Automotive Repair News Today

Braxton Critcher [00:00:05]:
What's up, Mike Allen. How are you, man?

Mike Allen [00:00:07]:
I'm good, man. How are you? Good to see you again.

Braxton Critcher [00:00:09]:
Yeah, good to see you, too. What's up in your world?

Mike Allen [00:00:12]:
A lot. We had an interesting couple of days at the shop. I've got some. Some key individuals that are off for vacation and getting their kids shipped off to college and that kind of thing. Oh, yeah, I. And today it felt. You ever have one of those days where you feel like just the wheels run off of everything?

Braxton Critcher [00:00:33]:
Well, usually I don't start days with the wheels on, so, I mean, if you start that low.

Mike Allen [00:00:39]:
Yeah. They can't fall off expectations appropriately so that you have none. Right, exactly.

Braxton Critcher [00:00:47]:
Exactly.

Mike Allen [00:00:49]:
We had a vendor who was pumping a waste oil tank this afternoon and didn't open the vent, and so created too much negative pressure and imploded the tank, the back of the shop. Power out at one shop, and it looks like it's a problem inside of our shop somewhere. So we're troubleshooting that.

Braxton Critcher [00:01:11]:
Why not? Why not add something else? Just another wrinkle.

Mike Allen [00:01:15]:
Yeah, why not? We were too busy. We're. I mean, I don't. I certainly don't want to make any money. That would be terrible.

Braxton Critcher [00:01:21]:
Yeah.

Mike Allen [00:01:21]:
Yeah.

Braxton Critcher [00:01:22]:
Come on. What are you doing? Why would you even try? Come on. Come on. Mike, you've been here long enough.

Mike Allen [00:01:29]:
Yeah, I know, right?

Braxton Critcher [00:01:30]:
So, well, speaking of money, I'm glad that you're here because I kind of want to talk about rates, raising rates and all that stuff. Like, in the past four years, everything's gone up. And obviously, in automotive repair, so has rates.

Mike Allen [00:01:51]:
Hopefully getting work done if you're a shop owner listening to this. Hopefully. So have your rates, right? Yeah.

Braxton Critcher [00:01:55]:
Yeah. Hopefully yours have, too. Yeah.

Mike Allen [00:01:57]:
So everything in life is more expensive now than it was four or five years ago. Oh, yeah. You know, if you are competing in a competitive marketplace for quality team members, then you better be able to pay them well. Right. Your pay rates have gone up, so obviously your retail rates have to go up as well to be able to, you know, field that additional expense. I actually get. You're talking about pay rates. I get a little bit frustrated when some of the online shop owner groups that have been around for a long time, it almost became like this running joke.

Mike Allen [00:02:35]:
Raise your rates. Raise your rates. Raise your rates. Anytime you have a problem in your shop and you ask for advice, there's just this wave of people saying that you're too cheap. Raise your rates. And that was born from a place of. There are an enormous number of shops that are not recognizing their value and not pricing their services such that they can have a good facility and have good tooling and have good benefits and attract good employees and that kind of thing. So a lot of times that was a good answer, and it still is the right answer a lot of times.

Mike Allen [00:03:12]:
But I feel like, you know, maybe the pendulum has swung too far in one direction in some instances because there are guys out there that, you know, kind of drank that KooL Aid and now they're 200, 3242 hundred, $50 an hour. But, and we should be, in a lot of instances, we should be up there. But they haven't brought along the quality of their service, the quality of their facilities. They haven't brought along, you know, the value adds that come along with that. So, you know, if, you know, a coke is a dollar in the vending machine ten years ago and it's 250 now, well, that's kind of come along with inflation to a degree. Right. But if it's, if it's $10, what's the value add? Maybe it's $10. When you're ahead at a concert you really want to be at? Well, you know, it's because they got it and it's at the concert.

Mike Allen [00:04:12]:
So there's a value add there. Right. But if it's $10, it's coming from the same vending machine. That, that doesn't jive. So I think there's a, there's a gap there. There's some folks that need to know that there's more than just raise your rates. You also have to raise your value, raise your quality, raise, you know, the facility, the tooling, the people, the better benefits. All of that costs money.

Mike Allen [00:04:35]:
So you should raise those rates. But if you're not doing any of those things and you're just racking up the rates, you're going to raise your rates right out of business. Right? Does that make sense?

Braxton Critcher [00:04:43]:
Oh, yeah.

Mike Allen [00:04:43]:
Sorry. It was a soapbox item for me.

Braxton Critcher [00:04:45]:
No, go ahead, sit on it.

Mike Allen [00:04:47]:
So, you know, I think.

Braxton Critcher [00:04:51]:
What, so what kind of, you know, value you're talking about? Like, you know, you mentioned coke. I think it's a good example, because if you're at a concert, that's added value to drinking a coke, like, that's not on the couch watching tv. To me, if you want whatever beverage of your choice at a concert, there's your added value. So, like, what? For a repair shop, help me fill in the blank. What kind of added value you're talking about that helps go along with raising rates that you can show a customer said, hey, we also offer this too.

