#58 Are You Hail Ready
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[00:00:00] 1, 2, 3, 4.
What's up guys? Gene Fetty back at you with another episode of the All Access Podcast from Dent Repair Now. Guys, it is level up week, uh, looking forward to it. Uh, we've got just a few days, uh, until we start. Um, been prepping for about a week, getting the shop ready, collecting all the panels, making sure all the tools are right.
Uh, it's, it's really a fantastic week. This is our third level up, uh, and I'm super excited, uh, for this week. So, uh, this is not gonna be a really long show. I've got a crazy busy week. We've got the podcast. I've got, uh, 20 group meeting tomorrow night. Uh, Jean comes in Tuesday. We finish set up Wednesday and then [00:01:00] class Thursday, Friday, Saturday.
And me and John will probably join you for next week's show and do a little level up wrap up. So that is it. Uh, if you would like to come to one of the Level Up classes, head on over to dent repair now.com/level. Or up? Uh, I've got a waiting list. Uh, that list will be the first list to get, uh, notice of our next class.
Uh, I'm gonna twist John's arm and see if we can't pull something off for the fall. Uh, and if not for the fall, certainly next winter around this time. So if you're interested, think you're interested, might have been interested, might be interested in the future, head on over there and drop onto that list.
Uh, so I can let you know when it's gonna happen. Uh, so what do we got going on, man? It's me and Melissa. Were sitting down talking the other day and, uh, [00:02:00] it is going to be a busy year. It's already a busy year. Um, it level up this week, uh, in just a couple of weeks, I guess about 3, 2, 3, yeah. And about three weeks.
Uh, Chris White from Kiko. Rocking the, there it is, rocking the hoodie tonight. Uh, asked if I would go over to Italy for the DB Expo and the advanced class that, uh, Bryce and Gdes are doing. Uh, Kiko is gonna supply some of the big pulling tools, uh, for that. Uh, I talked to Bryce. It's a go. So I am heading, wait, we, we, me and Melissa are heading over to Herba, Italy.
I think we're flying into Milan. Uh, this will not be Melissa's first trip to, um, Italy, but it is my first trip to Europe. [00:03:00] Uh, I've been to Mexico, I've been to Canada. But I have never gone across the pond. So wheels up. Here we go. We'll see how that goes. Uh, I'm sure, uh, I'm probably gonna vlog about it 'cause you know, why not?
It's pretty cool. Uh, and maybe we'll even get to do an episode from Italy. Hmm. Bon no. Huh? See, I'm even studying it up on some of my Italian, uh, language. Oh, shoot. Wait, it's nighttime. I shouldn't, should not say bojo now. Well, you could listen to this in the morning and bojo to you. Have a great day. Um, so that is coming up, uh, shortly after that, right?
March. April's pretty clear. Uh, probably do some pool training here, uh, but then. May, May 1st, I think it is gonna be a go. We are gonna be doing a, an [00:04:00] in-person advanced glue poll class one day at Anson, uh, on May 1st, the day before their open house. And their open house is also their 30th. Anniversary.
Happy, happy anniversary to Anson, uh, Christina, Craig, Lisa, Vinny Cade, everybody at Anson. You guys were amazing and happy anniversary to you and I cannot wait for the 30th anniversary at Anson. Guys, even if you can't come for the um, advanced glue poll. You gotta make it there for the 30th anniversary of Anson.
That is just amazing, uh, and I can't wait to celebrate with them some big news. About the PDR Expo, which is September 25th and 26th, I believe. Uh, which you [00:05:00] know, will be here before we know it. Uh, Susan just reached out to me to see about, uh, education day or education classes. It's not really an education day out there.
It's, it's more sprinkled throughout the expo. Um, we are going to be doing a class. On Saturday, the 26th or whatever. Saturday is closest to the 26th, if I have my days wrong. Um, but at the Rio, the new venue for the PDR Expo, they have room. The ability to bring cars in. We are going to be, we, I, I am going to be teaching a class, but it is going to be a live class, a live demo vehicle in hand.
