they always got a book. You know what I mean? There's always a book to take home, to have, fall back on. I had them in my toolbox. I was new. I had a couple of packets. I took some electrical classes, and they had it broke down, and I'd keep them in there, because I was a beginner, and still not good at it. It had detailed, with the multi-tool and all, of how to test things.

01:25:08 - 01:25:25 SPEAKER00 These events are where we make the real change happen. And it's not through, like yeah, you'll take a class and you'll come away with a little bit of nugget of a knowledge, but it's the people you're meeting, like you and I this morning. Like, before I got off the plane, I didn't know who you were. Right? Right.

01:25:25 - 01:26:24 SPEAKER01 Yeah, I heard of Jaded mechanic, but I didn't I didn't even know it was a branch with, you know, I didn't know. I didn't know nothing about I just heard about it. And I heard Paul talk about it a little bit. Yeah. But that was it. Like I said, I've not listened to a lot of the podcast because I wasn't I didn't even know I was gonna get back into trade. I was kind of, one, to be honest with you, I didn't want to come back in because of the tool expense, just to be honest with you. My oldest daughter, she'll be 23 soon, her husband, he's a mechanic and works on big trucks and all. He's changing jobs and he's getting rid of the tool bill. He's telling me what he spends on tools. I didn't want to get in. It all happened. I'm definitely glad to be here. But I listen to some of the podcasts, because not all of it is about mechanics with David and Lucas. Some of it's proof of information that ain't about the mechanic part of life.

01:26:24 - 01:27:50 SPEAKER00 But yeah. And that's the kind of conversation that I want to have. I'm not about trying to teach somebody how to fix a car better. I can do it. I can mentor people. But I want to know what drives you to be where you are. That's way more fascinating. It's like Lucas, you know, seek first to understand. I want to understand everybody like you and I were talking. I want to be able to get inside that person and lay them all out there. That's how my brain works. I got to see all of that. What was your backstory? How did you, because that's how I start to understand The way they are right now is all a reflection of how we've been up to that point. I'm a big believer in condition. People are conditioned to act a certain way. We have to work hard, like you said, to overcome sometimes the way we feel. how we want to act because of the condition that we put through, we have to put faith in something to not act that way. If I can understand people's backstories, I can understand better how to help them, how to enable them, how to just do like Lucas does, show them their best way, how to get to where they need to go. I mean, I'm just, I'm a lucky guy. I really am lucky for Lucas to see the potential in me and to give me this vessel. And that's what I'm about. And I want to thank you for sitting down with me, man. This has been cool as hell. Look forward to many more. Oh, we will, for sure. But anything you want to say before we go?

01:27:51 - 01:28:00 SPEAKER01 I don't just, uh, this first time doing this as well. You know, uh, like I said, we've talked for an hour or two since last night and we'll, and we'll talk again.

01:28:00 - 01:28:43 SPEAKER00 I want to keep, you know, I mean, I talked to Lucas a lot and I'll be definitely checking in on how you're doing and I'll definitely be listening to the Jaded. I love it, man. Thank you very much. We'll talk to you again. Hey, if you could do me a favor real quick and like comment on and share this episode, I'd really appreciate it. And please, most importantly, set the podcast to automatically download every Tuesday morning. As always, I'd like to thank our amazing guests for their perspectives and expertise. And I hope that you'll please join us again next week on this journey of change. Thank you to my partners in the ASOG group and to the Changing the Industry podcast. Remember what I always say, in this industry, you get what you pay for. Here's hoping everyone finds their missing 10 millimeter and we'll see you all again next time.