How To Be A Leader - Overhauled S1E13
How To Be A Leader - Overhauled S1E13 is now on your favorite podcast app!
Want to be a guest on Overhauled? - https://www.diesellaptops.com/pages/podcast-guests
In this podcast your host Melissa Petersmann (The Diesel Queen) discusses diesel technicians, trucks, the diesel economy at large, and many more interesting topics in a style that only she can bring - raw and unfiltered.
Melissa is joined today by Richard Anthony Schwarzman, a Manager at Canyon Lake Mobile Golf cart repair.
As always, thank you for watching and listening!
Transcript for How To Be A Leader - Overhauled S1E13
Diesel Queen:
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Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Overhauled with the Diesel Queen. Today, I am here with Tony who started out as a mechanic and he has worked his way up into the management side of the business. So, Tony, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself? Give us a little bit of background.
Tony:
Yeah, for sure. So, my name is Tony. I am been in the industry for 15, 16 years, something like that. I've never had another job that is not fixing cars or related to cars or trucks or anything in that way. So, currently, I own a golf cart repair business. We do close to 300 repairs a month in Southern California, down to San Diego, out to Palm Springs, and then over the last I would say five years, I've transitioned a lot of my in-shop work to the new way that everybody wants to do it, which would be mobile repair.
So, I've worked for YourMechanic. I've contracted with Wrench, contracted with RepairSmith, and really, my take on the whole industry is that everything will be going mobile, and fortunately, I was one of the first people to get into that. Yeah, it just ended up being a leader in that space and a leader in that industry and have grown and scaled mobile operations across the country a few different times. So, yeah, super stoked to be on the show. A lot of my basis is diesel, although a lot of my duties today are not diesel, but yeah. Dig the show and dig what you're doing here.
Diesel Queen:
Thank you. I appreciate that. I'm trying my best, not a professional by any means, but I'm working on it. With this mobile repair, so you made a mention that that's just the way the world's going as with mobile repair. So, can you elaborate on your thoughts with that a little bit? Because I find that interesting and I'd love to hear more about that.
Tony:
Yeah, so I mean, as everybody knows with the Amazon's nation of everything or the Uberization of everything, people want these repairs done at their home. They want this convenient service. I mean, COVID definitely changed quite a bit of it, changed the way we worked, changed the way we interact with our coworkers, with our employees, with everything. So, moving forward, I mean, we started the repair business, and I'll say Repair Smith. We started previous to COVID even happening, right? It was just an idea that said, "Hey, we're going to provide mobile repair," and on the side of the vans, it said, "Mobile car repair delivered," right? That's what it said. Then COVID happened, like probably four or five months after we started get going, and it was perfect because it said car repair delivered where, like restaurants were just starting to get into delivering food.
Dog groomers were starting to groom dogs mobile, right? Everything was going mobile and we were already there and really became a leader in the space. We pretty quickly scaled from one van to now we have over 400 vans across the country performing thousands of repairs a day. One industry that I seen myself that hasn't been touched basically by anyone was golf carts. I live in a golf cart community in California, and here we have 3,000 golf carts with two golf cart dealers that provide service.
Diesel Queen:
Jesus. It's a little bottom heavy.
Tony:
Yeah, it's totally a huge wide open opportunity where we jumped in, bought a van, hired a tech. This was all while I was still working and just bought some off-the-shelf software and started booking appointments. As we started to get booked out two weeks, then we bought another van, hired another technician, did it all over again and now we have four vans fully in operation. We service down to San Diego, out to Palm Springs is a big region for us and having quite a bit of fun doing it. In one year, we have well over 200 Google reviews and the calls are rolling in. I mean, it's a beautiful thing, but it all really just based in the idea of taking your tools, putting them in your van, and hitting the road and serving customers where they want to be served.
Diesel Queen:
Well, yeah, I would've never even remotely thought about golf carts until you brought it up. I mean, maybe it's because I'm from Wyoming, and well, golfing is not of that common of a thing in Wyoming, but I never would've even thought about golf carts and now that you say it, it's like, yeah. John Deere has all these companies that have lawn and turf. They've got the dealership support and they've got all this stuff for lawnmowers and Gators and all the modern turf stuff, but who the fuck works on golf carts? Who the even makes golf carts? You know?
Tony:
Absolutely.
Diesel Queen:
Wouldn't ever even thought about that until you brought up. So, this whole van thing, why do you guys pick a van instead of a service truck? I guess you don't really need a crane, do you?
Tony:
No, don't need a crane. That would be a big part of it. Even when we talk about golf cart or car repair or even say diesel repair, right? If you need an engine, you need an engine. Go to a shop. That's their-
Diesel Queen:
Okay. So, if there's jobs that are too big for you guys to handle, it's... So, it's similar to a service truck in the diesel side. So, if the job is too big or something, that can't be done in the field. Send it to the shop.
Tony:
Absolutely, and we have some really cool deals set up with some partner shops that are around us in each region that we operate. So, as part of launching any new region, we first have to establish all of our vendors. So, where are we going to get these parts from? What's their availability? Hey, if we do run into something that we're not capable of performing at someone's house, either, one, do we have a hub where we can pull this back to and do it internally in our own hub? Or do we have a partner shop that wants to take these leads from us? So, we usually set up a 15% gross cut on anything that we set out. So, if we look at a car, go out there for a misfire, determine it's got a dead hold. Hey look, the head needs to be pulled off. We need to do this. We have an awesome partner shop. We can send you over to those guys. We'll even handle the tow for you, and it goes over into the shop.
Diesel Queen:
That's good.
Tony:
We get 15% of that total ticket. Everybody's happy, but think of like a triage, right? That's really what we are. We get the call. Hey, doesn't run. I don't know if I need to tow it. I don't know... Whatever. Most of the time, it's just batteries. Most of our phone calls, most of our appointments, we get out there and it's like, "Well, you need a battery."
