#84 Mobile Vs Shop Part 1
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Speaker: [00:00:00] One, two
Welcome back to another episode of the All Access podcast from Dent Repair Now, number 84. Guys, this is-- I'm, I'm excited about this. I've been wanting to do it for a long time. Well, maybe not this topic, but the style. Uh, this is going to be the first of a three-part series on shop versus mobile and ending up in a shop and what that looks like.
So this is part one, uh, and then the next two weeks are gonna be part two and three. It's kind of funny how that works. And I'm doing this because I am getting ready to head on an anniversary trip with Melissa. [00:01:00] Um, we are gonna be gone for two weeks and I'm super, super excited to go, uh, enjoy our anniversary.
Twenty-five years already. Man, that flew by. Um, I remember having a 25th anniversary party for her parents when we were first dating, so that's kinda crazy. Um, anyways, uh, we are headed to Italy, uh, and Croatia and Montenegro, uh, to see some different parts of the world. So super excited for that. And I didn't wanna let you down without podcasts and I didn't want to podcast and mess up my vacation, uh, doing podcasts and Lord knows what the internet will be like.
So we're gonna do a three-part series. This is part one, uh, and then, um, sometime in the next few days I'm gonna record two and three. It'll all be published and scheduled out and it will be seamless and headed out to you guys, uh, magically through the, the magic of the interwebs. [00:02:00] So let's kick this off with...
Uh, and I see this, this question comes up like pretty regularly online where people are like, "Man, should I do a shop? Uh, I wanna do a shop. I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that." I enjoy having a shop, but it is not all, uh, butterflies and rainbows and door dings, right? So, so let's talk about some of that stuff.
So what, what did my journey look like? Started PDR in '02. Um, worked through until, man, I wanna say like 2013-ish, uh, is when I think PDR College was out. Um, Facebook for PDR techs had really started to pop off. There were some groups, there was a lot of discussion, and retail started to become a thing, right?
So, so chasing retail [00:03:00] business, uh, advertising, website, marketing, sales, like different than, than what I had pictured when I was originally becoming a PDR tech, right? I was just gonna set up and do dealerships, and actually we-- I wanted to be a one-stop shop. The name of my company is Total Reconditioning Services.
Uh, I wanted to be the one-stop reconditioner, right out of detail. Uh, didn't wanna detail anymore, but, you know, wanted to do wheels and bumpers and dents and glass and interior and paint and blah, blah, blah, but all wholesale. Started to move into retail, right? And did retail completely mobile. Uh, eventually worked my way into no real regular wholesale for myself and 100% mobile retail, right?
And that was the that was the direction that I personally headed in
I loved my mobile retail for the most part. [00:04:00] Uh, some l- h- let's talk, let's talk about some of the good stuff, right? So
I loved when I was mobile that I could schedule whatever I wanted to schedule. Or if I got done early, I could just cut out, or if I wanted to stop at the driving range and hit a bucket of balls, uh, in between stops if everything was going smooth, I could, right? And, and that freedom, that, that mobile business freedom is probably even still, right, we've had a shop for, this is '26, eight and a half years I've been living the shop life.
Uh, that also has flown. Dear Lord. Anyways Eight and a half years in, I think I still miss my mobile repair business freedom, uh, more so than, uh, dealing with the overhead, uh, uh, of having a shop, right? [00:05:00] The extra work that it takes to do this. Uh, I more miss my freedom, right? If I wanted to take a day off, all I had to...
all we had to do was not schedule any cars to be repaired that day, and I could take the day off. Now, right, with the shop, whether it was the old shop or the new shop, um, uh, I'm a firm believer that if you're gonna have a shop, especially on a main road, you better be open. Otherwise, people are gonna think you're fly-by-night or you're not really a real business, right?
So, so that, that was a big... That is still a big, um- Downside for me of the shop is, is losing that freedom, right? Or if I wanted to go... I remember back in '16, uh, when Louie was, uh, really good enough to speed, like really could handle everything, and I had Jennifer to answer the phones. Uh, and I went out and I did hail for, I think it was six weeks.