Mike Allen [00:05:26]:
Well, so, I mean, there are lots of different things that you can do, and it varies from shop to shop and market to market and that kind of thing. So you, you need to know what your market is offering, right? What the best guys in your market are offering, what you can afford to offer. You need to be involved with some groups so that you can find out what that's like. Because, look, if you're on an island by yourself or if you're, you know, just kind of living in a very insular environment, you don't know what's possible. You don't know what you don't know. So at the risk of kind of beating the same drum over and over, you need to be out networking with other shop owners. You need to be out going to some of these training events to find what other folks are doing because there's no original ideas, right. So for me, there's a lot of things that we can do.

Mike Allen [00:06:12]:
You know, we, you want to offer the best warranty in your market. You want to have loaner vehicles, you want to have, you wanna have really good benefits for your employees. Well, that all costs money, right? So what do you mean by really good benefits? Well, you know, there's health insurance and there's 401k. But, you know, we offer a tool truck stipend. We offer a lot of paid training, you know, free boots, work boots, you know, free gloves, that kind of thing. So just, I never would have thought about that. That wasn't my idea. Somebody else at one of these meetings, at one of these events was like, oh, we do that.

Mike Allen [00:06:43]:
That's a great idea. I'm gonna do that. You know, and it goes beyond that too, right? Some of the best marketing ideas I've ever had came from just the networking at these training events. So obviously I am very biased and I have a vested interest in the one that's in my backyard. Asta Expo, right, is near and dear to my heart as a longtime member of the association. But if there's one in your neighborhood, you need to go. You need to go to tools in Pennsylvania, you need to go to vision, right? If you're in the midwest, you need to come. If you're anywhere in the southeast or even further, you need to come to the Asda expo.

Mike Allen [00:07:22]:
It's in my opinion, the best bang for your buck from a training expense consideration. And also the networking is unlike anything at any event. I'm talking better than apex, better than vision, better than, you know, world packs, stx, all that stuff, because of all of the different opportunities and network with other shop owners and vendors, uh, throughout the length of the event, uh, it's pretty special, and that's intentional, you know, it's not. It didn't happen by accident. We've planned it that way.

Braxton Critcher [00:07:53]:
Were you ever a shop owner that when somebody mentioned training or going to an event like that, you were like, eh, not for me. Was that ever you?

Mike Allen [00:08:04]:
No, I, like, I want to learn. Right. I, I.

Braxton Critcher [00:08:09]:
Because I feel like that that's a good portion of shop owners, you know?

Mike Allen [00:08:12]:
I think. I think so. Right. A lot of shop owners are like former technicians who, and technicians, by their nature, are curious individually, the kids that grew up taking the bike apart and putting it back together or the toaster or whatever, and putting them back together. But if you, if you can get over your ego and know that you don't know everything, and that's the challenge. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, we all, we are all creatures of ego, but I mean, if you can go to an event and find one thing or two things that you can implement and execute on, on Monday, when you get back to the shop, it pays for the event ten times over the course of a year. Right.

Mike Allen [00:08:54]:
And if you've never been to an event like this, it's my favorite thing to do is to come. To come to the expo and meet a first time attendee shop owner or a first time attendee tech, because they just, they have no idea and it just blows their hair back, right. The people that they've known or know of online, in social media or in forums, they get to meet face to face and share a drink with or, you know, break bread with or go to their class and meet them, you know, but the shop owners, they come in for the first time, they go and they sit down in front of Cecil Bullard or Rick White or any one of these other trainers are going to be there. Darren Barney is going to be there. And it's like somebody's turned the light on finally, and they see, oh, my God, I don't have to work 70 hours a week and never take a vacation, or I don't have to close the shop to go on vacation, that this really can be a lifelong nest egg and not a job that breaks my soul. Yeah, I know. I know. You know Lucas very well.

Mike Allen [00:10:00]:
And he's told the story that the first time he came, his intent was to go to tech technical training because he was going to close up the shop and go get a job at a dealership, because there's no way that he could make more money than he could get paid at the dealership. It's like he just didn't know. Right. And now look where he is. So it's because he chose to come to a training event and meet some people and have his eyes opened. So it's pretty amazing the effect that you see from day one to closing to closing dinner with first time attendees. It's one of the most fun things that I get to see every year.

Braxton Critcher [00:10:35]:
Right. So on the scale of this is my takeaway from the event, is it more of the training or is it the networking, or where does that, like, scale tip for you?

Mike Allen [00:10:53]:
So for me today it's the networking, but that's because I've been to 30 training conferences and I've been to hundreds of hours of training. Right? Yeah. You take me back a decade when I first started coming to them. Absolutely was in the class, because I didn't have all these relationships built yet. And some training events are more clicky and standoffish, and some of them are more welcoming and social. Obviously, I feel biased that the expo is the most open arms and socially welcoming of all of them, but if you're a first time attendee, you need to go to class and you need to pay attention, you need to take notes. And my advice is to take all the notes you want and then understand that you're never going to get all that done. So when you get back to the room at night, try to whittle those notes down to two or three takeaways from each class that you go to.

