Episode 125 - Streamlining Operations with Intelligent Scheduling with Steven Fafel of AutoOps

No, let me try it. Let me try it. Okay. Faithful. Boom. There you go. Faithful. Lucas. Very Lucas. Underwad. Underwad. That's right. Stephen fossil from Autobot. Faithful. I just said it. Faithful. I don't run with you, blood. Steven, how you doing, buddy? He's getting fired from intros. No, it's not as bad. I was at a church once and it was our first time visiting there. I met the pastor right before the church

service started. I said, oh, my name is Stephen Faithful. Nice to meet you. He goes up in front of everyone, said, I can't believe it, we have visitors here today. Their last name is Faithful. Can we get a round of applause for that? Okay, well, misheard there, but it's all good. It'll work, right? It'll do. From auto ops. Yeah, a little bit about myself. I'm 65 years old. I've owned a shop for 30 years. I'm definitely on wait a minute, you read David's track.

Come on. If I'm 30 years into shop ownership at 65, I've done something wrong. The plan is to get crushed by a car at 50 because I'm still going to be within that 20 year term life insurance limit. So at 50, I'm underneath a car and just hear creak and then crush and then just a slow bleed out for me, and I'll just be like, Let me go, it's fine. I told my wife that, she got mad. She's like, what is wrong with you? Well, let me tell you, I guarantee you

we can come up with a very definitive list of things. I'm sorry you're not 65. I'm a little younger. I'm 25 years old, originally from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. There's not many software platforms coming out of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I tell people sometimes, yeah, we hire a lot of Amish people as developers and they're like, wow, that's really cool. So I guess they're not super familiar with Amish people. They're fantastic web developers. They do such a good

job. They do it with pen and paper, though.

I even just moved, actually, my brother and I, which my brother is also one of my co founders. We're both originally from Langster, but we even just moved deeper. We're in a small town now called Coreyville, Pennsylvania, which is like Amish central cornfields, as far as you can see. So that's my background. I moved out for a was in a past life. I was very into rock climbing, traveling, outdoor sports of all kinds. So I was

gone for about five years. And then when I came back to Lancaster, my father was working at a company that did online scheduling in a similar industry. And basically I saw what he was doing for a while. I had a marketing background. I had a marketing company for rock climbing gyms before this. And my brother and I saw what he was doing in that industry and how it

totally revolutionized it. And we thought that automotive was the last industry in the world to come over to modern, integrated, intelligent online scheduling. We pitched him and a couple of other people on his team the idea, and we were off and rolling. It was kind of funny. So my brother and I, we had a marketing company for rock climbing gyms. After that slowed down, we both went to other startups.

Not super small startups, but he actually went to a startup that did online scheduling for high end restaurant reservations. So we bring a couple different industries from online scheduling together to start auto ops and really just focus on this conversion point that we think is super important. It has been overlooked for a long time in the industry. That's kind of my mindset. Second background. But yeah, no, not 65, 25 years old. A little on the younger side,

but I'm learning as quick as I can. That's awesome, dude. So let me ask you this. Why automotive? What was it that drew you to automotive? Did you have an automotive background? Was there something about automotive that drew you into it? Was it just like, there's opportunity here. What was your main drive for that? Yeah, and it's kind of two parts. Two parts is I call ourselves Z level

technicians. We're all extremely honestly, I'll give a shout out to my father. My father, he recently did, like, a full engine rebuild, so he has been promoted from Z level technician to, like, a C level tech. So we all have general automotive. We like working with cars. We like cars. We've always been kind of into. In my driveway and my parents driveway as a kid, we always had, like, ten different vehicles. They were all, like, under $1,000. We were always swapping it out. Some

was in the shop, this is the shop. So we've always enjoyed kind of being around cars, not in the fancy sense that some people are. So I think general Automotive, like, I think another part is it's an industry that fits our personalities well. I'm from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I'm not from Silicon Valley. The people who I get to work with on a daily basis are people who have similar characteristics to myself and my team,

similar values, even though we're not obviously shop owners. I think just the way that blue collar people approach life is similar to the way as close as I can get from the tech side of things, that's really cool.

And that's something to think about, right? Like, a lot of these companies, they are very different as far as values. And it's like when we signed up and started working with shopware, right? Like, Carolyn is a shop owner, right. And she was a tech, and she understood what we were going through and what

we were working on and why we were doing what we were. That that's always been, like, a cool connection for me because I like working with people who understand what it is that I'm going through and so it's neat to hear that perspective. I hadn't ever thought about it that way. Did COVID kill rock climbing. COVID

sadly, did not kill rock climbing. COVID kind of blew up a portion of rock climbing, but for the people who wanted to get outside, it was one of those sports where you go outside and there wasn't a ton of bands on it. So I think it pushed a lot of people to go outside and now all those people are coming to the rock climbing gyms. But yeah, it's also crazy they survive through COVID because technically not in my area, but some parts of the country, you couldn't go into

that indoor facility. They were shut down, right? No, it definitely hurt. Climbing gyms as a whole. Yeah, there were a lot of climbing gyms that shut down over COVID. I think like a lot of industries, it separated the wheat from the chaff. Is that the correct expression? But yeah, the gyms that were struggling definitely did not get helped out during COVID But I think the popularity of there was some big climbing movies released during COVID so I think the general popularity of

climbing name one. What are you talking about? Have you guys free solo? That was the one. The dude who climbed one of the faces in Yosemite with no rope. Did you guys hear about this at huh? Very popular film. Free solo. You guys gotta watch it. It'll make your hands sweat. Oh, dude, there is some yeah. Is that the whole movie? Him climbing it up and like, hey, we're halfway up, so halfway through the movie. The

key really is that he did it with no rope. That's the insane part. It's like a 2500 foot face and climbed it with no rope. I mean, I might make it like 5ft up and by then be tired. Didn't need a nap, so not going a lot. Far possesses somebody to do that. I'm going to climb up 2500ft, no rope. I'll be fine. I will. I'll be okay. And I think there's some correlations you could bring in. But there's something to needing

to be perfect. There's something to just you have to the mental flow you get in where you know you can't mess up when it's not even an option. Something crazy. I try to sometimes get into that in business. Just even where we do have options, I try to put myself on hold, being like, if this doesn't happen, we're failing, we're failing.

There's something about where you just put yourself up against a wall. Yeah, but that's like, okay, if you fail, then you start an online scheduling company for, I don't know, something else. If that guy fails, he dies. And he has a second or two of contemplating his life choices as he's seeing those rocks coming at him at terminal velocity. And he goes, maybe this wasn't a good idea. I should have had something as a safe

splat and then that's it. And I understand I can't say anything more because if my mother ever watches this, but there may or may not be some videos on YouTube of me climbing without ropes. 2500Ft straight up. Like not like 90 degrees. It's like the wingsuit, dude. Right? Like you've seen the video. No, the wingsuit. That makes sense. It's just a thrill. I get that. It's like jumping out of a plane. Yeah. But I'm talking about not what normal

people do. I'm talking about the guy who comes down and they're holding the balloons and they let the balloons go as he comes across the top of their head and he's like, feet off the ground. It's what made sail that AWOL Nation song famous. You know what I'm talking about? Have you ever seen that video? Yeah, I can't remember dude's name. I've seen the video of the guy getting, like, clipped. Did you see that one? The same dude. It's the same dude. And