No big [00:06:00] deal. Just schedule the cars out for six weeks. "Hey, we're crushed. You know, Gene got called out to this." And mobile work, we'll just schedule it out when we got it. So like, it was, it was really, really crazy. So I think if you are a mobile tech, the first question, and again, it- that's what I still, not regret, I don't really have any regrets, but it's still what I miss the most today, is do you want a shop or for that shop that you want, are you willing to give up the freedom you have of Mobile work, right?
Because you can be tied to the shop. I think the alternative to that, right? Side note, that's not really in my notes for this. An alternative to that, if you want the shop not so much for walk-in traffic, but just somewhere to have your more complex repairs or store your, your bigger tools, do your bigger, [00:07:00] crazier stuff, you can get a shop and just not advertise it.
Get it, you know, like back in an industrial park where nobody's gonna drive by and find you. That is not a bad way to play, um, m- make a play on being able to do some of the shop damage, but, uh, without losing 100% of your freedom, right? But you just ramp up your overhead
Why did I switch to a shop? Not just because it was cool, right? I think the idea of a shop is cool, but not as cool as doing what you wanna do when you wanna do it. I will tell you the day that I decided I need a shop. Now, the weather is different all over the country, but I live in Pittsburgh. We're in the Northeast.
And funny note, I believe, if I remember the statistic right, we only get, like, one day less of rain or one [00:08:00] day more of rainy days than Seattle, right? To give you an idea of how wet, uh, the climate can be here. With that, not only do we get rain days, we get snow days, and we get bitter cold, right? We, we always have a week or two, uh, where we could see sub-zero temperatures, or at least sub-zero wind chills, right?
Where it's just ripping and nasty and it's just no fun to be out. So the day that pushed me... I had been looking for a shop. I wanted a shop. I thought it was a natural progression of I wor- weaned myself personally off of day-to-day wholesale and moved into day-to-day retail I think the natural progression was like, man, it would be great to be in a shop and have a controlled environment and not lose all of this drive time from one car to another car, right?
When you're wholesale, you go one bunch of cars to one bunch of cars. So you have an unpack, and maybe you do five cars here, and you unpack and you do 10 cars here, [00:09:00] and then you unpack and you do five more there, and at the end of the day, you did 20 cars with two stops. Not that I think it's possible, but if you tried to do 20 retail cars, right, you would do 20 different stops or, you know.
I can remember a busy, um, mobile retail day back in the day would be four or five stops in a day because I have to get there, unpack, talk to the customer, sort of resell the job, fix the job, pack up, talk to the customer, drive to the next stop, and rinse and repeat. So you lose a lot of time there
Anyways, focus, Gene. Come on, focus. Uh, anyways, the day that, that pushed me over the edge to find a shop. Again, I w- I had been looking. It's tough to find, at least here, it was tough to find good garage space, uh, because they had a big oil and gas boom. Um, the Marcellus Shale, I think is what it is. Anyways, they figured out a way to [00:10:00] fracture shale deep in the earth and pull natural gas out and created a big boom.
A lot of those companies, they were buying up old body shops, scooping up garages. Like, it became n- not impossible or nearly impossible to find space. So it is wintertime. Can't remember the month, probably January, I would suppose, because I found it pretty fast after that. Had to have been January of '18 We've got cars scheduled out.
Schedule out, you know, a week or two ahead of time. We can't always tell the weather. And right, I still need to pay my bills. I had Jennifer on payroll. I had Louie on payroll. Like, we still need to make money. So just because it's snowy out doesn't mean that I'm not gonna work. Well, I had a pretty good retail job scheduled for this particular day.
And, uh, we messaged the guy or called the guy and like, "Hey, are you there? Uh, I don't wanna drive out in the snow if you're not gonna be there." And he's like, "No. Sure. Yeah, we're good. Come on over. I'm, I'm actually working from home today," [00:11:00] blah, blah, blah. We're good. So I roll out, I roll up to his house, and if you've never been to Pittsburgh, there are a lot of hills.
Uh, in fact, lots of people are like, "Man, how do you even know where you're going? It's hills and nothing straight lines. It's..." And I'm like, "Well, it's just what we grew up with." So I get there, and this dude, nice little Cape Cod house, and his freaking driveway looks like a cliff. I mean, it's a pretty, pretty steep driveway, and I'm parked down on the road and go up and get my tools out.