Uh, I'm sure it's gonna be glue pull, so tabs on paint moving, metal making magic happen. In class, uh, her, her specific words to me were, [00:06:00] we do not want a PowerPoint. We don't want to be talked at. We want to see live action, right? If I had the ability to edit or the forethought, I would've put a little turtle man in there where he goes, live action.
And if you're not sure who that is, he's on TikTok now. Uh, but Mack loved him when he was a little kid. So anyways, we're gonna have a little bit of live action glue pull in, uh, out in Las Vegas at the Rio, uh, Mac is going out, uh, to. Swing at the beginner's competition. He will be right at 22 months in so solidly under the two year mark.
Um, but going back to go for that first place prize. And he said he also wants to compete in the dent trials. Man, I can't wait to see how that kid does. He just continues to blow me away. And I hadn't talked to John, uh, but I saw the video that MTE put [00:07:00] out this past week, uh, where he announced that this past Dental Olympics was his last dental Olympics.
Uh, and he's moving to the judging team next year. Um, but he did not say he wasn't competing in Vegas. So we will see Jean. Are you gonna compete in Vegas? You probably won't want, well, maybe you'll listen to this on the flight over anyways. Maybe we'll talk about it on the next show. I don't know. We'll find out.
Um, so it is already stacking up to be a great year. Uh, me and Melissa are talking about, uh, some of the other classes, uh, that we're gonna be teaching this year. Uh, keep an eye out. We will be putting a training calendar, uh, onto the Dent Repair Now website. Uh. Keep an eye out. It's coming up. Follow us. Um, oh, speaking of following, we just passed 3000 followers on Facebook.
Um, [00:08:00] part of the transition out of a a i and dent repair now being separate was like the ability to allow me to focus, uh, because I got into that like paralysis by analysis. Like, do I do this, which ignores this? Or back and forth and. In that paralysis by analysis, right? We stopped doing everything. Um, but even while a a, I was around and dent repair.
Now o obviously has been around. I never felt like we got good traction anywhere. Like it always felt like we were spinning our wheels in claw and trying to get to the somewhere
December 12th. I think it was December 12th, we passed 2000 followers, and then in under 30 days we passed 2,500 followers and now we are, we cracked the 3000 mark overnight last night. Um, I'm so excited and this is exactly what I was trying [00:09:00] to accomplish with. Rolling. My favorite parts of a a I into Dent repair now is to be able to focus on the brand, focus on the content, focus on the value to you.
To build our, our following to build our brand. And it's working. Thank you all for being a little part of that. Um, and I can see the numbers on the podcast are ticking up. Uh, that was rough to go from where? A, a I was back to zero, right? Because it was a whole new feed. Uh, but we are crawling up there. Uh, I'm sure I'll be sharing some milestones with you on that before too long.
Whew. That's the intro, I guess. Alright guys, so tonight's topic, I, I don't want to, I got kind of deep and philosophical and, you know, the whole shop story Last time, um, this week I wanna talk about a little bit of hail. Um, two or three days ago, whatever, I think it was [00:10:00] the 19th, it's the 22nd. It'll be the 23rd.
When you listen to this two or three days ago, the first real hail of the season dropped. Uh, we here in Pittsburgh have experienced the first storm of the year, like first big storm of the year. Um, at least twice. Yeah. At least twice and almost a third time. Uh, we were like a day after the first real storms, uh, of the COVID year.
What was that? 20? Um, I wanna talk a little bit about hail preparedness. Uh, if. If you're a chaser, right? If you're a hail guy, you're probably already chomping at the bit, right? It's, it's almost the end of February, right? You've been home, you're like, come on man, we need a good storm. I know John is chomping at the bit he's ready to go.
As a local business owner, uh, whether you're mobile technician or shop [00:11:00] can need to be ready to go. If you've never experienced a storm, you literally go from wherever your operating RPMs are. To red line overnight, right When that hail hits, it changes everything. Uh, and generally, right? It's not the dead season when that comes around.
So you might already be booked out a couple of weeks, or you might run a full busy route and you don't have extra time, and now you're gonna get dumped on with all of this hail. You need to be ready. Some of the things that I think you should do. And have in place before it hails, before you are in total chaos.