I think that's how he met his demise. But I mean, dude, you're traveling 120 miles an hour just floating through the air, feet above a rock. I mean, come on now. Eventually. No, well, they're trying to get close to the ground because that's a thrill. Otherwise you're just jumping out of the plane, you're going down fast. That guy wants to skate just above the ground and then hit a tree. Or whatever it was. He

clipped something and then that was it. There's a famous climber who is dating now, or married to her third wingsuitor because the previous two are no longer with us. And she just keeps marrying them. Keeps marrying them and they keep wingsuiting. Hold on. Now she's got a plan. Here's my question, though, right? Oh, you're really into wing suits. Sure, yeah, let's get married. Those people are not no prenup people, though. Those type of people are the people to have, like, a pack of

ramen noodles during the day, though, too. So I think she just well, maybe, but you think that's pretty expensive. That's an expensive hobby. It's not like, well, that's why they. Have packs of room. Well, I get that, but they're spending the money on the equipment and stuff like that. But you got to think that they are at least building up enough funds to then be able to go out and do the whole thing. And she's like, hey, on this last trip,

whatever, like, good luck. As someone who owns a lot of expensive climbing gear, I can tell you that it was like, oh, I'll buy this $1,000 climbing gear and then I won't pay for housing for the next two months. Hey, mom and dad, can I come back and stay with you for a little bit? Like, hey, man, I'm a little behind on my rent. Dude, we all have our stupid spending vices. Don't shame him. He's fine. I'm not shaming him. If you spend shame anybody. We're shaming you over your Steam

account, man. That's terrible. $50,000 in video games. You never play. I never play them. You know what? They're $2 apiece. How do you get that much money? Like, we're friends on Venmo. I watch. I'm like, Dude, n 64 games. In 64 games? In 64 games. My God. How many n 64 games can I. No, I don't have a console yet. So it's a thing. Like, you grew up, you didn't have any money. You're like? Yeah. One day. Well, one day is now. Well, I don't because I spent it all on old video games.

Yeah, it'll hit you too, dear. It'll hit you, too. You're a wild success in your forty s and you're sitting on a pile of money. All of a sudden, you're going to be that guy climbing up the side of El Capitan with no rope, going, yeah, I've got so much money. What else am I going to spend it on? I got my three personal trainer, personal chef, massage therapist. I don't even need them to be nice. That's all I want. Eat. To be able to eat well. Being

able to eat well. The cooking is fun. What are you talking about? Cooking is fun. It's fun to cook. No. Last night my brother made fun of me because I brought up a massive bowl of air fried meatballs. And that was our dinner last night. Ah, well, I I enjoy cooking so that I wouldn't want a personal show. I get the appeal. I get the appeal. The personal trainer, for sure. And I don't like people touching me. So physical therapist or personal massage person now? People touching me. All right, so

Steven, you don't know this. David and I were talking about this before you came on. I want your feedback on this. We're changing gears completely. We're going in a completely different direction. Hold on. I just want to mention this. 711 has the worst cups. The styrofoam is good. The lids are the worst. The lids don't attach. Our local one our local one, you can't get lids. Our local one has plastic or Styrofoam. Cups because the lid lids the lids just flop off. They have these

eco straws. They're okay. They get little holes and stuff like that poked on them. They're okay. But the lids are the worst lids. So seven up. You're probably never going to listen to this. One, we need a sponsorship. And two, I need you to fix the lids before we accept your money. I don't need money for your sponsors. Oh, yeah, you can. Popeye's Chicken. Popeyes Chicken. Eleven. Popeyes Chicken. They're opening up one. Hey, Lucas, sorry this is going sideways, but I just wanted to tell

you this. Lucas, the best chicken strip place in Kansas City is opening up a thing, like a restaurant, caddy Corner, to my shop. Caddy Corner? Really? Just like on which corner? Just what is it? Southeast of us. There was a bar there. The bar closed up. It was a sketchy bar. And they bought it. They're going to keep it a bar. They're going to make it a dive bar, but they're going to sell their full menu, and so they're ridiculously good. Coleslaw the

chicken is fired. We'll have to check next time. I'm

out. So I don't know if you know this talking about fast food restaurants. Popeyes is owned by Restaurant Brands Incorporated, right? RBI. And then they also own Burger King. And the dudes who saved Domino's came in, and now they've invested all of their money in Burger King to salvage Burger King because Burger King had been flat. And then it started going down, and they were talking about it was really cool because I watched this interview the other day. God knows how I ended up on the

interview. But they were talking about their strategy for saving Burger King, and they were talking about the mindset of what a consumer looks like when they look at Burger King and how do they think about it. It was a really insightful interview, even though we're not even related to fast food or anything like that. Their mindset of the CEO, he said, when I came into Burger King, I decided to take it over. He said, I've made a rule. He said, we

did the same thing with Domino's. If I'm going to do this, I'm going to invest personal money. And they said, well, why did you do that? It's a dangerous move. Burger King's been in bad shape for a while. And he said, listen, I need to invest money in it so I have a personal attachment to its success. And he said, that's what drives me is that I've invested in it. I know that if I'm going to get anything back out of that, if I'm not going to lose everything I have to have, I've got

sweat in it. And so he talks about all of these things that they're doing, these strategic mindset changes within the organization. And so the interviewer says, well, wait a minute. Like, you're talking about these huge strategic changes, but you're not talking about changing the food or even necessarily the branding. You're changing the way that the employees think about the business. And he said, well, because the employees are the business, right? Like, I

can build any building and make any business. He said, that's what we did with Domino's. We changed the way that the employees saw the business. And so now they cared about the business, and they provided a better product to our consumers, and we paid them more, and we created more opportunity for them. So it wasn't just a dead end. I'm 16 years old and need a job deal. We created something that was theirs.

And I thought that was such a cool concept when you really dig into it, that these guys are investing that kind of money and it almost seemed like this was just a thrill sport for them. Like the dude climbing the rock face with no rope. I mean, it's like, hey, I'm going to invest half my money in this. I'm going to put it all on the line and gamble just to see if we can turn it around. And up to that point, they said that there was no chance that they were going to turn it

around. And then these two super duper CEOs that have saved all these other businesses come in just for funsies, to save Burger King. I just thought it was a cool idea, right? And then they closed my local pupey's. Turns out they're opening the one right by my house. Listen, we're going to have to get bigger monitors or we're going to have to

switch platforms because you're not going to fit into the frame. In a couple of months, I'm going to go to full frame camera just to be and then I'm going to sit in my personal what? No, I want Popeyes, bro. He's got a personal right next door.

What you said. Lucas I think there's a point in my brother and I were talking about this last night that some of these people, you just get past money and you just like, I think no pun intended, they like changing industries. They like changing entire sections of how businesses work just for fun, just because they're like, oh, I think I can. And now, obviously, it's still in the food industry. Burger King's big enough where it's like,

I could change a massive corporation. I think they just find fun in that. And I was talking with my brother last night, and he, you know, listen, we obviously were eating air fried meatballs. We ain't crushing yet. But he was like, if we ever make money, he's like, I don't even know if it would be that cool. It'd be way cooler just to leave a mark on an industry. So I think they just get to the point. He says that now, but

one day he's going to be like, I've got 40 billion. I'm going to buy Twitter and then change it to X. Because why not? Because I can. But I think making changes, like massive changes like that is way more fun than the money. I kind of relate with that because you look at my shop and you can ask David. David's always like, you're crazy. The amount of work you're putting in and the things that you're doing with the shop. I mean, you're pushing

really hard. For me, that's the thrill in doing it right. Like getting paid, like, know, I can do without the money, right? I don't really care about that except when I can't pay the bills. That sucks. But being able to say that we push something to the absolute limit, that's what I get my thrills in. I probably should have gone into engineering. I was the kid who like, I'd take the little dump truck and I'd fill it up with dirt, and I would push it to see how far it

would go before it turned ever. Right. And so I like pushing things to the absolute limit of sanity. And so that's why David's lost his mind at this point. But look, change gears here a little bit. I'm curious about we already said that. I know. We changed gears to something else. Now we're changing gears to something completely different. Okay. This is going to be the ADHD episode, and it's not your fault this time. I don't know what's happening exactly.