And I think at the time, I was doing like a Home Depot five-gallon bucket with the sleeve that goes around it with all the slots, and I had all my tools in there. It was sort of like my little mobile in and out setup. I, I may have been working out of my... No, I think I was working out of the Silverado by then.
Yeah, in fact, I for sure was. But anyways, had a tonneau cover, so it wasn't like I had a big pack out set [00:12:00] up, and the pack outs weren't around. So a little, call it dolly style tool cart that I had built. Got that in the driveway. Fix the dent, and I'm getting ready to pack up. Now, I'm on a hill, right? I'll, uh...
We'll give you a good visual here, visual description and, and show you if you're on camera, right? So let's pretend that my headphone case is my cart, and I'm on this, uh, this steep driveway, and it's below me. It's downhill. And I go to grab the handle, and as I grab the handle, I just bump it, and it was snowy out, remember?
So in slow motion, this cart starts sliding down the hill, and, and it, it's icy, snowy. I'm not gon- I'm not gonna run after this thing. I go to grab it right as it's like this and hits clearly a bump, and the whole thing upends. And I told you, it's all in a bucket, right, with sleeves. The freaking cart tips over, and [00:13:00] all of my whole freaking cart empties, goes down this driveway, which would suck on a regular d- that would suck on a sunny day.
That extra sucked on that particular snowy ass day. So now all my stuff falls out. I've gotta dry it all off. I've gotta find it, right? Digging through the snow to make sure I have everything.
The level of frustration I felt, like son of a... I'm out here, I gotta fix these cars. I got this stupid snow. What the hell's wrong with me? W- I c- this is ridiculous. I can't do this anymore. I have to have a shop. I'm done with this. Like, and I just, I just made my mind up, and I really feel like when you make your mind up like that, sometimes you can do a little manifesting because it's all emotion.
And dadgum it, I was fired up and I'm like, "I need a damn shop." Well, I really feel like it was later that week, uh, where I was in another part of town, [00:14:00] uh, and I'd stopped at Panera 'cause that was like my mobile office. I stopped at a Panera to do some, uh, computer work, whatever I was doing at the end of the day.
And, uh, I come down Campbell's Run, right? Turn left, and you have to come back kinda outta your way from that particular Panera, and then you get turned right and you go up and loop on like a big old quarter cl- quarter clover leaf, um, on-ramp. And I was talking to Jennifer on the phone, like wrapping up at the end of the day, "Hey, what's going on?"
Come around this bend and I look over and I see this... It looked like a, a white, um, white piece of poster board, and scribbled in marker was, "Short-term lease available," and a phone number But I'm kinda in this turn, this, again, it's a swoopy turn, and I go up past the on-ramp, like you can go under the highway and go up the hill.
I'm like, "Jen, I gotta call you back. I, I, I think I saw a shop for rent." So I flip it back around, come back [00:15:00] down, grab my phone, and I call the number, and, uh, it was like, "Call Don." So I call the number and I'm like, "Hey, Don, you know, my name's Gene. I see your, your sign here on Campbell's Run. What is a short-term lease?"
And he goes, "Well, the county's taking the building for a project." He's like, "But I can guarantee you at least a year. So what we're doing is a one-year lease and then a month-to-month renewal. Uh, do you wanna come see it?" I'm like, "Well, yeah. Do you wanna do it now?" He's like, "Well, no, I can meet, but I can meet you in the morning."
I, I think, I can't remember if we ... Yeah, I think we did ask the price. He goes, "Man, I want 1,100 a month for this place." And that is a freaking steal. That was a steal eight and a half years ago. That's an extra steal now. But I'm like, "Man, this could be exciting." I drive home, tell Melissa, and, you know, we gotta be there at, whatever, we meet the dude at 9:00 in the morning, whatever it is.
So we both roll up, and the dude's there, and he is like this [00:16:00] burly, gruff, older, crotchety mechanic car guy. Like he was, he was something. God, we rest and sold, Don. I miss you, bro- or rest in peace. Miss you, brother. But anyways, he's rough. I mean, gruff. Like, "You gonna pay your rent? You gonna do this? You can do this with that PD- that dent stuff?
