#85 Part 2 PDR Shop
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Speaker: [00:00:00] One
I just spent the last, like, 35 minutes recording episode 85 of the All Access podcast from Dent Repair Now. It was part two of shop life and what that looks like. And the entire recording, my mic was muted
Yep. Like 30 some odd minutes of me sitting here like this
With no audio. It's [00:01:00] fantastic. I love it. So we are in the studio, or we are not in the studio, we are in the basement, right? The basement studio, uh, to record episode two, and now have about 45 minutes until we leave for the airport to go to Italy. It's gonna be a little quicker episode, and I've got another episode to record after this, because it has been crazy busy at the shop.
Hard cars, like ridiculously hard cars. Uh, you guys who are in the Discord channel, uh, probably saw that Ram door golf ball hit I was working on. Yep, total ass-kicker. Should not have put my Superman cape on for that one. So because we are short on time and I need to make it to the airport, but I wanna get you episodes, we're gonna cancel Tool of The Week and The Marketing Minute for the next two episodes to save me some time, but I wanna get some information to you on, on what the [00:02:00] evolution looked like, uh, moving into the shop.
So on this one, this episode, I wanna talk about... Last episode was Shoppers Mobile, pros, cons, back and forth. This week I wanna talk about- What it looked like to move into the shop, and some of the hiccups we ran into so you can hopefully avoid them or at least prepare for them. So when we signed up for our lease, if you remember, it was a short-term lease, so hadn't thought about...
And, like, hindsight, it makes sense. I hadn't thought about a build-out. But the way the shop was laid out, we couldn't just open up the doors, right? It was like the shop was split into halfway 'cause the old place had a showroom and a little service area, but they did motorcycles, not cars, so they didn't need the space that we needed.
Like, it was kind of a pain in the butt, but we had to do a build-out. Because we only had a lease, a one-year lease, [00:03:00] we didn't wanna put tens of thousands of dollars into this place. We wanted to, um, shoestring it the best we can, right? And we're pretty handy. We're like, "Oh, we'll do the work. We'll figure it out.
Okay, let's just make it happen." So we dive in, we're tearing walls down, we're literally scraping grease off the floor 'cause the people who were in there last were filthy pigs. It was like you should be ashamed of yourself to keep a building in that space. Maybe that's a common theme amongst, amongst mechanics, 'cause we'll talk about that in the next episode also.
Anyways We go through, um, the shop, like, the front two, three quarters is all showroom and one little bay. We need multiple bays and a... And somewhere for customers to sit. So we go through, we build all of that, and then my insurance guy was like, "Hey, just need a copy of your occupancy permit so we can put the policy on the building."
"Well, what a [00:04:00] permit?" "Oh, yeah, occup- occupancy permit. You gotta get that from the town that you're in." I'm like, "Oh, hmm. Okay. Well, I hope we did all this right." So we call the township, and they're like, "Okay, we use an inspection company that'll come out and take a look. Did you, did you move any major walls or anything?"
And we're like, "No, we just... Some dividers, but not... We didn't rebuild the building." They're like, "Okay, shouldn't be a big deal." So they come out, and, uh, first thing, he's like, "Was that an ADA bathroom?" I'm like, "No public bathroom, employees only." "Okay." Then we needed some fire extinguishers. No big deal. Uh, had to put in an emergency light, uh, that if the power went out would come on so you can illuminate.
No big deal. And then he comes up front to our customer waiting area, our greeting area, if you will, and we had built this really nice custom built-in counter, right? 'Cause shoestring, didn't have time to order stuff, like, we'll just [00:05:00] put it in and call it a day. And he's like, "Well, this, this is not an ADA compliant, uh, counter.
I can't let you open. I can't give you a permit until you change that." And I'm like, "Well, it's built in. It's here." He's like, "Well, they gotta be compliant." I'm like, "Well, they can go right here." "Well, that's discriminatory. You can't do that." Like, okay. So I call my father-in-law and my wife and we look at it and we're like, "What are we gonna do?"