Diesel Queen:
Well, these people running these golf carts and stuff are like lawnmowers and those people where their mechanically inclined skills are very, very, very limited. So, I'm sure that... You know? We ran into that in the heavy duty industry even. You get some customers that they can't tell you the first thing about it. All they know is it's not running right, and it's like that's great. That's really not that great of information, and then you got to try to connect through JDLink and see if you can pull some remote codes from the thing if it's in an area that even gets service in Wyoming, like got to go through all that, and then you have the 75-year-old man that has an excavator and he is like he needs a turbo, and we're like, "I trust you with that. We will bring you the turbo and help you put it on." Save us a lot of time, right?
Tony:
Absolutely.
Diesel Queen:
Obviously, there's in between that, but I'm assuming that the majority of the people you deal with are in the latter.
Tony:
Yeah, on the golf cart side, definitely. On the automotive and diesel side, you get a little bit more. I mean, there's a lot more competition and there's a lot more information out there for these guys. So, a lot of times, hey, if you need a water pump and you're requesting a water pump, it's probably because you need one. With golf carts, we take everything with grain of salt because nobody knows anything about golf carts, even the people-
Diesel Queen:
I don't. Is it like a Gator? Is that pretty much what it is, is a Gator?
Tony:
Yeah, and in fact, a lot of our service work on the commercial side as opposed to our retail customers are graveyards, apartment complexes. What was the other one? Cities, right? They all have these utility vehicles that are the Gators, the UTVs for a construction company. They might have this utility looking side by side, but they're all the same, single-cylinder engines, drive belt clutches, and they're very basic small engine stuff. So, we see quite a bit of it, and I never thought I would really enjoy the small engine especially as opposed to coming from being a CarMax technician. Man, this stuff is easy to diagnose, easy to get to a quick response on, and a lot of the times they never really need motors. They're highly reliable. So, it's pretty cool stuff. Both gas and electric too, right? So, we have the electric side as well. We're doing quite a bit of that.
Diesel Queen:
Well, that's something that I've always told, even just mechanics that aren't working for themselves. They're working for other people. That's something I've always tried to give an advice on is specializing in something. You can make a lot more money. Like being a John Deere technician is great. You're specializing in John Deere. I could get a job tomorrow site unseen for whatever the fuck I ask for at any John Deere dealership, but you start specializing in things like cranes or the work in paving equipment or even like your deal. You guys are specializing in golf cars, and if that's all you do and that's what you specialize in, you're going to have a much higher chance of being efficient and cost-effective and doing it right the first time and that's something I've always tried to tell technicians, like try to specialize in something because that makes you invaluable, especially on things that are not very common for people to want to work on, and I mean, yeah, maybe it's not a giant crane that you guys are working on, but I don't know anybody.
I've never met anybody else who works on golf carts ever. So, I'm sure like you said, you guys started up a business and it just fucking took off because there's a lot of demand and not very many people supplying it.
Tony:
Yeah, we'll be setting up a service visit in San Francisco. So, we're down in San Diego area. San Francisco's, I don't know, 10 hours away from us or more, and one of the colleges up there, pretty big college. I won't say the name because you can't just yet, but they want to do lithium upgrades on all of their maintenance carts. These guys have 70 carts on site.
Diesel Queen:
Jesus.
Tony:
This is a $50,000 deal and the reason why they called us is because we're the only mobile provider of golf cart service. So, so crazy. Never thought any of that would happen. I mean, we started as a general repair company, so the company's name is Canyon Lake Mobile, and our first van said cars, carts, boats, diesel on the side. So, we're just like, "Hey, if you call me, I'll fix it." Right?
Diesel Queen:
Right. Yeah.
Tony:
Like we'll figure something out, and this is what we found. So, how much would you pay for a normal diesel oil change? What do you think the cost is there
Diesel Queen:
Like per hour?
Tony:
No, just like if you go into any shop and you're like, "Hey, I need an oil change on the diesel," even-
Diesel Queen:
I mean, I've never paid for an oil change, but I'm going to go ahead and assume it's somewhere... I mean, I would take it to a dealership because I don't trust Jiffy Lube. Like, I don't know, 150 bucks.
Tony:
Okay, awesome.
Diesel Queen:
Maybe, I don't know.
Tony:
All right, let's go with that because really that's all we have to go with is what does the consumer think a fair price is?
Diesel Queen:
Yeah, and good luck getting the hourly rates out of local shops to try and be competitive.
Tony:
Exactly. Exactly. So, that's the other part of it. We've got a lot of other influences on pushing that price down because competition drives price down. So, diesel oil change, let's say in your mind, you think 150 is fair. Our diesel oil change is $300, but most of our customers tell us, "Fuck off. I'm not paying $300 for an oil change." No problem. Guess what we get for doing it on a golf cart.
Diesel Queen:
What?
Tony:
250 bucks?
Diesel Queen:
Really?
Tony:
They are dying to get on schedule. I mean, when can you get here? When can you come? So, as we started to find these pricing models, do I do a car oil change for $150 that cost me $60, not including the tech that I have to pay, or do I just change one cord of oil and one little filter on a golf cart for 250 bucks? Crazy, right?
Diesel Queen:
Yep.
Tony:
So, that was for us probably about four or five months into starting this saying, "You know what? We need to go with what pays us the most," and-
Diesel Queen:
That's smart.
Tony:
.... I can hone down our technician training. I'm not having a tech that needs to work on a boat, needs to work on an RV, needs to work on a car, all this stuff. Most of our technicians are automotive-based because I can't pull from golf cart technicians. So, if I had a guy that say he worked on golf carts for the last 20 years, probably has half his teeth, probably has a drug problem, like I don't know. We have no idea.
Diesel Queen:
That's so accurate.