Mike Allen [00:11:51]:
Because if you try to do it all at once, you won't execute on any of it and you'll believe that it was all hogwash. But if you just pick two or three things to execute on from each class, that you can be a better technician, be a better manager, be a better service advisor, a better recruiter, a better marketer, you know, then that's how you get those little incremental changes that change your life and change the life of your employees, right? Because you're responsible for the livelihoods of all of your employees and their families. If you choose to own a business, employ other people, that's the responsibility that you're taking on. Yeah, and it's pretty powerful stuff. So if you're an early attender, if you haven't been to it many, I would say the classes, and you still need to start building those relationships. If you've been to a dozen of these things or 20 or 30 of these things still reason to go because of the networking and meeting. The new tech techs that you met a decade ago are now shop owners. Right.

Mike Allen [00:12:43]:
And we can pull each other up together. Right. You don't have to be a master to teach someone. You just have to be further down the path than the next person. And so those conversations also are hugely valuable in the hallway and at dinner and at the social events. So, except for at casino night. At casino night, it's just silliness. It's just total silliness.

Mike Allen [00:13:05]:
So.

Braxton Critcher [00:13:06]:
Well, you know, I do feel like, you know, that may stretch outside of the casino night just a little bit since Lucas is going to be there. But I mean, and David. I mean, David Roman, if you guys have listened to change in the industry, silliness just kind of follows them along.

Mike Allen [00:13:23]:
He's maybe the most social person I've ever met. There's nothing he loves more than getting out there in the middle of the hallway and just greeting people and giving hugs to everybody. Yeah, dude loves a hug. Yeah. If you see Roman, give him a big hug.

Braxton Critcher [00:13:36]:
Big hug. He loves them all about it.

Mike Allen [00:13:40]:
It's awesome. I can't wait. I'm excited for it. We're six weeks out. It's going to be amazing. Next year, we're going to be at the Raleigh convention center, which is four times the size. So this year, we had so many instructors submitting classes that wanted to come in and be there. We had to actually draw a line and cut it off because we had way more people wanting to teach than we actually had space for.

Mike Allen [00:14:01]:
Um, and so, uh, you know, if you look at the. At the course lineup and the instructors and the subject matter lineup, I mean, it's. It's really dynamic. I mean, I'm frustrated because every learning session that we have over the three days, there's more than one place I want to be. Right. I just want to multiply myself so I can go to four different classes every session. Um, so I'm just sending several people from the. From the company, and everybody goes to their own class, and the takeaway is you take notes and you come back and we're doing lunch and learns over the next month, and you get to teach your class or the key takeaways from your class.

Braxton Critcher [00:14:38]:
That's a good idea.

Mike Allen [00:14:39]:
So that everybody can get some value out of it. Right?

Braxton Critcher [00:14:41]:
Good idea. I will say it's probably important to share that this is the Asta Expo, and it was called Astro.

Mike Allen [00:14:51]:
It was. And Lucas likes to give me a hard time about that. We had all this Alphabet soup. It was the automotive service. Entire alliance is the name of our association and we had been hosting for years the automotive service and technology Expo. And so it was Asta put on by what was Igo and NctDA, and now is Asta. And it was just Alphabet soup.

Braxton Critcher [00:15:12]:
Yeah, that's giving me a headache right now.

Mike Allen [00:15:14]:
Yeah. And so now it's just the expo. ASTA is the association and we host the expo.

Braxton Critcher [00:15:19]:
Yeah.

Mike Allen [00:15:20]:
So Lucas likes to make it up to this big deal that it's way more complicated and confusing than it needs to be. It's not. Lucas is just simple minded.

Braxton Critcher [00:15:29]:
I'll send him that clip there. You just said, oh, please do share that with him. Link to register for the ASTA Expo is in the description of this podcast, the YouTube video and hey, come say what's up to us. I'm going to be there. Mike's going to be there. Of course, we talked about Lucas and David, so we'd love to.

Mike Allen [00:15:49]:
A bunch of different podcasts they're recording. Yeah, go get. Go get your Internet fame on.

Braxton Critcher [00:15:53]:
That's right.

Mike Allen [00:15:54]:
It'll be awesome.

Braxton Critcher [00:15:55]:
Yeah. Jump on episode. If you got news to share, we'd love to talk. So, yeah, we're gonna be there. Asta Expo coming up September 26, 27th, 28th in the show notes.

Mike Allen [00:16:06]:
Come early. I'll give you a tour of the shop.

Braxton Critcher [00:16:09]:
Oh, yeah, that'd be great. Yeah, yeah. All about that. Well, thanks, Mike.

Mike Allen [00:16:13]:
Thanks, Braxton.

Braxton Critcher [00:16:13]:
Yep. Hey, if you're still here, thank you so much for listening to this episode of Automotive Repair news today. If you enjoyed the show, please take a moment. Like share, subscribe to the podcast. It'll help us out a big deal and help grow the show. And you know what? While you're at it, slap on a review, too. If you feel like this content is helpful for the industry, don't forget to follow us on all your favorite social media platforms. We're on Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn.

Braxton Critcher [00:16:44]:
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