I've heard about that. Are you gonna be able to pay your bills? Who'd you vote for in the election?" I mean, like, it was, it was something. And, uh, while we're there, and I don't know if this was staged, I don't think it was staged, uh, 'cause, uh, 'cause he wasn't nearly as, as grou- He's actually a sweet dude. Um, but somebody called while we were there, and they were like, "Hey, Don, you know, I want that building.
I saw you got it up for rent and blah, blah, blah." And he's like, "Well, I got people looking at it right now." And he's going him and hawing back and forth, and Melissa pulls out the checkbook, and she goes, "Listen, bud, here's the deal. What do you need for a security deposit? [00:17:00] We're, this is ours. We're taking it."
And he was sorta, like, dumbfounded and taken back. And, uh, I think we gave him first month's rent and, uh, one month's rent for security deposit or something like that. And, uh, and that was that, right? And that got us into our first shop. But it was the, for me, the push, the big push was the... In here in Pittsburgh, um, the initial shove was that weather, and that snowy day is the one that, that pushed me over the top to make it happen, right?
I had to have a shop, right? If we've got 100 rainy days a year, like, that's a lot of days where... And y- uh, this is, this seems to be universal across the country. Just because people have a garage doesn't mean that they can actually park their car in it, or they're in a subdivision where they've squeezed every little inch out of it, and you can't even, like, walk, hardly walk next to the car when it's in the garage, [00:18:00] right?
So we had tons of all these weather-dependent repairs because they don't have a garage. Well, then, like, we're scrambling. Like, it just, it just wasn't a easy way to operate at all. Um, so weather was my biggest driver for sure After having a shop, of course the weather thing is great. The next best thing, best thing is being able to deal with insurance companies, right?
It was nearly impossible to
Try to do supplements, try to do an estimate with an insurance adjuster. You know, like you can't count on... Like they, they just, their schedules are crazy. They can't come out and meet you at 8:02 AM at this place. So we passed on a lot of it, or kept the price to the level where they weren't gonna make a claim just to avoid that.
Now, especially now with the shop with more [00:19:00] space, we can have cars drop off, we can wait, we can bring the adjuster in, we can show everything. Like the ability to do larger repairs and, um, more insurance claims is a huge driver for us. Like changes, changes the game.
Oh, capacity, right? So when we were talking about like some, some mobile versus, uh, shop or if you're doing retail, like I said, you could go do 20, um, wholesale cars in a day, and I still have never done 20 retail cars in a day. But we could do more than two or three or four or five. When you have all your pack up, unpack, drive, unpack, load, like all your interactions, you're burning a ton of your day.
You might end... actually end up, depending what your service circle looks like, with a half a day. Uh, another big advantage to the shop is I can [00:20:00] do more retail cars. One, because I don't have any drive time. Two, I don't have any pack or unpack. And three, w- I've sort of gotten in the habit of just to hold the cars longer or, right, we've got the bigger job.
So we're finishing up a $5,000, five, $6,000 hail car. Well, that was here all last week. We had... Now we had to wait on the adjuster and everything, so it wasn't like it was an all-week repair, but we could drop that off and then we had a couple other bigger jobs, you know, mid 15, $2,000 panels, and we can sprinkle in a bunch of door ding repairs or smaller dents.
We'll come in, knock two or three of those out, or you get tired of working on the big dent, step over and do a door ding or two or a smaller dent, and then come back with fresh eyes. Like it really, really makes a difference. And also, I have [00:21:00] no problem leaving a car taken apart, right? We've got the hood off of this car, the hatches off of this car, the sunroof's out of this car.
Well, I- I can't do that at your house, or at least certainly not easy. Where are we gonna put it? And I can't do it in a parking lot, right? Or how often are we pulling doors? We pull doors all the time here. Not comfortable with that in a parking lot or your driveway. Two, I, I wasn't driving a semi around. I couldn't carry my door stand and my hood stands and my everything.
Like it just doesn't work I can do more retail capacity at the shop than I could ever do mobile out on the road, right? So that's, that's pretty, that's a pretty big deal. Now, with that comes the extra overhead of a shop, so I've got rent, albeit I started pretty cheap at the first place. I promise you we're making it up for it at this place.
Two, extra insurance, three, extra staffing, right? If you've gotta keep somebody there full-time or even part-time, so if [00:22:00] you're still out and about and doing dealer work, all of that inc- increases... Excuse me. All of that increases your overhead, right? So it's just, it's a different animal The shop adds a ton of legitimacy to your business, right?