Tony:
But if I can get a professional automotive guy, and I'd bring him in, it is so much easier to take your knowledge base down and say, "Look, golf carts are very simple. We've got an engine. We've got a starter. We've got a belt. We've got a drive system. We've got very simple things," and-
Diesel Queen:
Hey.
Tony:
... I would say comfortably it takes us, and I've done this, I don't know, probably about 12 times now, takes about a week to two weeks to get a technician comfortable enough to be on their own in their own van, and we're still there for support. We're still there for, hey, I'm looking at this. I can't figure this out. Where do I test? I'm like, "All right. Take your multi-meter. Test at this point. Test at this point." So, now we have these... We actually have a team that actually is capable of working together, figuring out any problem. So, that's really helped definitely honing down what we actually work on, has helped with technician recruiting, the success of each repair, because when you're doing 200, 300 repairs a month, if 20% goes wrong, your whole business is failing. I mean, you really need to get down to five to 10% or less of issued vehicles to be able to run smoothly and things like that.
Diesel Queen:
Well, that's what some people don't understand. I've gotten the comments all the time about why don't you start your own business? Why don't you get your own service truck? Why don't you do this and do that? I'm like, "There is so much more to that than just buying a service truck and going out on repairs."
Tony:
Oh, yeah.
Diesel Queen:
Like you fuck up an engine, I mean not saying I've ever up an engine, but by chance something... Bad shit happens. You fuck up an engine on one of these pieces of equipment, that's 55 to $75,000, and you got to have insurance for that, or that's something that you're going to have to cover yourself and really, there's so much more to... My boyfriend's mentioned a couple times like, "Why don't you just open your own shop?" And it's like, "I fucking wish, but I don't want to have to deal with the liability of customers yet. I don't have the means to do that yet." So, what I'm trying to do is get into buying engines and rebuilding them, and then reselling them or buying a truck, rebuilding it, and then selling it. Unfortunately, that means I have to steer away from the heavy equipment, which is where my passion is, but people don't understand, like an engine for one of these things literally costs more than your car.
So, it's the insurance and the liability. Just like you said, sometimes in between overhead costs and your technician hourly wage and stuff like that and tooling and all that stuff, you got to have your numbers down. You got to be efficient or shit numbers start not really looking that great.
Tony:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, for anyone that's out there and to anybody watching this as well that's been thinking about like doing mobile, I want to encourage that you do it, like you should absolutely try it because we've all done side jobs. I remember me being as a tech, of course, not making enough, pulling in side jobs, friends, family, stuff like that. I mean, imagine doing that full-time. So, you definitely need to have a kitted out truck that's ready to go. You don't want to be rolling up in a Honda Civic with a tool bag in the back, right?
Diesel Queen:
Yeah, professionalism.
Tony:
And especially if you take that stuff seriously, right?
Diesel Queen:
Yeah.
Tony:
The mobile repair industry has a connotation to low quality or low budget work, right? And-
Diesel Queen:
Yeah, unless it's associated with the dealership.
Tony:
Yeah, right? You're looking at a different thing where maybe people see it as a premium at this point.
Diesel Queen:
Yeah, well, $235 an hour or some...
Tony:
Yeah.
Diesel Queen:
And that's in Colorado, Wyoming. I don't even want to fucking know in California what your guys' field repair for a dealership is.
Tony:
Yeah, yeah. No, it's across the board. It's all pretty high, but yeah, keep that in mind as you open a mobile business. As you start to do this yourself, you really got to say, "Do I want to be paid well or do I want to keep giving people deals," right?
Diesel Queen:
Yeah.
Tony:
Because if you go out there, you're going to take your expertise, your experience, and apply it to this vehicle. It should come at a premium and which is probably an interesting topic we should talk about is the diag fee. Do you give a credit towards the repair? My thought is why should we take our most important skill, the one that we worked hard for.
Diesel Queen:
That's the hardest one to have.
Tony:
Give it for free, right?
Diesel Queen:
Yeah.
Tony:
Why do we do that?
Diesel Queen:
Fuck that. No. That's [inaudible 00:21:59].
Tony:
The industry continues to do this, and the only thing that we can do is for us, we have a policy. Our diagnostic fee is $250. If you move forward with the repair, we'll take 125 of that and put it towards your repair, but only if the repair's over 300 bucks.
Diesel Queen:
Which makes sense. Like you said, diagnostics, anybody can be a parts changer. Anybody can get a fucking manual and go step by step and change parts on something, but the diagnostics is what really makes a technician valuable is being able to diagnose things and diagnose it properly and I've always thought the same thing about the diagnostic fees because you know what? At the dealership that I worked at, we had a minimum of one hour that you would be charged for diagnostics. Two, if it was an electrical issue, and if you went over that, well, the customer got charged for that for the most part, but these machines have 40 fucking controllers.
You can't put a time limit. Some of this shit, you got to go into DTAC and go into the fucking computer programs and ask the fucking engineers for help, and half the time the engineers are... Okay. DAC loves to use engineer... The DTAC, which stands for Dealer Technical Assistance. They love to put new engineers into DTAC before they become actual engineers. Every now and then though, that's a recipe for disaster because then they just end up reading you the same fucking manual that you're looking at, and it's like, "No, that's not what I fucking need. I can read the manual. I can understand the manual. I need more, okay? I've been working on this thing for two days. Give me something else." Every now and then though, you'll get an old mechanic or an older engineer that was just tired of shit. So, then he just went back to DTAC help people. Now those motherfuckers are helpful, but still all of this time and this effort and this resources are worth something.
And technicians, we are constantly learning. We have a lot of shit going on that we have to learn and figure out and I've always been an advocator for... You're not paying just for my time to diagnose this and repair this. You're also paying for the seven years I've spent in this industry learning how to do this because as we all know, you don't start out as a rockstar regardless of what anybody else tells you. People that start out in this industry, fresh off the fucking trade school bus, are not rock stars like they think they are, right? All of us fuck shit up for the first year at least, right?