So we literally, this, this beautiful counter that we just built, we bring in the circular saw and cut the top, grab the Sawzall and redo the countertop and drop down to ADA height. So we had a tall area that you sort of sat behind, and then the short area where, uh, ADA could come in and make it work.
Hurdle number one. We do all that stuff, and we get our, uh, thing dialed in. Right? We are good to go. Get our permit. We open up, [00:06:00] and it is a ghost town because- Google. We were a service-based business, right? So we had zip codes, counties, towns, all like we service all of this, about 30 miles from around my house.
Well, and, and 42 reviews, I think. I think there's still 42 reviews on that listing that sits dormant. Um, we moved to the shop. Either you couldn't or I couldn't figure out a way to switch from a service area business to a physical location. So strike number one for us, we had to create a new Google listing.
Strike two, you can't transfer your reviews from one listing to another. Ugh. Strike three, and you didn't take us out, but you tried. Now, instead of serving this big 30-mile-an-hour or [00:07:00] 30-mile circle around my home, we're a fixed business. So dent repair near me, we show up all the time. Now, dent repair near me, we show up this much of the time, right?
Probably a five-mile circle around the shop is our only organic reach, um, because of Google seeing that we're now a fixed location, not mobile Brutal, dude. Absolutely brutal. I mean, like, pump the brakes. Weather breaks, we normally book out weeks and weeks and we're rocking and rolling, and it is like crickets.
Like, "Oh my God, what are we gonna do?" I even broke my own rule that spring, and a friend in Texas got hail and was like, "Hey, if you wanna come help, well, you know, we can get you in and you can help." I'm like, "Ah, Texas hail is not for me." "No, it's gonna be good. This is gonna be different. It'll be great." And I'm like, "Okay."
Well, we just spent all the money [00:08:00] moving in, and it's dead, and I could use an injunction of cash. Well, in true hail fashion, in true Texas hail fashion, the deal literally changed while I was in the air. My other buddy who was coming to meet me called me. Like, the phone, my phone was blowing up when I got out of airplane mode, and he's like, "Dude, the deal changed.
I'm so sorry." I'm like, "Well, I'm in Texas, so we're gonna make the best out of it." Anyways, not a good deal. Dude was super cool. Uh, none of it was malicious. It's just, shit falls apart. I think we ended up just breaking even, thank goodness, on that trip. Um, came back. We end up having a tiny little hail storm around the shop, about 25 minutes north, but small storm.
Decent damage, small storm. This is when the f- when the shop wins really start to become noticeable to me, right? So we start bringing these cars in, and prior to this, I would've [00:09:00] had to call Charlie and, and rent space off of him at his, in one of his buildings, or work with one of our body shops, and then we're giving up our percentage there.
With my shop, we control everything. We instantly get to keep those extra dollars, those extra repair dollars. Because- We're holding it, and because the shop was really so affordable, those handful of cars and the extra percentage we're getting to keep on them really made a huge difference in how we looked at insurance claims, right?
And then a little evolution after that, like as we moved through the summer and got a little bit more experience and Google got better, we started to pull in some of these bigger smash jobs that before I would have passed on because I'm not going to somebody's house for multiple times or I can't take doors off, uh, in somebody's driveway.
Now we start to pull those in and we start to see some wins and make it happen, and it's [00:10:00] pretty cool how
By being a real business instead of a Chuck in a truck, no offense to the Chucks out there, um, insurance companies start to look at us a little bit different. The insurance adjusters, instead of phone calls and back and forth, and you can't do this, and you can't do that, when they're coming into the shop and seeing what we're doing and seeing the kind of operation we run, like it's, it's almost like instant street credibility, street cred, uh, with them.