Well, maybe I brought up the seven up, and then you got on the tangent about Burger King. Is Burger King going to get saved? I feel bad for Burger King. It looks like Burger King is going to get saved. They've started burger. Yeah, I know, right? They can keep that thing. It looks like they've started seeing changes that are making a difference. Right. It's interesting to eat there. Do you have a Burger King? Me? Yeah. There you go. That's a no. You see the pause where he's like,

yeah, that's a no. You don't eat there. I don't eat there either because fries are gross. Yeah, their fries are kind of gross. But the staff was the reason that I wasn't eating there. Right? Probably the staff. You cared. Well, dude, if you are super inefficient in a fast food restaurant yeah, like a major pet peeve for me. I can right. But look at the appeal of Chickfila. I think their food is gross. I'm not a fan of Chickfila. I'm not. It's gross.

It's bland. It's meh. Like, you gotta put the sauce everybody goes nuts with these stupid sauces. It's all gross. That sponsorship. Holy cow. Yeah. Right. No, I'm a popeye. Popeyes? Popeyes has a much better much better chicken sandwich by far. Popeyes is a superior chicken sandwich to Chickfila, but everybody goes nuts, and so they wait in line. Now you're saying don't be inefficient, but dude, like, 30 minutes in line to. Go pick up a it's not 30 minutes.

That's just it. Chickfila is super efficient. You pull in that drive through and it looks like it's wrapped. Car is still going to take 30 minutes. Dude, it doesn't that's what's crazy is they're building these restaurants. It's a restaurant parts upstairs and down below. It's like you're pulling through the middle of the building and they're just, like, handing you food as fast as you

go through. Our local Chickfila will be backed out into the road. Like, you can have a mile line into Chickfila and it still takes you 15 minutes to get through it. Right. I mean, it is insane how efficient they are. They will block up all of the road in front of the restaurant with cars. And I mean, you just see a constant line. There's as many cars coming out as there are. Don't get the appeal. I don't get the appeal. Look being Keto. I don't like chickfila either. I think the

grilled food is just meh, right? The fried food is fantastic, but that doesn't work very well. Just breading. That's the only difference. The chicken still sits in that VAT of whatever to brine it. It's gross. I can't believe you don't like Jesus chicken, man. I thought you were a Christian, not Jesus chicken. That's the other thing, too. Just because they're closed on Sunday just because they're closed on Sunday, that's obnoxious too. You got to tell your kids.

I can't go, hey, I want Chickfila. We can't. It's Sunday. That's, like the best running family joke we have in my family right now is like, my wife wakes up and I'm like, hey, what do you want for breakfast? And she's like, Chickfila. I'm like, all right. So I'm jumping up and she's like, Dumbass, it's Sunday. That's what we do. So. Thanks, Chickfila. Anyway, go on to your story. Sorry. You've been waiting for this. This is going to better be we're building

suspense. All right, so David did not believe

me about this, and I want to hear your input and your feedback. You're kind of a software guy. You probably don't know anything about this. David didn't know anything about this. There's been four posts in ASOG over the past couple of months. Very interesting theme. And I've seen this post elsewhere recently. And so this person says, this morning, coming into the office, I've received a text from a client, which

we serviced her vehicle yesterday. She stated one of my texts, texted her and told her there will be an additional charge on top of our repairs we did on her vehicle. The number she received the text from was a subscription number only. It seems that my information was breached, and somehow this person got a hold of this client's number but told her to contact me instead. This doesn't make any sense. Have you ever encountered anything like this? Was his question. So here's the thing

is, we noticed there were four posts in ASOG. It's been, like, months apart, right? And then there were posts in other groups. And it seems like it's either a shop management system, it's some type of integration, like through Full Throttle. Somehow there are certain shops that their information is getting out, and there are scammers calling their clients saying, hey, I know your vehicle was just serviced with us. Tell you what, we mischarged you. You owe us more.

Give us your credit card number, and we'll just charge it right now. And so they charge the client, and then they keep the money, and the client calls the shop and says, hey, do I have a receipt for what you charged me last night? And they said, well, we didn't charge you anything. What are you talking about? Now, the thing is, a in my shop, if you're leaving and you're already gone. I'm not charging you more. I'm calling you to say, hey, I messed up and

left a part on your bill I wasn't supposed to. Where do I mail the check? Right? And so there's a lot of scams going around all over the world and all over different industries. It's not just us. What do you think about that? What does it make you feel when you hear that? I'm glad you're telling the story because it helps people understand all the time. So in Auto Ops, we pull information from the Shop management software

into the scheduling experience. We have our scheduler on hundreds of sites. People all the time will be like, why do you need a verification code? It just pulls up someone's name and it just pulls up their vehicle. Is that super sensitive information? As much as it may not be sensitive, you always have to think back to scammers. Scammers do not need that much information to trick you into thinking that you are connected with them. You know them

sometimes even just using someone's name. But Lucas, if you got a text that said, hey, Lucas, I know for your exact vehicle, I know for your 2020 Maserati, because that's of course we drive. I know for your 2020 Maserati, we had this in the Shop yesterday. Blah, blah, blah, here's your bill. And just linked out to some payment page. Just with that information, just being able to identify a vehicle that you have, you're all

of a sudden your guards down, you're like, oh, they know me. How would someone know who my vehicle is? So that's why and there is definitely yeah, I think it's a I'm glad. At Auto Ops, we use a verification code to protect that data for pulling any customer's information from a Shop management software. Because scammers don't I mean, the classic scam going around is just using your kid's name. One of your kid's name,

hey, blank's name is in trouble. They hear their kid's name, they're like, what the heck? I'll do anything. I'll wire you over $100,000. Right? So I think people understanding that you don't need that much data to pull someone's guard down is super important. So using verification codes, autops, if anyone, there's not many other people pulling intelligence into the schedule experience like we are. But for the ones, if anyone is better, have a

verification code. I've definitely seen working with Shop management softwares that some have much better guidelines and protections on who their integration parties are, third party integration parties, how they use their data, how they protect their data being ISOC compliant. There's all these kind of tech privacy compliance policies that yeah, I would just recommend that Shop management software, as they do more integrations, a, they should obviously secure their data

well, too knowledgeable on that. But with third parties, just make sure you're vetting third parties properly who are going to be able to like they're actually. Legit. Yeah, well, I know there was a while and a lot of stuff went around and around and there was a company, and I'm sure you know who I'm talking about when I say this, but they manage like 90% of the integrations with all shop management software and they're basically a data aggregation warehouse, right? And they just take the data

and they split up the data to where it needs to go. And they were talking about the fact that there were multiple terms of service, and that company had like 15 or 16 different terms of service that may be used in any one situation. And so some of those terms of service were that if you put your data into our system, that then Carfax's equity mining aspect gets every single bit of that data. So the car