Tony:
I do actually.
Diesel Queen:
So, you're paying for that experience and that training and the certifications that we took the time to get and that is valuable because why shouldn't it be valuable? That's something that you have to actually put the years and the time into getting. You can't just go online and spend 20 minutes skipping through a test and be a master mechanic, you know?
Tony:
Absolutely. Yeah, that's how-
Diesel Queen:
Felt strongly about that.
Tony:
That's the whole piece of it. I mean, on the technical assistance side, we've noticed... So, I used to run IC bus dealer, so international school buses. We had three shops in California, one in Sacramento, one in LA, and one in San Diego. So, between that, I probably had 35 technicians between the three dealers, but I can say, and for anyone who's experienced before, the IC or international side, their technical support is pretty good. It's a bunch of old grouchy technicians, but dang, they know their stuff, and I think they're all based out of Naperville, Chicago or Illinois, and I've met a lot of those guys. They know their stuff. They're very, very good. Unfortunately, we don't have any resources for golf cart, so we're stuck to Google and the manufacturers and things like that, but it's all the same staff. You just try to do the best that you can with what you got, and fortunately, a lot of the schematics are public, and so we can get into basically anything there, but yeah, it's cool. Very, very, very cool.
Diesel Queen:
So, something that we wanted to cover is dealing with the technician side of it. So, you came from being a technician into running the business. So, obviously, you know how most technicians are because you've been a technician, right? We can be hard to please. We can be hard to deal with. We want the right safety gear. We want the nice jack stands. We want the nice shop. We want good tools. How has your mindset changed, I guess, if it has from being a technician working for somebody else into now your role is reversed and you are on the management side of it?
Tony:
Well, I try to keep humble and really put myself back in those shoes because when you make the transition, even when your first management role. So, that could even be something as easy as like a foreman, like a service manager, then a service director and things like that. But definitely depending on where you're at in that, me right now, I'm more of like a director level, but if you remember what it's like to work in the cold, to work under a truck on the ground, probably on gravel, like you have to keep that stuff in mind because if you lose touch with that and you lose the trust of your technicians, they'll stab you in the back sooner than anyone else will. Right? Sooner than your worst enemies.
As a leadership style, I try to take in quite a bit of feedback from our services, our vans. "Hey, is this working out for you? Hey, on the next van, should we build in this?" Right?
Diesel Queen:
Mm-hmm.
Tony:
Things like that to make it easier because while I was a dealership technician, I was never a mobile dealership technician and so as we went into mobile, I've probably done, I would say, 1500, 2000 mobile appointments myself and so that helped me do it a little bit, but I very quickly got out of the van and into managing the schedule and things like that, but I mean, that's it, right? As a manager, your role is to earn trust, right? Managers work for technicians. It's not the other way around. It can be the other way around, especially when you have a tech who's had repeated issues and you're having trouble getting them to buy in to do what you're doing, and I fired many, many of technicians, but I always say, "We hire for character and we train for skill," because if you got the right guy on board, I don't care if you don't know how to diagnosis this. Call me. I can help you through it.
Diesel Queen:
Well, you can't teach work ethic, right?
Tony:
No, no, not at all.
Diesel Queen:
In many shops, I've watched that exact thing where you've got the kid that fucks everything up that he touches, but he's still got the job because he shows up early every day. He goes home late every day and he tries, right? He's not on his phone. He's not fucking off, but then you've got the mechanic that thinks he's too good for everything and he's declining jobs, personal experience from somebody I know personally, declining jobs because they're too good for that. That's not their job. This isn't their job. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and it's like it they're such a good mechanic, but it's wasted because I won't touch a crane. That's not my job. I didn't sign up to be a crane mechanic. It's like, bro, you're working for Haun and Equipment. We are a Grove crane dealership along with Deere, along with WorkIT.
Get with the fucking program, and I'm not going to name who this is, but this person was a very good mechanic, they were very good at what they did, but they pissed off a lot of bosses because they thought they were too good for it, and I went back to the shop. At Hahn and Equipment, if one shop was slow, we would send mechanics to other shops to help out, which honestly, I didn't mind too bad. I had horses and stuff at home that I had to make sure were taken care of, but for the most part, I didn't really mind it, and I showed up at one of the shops' locations, which I had worked at a couple of times and the boss there is great. He's laid back. He's great. You know, great guy. I'd work for him in a heartbeat. He actually tried to get me to transfer to his location before I moved to Indiana.
But I showed up and they needed a transmission pulled out of a crane. It was already diagnosed, but they needed the transmission pulled out and this is a job that nobody in the company has pulled a transmission on a crane. Cranes are something that we're a dealership for and we worked on a lot, but there's definitely a lot of jobs that people haven't done yet because it's cranes. It's not like we have 40 of them in the yard like we do John Deere equipment, and he's like, "Well, you're just going to have to figure it out." He's like, "Because whatever." He's like, "I don't really care if you make time. Just get it out," and I'm like, "I got this. I can do that." So, did I make time? Absolutely not. Did it take me forever? Yes, but I got it out and he looked at me and he's like, "You can come back here and work anytime you want. I will always have you at this shop and you will always be welcome because you always are willing to do whatever job I give you."
You don't care if it's Deere, if it's cranes, if it's some random dude's axle out of his pickup truck because that's just how those shops kept open is when it was slow. We took work from everybody, and he's like, "You just don't care. You're willing to work on anything and you have a good attitude about it and that's worth a lot more than a mechanic that's a little bit better than you. They've got more experience than you, but they're to work with. Your attitude's shitty," and it made me feel really good because I'm like, "I know this mechanic and this other mechanic's really good mechanic," but I had no idea that he was pissing people off like this. I had no idea until I actually started talking to people. I'm like, "I don't want to be that mechanic," because I do have a little bit of...