If we're talking about bigger jobs, do you want Chuck in a truck to show up and do your work? Or do you want an established shop th- that's a real business that's not going anywhere, right? There's, uh... As a shop owner, I have to sell against the mobile guy, right? Do you, do you just want some dude rolling up with a gun case full of tools in the back of his truck and see what happens?
Or do you wanna come to a real business and get it done the right way? Now, if I were mobile, "Man, do you wanna pay an inflated price just because the guy wants to have a nice warm shop to work in? That's ridiculous. Let me pass those savings on to you [00:23:00] because I don't have to do rent and extra insurance and pay this front person and do this and heat and utilities."
You can sell either way. I'm gonna sell as a shop owner because I've got the shop and that's what we can do. Um- That overhead though, when you're mobile, man, that's nice. I remember-- So we had to move out of the shop. In fact, we signed the lease in February, opened up in March, and in May the county came in and they were like, "We need to get you the hell out of here because we're tearing the building down."
Right? They were trying to fast-track, um, fast-track the, the thing. Well, then funding happened and COVID happened, and it was six years, almost to the day. Six years from the time they were like, "You gotta get the hell out," to when we actually got the hell out. Um, but that low overhead, I was thinking... And now that was cheap, right?
Eleven hundred a [00:24:00] month. Uh, utilities weren't that bad. Internet wasn't that bad. Like, it really wasn't... It was, it was a amazing, amazing first start into a shop to sort of test the waters. But when we couldn't find somewhere and I thought we were gonna get pushed out by the end of the year, I'm like, "Man, what am I gonna do?
I'm getting a little soft now that I can work in a nice building." I thought about, I thought hard about, because we hadn't hired Dave, it was still just me and Louie and Jake and Jennifer and Melissa, right? So I, I was still not... I was still actively pushing every day. I was like, "Man, we could buy a big, the big Sprinter van," right?
The tall one that I could comfortably do jump rope in. And I'm like, "Here's what I could do, because we're spending 15 or 1,600 bucks a month to be in here, like, I can lay a van out pretty good." I was gonna get the tall van. And mobile guys, think about this, right? 'Cause this could be an option instead of a [00:25:00] shop.
Uh, and right, it doesn't go on forever. So big, tall Sprinter van. I was gonna get a nice awning that came out of the side, like Custom Upfits makes some. Uh, and then I was gonna take the, uh, heavy, like, body shop curtains, and I could curtain off basically a bay next to the van I was going to put a big rooftop air conditioner in so I could work in air-conditioned, air-conditioned, uh, van, air- or back of the van, air-conditioned outside.
And then I was going to get some of those, uh, 'cause that Custom Outfits made really nice pull-out, uh, generator things, uh, that would roll out of the back of the truck or the side of the van. Put up big infrared heaters. Man, I c- like, uh, you could spend some serious money and really get like an actual mobile dent shop, right?
So I contemplated that, [00:26:00] and I was like, well, if I spend 100 grand on that, you know, roll that over, whatever they'll finance those Custom Outfit vans for you for. And then at the end of that, I've a paid-for van, and I won't have to worry about it, and it's not that ongoing headache, um, that is the, that is the shop, right?
And, and if I ever left the shop completely and was still gonna do retail PDR, even if I had to go back to wholesale PDR, I think we're building that van, right? But comparatively, the pimped-out, most amazing mobile rig ever is still less than, like, the cheapest shop ever. Does that make sense? I don't know.
Something to, something to think about.
How do you know what's right for you, right? Is sort of the question. You gotta think long and hard about it. Decide what you wanna do. Decide what your business really is. Um, I, I think That a lot of technicians are in smaller markets [00:27:00] and they're doing well in the smaller market And they're doing well in mobile with a mix of wholesale and retail and body shop, and they think, "Man, if I could just go to the shop and everybody would bring me everything, it would be amazing."
Well, we all know realistically your dealers aren't bringing you cars, or certainly not many cars. Man, too hard this weekend. Um, now that being said, side note, I do get some of our local closer to the shop dealers, they will just bring cars and drop them off, and they're like, "Hey, get to you when you can get to it."