comes into your shop and you say, okay, I'm going to work on this. Car client comes in, and while they're in your shop, or shortly after being in your shop, they get an email and a telephone call from the local dealer, says, hey, I know your car is in for some repairs. We've got this amazing deal going on. You can come out to the dealership. I'll put you in this car. Why don't you drive it for a couple of days? Tell you what, we'll even give you $500 off your repair if you

bring it here instead. And so people were pulling their cars out of independent repair shops and it was happening over and over and over again and people couldn't figure out why. And it turned out that it was equity mining. And part of me says, well, it's free market. They can do whatever they want. And if you give them permission to use that data,

then it's on you. Right. But in the same respect, I mean, that seems kind of sleazy to me, especially if you're working with a professional business that's supposed to help you build your business and they're taking your information and giving it to somebody else like that. Come on now. Yeah, and I'm almost ready to blow auto op shot with Carfax because I've been hearing more and more people just be like, when they are taking your data and aggregating it, they ain't selling it to the

local shop down the road. They ain't selling it to you to help you out. It ain't going in your direction. It's going to Ford of Dallas, who pays them $14 million to be able to access this data and then take business from local shops. So I need to do more of my research on exactly how the data is used and how if we wanted to pull out data, what data we would be offering. We don't feel like offering up customers data to be sold away from independent

shops. Obviously, on our side, we want is it good to be able to recommend services for a customer's vehicle that you may not have at your shop the knowledge of, hey, where did this car come from? What had it previously? For sure. How has it previously been serviced? So it's good for us. For example, if you had auto ops on your website, it'd be cool. Right now we pull in declined services, but also being able to pull recommended services from previous history of the vehicle.

It'd be cool to be able to upsell that for your specific shop, but yeah. At what cost is that data coming to us is kind of what we're trying to figure out, because we don't feel like selling customers data. I was talking to somebody a while back, and they were talking about shop management softwares. They were talking about restaurant management softwares. They were talking about just a plethora of organizations. They're talking about these software companies that to them, and this was

somebody who would know, right? Like, they have the intel to be able to say that for them, it had nothing to do with even necessarily the subscription cost of what it is that they get every month from the shop or the restaurant or whatever it was for them, their primary interest was in the data that they collected. Right. And they have terms of service. Again, I don't know about you. I'm terrible. I don't read terms of service. Right. I don't read any of them. But

they are interested in the data. And that one of the key currencies in our current society, is data. Right. It's valuable. Yeah. There's whole companies data as service. There's whole companies that just sell data, and they'll start one of those companies. Yeah, what a sketchy product. It's like, hey, I gave you the data, pay me. And then that's it.

You know what you don't get is a call on Sunday at 02:00 where the coolant hose that you just installed on this vehicle popped off, and now there's coolant dumping everywhere, and they're 2 hours away from you. You don't get that call with data as a service. You see what I'm talking about, Lucas? You see what I'm talking about? That's what I'm talking about. Data as a service. I don't know anything about it, so I'm going to start researching it right now.

David's all of a sudden going to train off. He's selling a shop. That's it. I'm not selling

anything. There's nothing to sell. There's debt. You know what I'm going to do is just hang a little sign. I'm going to pull what's his face from Oklahoma, old boy. He just hung a sign up one day, and the customers didn't know. He just hung up a sign and said, hey, we're closed. And the customers are calling. And then they show up. Their cars are inside the building. Cars are inside the building. Can't get yeah. He's like, oh. And then he had to get online and be like, hey,

we're going to work with everybody. Get your car back. And this that and the other, they just closed. He's living the dream. That's the dream. I'm going to call what's that? No, he took care of it. I'm sure he didn't pull what that Canadian company did where it was months, right? I'm going to go down to my list and I'm going to find every Asterisk customer, every single customer that I had an Asterisk next to, I'm going to call them up and I'm going to say, hey, next

week, free automotive repair. And they're going to be like, what? Yeah, bring your car down and I'm going to pack all those cars into my shop and then that's the day I close, all those cars are going to be inside my shop and I'm going to hang a closed sign and we're like, yeah, you dirt bag, you wanted free repair. How the hell was I going to pay my bills? This is why we're closed, dirt bag. And then that's it. I'll be closed. I'll get my revenge too.

Every one star review. Unjustified one star review. We have a few on there that were justified, I think maybe one or two, but the rest of them, all the rest of them, yeah, I got your names, buddy. Don't you? You just wait and see one day. Speaking of that, so that was something I was curious about when all the online scheduling started happening, right? So like in my online scheduler, I have the ability to block people. And anytime, even if they just come in and I know it's going to be

one of those, I'm like going in. You can't book your own appointment anymore. You have to call. And then when they call, they've got all these Asterisks next to their name. And I'm like, Man, I'm really sorry. But we're six and a half months out. What tactic have you used to manage that? Because you don't want to upset them, right? You don't want to set somebody off and be like, they're

discriminating against me. This, that or the other. How do you manage that with Auto Ops to where you can kind of have some control over that? Totally, yes. Right now we call them the special customers, the Asterisk customers. We don't have a way to say you can't say, this is my blocked list of customers, but in general, we're adding a lot more features over the next month about basically at certain points in the experience, if we note certain things leading people to

call the shop or just get in contact with the shop. Now, for example, if you're like, hey, my car is broken on the side of the road, I'm going to take it to the first shop that answers. If someone engages with that shop through auto Ops, we want to get them connected with your shop as quick as

possible. So in that time period, as we kind of build out that functionality throughout, we may get to a point where, okay, if there's a list of customers based on their phone number that we would like to call the shop so we can speak with them about their service. Obviously, we can't just block them and be like, hey, it'll just seem like Auto Ops is broken, but we can prompt them to say, well, for this customer, if you'd like service, call the shop. That's something we may do at some point, and

maybe this is a learning opportunity for me. Is this like, you have, like, 100 customers that you're like, I will not service, or is it like one or two? Well, it depends on the customer. You got five or six, five or 600. My customer list is in the thousands, right? Yeah. I mean, you probably have 100 names over ten plus years. What? Eleven years that I've been in business? Yeah. You're going to grow a list of 100 or so names. Now, those people may have moved away, or

they may not have the same vehicle anymore, or they may have died. I don't know. They may have no interest in coming back. Yeah, they may not have any interest in coming back, but those are people that if they call and one of my source advisors pulls that name up and there's an asterisk there, it's, hey, I'm sorry, I can't get you in right away. Are you willing to wait six months, a year? You're not telling them no, but you just want them to quietly go away? And in our online scheduler, they

cannot set their own appointment. That name and that phone number is flagged because it creates a unique customer ID. That unique customer ID, if they put in their information, it pops up and says, hey, are you so and so? Yes, I am. Because they've been there to the shop before, and so they're in my customer list. That person cannot schedule their own appointment. They have to call in, and when they call, they get flagged. And is this normally because of

the vehicle for you guys? Is it like, hey, we just hate working on that vehicle? It's usually client. Some people are impossible to work with. It's just not worth risking a bad review. It's not worth the money. The bad review may have already

come. Assault on your employees. Right. The ones that stand out to me, I won't flag them on first visit. I'll only flag them on second visit. The ones that stand out to me, we had a guy come in and basically, literally commit friendly fraud. Right. His whole intention was to steal the money. He never had intentions of paying the bill. He never had intentions of letting the charges go through. His entire program, everything he did was about stealing the money, getting his car fixed,

and not having to pay. And so somebody like that, I don't want them back in my shop. Someone who curses at my staff, you say one curse word to my staff, I will carry you out the front door of this shop and you will never set foot back in it again. Right? You don't disrespect my staff. Somebody that is extremely high workload to deal with. Right? We've got a really great client. Love them to death, but they experience some mental issues. And it is four and 5 hours on the telephone calls,

right? It is every day you're spending 6 hours on the telephone with this person, just trying to work through explaining things to them and helping them understand and then them going back and forth. And at some point, I have to say, this isn't healthy for me or you. And so my job is, as shop owner to come back and say, listen, I'm really sorry, but I'm busy right now. I can't get you in. People who don't want what we sell, right? And I've got a perfect example of it. We had a guy who came in.