I'm a little of dominant personality and if I feel like a boss is being not a leader, and sometimes I don't always get along with some bosses. I've had a couple. For the most part, every single boss I've ever worked for I've gotten along for the most part, and the very, very select few bosses I've worked with over the years that I didn't get along with were like the kind of bosses that... I had one when I first started working in one of the shops that was brand new when it opened, and he was a good mechanic before he was a foreman and he is fucking smart. But God, was he anal? I mopped my floor. I'm not a clean mechanic. As we all seen, my bays usually look like a tornado went through, but this guy, he's like, "This is a brand new shop. We need to treat it as such." I'm like, "Okay, fine."
So, I had an axle [inaudible 00:34:30] grader, which is not a clean job in the first fucking place. You got dirt and dust and grease and oil leaks that have been there for 20 years and all this other shit on the floor. I had that axle out. I put it in the other bay, and I swept and mopped that entire bay and picked up all my tools and put them away. This motherfucker has the audacity to come out and he found one bolt laying on the floor, one bolt, and he fucking chewed my ass for it because it was like literally five minutes until clocking out, and I was sitting at my computer and he's like, "Why the fuck are you sitting on your computer when there's a fucking bolt on the floor?"
I'm like, "Bro, I just spent fucking 45 minutes cleaning to make it... Dude, I mopped my bay, okay? For me, you should be proud, right?" It's bosses like that that they got to prove something. They got to prove that they're the boss. It's like, "Dude, I already know you're a good mechanic, and I have respect for you. You don't have to do this shit, but now you're losing my respect."
Tony:
I find it in a lot of middle managers, right? So, either you have someone in my position with our own company. I'm the owner. I have a service manager who's in the middle of that and a lot of the times, especially if it's the wrong person, that middle manager can be very like, "Oh, I'm going to go above and beyond and be dicks to these guys because I want to be a good manager," but let me remind everybody that being a good manager has a very little to do with managing people. You are earning the trust of your team. As with any baseball team, football team, shoot, even golf teams, you have to earn that trust and it's not always, "I don't care if the manager's not a great mechanic.' As long as they make sure that my parts are there on time, they make sure that I'm not dealing with dumb things and they don't throw me under the bus.
If they got my back and make sure I have everything that I need, I'm going to be a high producer for them no matter what. That's what I try to set up for our technicians is I'm not going to send you to something that you're not prepared for, or I'm going to field all these calls and say, "Hey look... " All right, kind of sounds like, all right, it may not be this technician I want to send there. It may be this technician just because he's seen this a little more." It's hard work to do that, right? It's really hard to know your technicians and adapt your business to fit the team that you have. I was in Marine Corps for eight years and a lot of my leadership style is not necessarily based in the knife hand part of the Marine Corps, but more based in know your team and look out for their welfare, and if a technician trusts you and trusts that you have their best interest, they'll kill for you. [inaudible 00:37:41].
Diesel Queen:
Oh, yeah. Well, if you have a positive attitude, positive attitudes go a long way. I completely agree with that and you made a comment that I want to touch on earlier. You said mechanics don't work for management. Management work for mechanics, and all the bosses that I've always got along with were actually a majority of them were always like that. They're like, "Here's what you need to do. Here's what I need you to do," and if it was a job that they thought was over my head for the time or they're like, "I'm not really sure." They just approached it and be like, "Hey, I know this is a big job for you. I understand that you're probably not going to get this done in time. I don't care. Just take your time, go slow and try to do it right," and I worked at a shop that I was the only shop mechanic, and we had me as a shop mechanic, and then we had two field mechanics.
So, it was a small shop. It was a startup, and when the current boss decided he wanted to quit, because it's a small shop, everybody has a lot of roles. So, I helped check in machines in and out of the yard. So, I was a mechanic, I was a yard dog, and I was also a fill-in boss for whenever my boss wanted to take a vacation or he didn't feel like answering the phone, which I get it, right? Like sometimes the phone's just ringing nonstop and he just wants to be out fixing something. I understood. We worked as a team and so when he quit, the regional manager was like, "Hey, you can run the shop while we're trying to hire somebody else," and I'm like, "Okay, that's fine."
There was a conflict of interest with one of the other mechanics there that was actually my ex-boyfriend, but he was not my ex-boyfriend at the time. So, I could not actually be hired for the position, but they're like, "Hey, if you want to run the shop for now, that's great," and he actually vouched for me, and he tried to get the owner to just hire me anyways, but didn't happen, which I understand, but I ran that shop for probably three months, and I learned rapidly. Coming fresh off the fucking plate from being a mechanic, right into that leadership role, you really are working for your mechanics. You are making sure the parts guys are getting their shit done on time. You are being the middle man in between pissed-off customers.
You're scheduling them and scheduling was something that the previous manager was okay at, but it wasn't great. He was pushing them way too hard. We really didn't have the workload to be working field mechanics 15 hours a day. We didn't have the workload for that.
Tony:
Oh, wow.
Diesel Queen:
So, I slowed it down a little bit, and as you know in Wyoming, or if you might not know, but in Wyoming, everything is at least an hour away, everything. Everything. So, if it was a job that was not in Cheyenne, Wyoming itself, I schedule one field call a day. That would give them time to drive there, especially if the roads are, shitty, drive there, look at the machine, figure out what they need, and then come back and a lot of times that's an all day thing, and I've seen bosses, not that particular boss, but I've seen bosses try to schedule three field calls in one day and one of them's an hour and a half north of Cheyenne and the next one is an hour and a half west. It's like by the time the technician gets there, looks at it, comes back, does the job in Cheyenne that you wanted them to do, and then goes all the way out west, they're going to be home at 10 o'clock at night, and that's not going to keep a field mechanic happy very long, and these people are invaluable to us.