If you have the opportunity, talk to your dealerships and see and talk to them about hail preparedness. Find out if they're aware of what their coverage looks like. [00:12:00] Uh, maybe have them look at their policy prep, all that out, what that does. If you can sit down and have that conversation is shows that you're the expert.
You understand this, you're preparing this. When it hails, everybody's coming to town, and especially wholesale can be difficult, right? I've lost, I've lost dealer accounts over this, or walked away from dealer accounts over this. I have had my bids cut drastically. Right when this happens. But I've learned how to save these accounts.
I've learned how to have these conversations beforehand, um, and set everything up to minimize our risk with this and maximize our chance at capturing the wholesale deal. Now, it may not be the most exciting thing wholesale, like wholesale numbers, however, they're generally pretty quick. And other than a little bit of an administrative nightmare, [00:13:00] well, headache, uh, they're certainly very profitable very quickly.
But you need to watch out that you're not getting sucked into, uh, trying to take care of your wholesale dealer account and you miss out on taking care of your, in essence retail or your high dollar hail account or your body shop accounts right there. There's a big difference there. So talk to those dealers, see where they're at, see where their preparedness is at, and now asterisk provided.
You can actually do this, reassure them that if there is a storm and they've got 200, 400, 500, 800 cars on the ground, they know you as the local dooring guy, right? Oh, gene does, you know, eight cars a week for us. How could he ever do 700 cars? With my network that I've built now, right, with our [00:14:00] backlog of, of, you know, jobs we've done and how they've gone smooth.
And I've got people I can refer dealers to to get their references, but ahead of that, I assured them, listen, I've got contacts all over the industry. I've got hail company contract contacts. We can handle anything that you need done. You need 500 cars done. Great. You need 500 cars done in the next two weeks.
Oof. Okay. But great, we can make this happen. Um, I laid all of that out before, before it was a problem. Right. It's sort of a reminder that I need to go back and talk to our accounts just to reassure them that we are still the people to take care of it. However, no. Let them know that you are the expert when it comes to PDR, when it comes to hail damage.
Your body shops. Have you even talked to your body shops [00:15:00] about hail damage and what that looks like and what to expect and what workflow is gonna look like? Listen, just like you were running at, you know, 3000 RPMs and it hailed and now you're at nine grand bouncing off the rev limiter, your body shops may already be there plus, right?
They're already booked out four or six weeks ahead, and then we are just gonna drop hundreds of claims on them overnight. They're not ready for it. That's gonna stress them out and break 'em and. They need to be taken care of all of their current customers. Right. The customers that were in the queue. It's time, right?
It's early. It's late winter, early spring, I think. I think March 20th is the first day of spring. Um, our first storm, the one year was March 23rd. My buddy Dan in Illinois caught like a February twenties, right? It would be like this week. Big hailstorm. [00:16:00] It's time to have these conversations yesterday, right?
When you're listening to this, make it your goal to go out and talk to your, your, your dealerships and your body shops. What to talk about at these body shops. Now, I don't know that you need to get into percentages. You probably should, you should probably get that outta the way, get it locked in. Because as the local company, when it hails, the big dogs are coming in and everything I see online and everything I read and hear is that percentages are getting higher, not lower, uh, to the body shop.
And if you're gonna try to compete on that, when these guys are giving ridiculous percentages, they're gonna run you out. Get to the body shop, reassure them that, Hey, I can handle whatever you need. I've got the contacts, I've got this. I've got X, Y, and Z. In fact, I will tell you, if you don't have the contacts and you [00:17:00] get hit and you need help, reach out to me and I will put you in touch with the right contacts to handle whatever you need.
It's absolutely doable, but have that conversation before everybody's running at Red Line and freaking out. Right. Talk about some scenarios, right? Grab your manager, preferably your owner, if you can get to them, excuse me, uh, about where you gonna work, how do they want to handle it, right? So my favorite body shop back in the day.