We're perfectly friendly. He's from town. He's friends with a friend of mine. And this guy literally is known online by a persona that starts with crazy. Right. And he's a smart guy. I'm not saying he's not a smart guy. It's just the point that every single time he comes in, well, I don't understand why I'm paying for this, and I don't want to pay for that, and I don't want to pay for this and I don't want to pay

for that. That's not fair that I'm paying for this. Sometimes it's the argument after argument comes after they've approved it. They've already approved it. You had that crazy guy fight you. Just to get the money back. Yeah. They'll create a fight just so you'll refund it. The guy that you had at the counter, he's like, I guess I'm going to have to pay it. You're holding my car hostage. Like, whoa, what are you talking about? You approved this online? Like, you had to physically approve this

online? Absolutely. How did you not know how much this was going to be? Well, I just don't think it's fair that guy's not coming back in. I'm not going to get into confrontation. I avoid confrontation. I'm not going to carry anybody out the front door. That's going to be a thing. I don't like confrontation. So if I have to confront somebody, I'm already uncomfortable and I'm already annoyed. You're going on the list. I shouldn't have to confront you as, hey, this is the

bill. You have to pay it. Hey, you approve this? Hey, I'm sorry, we don't take 330 waiting oil changes. You can complain all you want, but we've already talked about this. This is the third time I've had to bring this up. Do not call for a 330 waiting or show up and expect that I'm just going to drop everything and go. And we just had a customer. Something got messed up with the brakes. The park and brake didn't get adjusted properly. Whatever. The car, when you

first thing in the morning, would moan like a whale. Okay? It was terrible. Okay, fine. Now she's concerned that there's a safety concern. Fine. She brings it back in for another service. We check the brakes. The brakes look fine. The noise only happens for 20 minutes. So after she pulls away from could. You imagine driving through town sounding like a whale for 20 minutes? Yeah, well, it's for 20 minutes of driving, and maybe even not 20 minutes, but the car

was cold, sat overnight. You would go drive it. It would moan for a while. It would stop. By the time she would get to our shop, the moaning was gone. And so we didn't hear anything. She comes in for a service. After we had done the brakes, we checked the car. She's like, hey, I'm hearing a noise. Okay? We check everything physically looks fine on the brakes. Now, I don't think we went in and checked the parking brake or whatever, but everything looked fine on the

brakes. Everything looked normal, and there was no noise, and the car was stopping, and we had nice, even wear. Everything was fine. Two months later two months later, she walks in at, like, in the middle of the day at 1230 and demands that we look at it right now, and we're like, okay, well, let's put you in a loaner. I don't want a loaner. Okay, everybody's at lunch, so there's no possibility of somebody looking at it right now. On top of it, you've already driven the car. The noise

is gone, so the noise is now not there. So we don't know what to look for. It's 1230, everybody's at lunch, and you're refusing to leave the car here. Well, that just doesn't fit my schedule. It's like, okay, you need to work with us. I want the owner to call me. Fine. I call her, and she's giving me the same spiel. And I finally have to ask her. I say, hey, what is it that you want me to do? I want you to come down to my house and listen to this noise. I don't want to go

to the shop and leave my car. And I said, fine, I will go to your house. So at 830, I was at her house, and we got in the car, and I heard the noise, and I said, I think there's something wrong with the parking brake. Fine. Okay? I said, come in tomorrow at 830, and I will bump everybody out of the way to pull your car in first so we can service this and fix it. 830 the next morning. Do you think she was there? No. She should have scheduled online. Took a video of her the sound she

was hearing. She did take a video of it. The problem is she had a video of the noise so we could hear the noise. The problem is it wasn't crunchy. It wasn't crunchy. Yeah, it sounded like dory. The dory sound. What sound is your car making? Sound. The dory sound? Yeah, the dory whale sound. That's what it sounded like. And

so at 830, she wasn't there. She had shot a video. But the problem is you still need to be able to drive it. Do I hear it backing up? Only going forward does it increase as I go faster? Because that means it's all different things. No, once you got it up to a certain speed, the noise would go away. It was only from a stop accelerating the first like 5 miles an hour, it would make the noise. Anyway. She rolls in about 10, 10 30. She wants service now. And I knew she was going to do that. I see.

You see, Stephen? Do you see that reaction, that visceral reaction from Lucas? My entire schedule is now upended because of this. She's going to go on the list. And here's the really annoying part. I bought everything. I'm like, I don't know if it's the brakes. I don't know if it's pads. I don't know if it's parking brake hardware, whatever. I bought it all brand new. Had it all sitting there waiting. We had a bay open. I said, don't put

anything in this bay because she's going to roll up late. I just had a feeling when she wasn't there at 830, my service advisor was like, she's going to pull in like 10, 10 30. Well, he texted me. He's like, Guess who just showed up? She pulls into the bay, we take it all apart. My tech's like, hey, I think it was the parking brake got adjusted out too far. I said. Okay. Well, whatever. Do whatever you got to do to fix that. Just don't want this thing come back for this noise. The

entire time. She's standing at the window staring at my tech the entire time, watching him take every bolt out. Just mean mugging him the whole time to pace him back and forth, which is right by where my service advisor sits. And he can't sit down and do his job because she's all up in his business. So this is disrupting for like 2 hours. This has disrupted the entire flow of the

shop. Everything is out of whack now. We're behind on other cars because we had to stop deal with this one car because she didn't want to follow the way we do things. We drop the car off. We give you a loaner if you can't get a ride or whatever, right? We have loaner vehicles. We offered her to, she wouldn't take it. Whatever, fine. He's taking all this apart. And then at some point she's like, hey, I've got new brake pads in the back of my car. Can you put them on?

Yeah. I bought what was really going on. I bought Akibono brakes. Now, she was very impressed with herself that she bought Akibono brakes. The problem is, Acubono isn't OE on Toyota. It's like advios or whatever the name of that company is. OE on Toyota, she thought she was buying OE brakes, but at a discount because they weren't green Toyota brakes. Toyota brakes are typically green. And so she thought she was impressed with herself that she had

bought. And here's the other thing. Akibono has like three lines. They have a cheap line, a middle line and a premium line, and they all squeal. So I'm definitely not putting Akibono brakes on her car. And on top of that, she'd already bought brakes for me. We were already doing the job again, just to appease her. There was nothing wrong with our pads and rotors. It turns out it was a parking brake, which we didn't replace. The technician had not adjusted them

properly when he did the job the first time. So now he was doing it, he was cleaning it, everything up, lubricating, everything. We were redoing the whole brake job. Anyway, she's going on the list is what I'm saying. All that to tell you that now there's an asterisk on her name. Well, I mean, here's the thing for us. We set very specific rules about how you're going to act in the shop, and we don't tell them. Like, we have rules and you're going to follow them. It's that here's how

we work, here's what we do. And I'm building a product, and we. Do that to be equitable to everybody. This is so nobody gets screwed over. It's fair to the shop, it's fair to the employees, it's fair to the customer. That's why there's rules. Sorry, go ahead. But is it that the other shops aren't doing that? That the consumer gets this idea everybody's trying to screw them over?