But that was another thing that I learned is I knew the mechanics that worked there. Obviously, there was only two or three field mechanics, but I knew them pretty well, and I knew what their skillsets were. So, if it was a very in-depth hard job that needed somebody that was really good, I knew who to send, and if it was a little bit easier job, I had it figured out on who I wanted to send at what. There were certain customers that would request, specifically request, one of the field mechanics that we had. So, I've always tried to... but that's something I did want to cover in this episode was the management side because I haven't really covered that very in depth, and I really, really wanted to hear your take on coming from a mechanics standpoint into management because as you know, there are great managers that were never mechanics.
But having the experience in the field and remembering, like you said, remembering what it's like to be the mechanic, you're at the mercy of your manager for scheduling and jobs and what you're doing, and it is important to have that kind of remembrance of where you came from. You know, "What would I do in this situation if this was done to me, and I was still a mechanic?" Obviously, sometimes, you got to suck it up and just do the job whether you want to or not because you're a fucking mechanic, but I've always believed that management makes or breaks a shop. I've always believed that is... All it takes is one bad manager to lose your entire team.
Tony:
That is correct.
Diesel Queen:
Because once you have one mechanic leave, the rest will follow.
Tony:
My service manager watches this. Thank you, Josh, couldn't do it without you, buddy, because that is true. I mean, we got one key player basically in any role. Of course, if something happened, there would be a solution, but without that key player really looking out for those things and managing your techs how you'd want them to, like it's even harder for me because now I don't even... I trust that that management is being done well, and I do by the way, Josh, but yeah, that's a hard part of it as well. I mean, for our Amazon side of things, I've four or five different managers and they're all different. Some I don't necessarily agree with the way that they do it, but the only thing that you could do is as that director level go into your middle manager and saying like, "Hey, give them feedback on this stuff," because a lot of the foreman, they're just thrown into this job. You're a great tech. You should lead mechanics, and then [inaudible 00:44:35]-
Diesel Queen:
That's what happened to me.
Tony:
... foreman, and they're terrible. So, you take your best technician. You promote them to be a manager, and you don't give them training. Now, you've lost a good technician and you've off all the others, and it's super, super important, and I don't think a lot of... I don't think a lot of this is common knowledge of how to manage people, and I would suggest for anyone in that transitionary period is to read, and you don't actually have to read words. You can download Audible. Link in description. I know you should put that-
Diesel Queen:
Oh, you know mechanics very well, don't you?
Tony:
But yeah, I mean, I read. There's a lot of good books out there. If Extreme Ownership is one of them, a Navy SEAL who talks about how you execute on things, whatever. There's How to Win Friends and Influence People. That's a really good book, but seek knowledge. We seek knowledge as a mechanic on performing tasks and things like that, but do we seek knowledge when it comes to leading and being a leader in a shop? I would argue to say that maybe most don't, but if you're in this transitionary period, prepare yourself, educate yourself, read. Do what you can because the people that are out there killing for you depend on you to do that.
Diesel Queen:
Well, they're not going to be killing for you for long if you're a shitty fucking manager.
Tony:
No, they'll kill you.
Diesel Queen:
Exactly, and I got lucky before I ran that shop. I got lucky that I was the fill-in boss for almost a year. So, I watched Jason, and I watched how he managed things, and I watched how he dealt with customers and stuff like that, and I learned the qualities that worked well for the customers and the qualities that worked well for us mechanics, and then I also learned... because he's actually a really great team player. He was actually a really good team player. There was just a couple things that were a bit on the extreme, but for the most part, he was a great team player, and I tried to learn from him the do's and don'ts of how I would run it, but the one thing you never understand is... For all the mechanics listening to this that aren't in the management side yet, what you don't understand is all of the stuff that these managers filter away from you, there is a lot of stuff that managers deal with that mechanics do not understand or don't see.
When we deal with pissed-off customers or shit rolling downhill because shit loves to roll downhill, right? Sometimes, you're just at the mercy of the people above you too, and I ran into that a couple of times where one of the other shops needed a mechanic or two or whatever, needed a mechanic and even though we were short on work, the manager above me decided that our work and our jobs, after he talked to the customers... Obviously, he was actually a really good manager, but he decided that our jobs and what we were doing were not as important or not as dire as the jobs that he needed a mechanic for. I'm at the mercy of that. I can't just tell this guy "no." I can come up to you and be like, "Hey, I'm sorry. I don't have control over this. Somebody above me wants you in a different city right now to work on something else." I can't control that and a lot of the mechanics... I think as a manager, if you approach it that way and you're honest with your mechanics and you're transparent and be like, "Hey, I don't really want to send you either, but I don't really have a choice. I know you had this going on or that going on, but I don't really have a choice."
Instead of just being not transparent at all, be like, "Hey, you're going to do this. I don't care what you have going on. I don't care about your life, but you're just going to go do this." If you're more transparent with them and telling them like, "Hey, I'm sorry. I don't have control over this situation," then they're much more understanding. At least they're not mad at you for a decision that you didn't even make.
Tony:
Totally. Absolutely.
Diesel Queen:
I don't know if that's right, but that's a take that I got from it.
Tony:
And don't forget to take these guys out for a beer every once in a while too. Super key.
Diesel Queen:
Yeah, free food goes a long way with mechanics, burritos and donuts and pizza. It goes a long way. It might seem stupid, but mechanics-
Tony:
No, it does.
Diesel Queen:
... the way to their hearts is food.
Tony:
Yeah, you can even buy a little bag of Snickers, right? Just throw them up in the break room or something like that. It all makes a big difference, and then the very small things that you do as gestures are very big. They do make a big difference. We used to just buy a rack of Red Bulls. Just go down to Costco, buy couple cases and just keep them there. I don't care what... It's 70 bucks in Red Bull, but what it does is, in addition to the boost of energy, gives you wings, it also is part of that that just makes you feel comfortable and at home because you do spend more time at work than we do at homes, and a lot of the times that shop becomes your family. So, don't be a weird family member. Be a good [inaudible 00:50:13], okay?