Loved put to put roofs on cars. Never had a pro. If like the roof was bad, he would never ask us to save a roof. Right? We'll put a roof on it. I invested in all this money in these shops or in these, in this equipment. Let's put the roof on it. Have I got another guy that loves to put hoods on cars? Oh man, I already ordered the hood.
I told them, you know, this dent was on [00:18:00] that body line and you can't do it. All right, dude. Go like, learn. How your body shops are gonna work. Talk about it, figure out your workflow, figure out what they want to do. I had a great relationship with a body shop back in the day when it was me and Louis and we were just wholesale out running all the time and the body shop was a busy body shop already, already busy all day, nevermind.
Did working long hours, especially when it came to hail. Um, I had a key to the place we would go in. Like four o'clock, like run through the route, get the route done, take care of our wholesale customers or regular customers that are there all the time would show up at the body shop at four, they would already have the car in and torn down and ready to go.
Go over everything together. It was a DRP shop, so it was just right and go. And we would knock out like a hail car a night, two of us. Sometimes we'd call my buddy Charlie in and three of us, and then we would [00:19:00] just bang out this car. Done. They'd come back in the morning, put it back together. We'd go out on the route, rinse and repeat, and we would do 3, 4, 5 hail cars a week.
It was a beautiful thing and it worked for everybody. We kept our flow on the route, right? We kept our normal route, kept everybody happy there. The body shop was able to keep their normal collision workflow that their business is built on and flow through. And we worked in the evenings. It was a beautiful thing.
We've had other shops that, right? They've got an extra building and we set up and that is just balls to the wall and get it going. Have these discussions ahead of time and know exactly what you're walking into. Do you have your equipment ready to go for hail, right? Are you stocked up on glue tabs? Uh, you got, you got good cold glue, right?
You get that new Lexo Diablo? Did you pick that up from Anson? Um, nice [00:20:00] hard pulling. Uh, did you check out the AR 10 upgrade from Dent Layer? Right? Where are you at? Are you ready to go? Is your hood stand in good shape? Have you even had it out in the last six months? Eight months? When's the last time you used it?
Make sure it's good. Check your caps. Maybe you need those new dent vision caps to put on the arms. 'cause your old rubber ones are worn out. Are your hail lights good? I know when I was door hanging, I hardly ever used a full-size light. It was portable light the whole time. It was like the big light was just a hail light.
Make sure it's set up and working. Make sure your batteries are good to go, so you're not scrambling around to, uh, to do that. Do you have a plan in place to get your estimates written? What is your strategy for writing estimates? What I can tell you not to do is get sucked into the, I'm gonna grab the pop-up line board and go outside and write these.
You'll cost yourself a ton of money. You'll lose a ton of [00:21:00] money, or you're gonna end up doing a ton of supplements on the back end. Slow down, be ready to slow down and write your estimates and get going. Uh, and. Set them up and write 'em properly so you're not going back and supplementing yourself in the beginning.
Do you have markers, right? Do you use the auto writers? Do you use the, the posca? Uh, I like the soft, um, I guess it's almost like a grease pencil, but it's like a, it's like a soft waxy pencil, uh, that marks and wipes right off super fast with glass cleaner. Are you set up for everything? Have you looked at Dent Ops or Claim Connection and set up your accounts there to see what it looks like to work with them and let them write estimates?
I can tell you right now we are doing a, uh, hail, [00:22:00] um, invoice audit through 10 tops, and I'll tell you, they've got my interest peaked with the numbers they're coming back with. Uh. That we're going to audit and supplement back to the insurance companies. Very curious how that goes. Uh, and this may be the move that shifts my mindset from we write a damn good estimate to, um, maybe we should be using, uh, a separate, um, estimating service for these cars, right.
Wait and see, but have you looked at it? Right? Are you ready? Are you prepared for that? Um, you know, like listening to, to the PDR College podcast, which is back on a weekly basis, if you don't know, you need to be listening to that, of course, after you catch the all access joke, but Right. Keith and Shanda have been putting out content every week.