So now what happens is they come to our shop, which we're not trying to, we're trying to do it right, but they are so afraid they're going to get screwed over. So afraid somebody's taking advantage of them that they don't ever see it. It's the flipping seven to Steven Firestones, dude. It's the

seven to seven Firestones. I'm sorry. If you're listening to this and you're open seven to seven, we need to talk. There's some BS. All seven days. Like, you don't have a day off, so what are you doing? Just rotating schedules out and you got to overstaff your store because you got to give people days off. And so you have guy working four days this week and three days the next, and four days and three days. Whatever. All I'm saying is they shouldn't be working that long. And we've conditioned

customers that I hate. I'm going to wait here. And that's why I have this nice waiting area. And I've got coffee and I've got TV with Family Feud playing for 24 hours a day. I've got this built so you can expect to sit here and wait for me to service your car. Do they even get to the vehicle. Have you actually gone in and waited? I went in to a dealership to have my transmission. The car was under warranties before I owned a

shop. The transmission had a problem in the synchro, a third to fourth synchro, something like that. And the service advisor goes, yeah, we're going to have to replace that Thunder with the warranty. They're going to have to open the case up. I said okay, well they didn't offer me a loaner. It was like a 30 minutes drive to the dealership. I sat there and waited. I watched tennis. Have you ever watched tennis? It was most awful boring sport. I'm sure playing tennis is fun. I don't know, I'm a

chubby guy, I'm not going to play tennis, but I'm sure it's fun. But watching it, I'm sure live, it's interesting. Some sports like hockey is interesting live. Don't watch hockey on TV. That is boring. AF the tennis is boring. It is awful. They were playing tennis. I watched 6 hours of tennis. I think it was Wimbledon or there was one of the big opens, australia, I don't even know. The court was blue. I remember this, this was like 15 years ago. 15 years ago this was burned in my

brain for 6 hours. I sat there six, 7 hours I sat there waiting for this car to be serviced in this big cushy chair. I didn't want to be there. What is wrong with people? Why do they wait? Why do they do that? I don't understand. Do you really want to sit at a dealership? Do you really want to sit at a firestone and drink crappy coffee and watch Family Feud? There's other things to do. Get a loaner. All I'm saying is they shouldn't be open.

Seven to seven. You're conditioning these customers to expect immediate service. Right now I've got 17 technicians waiting for you to come in right now. You know who I could see that would want to go into a shop like that and experience that? George. I bet George was the guy who took his car into a shop and waited. And old people that have nothing else to do. Old people that are retired and my

family's moved away from me and maybe like they're estranged too. So now nobody likes me and I don't get invited to Thanksgiving and what do I have to do all day? Bitch and moan to people and show up to stores and waste people's time. And I'm going to go and I'm going to sit there and I'm going to drink your crappy coffee. And they always ask for coffee. I don't understand. Do you have any coffee? Do you really want to drink the coffee I make

at a repair shop? What do you think I have got a barista in the back? Do you think that's what it was going coffee filter? A what? Red grease, red coffee filter? Yeah, red grease, red coffee filter. That's the coffee. You're getting that coffee. That's what's going on. What kind of coffee do you think you're getting? At least go sit at a restaurant or a coffee shop. Like, that's what they're designed to do. Get your laptop. It's always an iPad because old people right, it's an

iPad. Go to your coffee shop. Don't worry, Steven. Nobody over, like, 50 listens to this podcast. Nobody at 50 listens to this podcast. I'm just telling you right now, so you don't have to worry about it, complains about it. And Dutch is definitely not going to. Listen to this because Dutch doesn't listen to the podcast. He's wholly against he is absolutely against online scheduling. He thinks it is our industry. Working on him. I'm working on him. Slowly but surely, he'll

come at some point. He was actually one of the first people one of the ways that Auto Ops gained some traction in the beginning was we just sent out some surveys, and I was actually trying to learn about how shop owners think about online scheduling. One of the very first people last year, he was like, this is terrible. I almost quit. Dutch is still ruining people's lives. No, listen. No. But

he's softened up a little bit. I'll reach out to him soon, and I want to go back real quick to what you guys were saying about I call it personally firing a customer is that not only do you avoid a bad review, do you save yourself a hassle. Your employees don't get hassled. Is that it actually allows you to continue on being known for being good at something is that it actually allows you to when you do jobs that suit your shop better, it allows you to gain

reputation. Being known. Well, for that industry, the repairs could be equal. The repairs that shop A and shop

B could be the same repair. It's personality. People that come into our shop and are happy with our service, it's because what we delivered is what they were expecting. We set the expectation they were fine with it, they were happy with it, and then they left happy. We didn't do anything different on our five star reviews that it did with our one star reviews, the unwarranted ones, we didn't do anything different. We treated everybody the same. We were friendly. We

communicated the way we communicate through text. We sent pictures. We sent them the estimate. We don't call and pressure anybody to sell anything. We don't say, well, if you don't do this, you're going to die tomorrow. We don't do any of that. That whole spiel. We avoid it all. And yet they're upset at us because we recommended a belt. Okay, decline it and move on with your life. Don't leave me a one star review because I recommended a belt. You felt like some cousin mechanic of yours who

doesn't know what the hell they're doing is telling you, oh, you don't. Need a belt? At what point do you need a belt, then? When it snaps off? Do you even know what the hell you're talking about? You don't know what you're talking about. So why don't you leave it to the professionals or find somebody else that fits what you want them to do for you? That's not us.

Personality. And the thing that should help you guys, and I always tell myself is that the people who give one star reviews is they're also the people with crappy friends you don't want at your shop anyway. So that's what I think it reminded me when you were talking about the customer who brings in the crappy non OE part, and you're like, we can't do this. We get people hitting us up in slight offshoots of automotive repair.

We'll get car washes, we'll get tinting places, and they'll be like, hey, can you put on this feature and this and they're asking you to do all this crazy stuff. And that's when you realize it's not even worth it, because I'm just going to lose credibility in the auto repair space. I'm not going to be as good I'm not going to be known for being as good at just full auto repair, independent shops. And so that kind of reminds me of we got to consider that in RM, that there's a

time to fire customers because they just distract you. They just distract you from doing what you're good at. Let me ask you this, and I've talked to some other people. Obviously, restaurants deal with it. Hospitality deals with it. Do you deal with crazy clients like that? I mean, you're dealing with professionals who face those challenges every day, you know what I'm saying? But do you shop owners are the most not self aware group in the history? Do you have any idea how cheap shop owners are?

Like, $99 a month? That's insane. I just can't justify the cost. It's like, what are you talking about? I've seen what you spend money on. What are you talking about? That's too much money. You do $2.1 million a year. You're arguing for $99. It should be $69. Shut up. That's a personal so two points. That honestly, and this is the truth, I've never had, like, a real poor interaction with

the shop owner. I've never had anyone getting mad. No. I like to think we specialize in one thing and we do a good job at it. We don't try to do ten things. I'm sure if we came out and was like, we do 100 things in one, I'd get yelled at from everyone, but so I've only had positive interactions. But the one thing I have learned is obviously there is some shop owners who really push us on price or real price sensitive, is that they're never going to be

successful for us. They're never going to be successful customers. If really the only reason that you find value in autoops is that you could get it for way less of a price. If you're crunching numbers over 30, $40 a month, then obviously we understand you don't want another bill. We're conscious of that. But for the customers to really push it on me, we've had, in full transparency,

we're in about 180 shops. I think we've had four leaves so far since starting all of those people, I look back and they were given huge discounts. And so I think there's a reason why if you just can't see the value in what we do up front. From the get go, I'm not doing a discount. Yeah. Because the problem is the point is that these people complain about the customer nickel and diming them complain about it.