And we start getting less and less pushback and start to develop some relationships. And right over those years, we get to funnel more work to us. Like it's actually pretty amazing
Our location Crazy busy area, right? We literally could walk out the back of the shop and throw a ball and hit the parkway, [00:11:00] which is the major east-west route from downtown Pittsburgh to the airport. Literally off the back of our building. Uh, and we're right at an off ramp and an on ramp. Like, you have to go around our building if you get off or get on, or if you're coming to us, easy off, easy on to get going where you need to go.
The main road we were on is like a funnel, like dude, just full of traffic. Two office parks across the street from us, actually three office parks within a quarter mile of us. Like, we are in traffic city. I thought that was gonna be amazing. More like traffic purgatory. And when people are there, they are not looking around to see what's going on.
They are tunnel-visioned, got the blinders on, get me the hell out of Robinson. I don't wanna be here. In fact, we were at that shop for six years, and still to the end, we had people coming in and they were like, "Man, I, I've worked out here for 10 years. How long have you been here? I didn't even know you were here.
I drive past this [00:12:00] place two, three, four times a day and I never noticed." Hmm, maybe they should've put a blow-up gorilla out there waving its arms
The location, albeit easy was to get to, was not good for walk-in, right? I thought we were gonna have amazing walk-in, and turns out we had a horrible walk-in. Um, it took about three years before we even started getting really decent walk-in traffic into, uh, the shop. Like, this, this was a, this was a build-out.
This was not easy. Uh, like, it was kinda rough to, to get going, but we made it happen, right? And it was pretty amazing. When we moved in, right, we had been mobile forever There's a hiccup I hadn't thought about. People were calling Jennifer, who's still working remote, um, to schedule. And she goes through and does her sales pitch and, [00:13:00] uh, gets everything dialed in, and they're like, "Okay."
And she's like, "Well, do you wanna come to the shop or do you, do you want a mobile repair?" And the customer logically was like, "Well, what's the difference?" And she's like, "Well, you either come to the shop or we come to you." And they go, "Well, does it cost more for you to come to us?" She's like, "Well, n- no. I, I guess not."
And the people were like, "Well, why would I inconvenience , inconvenience myself to come to you if you will come to me and it doesn't cost me any more money?" I'm like, "Huh. Good logic. Can't argue with that. Hadn't thought about it. We need to fix this in a hurry because I'm certainly not trying to build the shop and then I gotta call Melissa to come out and sit while I go out and do a repair.
Like, that's ludicrous." So we implemented a mobile service fee so there was a difference. The idea was to not seem like, uh, an ass and we're just trying to rip 'em off, but [00:14:00] we wanted to give 'em enough pain that they wanted to come to the shop. So if memory serves, we started with a 69.95 fee to do mobile service.
And that stopped a fair number of people, but not enough. So then we maybe end up within a year or so moved to 89.95 for a mobile fee. More pain point, more people coming in, but still getting called out for stuff. Then we moved to 99.95. Pretty good deterrent. People will come in for 100 bucks. However, we were still getting asked to come out on some stuff that would've been better served at the shop.
So here's a tech tip for you Make a company policy. So we implemented a company policy that any repair requiring significant R&I, which could be a door panel, right? More than a taillight. Uh, and really, if the taillight's covered by the bumper, [00:15:00] that's significant R&I. Any repair requiring significant R&I is not qualified for mobile.
It has to come to the shop. Also, any repair over $500 is too significant to be done mobile. It has to come to the shop. And the argument would be, we need to have all of our tools and everything in place so we can give you the best job possible, which is 100% truthful. I said, "We can't bring the entire shop to you.
That's why we have a shop. You need to come in for that stuff." That solved most of our mobile problems. And then really, since we lost Jake and Dave, uh, we've essentially taken mobile off the table because we just don't have the capacity to get out and do mobile repairs or, or get podcasts recorded when you don't mute your mic, or when you mute your mic.