Or if Max's out at the, like, the Ford store and he's like, "Man, I can fix this, but we got a shrinky box that we're pulling the door off," run it down to the shop and we'll get it fixed up. Right? And we do that all the time. Or, "Hey, we got a sold car. Run the sold car down and we'll get it." Um, the service drives, but the service people are sending customers [00:28:00] to us and-or sometimes they'll take it in and bring us the service car and we do it up.
Like, there's some advantages there. But anyways, how do you know what's right for you? Look at your, one, see what you can find and see what your overhead looks like. And I really think, even though I'm a burn the boats guy and, like, go all in, I, I really think in some smaller markets or if you're just not sure, try to find yourself a shop, call it off the beaten path, that is not scary for a customer to come to, uh, that still looks like a business.
Like, don't put a-- I wouldn't put a barn up behind your house and, like, tell them to go drive down the dirt road. Like, that seems a little sketchy. But you can still find slightly off the beaten path garages that you can get to that are big enough to allow you to do bigger jobs. That might not be a bad stepping stone if you're thinking about getting into the market.
If you are [00:29:00] in a super hail-prone market, I think a shop's a pretty much no-brainer, right? If, if hail is your focus and you can chase and capture retail hail, man, the percentage you're not giving up to the body shop is huge, uh, on a car-by-car basis, right? You can cover that rent quickly. Uh, and also it, it allows you to build that year-round presence, right?
Build a customer base, build everything so that when there is that hailstorm that comes through, you've already got relationships established with your customers. You've got hopefully their information. You can use your CRM, uh, and go out and start blasting that marketing to people who already know, like, and trust you, right?
Make that magic happen. Um, yeah. So, so think about it. A-and look at population size. So when I started mobile retail, '13, '14, somewhere around [00:30:00] there, I remember doing, uh, Facebook ads right when they came out. And when I was looking at the metrics, our metro region was like 1.4 million people is what was in my circle.
I saw the other day that some dude was like, "I've got 20,000 people in my city." Bro, that's not very many peop- we have 6,000 kids in our school district. Like, I would be a little worried about, uh- Scaling or being able to do enough in that small of a market. Now that being said, he did say he was in a hail-prone area, right?
So you gotta think about it, figure out what, what makes sense for you. But
population has to come into play
Next week, next episode, we are gonna talk about what the actual transition from mobile to shop [00:31:00] looked like. Some of the hurdles that I went through, some of the wins we had, um, some of the changes that I did not see coming at all. Uh, we're gonna go over all of that. It's gonna be a great show. Um, it's really, uh...
I almost feel like I could do a presentation on it. Uh, in fact, I think if you really look at the round table that me and Matt Moore have spearheaded the last three MTEs, I believe, uh, a lot of these questions come up as like, "What's it look like to do a shop? How do you do this? How do you do that?" Got a lot of stuff to talk about, so I'm excited for episode two.
Now, with that, uh, let me check my notes. Again, not normally a note guy, but I'm trying to make this cohesive for y'all. Got my intro, got my story, pros and cons of mobile, pros and cons of a shop. We talked about those. How do you know what's right for you? Like, again, I think freedom's big. Like, do you like that mobile [00:32:00] freedom?
Um, population is big. Can it sustain? Are you going mainstream? Are you going off? Do you wanna stay solo? Do you want employees? Do you want, even if it's office employee? Like, all stuff to things about, think about. Um, and I guess, I guess something to keep in mind, and, and this really I think will be a common thread through these episodes, through these three episodes.
Nothing's permanent. Like, if, if I wanted to say screw it tomorrow and pack it up and go chase hail, well, it's not a really good hail year. But I could pack up my stuff and go to some of these towns that were smoked with hail and, like, walk away. If the shop wasn't working out or didn't work out, quit.
Don't renew your lease. Pay to get out of the lease early. Like, none of it's set in stone. You've gotta try it in order to figure out what is going on, right? So [00:33:00] anyways, let's do the marketing minute. Now let me find that window. Sound effects. It is here. All right, so this is a short one. This is episode four of the PDR Marketing Minute.
So without further ado...
Speaker 2: And now it's time for the PDR Marketing Minute, your weekly quick tip to help you build your PDR business.