Turn around. Yeah. It's like the shop owner that gets mad at the one Star review, but that's the same guy leaving one star reviews at restaurants because he didn't get the bread in time. Like, what are you doing? You own a business. Leave five star reviews everywhere you go. Or don't do it. You watch those people and you know who they are. Right. Like, if you pay attention, we know you know who they are. Because you see, they're always mad at their technicians. They're always

frustrated. The technician costs them. Always mad at the technician was the problem. They're always mad at the customers. It's always somebody else. Right. I think that's something to think about. When you deal with those clients that are like that, and you deal with others in your industry who are like that, is if you pay close enough attention, you realize this is not a you problem. This is more of they're unwilling to accept responsibility for anything in life

problem. Right. Yeah. It's always got to be somebody else because it couldn't be me. David and there's someone I was listening to, and they were basically just saying, this is something that I took on a personal level, but I expanded now on a lot of things, is that usually when things aren't going well in your life, you can always whether it's me personally, whether I meet someone, and there's always something

off. There's always something that there's off. No one is like, doing everything perfect in life and it just doesn't work out for them. There's always something weird and something that I've taken even a little bit of comfort in. Auto Ops, the ones that and as I say this, I'm going to talk about maybe shops who aren't of the highest quality. We're

trying to find ways here at Auto Ops. We're changing our pricing model. We're adding new features to work with shops who are getting started, who are doing twenty k a month. We're trying to find ways to work with those shops. But right now, the shops that don't see value in Auto Ops are the ones where I get on a call and they have 100 papers flying around behind them. Their shops

all in disarray. They're screaming out of tech while I'm on the call. You're like, I know I'm not going to close this, and I know maybe not even it's unrelated to autopsy. This is that you have other issues in your shop. So that's not to say shop owners. Don'T use while mid sales conversation. Man, I can't hear you. What? I can't hear you. And all of a sudden you just click end and you're done and

it's over. I've been on calls showing someone and literally they're screaming at their technician while on the call. Luckily, we have signed none of those. You know they're going to be screaming at you tomorrow because it's not working like they think it know. And look, I think there's a lot of fear about online scheduling, right. And so I was a little afraid right when I set mine up. David had Acuity would you shut up for a minute? That was a dumb statement at all.

No, losing control. No, it's scary losing control, like giving. A piece of control over to let me explain. I was not afraid until I talked to Dutch and then I talked to Dutch and he's like, the world's going to be over. Your shot's going to go out. Why? I don't understand. What's his hesitancy do you have his. List of concerns about online scheduling? I can't remember all of them. I can probably go find them online. I

have it somewhere in a message, but I do not have it off. The long story short, lets you set up parking lot scheduling like the way you do Lucas, right? Exactly. Just build that into the online scheduler. That's how I've got mine set up. Right. And I adjust it as I go. And so if I get too busy, I back down. If I'm not busy enough, I ramp it up. And so I'm controlling that workflow. And his concern was how do you control this? How do you do this? And

there's no way you're going to have bad people in your shop. Yeah, a couple of common misconceptions, like general ones. And I know not all people think, but these are some common misconceptions that A, we get into guaranteeing when the service will be finished. Our goal at Auto Ops is to get customers in your shop to shake your service advisor's hands. We don't get into being like, it's going to be 4 hours, you can pick up your vehicle. At this point, it's your job to

communicate with the customer. On that end. Our job is to get the customer in your shop. We just want to convert better from your current marketing spend. So that's one thing. A common misconception. Another misconception is we get into guaranteeing pricing. We don't do anything. I mean, you can there is ways to include pricing ranges. We have a few shops who opt to do that. But in general, when we pull declined services from your shop management software. We're not putting in the

price. Parts change all the time. If you quoted someone seven months ago so we don't get into pricing. That's not something we do. Another thing is that there's a fear that online scheduling is leading to, like, I never see my customer. They come, they put in an electronic key drop, they fill out a form, then they schedule online, they drop the car off, they come pick up their keys, text to pay, and that I never get to see my customers. And that's

what Auto Ops is leading to. That's not what we're leading to. We still think one of the most important pieces of retention is the service advisor coming over, shaking your hand, saying hello, being really friendly to you, and that david, you're shaking your head. You do not believe that's not yeah. We avoid all yeah, I avoid all that. It's not that I don't want people come in, they drop off their car, they're friendly, but I prefer they just leave

the keys. And then we try to do everything, communicate everything. But at the end of the day, hey, we're not trying to hang out. Do you still want me to fix your car in a friendly and communicative manner at a fair price with a good quality repair? That's it. That's what I offer. I'm not here to ask you about your dog or apart from, obviously, Auto. Repair for Introverts of Retention.

Yeah, and one thing, obviously, a lot of times we leave out service. You have to provide good service. That's obviously the biggest part of retention. If you do a crappy job, your customers leaving every time. But yeah, that's some of the things I think. And then the biggest part, which this is something that we've worked on over time and it's getting better and better, is the fear

of that. I cannot have enough schedule settings and enough control over my calendar, and I can't tweak it in the ways I want to feel comfortable that if a customer sees a time slot on my scheduler, that I will actually be able to do the work. And that for all of our shops we fixed. In the beginning, it took us a while to get our first, like, five shops because our schedule settings were not up to par. Today we have schedule settings you could say,

okay, I want three waiters from 08:00 A.m. To 11:00 A.m., and I want four drop offs from eight to 02:00 P.m., and I want the soonest a customer to schedule is one day out. But if it's a new customer, I want them to be able to schedule as soon as 2 hours out. And I want to block drop offs from dropping off from two

to four because something's happening in that time range. And I want current customers to have this kind of experience, and I want new customers to be able to skip these parts of the experience just get into my shop quicker. And I want people to be able to call my shop at this point. So the schedule settings, as much as some of the stuff that blows up a

little bit about autops is the fancy stuff. Fancy stuff is cool. Is it cool when you type in your number and the customer sees their name and vehicles pop up and it creates that live experience that they feel in other industries? Yeah, that's super cool. But if you can't back it up, that live experience, the feeling of a live experience with actually good enough schedule settings to provide live time slots, then nothing right. The customizability and the ability

to move them where they need to be. And I think that's the biggest fear. Once I got to talking to Dutch, that was really his fear was that I get into a situation where I can't service the vehicle when it shows up. That's the number one acuity. When we had that set up, we run everything right. We don't manually schedule anything. Everything we do here goes through Acuity. So like, if you want to make an appointment for a client, you're going in Acuity to make the appointment. And so

is that something you can do with Auto ops? Do we have the option to schedule manually in auto ops? Like that correct? Yeah, we have an internal scheduler and kind of this gets back to that safety point for a SEC. We have an internal scheduler where it skips the verification code for service advisors who obviously already have access to customer data through the Shop management software. We're not providing them anything they couldn't get. But yeah, you can schedule