Diesel Queen:
Don't be a weird family member. That is true.
Tony:
Yeah, but yeah. I mean, I've enjoyed my time. I said I've been in the industry for about 15, 16 years, and I would say I'm getting to the point where about half of that is has been in management. So, I probably say I've been doing it for seven years now as far as a service leader as opposed to being the technician. The money's not always better, to be honest, or as a mobile mechanic, really in California, you can push over a hundred with without any issue and if you're not making that, call me. I'll hire you, but in a manager, right? You're going to make 60, 70,000 a year. You may have some incentive bonus program that gets you closer to that hundred, but the expectation is when you're a manager, you get a salary and the salary is 60 to 80,000, but your technicians are going to make more and you shouldn't get upset about that, right? You should be stoked about that.
I get stoked when someone makes more than me because if they made more than me, it means that they produced, and at the end of the day, the business was successful because of that and that's how everything should be lined up. Your technicians should absolutely make the most, and everyone else is there to support them. Parts teams are there to support them. The operations are there to support them. Even your sales teams, right? Sales teams-
Diesel Queen:
No, don't get me started in sales.
Tony:
Well, and it's funny because at a dealership, especially like when we talk about a GM, a lot of times that GM is previous sales guy, not a previous service manager, which is really how that always ends up happening that way, but I think I understand a little more of it now because at the end of the day, selling cranes makes a lot more money than fixing cranes. It is what it is. I mean, that's the reason why a lot of golf cart companies end up becoming golf cart dealers as opposed to just a service business, which is just what we are. We don't sell golf carts. We're service golf carts, but man, if I sold a few golf carts a month, we would double what we do. It's crazy. So, yeah, I've had quite a bit of fun doing it.
Diesel Queen:
Well, one of the shops that I worked in... I'm trying not to name these as much, but one of the shops I've worked in, as a company, they made a point that when they hired foremen or hired store managers or whatever, they were previous mechanics and usually previous good mechanics and how they did this is instead of just hiring a service manager or whatever, it was a service manager/mechanic or it was a working foreman as they would call it or a working service manager. So, that eliminated the salary thing because I've also worked for another dealership that had straight salary, and actually, I think it worked pretty well because all of my bosses were ex-mechanics, which obviously is sometimes good, sometimes bad, but for the most part, these people could be out there working with you. These bosses could be out there working with you and helping you and they were...
Obviously, I've worked for plenty of service managers that were not mechanics, that were great managers, and I don't know if... You'd have to ask actual managers for more in depth, but I felt like the managers that were getting paid hourly because they were working foremen, and they were obviously required to clock 10 to 15 hours a week or whatever on a job, but I felt like they were happier than just a... because some of these, I had a boss at one of the other companies I worked for. Great boss, great boss, but he was salary, and he was an automotive mechanic before, but he was just salary. He wasn't allowed to touch it. God forbid, you do not ask him to run a piece of machinery because unless you want to commit suicide, that was not a great idea.
Great guy though. Great manager, but that poor man made like $60,000 a year in salary or something like that, but he worked like 14-hour days. So, his hourly rate, if you did the math of what his salary was versus what it would transform over into hourly for working 12 to 14 hours a day, he was making shit money, like horrible money, and I felt bad for him because he had a wife, he had kids and he was actually a really good manager. I just want to get your take on that because I've noticed... That's just something that I've seen or noticed or had a little bit of an opinion on.
Tony:
Yeah, well, it's an encouraged path for those that are thinking about it. I mean, being able to clock out is something that's very important for your mental space and if you don't have a job that you're able to clock out, you better love it. So, it's not for everyone. That is for sure. For anyone that's on the fence of, "Hey, I have an opportunity to be a foreman," cool. Just take into account that, you know, talk to your family about it, right? Talk to your kids, talk to your wife, make sure that they understand that the responsibility is more than just what clocking in and clocking out means because you're now responsible other human beings living and that's a huge burden, and I enjoy that burden. Right? I love being able to provide that, but I'm a weird bird, so that might be just me. Well, I could tell you my mess-up story if you want to hear that.
Diesel Queen:
Yes. So, we're going to wrap this episode up a little bit, and I love to end at them with I want to hear your biggest fuck up because... and then your biggest accomplishment. We're going to even the plates.
Tony:
All right, very, very good. Very good. So, we'll start with-
Diesel Queen:
Fire away.
Tony:
So, I think this was my first flat rate job. So, I was an automotive diesel technician, Duramax certified. I ended up later becoming common certified, but this was like... So, I did two years as an apprentice at a GM dealer, and then like 19 years old, I went on my own, fully flat rate, ready to go, and I worked for a Chevy dealer in San Diego, and we had a Coca-Cola, Chevy HHR with a little four cylinder engine in it, and it came in completely covered in oil and a rod sticking out of the block.
Diesel Queen:
Oh, that's cool though. Those are always fun.
Tony:
And I was like, "Oh my God, what happened to this thing? Wow." Actually, no, I don't think the rod was through the block. I just think it was seized or something like that, because I ended up reusing the block. So, pulled the motor out, did the whole thing. This was all under warranty, by the way. I'll go into why it shouldn't have been. So, I pulled the motor out, redid all the bearings, rebuilt, basically did the whole thing, put it back in, put it all back together, drove it all the way down the road, and I'm like, "Sweet, this thing is ready to go," and I shipped it. Three weeks later, it comes in, covered in oil.
Diesel Queen:
Oh God.
Tony:
And I'm like, "What?"
Diesel Queen:
Just a turbo, wasn't it?
Tony:
No, it was stupider than that.
Diesel Queen:
Oh God.
Tony:
You have canister filters on them, and the canister filter had a line crack in the top of it, where if I was paying close enough attention, I would've totally seen it.
Diesel Queen:
Was this a power stroke?
Tony:
No, it was a four cylinder gas engine.
Diesel Queen:
Oh, you just said that. Nevermind. Anyway, sorry.