They're back on a regular schedule. Um. [00:23:00] Kind of bummed that I'm not on the road anymore because that was how I loved to start my week anyways, neither here nor there. You are getting ready to go from right. If you're doing wholesale, uh, maybe a couple hundred dollars average ticket or maybe even a hundred dollars average ticket, or maybe you're doing retail or you've got a four or $500 average ticket to a five to $15,000 average ticket overnight.
Right? Are you prepared? To make that jump,
what do you have in place to track these leads? Really, you should be tracking your leads, uh, if you're doing any kind of retail, but what do you have in place to track your leads? When somebody calls in with hail damage, right? And then they drop out or you don't get back to 'em, or you write it, 'em an estimate and then they disappear.
Are you using a good CRM? There's customers plus, um, there is, uh, [00:24:00] shop launch from Matt. Like, check out a CRM, get that in place before one, before the busy season two before the potential hail season, right? You need to be ready for all of these things
if you're running a shop. What processes. Do you have in place before it hails? Have you thought about it? You should think about it and you better get 'em in place. Do you have somewhere to store cars? Right? Our goal when it hails, if they've got a claim, capture the keys, get the car. We'll figure it out.
Right? Keys? Keys. Keys. Uh, I heard Matt Moore. Maybe it was even just at dinner at MTE, right? Talking about grab the keys, get the keys, get the car, capture the claim. Then figure it out. Do you have somewhere set to hold cars? Can you hold cars? Is it a safe place to hold cars? [00:25:00] How many cars can you hold? What kind of key storage do you have?
Do you have a filing system, right? Because with this hail comes loads and loads and loads of paperwork, right? The original estimate. Supplement one, supplement two, yours, um, parts, invoices. Do you have somewhere to keep all of that straight or do you have a virtual setup? Right? Do you have a Google Drive that handles all of that for you?
So it's easy and searchable and you can go if you don't, you need to get it in place, but do you have a keyboard, right? I don't mean a keyboard like this on my computer. I mean a keyboard to hold keys and not just hold keys, but to track them through the repair. We have a whiteboard, right? Thanks, Dan Ner, and I think maybe you got that from, uh, Shane back in the day, or Tony.
Um, right. Where's it at? Is it in process? Is this approved? How do you attract this? How do you tell everybody what's going [00:26:00] on? I cannot stress enough how important it is to be ready for hail. And if you're not ready. You're gonna lose a lot of money and you're gonna gain a whole lot of extra stress on top of an already stressful situation.
You gotta have it there. Do, what are you gonna do about parts? Do you have accounts set up with different dealers, uh, for parts? We continue to add them. We've got our whole list, uh, of ones, are you set up on a credit program? Are you paying as you go? Are you using a debit card or a credit card, or are you writing a check?
How are you gonna track the parts? Where are you gonna store the parts? I'm just telling you all of these things. One, to prep myself for hail season, but two, we have been doing hail. Locally running our own storms since 2008, right? I started [00:27:00] in oh two. Oh eight was our first real hailstorm. We've averaged the storm a year since then.
Um, what we do, every storm is at the end of the storm. We sort of armchair quarterback it and we sit down, right? Whether it's back in the day, whether it was just me or me and Charlie, right? Not even the same company, but, but friends or the whole team. And we look back and in each storm we find like, what were our bottlenecks?
What did we struggle with? What should we do to solve that? Right? Um. Working with body shops, okay, this body shop likes to do this. This is where it's gonna hang up. How can we solve that problem? We look back and figure out how to get better after each storm. All of these things I'm just telling you are things that I have learned from each storm.
Uh, and again, more and more and more. And we could probably do a class just on hail [00:28:00] management. Uh, in fact, was it hail? They call it hail trainer. It was Tony. Uh, Tony and Max used to do a hail only class, uh, almost like a seminar, and they taught hail chasers how to do this. Now we probably need. Some sort of how to hail as a local tech and what to be ready for.
You know, we even held the hail expo last year, maybe not at the best time of the year, but lots of great discussions there with how to run a storm, what to do. In fact, that reminds me if you'd like to go back and watch any of those. The Hail Expo replay is up on the institute at Dent Repair now. Um, I'll drop the link to the class in the description.