Speaker: Hey, welcome back. Episode four of the PDR Marketing Minute. I'm Gene Fette, your host. Let's get started. Today, we're gonna keep working on our checklist that we started all the way back in episode one, and we're going to talk about creating your Facebook business page. Uh, right off the bat, I see a lot of people who try to run their Facebook business out of their personal profile.
They may even have their name, um, their personal name as a business name. Facebook really [00:34:00] frowns on that and, uh, I've even seen a couple people get banned from Facebook for not using their real name. Uh, what you wanna do is create a business or a fan page for a local business. In the menu, you can find a, a spot where it'll say create a page.
Go in there, choose the option to create one for a local business, and, uh, it, it's really pretty straightforward, much like the Google video we're gonna be making. Uh, I'm also gonna make a video for how to set your Facebook page up. Couple of things you wanna keep in mind. You wanna make sure that your name, address, and phone number match exactly how you set up in your Google listing.
Local SEO relies on that. Uh, the acronym is NAP, so name, address, phone number. Make sure that all matches. Once you get the page up and running, do not, I'm gonna repeat that again, do not ask a bunch of dent technicians to go and like your page to get your likes up. That's gonna hurt you in the long run, and [00:35:00] we're not gonna be able to come back and, and be able to market as well with your page.
It's perfectly fine and a great idea to get some of your local family and friends to come through and give you some likes and some shares. Uh, and then you wanna add content. Keep it simple. Three to five times per week max is all you need to do. We'll be diving much deeper into Facebook as the, uh, episodes progress, but that's all for today.
Thanks for listening. I can't wait to talk to you all next week.
All right, so not bad advice. Still relevant. Facebook is still relevant. Um, Meta as a whole is still relevant. Um, the NAP, the name, address, phone number is still crucial across the board, right? You gotta make sure that is correct everywhere. Um, the don't ask a bunch of dent guys to follow your page. Eh, screw that.[00:36:00]
Ask everybody to follow your page, because now, more so than back then, number of followers, uh, is street cred in the world, right? So if somebody had 200 followers back in the day, and I think it would be likes actually, not even followers. If you have 200 likes back in the day, oh, okay, a lot of people like this.
Now, man, if you don't get thousands of views on a post, you need to start worrying about it, I guess. Um, content-wise, three to five times a week, uh, I would agree. I, I think that's solid. Um, as far as not messing up who you're showing to or ads or anything like that, the algorithms are so good today that you don't need to sweat it, uh, not for a second.
Like, it's, it's really, um, crazy. So yeah, don't sweat, don't sweat that. So [00:37:00] that's PDR Marketing Minute, episode four is in the books. Uh, all right, it is time for
All right, so this week's Tool of the Week is the Shotgun. How'd you like that? Oh, there we go. Look at that. Come on, focus on it. There it is, the Shotgun Auto Loading Slide Hammer by Fast PDR. Right, so there's the Shotgun And by fast PDR, this is an auto... Well, I guess it's not auto 'cause you still have to cock it.
But it's got a trigger right here that gives you the same pull every single time. And most importantly, for this old dude's shoulders, is like I'm not [00:38:00] slamming it like this. Or go check out Dent Slayer's video that Matt dropped this week on grabbing slide hammers backwards, and pull with your tricep instead of with your shoulder.
Anyways, this thing, I, I picked up a few weeks ago, maybe even a month ago. It was right when they came out. It was right after I saw it on Tool Porn Thursday, uh, from our buddy Craig. Um, we had talked about this when I was down... I guess that would've been for the open house. Um, so I knew it was coming, um, but I saw it, and then my buddy John Yeager, uh, shared in a group text, uh, talking about how fun that was.
Uh, and that... I think I had mine on the way by then. Anyways, it was on my list of things, like, I wanna check out
Pretty awesome. Now, I made a personal upgrade to this. There's a safety here. You kinda see that. Right there [00:39:00] is the safety. The way I was holding this, I kept accidentally shoving my safety in, and then, then it wouldn't shoot. Uh, so I just taped over my safety, uh, because it was getting in my way. Um, man, that hail car that I was talking about earlier in the episode...