Anyways , you understand the, the, the struggle of trying to make it happen. [00:16:00] N- and nobody argues with company policy, right? It's a great... I actually picked it up in a business book, uh, real estate investing book on, like, how people handle, uh, pain-in-the-ass tenants, and they set up a, a management company and now you're not the owner, you, you work at the management company.
That's owner's policy. It's customer pol- or it's business, company policy that we don't do X, Y, and Z. Oh, okay. Well... And it stops the argument, and we have found the exact same thing in, in dent repairs. When we make it company policy, there are no arguments with said company policy. So it is good. It's all good
So those are some of the hiccups. Ooh, we had a hailstorm, big hailstorm, double whammy hailstorm, monster storm, uh, an hour south in '22, and a decent [00:17:00] storm an hour, hour and a half north in '22 at the same time. So Louie and Jake are south. Dave's normally at the shop, but his old stomping grounds that, that we brought in when we acquired Dave was up north.
So Dave goes north, they go here, and it's busy enough that I need to be orchestrating everything. We ended up having to
temporarily close the shop for almost a month, three weeks or a month, w- like at the peak of both storms We had to hang a sign on the door, right? Melissa's running. We're all stepping in fetching 'cause it's a hailstorm. Basically hung a sign on the door that said, um, "Closed due a, due, due to a catastrophic hailstorm."
You know, the whole company's been called out, blah, blah, blah. Like, made a pretty good excuse, but it shut us down for a month at the shop. Jennifer just kept scheduling [00:18:00] customers out, like we're booked, and I think if memory serves, people are like, "Well, there's, doesn't look real busy at the shop." And then we gotta explain the whole hail thing, and then we lose jobs.
When we reopened the shop after the big push of the hailstorm, I definitely noticed a lull in the action because it had appeared as though we were closed, right? Like, something's going on. There's no cars getting done. Not really sure what's happening. Like, it is a, it's an issue, for sure
The first year of the shop was financially brutal, like huge, huge setbacks with the amount of business coming in. If you're getting ready to move into a shop, financially prepare yourself to take it on the chin a little bit. Research whether you're gonna be able to [00:19:00] save that Google listing or if you're gonna have to start a new one.
Uh, I haven't had to do that since 18 because when we moved shops this time, we just moved Google listing addresses, which we'll talk about in the next episode. Um, had its own hiccups
shop life affords you the ability to do repairs that aren't so doable on a mobile basis. It also affords you the ability to do more insurance claims and hold cars longer and do bigger jobs and do more insurance work. Big wins. However, like I talked in the first part of this series, it's also stripped some of your freedom away and you're going to lose your ability to, um Step away when you wanna step away or go do hail when you wanna go do hail.
These are all things that you need to think about and be completely committed to. Speaking of being completely committed [00:20:00] to, I think a lot of people dip their toes in the shop life. I don't think that dipping your toes is a good way to go. Certainly not with a r- retail shop on a main road. If you wanna dip your toes in, and I think I even mentioned this in part one, get something off the beaten path that is by appointment only, that does not really have an address, that's not a Google listing, that you can funnel these bigger jobs to.
Because if you go all in on the main road and you're not committed and you're not open and you're always running out and doing things and you're missing out, you're not gonna succeed. So think about it. Make it happen. And I think that's all I've got for this part. And looking at the clock, we're gonna record session three probably at an airport somewhere.
We've got a big long layover in Atlanta, so that may be where the next episode comes from. But I will get it out and published for you. I will not miss a [00:21:00] week this year. Really, we're gonna go longer than a year. I'm not missing a week. It's not gonna happen. We're gonna make it happen and get it done. So I hope that helps.
Looking forward to session three or part three of this series, uh, where I can really talk about the evolution of where we're at, what the new shop looks like, how we've changed estimating and hiring and everything like that. So super stoked for that. Sorry I didn't see my mic was muted and you missed out on the other episode, um, that was just slightly longer.
But anyways, until next week, have a great week