Um, I think it's like 99 bucks. You can go back and listen to, uh, me talk about marketing. [00:29:00] Noah Hebert. Talk about dent ops and claims handling Paul Corden, like a whole mess of people. Matt Moore was there, everybody talking about how to work better storms. Go check it out. I actually kind of forgot that it was there, but it is there.
Um, again, I'll put the link in the description for you to check out. You need to be ready. Hailstorms, I don't wanna say can make or break you 'cause I haven't seen it break too many people, but I have seen several people get made, uh, with it and, and make a ton of money, um, and be super profitable and, you know, it's almost like a.
It's almost like a lottery ticket that you work for, which is pretty, pretty, pretty cool. Um, to be ready, be ready for the hail, be ready for the chaos that comes with hail, but you can also reap a ton of benefits, uh, with the hail. If I can help you out with any of this or [00:30:00] what are your, you know what, more than that.
No, I don't, I don't know that I can help you. Help you. How about. Send me comments, drop me BMS about what are some of your best practices for being the local tech with a hailstorm? How are you tackling those hailstorms? How are you handling the logistics of a storm? Do you have a paperwork trick? Do you have a keyboard trick?
Um, drop an example of your keyboard. I will, uh. I try to, in fact, I'll, I'll drop it on the dent repair now page pages, the gram, we'll do it for the gram, um, and show you my keyboard board, my or my whiteboard tracker that tracks what phase we're in and where we're going and what's going on. Um, that's pretty cool.
It's very cool. Hail can be amazing. Again, it's the 22nd. I know. I've had friends in the next week. That have gotten [00:31:00] storms this early, certainly within about a month. Hailstorms could be firing right up As crazy as this winter has been, right? We had 20 degree weather in Miami, right? These jet streams and stuff are flowing and going nuts.
All it takes is a thunderstorm to pop up. We had the biggest thunder I've ever heard in my life, just the other night. We had a, a front move through, uh, and it was one of the brightest flashes of lightning I've ever seen. And then honest to goodness, it shook the house for 10 solid seconds. I mean, it was like, it was harder than the, I dropped bombs like Hiroshima from the chronic album.
I mean, like, it absolutely rocked the house. Uh. Storm season is here. There's already been storms. I think Detroit's been hit, um, since, or indie somewhere over there. I saw some reports. Now I don't know if it hit population, but I did see hail dropping on the ground. Uh, hail trace is up. There was already, I think, three [00:32:00] tornadoes, right?
So guys, it's here. You need to be ready. Have you ever experienced this storm before? If you haven't, you need to be ready. I remember my buddy Dan up in, uh, Dan Rikki in Rochester, the dent guy of New York. He got hit two years ago, I think it was two years ago, and full chaos. Right. Thought he was ready.
Wasn't ready. Still did really well. Could have done better. Right? You need to prep and be ready for this stuff, man. It is. Uh. It is something. Alright, I think that's it. That's a lot. Nice half hour show today. That was good. Didn't overwhelm you. You can go find the, uh, PDR College podcast or I think they put up, uh, Keith's most recent Dense Slayer podcast, which is like almost four hours long or it's on dense slayer, so I'll give you a little [00:33:00] shorter show.
You can spend a little bit of time going over there and doing that, and I would look forward to. Next week, next show. Um, I think it'll probably be me and John talking about Level Up and how it went and what it was like and what we learned, right? Just like our armchair quarterback, those, uh, hailstorms when they're done, we always armchair quarterback our trainings, whether it's glue pull or advanced one-on-one or level Up or whatever it is.
Always trying to get better. Uh, and make it happen. Guys, thanks so much for listening. As always, go follow us on social. Keep an eye out. Help me get to 4,000 on Facebook at Dent Repair. Now across the board. Can't wait to see you out there. Can't wait to see what's up. Can't wait to see some of you in Italy in just a few weeks.
Three weeks. We leave on the 15th. We get there on the 16th. It's gonna be here before we know it. Bryce, if you're listening. Can't wait to see you there, dude. All right, guys, [00:34:00] that, whoa. There we go. That is it. I will see you on the next episode.