Uh, no, sorry, wholesale hail car, uh, that was here earlier this week with just a littered rail. Like, it was... If this wasn't a wholesale car, we would've been like, you know, just conventional this side. So anyways, I'm like, "Man, I can finally get the shotgun." So from Anson, I ordered the shotgun, and then it came with three of the gold PDR outlet cold glue tips and a three-pack of the Glexo Diablo preloaded dots.
Uh, these things are great, um, to load up and put on the slide hammer, right? So and I already used this one [00:40:00] Loving my Glexo Diablo. Um, the only time I haven't loved it all summer was the one that we had like near 100 degree days. I had to cool the panel off a little bit to use this. Um, but as a whole, the rest of the time, this stuff is amazing.
Uh, and normally I'm just giving a little flash of heat, but dude, so this, so consistent and so easy. So I probably had 75 or 100 dents down this rail and, and really the majority of them, call them soft nickels, right? Like good dents, but no real pits. I'm able to reach out, give it a wiggle, wham, and then reload, wham.
And I really just flew down that whole rail. Um, and it made a nice pull. What I noticed about this is [00:41:00] when I get my best pulls with cold glue, if I'm using, you know, a bigger slide hammer, I actually teach to like take your hand and push into the panel and continue to hold pressure while you're sliding out.
So you're two different directions. Well, with the smaller slide hammers for the rails, sort of lose that ability because you're like one hand, squish, wham, wham. With this, I am able to I, I don't wanna mess my phone up. I'm able to hold down and squish, and I'm holding tight into the panel, and then getting a great drive up.
Love it. Like, I don't wanna say I thought it was gonna be a little gimmicky. Like, I like the fast PDR stuff. I'm like, "Ah, I've gotta give it a try." So glad I [00:42:00] did. Um, so upgraded mine. W- blocked that, uh, safety. I may look for something, because this looks like it may be 3D-printed If it's not 3D-printed, it is a pretty rough texture.
And, and since I'm a shop guy now, and I've got my dainty hands, I did notice that after so many pulls, it was maybe a little bit rough on the hand or a little bit hard on the calluses. I may find something that's gotta be 3D-printed. I may find something to, uh, to put on there. Um, but the magnets are great.
It won't roll away. I guess you can't really see the back of my desk. Uh, anyways, the Shotgun, and available as a kit from Anson PDR, um, with the three tabs and the three... If I can hold it [00:43:00] up right. Glexo Diablo glues. Uh, man, you cannot go wrong with that. Uh, and this does take the... I guess it's more the European cold glue thread or the standard thread.
Um, so Glexo, Keco, Dead Dent Tools, Tequila? Does Tequila have tips? Anyways, they all use the smaller bolt head. Uh, it's that size. The, uh, Dent Slayer and VIP use 5/16, so a little heavier. So this is made for the smaller diameter, um, tabs. I guess Sergio's would also fall into there. But anyways, the Fast Shotgun Auto Slide Hammer is the tool of the week, uh, and this thing is, is pretty freaking awesome.
I, I was, I was thoroughly impressed with how well it worked. Uh, and I had to share it because it did work so well. So that is the tool of the week. Now, back to your regularly, regularly scheduled podcast. [00:44:00] All right. Listen, we are still open for some apprentices. Had some people reach out. Um, one guy couldn't make it work, but he still may try to learn PDR.
Uh, and I'm supposed to have another meeting with another guy this week, uh, about some part-time stuff. I'm super stoked for that. Still would love to get a couple good apprentices in here, uh, that we can start you on your career into PDR and, and really, truly, truly set you up for success. PDR Expo's coming up September 25th and 26th.
Uh, can't wait to see you out there. Uh, if you haven't got your tickets, go get your tickets. Which reminds me, I need to email him about my tickets. Hmm. All right, we gotta do that. Um, I am gonna be off the grid for a couple of weeks. I'm sure I'll still pop in on social media, but, uh, if you need something from me, and I'm traveling around the world, I will get back to you when I get back.
As always, [00:45:00] go follow us @dentrepairnow across the board on all social channels. Uh, we would love to have you like our Facebook page or follow us on Instagram. Follow us on Facebook. Go subscribe on YouTube. Um, anyways, get after it. Uh, thank you all so much for watching episode... Where's the outro? Episode number 84 is in the books.
Make sure you come back next week for part two of what it really looks like to open the shop and switch from mobile to retail. See ya.