Tony:
So, just a little hairline crack in it and if you watched it, it would take probably about 30 seconds, but you'd start to see oil run down the block, and I missed that for sure. I missed that. Coca-Cola did their own oil changes and they cracked that filter. That motor should have never been under warranty, but guess who got to rebuild it for free for the second time? This guy. That was like a big one where it was just an oversight thing. I had another big one that was a little bit more than an oversight. This one was just day one stuff. When I was a helper, I was working for the front end guy. So, he does brakes and alignments. That was their department, and I was a helper for the whole shop.
So, I went over there. He's like, "Hey, can you knock out brakes on this Silverado?" Yeah. Boom, did front and rears, and I just left it there because all he asked me to do is do the brakes. So, I did that. Ran over, helped somebody else, was doing whatever, and then he is like, "Hey, that truck, can you drop it down, get it on the alignment rack? We're going to go ahead and run the alignment." So, I went back over there, I hopped in the thing, lowered it down off the lift, kicked the racks out, backed it up, and didn't pump the brakes.
Diesel Queen:
Oh, Lord.
Tony:
I think behind me was a engine block from our heavy line guy on an engine stand right in front of the bench. Fortunately, this bay was empty because I would've killed someone. The bay was empty and all that was in it was a engine block, and I backed up, realized I didn't have brakes and went straight for the engine block because this is the only way I wasn't going to hit another car or another person. So, not only did I... I didn't total the truck, but not only I really screwed up the truck, but I also ran this warranty engine block under a bench and scratched the whole top deck of it. So, the whole cost ended up being somewhere around $15,000.
Diesel Queen:
Ouch.
Tony:
I had a wonderful service manager at the time, and I worked by butt off for him. I was one of the kids that I don't care if you don't know too much about stuff, but shoot, he'll do anything. Right? I was one of those guys. So, it was what I had done and the name that I had made for myself in that dealer that allowed me to still have a job when that happened because he said, "Hey look, things happen. I totally understand it. Each one of those guys, the technicians that I was a helper for, had my back as well." They said, "Hey, you know what? I get it." It was like two hours between when he did the brakes and when he pulled it off the rack and he was doing a bunch of other stuff. Happens, whatever. So, those are my two big ones.
Diesel Queen:
I bet you never made that mistake again though.
Tony:
No, I never... No, I Just-
Diesel Queen:
That is the only-
Tony:
[inaudible 01:02:01]. I'm just kidding.
Diesel Queen:
The only true failures and mistakes are ones you repeat twice.
Tony:
Yeah, that's correct. Yeah. Never definitely pumping the brakes every time now. So, yeah, fun times.
Diesel Queen:
Well, if it makes you feel any better, the last shop I worked at had a mechanic that was like 55 years old and he claimed to be like... He was the lawnmower mechanic and he claimed to be like... He was one of those guys that just claimed to be God's gift mechanic industry, and I followed up a break job that he did on the pickup truck, on the parts truck, and the brakes, like I was supposed to breed the brakes... bleed them, and I could not get the fronts to bleed. I'm like, "What the fuck?" He swapped the calibers and the bleed screws were on the bottom instead of the top. Obviously, that was never going to bleed. Yeah, and he was like 55, so you're good.
Tony:
Well, so then I guess if we go with biggest accomplishment, normally, I would say the business that we've created, and that is definitely up there, but probably one of the things that I'm definitely most proud of is we started providing services to Amazon overnight for the company that I contract for, and I did the first, I don't know, probably 25, 30 oil changes myself, and then I hired and scaled. We now operate in 54 stations across the country and we do about 1,500 repairs a night. Even though that wasn't my own company, I put my blood, sweat and tears into it and to be able to handle the largest fleet in the United States and do it well is a huge accomplishment. So, my accomplishments are the accomplishments of my team. I'm super proud of everything that they have done and under my guidance, I'm proud that didn't lead them to a dark place. So, everything that I have as far as where I've been, where I've come from is really because of a lot of the folks that worked for me and their ability to work with my crazy ass and still get everything done is, hey, I'm stoked with where we are with both of those projects. Been a lot of fun.
Diesel Queen:
That's good. It's cool to see the success of people that don't obviously are humble enough to say that, "I didn't get here by myself. I had help and I'm willing to give credit where credit is due." There's a lot of people that miss that and so that's good. Means you're a good leader.
Tony:
I owe quite a bit to my wife too, because she's been there the whole time, and oh boy.
Diesel Queen:
Yeah, I would like to have a conversation with her.
Tony:
Yeah, absolutely. She feels-
Diesel Queen:
That son of a bitch... The man I'm dating right now is a very ambitious person, so I understand. Sometimes, you got to pull the reins in a little bit.
Tony:
Oh yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Diesel Queen:
Well, I appreciate having you on this podcast. I think we covered a lot of good things about management. That's something I was really looking forward to covering after we spoke a little bit this morning was about management and that side of it and building an industry and building a shop and having a team that can coexist with each other and work well together and how you handle that. So, I appreciate you being on here and if you have anything else you want to add or talk about, now's the time. If not, if you want to share a website or social media or any other accounts that you want public that people can find you at, if they want to get ahold of you, now's the time.
Tony:
Yeah. So, if you guys ever do need to get ahold of me, have questions about any of the stuff that we talked about, you can email me tony@canyonlakemobile.com. If you have a golf cart and you are anywhere in the United States, we do sell golf cart parts on our website at canyonlakemobile.com. In addition to if you need technical support, we do sell our technical support nationwide. It's 125 bucks an hour, gets you on with the technician. He'll fix any golf cart problem that you have. We ask that you bring a multi-meter and basic hand tools, but we can get anything fixed out. So, canyonlakemobile.com is where you can that. Other than that, we'll see you next time.
Diesel Queen:
Yep. Well, thank you, and I hope you have a good weekend.
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