on behalf of customers through auto ops, obviously. But once again, you could schedule just schedule an appointment normally in Shopware, and obviously we pick that up on our end. We're calculating all availability live instantly by the time of right. Even if a customer if you put something in Shopware and a customer is mid scheduling, but they didn't get to the calendar yet, we'll still update that because we don't pull availability until you actually click on that

calendar page at that point. Then we're calculating availability based on the service duration. We're looking for a time it could fit in your calendar and then all the auto op schedule settings go on top of that. And honestly, a lot of people we've switched a lot of people over from Acuity simply based on the integration, the decline services that we pull, for sure, the auto specific to what we do. But they have great settings in general, acuity has done a good job at obviously, they

focus just on scheduling. So really what they're focused on the schedule setting side. But then when it comes to being auto specific and the integration with Shop management software and the way the customizability we have, that makes sense only for auto shops. That's really where we've succeeded. But have you guys been happy with just on the scheduling piece, the level of do you really dive into the schedule settings? With Acuity, I dive in

pretty. So basically what I do is I follow parking lot scheduling, which means that every so each, each job in auto repair, you have an average hour per ro. Right. And so I know how many hours my technician can turn. So let's say it's Eric and he can turn 9 hours a day. Well, if his average repair order is 3 hours, how many jobs can he do? He can do three. Right. And so I know better than scheduling, more than three. And really what I'm targeting is the initial evaluation.

And one of my fears when I went to Acuity was, how do I explain to them that most likely I'm going to have your car for two days? Maybe it's three, maybe it's four, I don't know. But don't plan on dropping your car off and picking it up that afternoon. Right. And so we still schedule the majority of clients on the telephone. That's where we still get the majority of scheduling.

And so when we set it up, I came in and I built forms and I built a write up that helps explain that, that, hey, you're going to drop it off, I need you to drop it off first thing in the morning. We don't do any waiters. And so they drop it off first thing in the morning. They bring the car in, we look at it. And so that first schedule for us is an hour and a half. Now they see 4 hours. Right. And I tell my clients, hey, it's going to be

four to 6 hours before you hear from me again. Right. I'm not going to call you back in 2 hours. I'm not going to call you back when this scheduling up. And so what it does is it allows me to get in. I know Eric's going to be on that job. I've got a testing routine that's 1 hour on most all my vehicles, and I've got 0.5. That's for our peace of mind process, that's an hour and a half. So how many can he do before lunchtime? He can do three of those before lunchtime. And then we're writing the

estimates. We're getting the approvals that typically converts to four, four and a half hours. And so you see what I'm saying? Like, now I drop that back into the parking lot wherever I can fit it in, and it keeps me from overbooking. Does that make sense? In other words, it's set up based on our actual capacity and actual ability. And then if we get too busy in the shop, I go in, I click, and I change it down to where Eric only gets

two appointments today. Eric only gets two appointments from here on out. Or, hey, we're not busy enough. And my GS guy, he's flying through work. I need to get more appointments in for him, and it gives me the ability to curtail it and go up and down as I need to, if that makes sense. 100%. Give me 2 seconds to plug in my laptop so that it doesn't die real quick. Thank you.

Okay. Sorry about that. But yeah, like you were saying that stuff especially, and that's what we figured out a lot more is a lot of people were saying, yeah, I want to scheduling, like, max appointments per day, per technician, but if you're not doing it based off hours, it's never going to be as accurate. So let me ask you this. Is that how you're scheduling? Because so in other words, in Acuity, I have it set up to where I'm scheduling for an

employee. Right? In other words, like, that is a technician, and that calendar is how they look at it. And that calendar is the technician, and here's his capability. And so if I need to back it down, he's going on vacation, I can block just him off. Right. And so one of my fears with changing was that a lot of the other scheduling I looked at didn't do it like that. It was that all of the schedule, it was just a schedule for the shop. And you have this many bays, right? And

I'm like, Nah, dude, I don't want that. I want to be able to break it down by employee because each employee has different potential. They work on different things. They have different abilities. And so I've got to be able to funnel the right job to the right person. I've got one guy who just does oil services and tires. I've got one guy who just does alignment, steering and suspension. I've got one guy who does heavy line and diag. So I have to be able to decipher where that's going. Now,

I'm an intensive manager in that sense, right. Like, I'm on top of that, paying attention, trying to make sure we're taking it to that extreme level. Some shops are just like, well, we'll figure it out when they get here. How are you handling that? Yeah, and that's where everything is going with Auto Ops. Once again, being a company that just focused on online scheduling, these are the nitty gritty we get to dive into. So,

yeah, right now we're currently developing the ability hours. It's going to be hour based and technician based. Right now, we're basing that on the unassigned columns. The part that we've been struggling with is the shops who get nervous assigning appointments to specific technicians because they don't have a good enough understanding of what the customer exactly needs, so they don't understand which technicians it's steven going to based on what the customer

says. Because the goal would be I mean, would you guys feel comfortable saying, hey, if a customer indicated I mean, obviously you'll be able to move it around your calendar. But hey, the customer indicated that they're hearing this kind of engine noise, that it always goes to your heavy diag technician. Yeah, that's how I would handle it. I know there's some crazy stuff you can try to do with Zapier for some

of the Shop management software to build integration. Have you played? Yeah, we're integrated

through Zapier. Zapier and Acuity integrate. There's things that Shopware won't show Zapier and there's things that Acuity won't show Zapier. So it can cause some problems. The biggest frustration that I have with Shopware, AutoFlow and Zapier right now is Reason vehicles here. Right. Because I can pull Reason vehicles here from Acuity, but I can't get it into the Reason vehicles here in Shopware and I can't put it into AutoFlow automatically. So my idea was AutoFlow or Auto text me, right.

Like you've got an inspection. And so when we start that inspection at the top, it's got reasoned vehicles here. And so what we use that for is we take the labor lines from the repair order and we say, okay, they're getting an oil service. Well, the oil service is done. That part of the process is complete. Well, they're also getting a break evaluation. The break evaluation

is in process now. And then you drop some note in there that says, hey, we'll be in touch within the next three to 4 hours to give you an estimate. Well, that means you give them the first contact without the service advisor who's already overwhelmed picking up the telephone to call them and say, hey, I'll be to you as soon as possible. Now they've gotten a text and email and it says in there, hey, we've done this part, we've done this part, we're

actually working on the car. We're in process right now and they'll be in touch by this time. Well, what does that mean? Well, now I don't have to pick up that client's telephone and call them. I don't have to bother them, they don't have to bother me. I'm still moving forward and getting work done. And so it expedites the shop a little bit. And so that's probably my biggest frustration with any of the integrations I've got right now is I really want RVH to be

fluent across the board in all of my applications. Right, totally. Yeah. And we do a good job. And that's one of the biggest things is how you can collect better information for your technicians. And really the key is obviously can we have it in all of our integrations and obviously all the Shop management software as we integrate it's going in for a Shop where reason for customer visit. But yeah, can you

decrease slow? Could you get to a diagnostic evaluation, correct evaluation quicker with collecting better information and the way you can customize kind of this issue tree in Auto ops to ask, hey, not just only brakes hey, is it making a sound when you speed up. So those kind of things like, hey, what kind of sound is it making? Does it happen when you speed up, asking those questions to get better information while

not pushing the customer out of the scheduling experience just because it's too long. It's kind of the balance we go against, but going back to that scheduling yeah, we do a good job right now of basically appointments per time slot, appointment in your shop, management software, appointments per time slot online, total amount of appointments per day. Then going down into drop off and waiting different hours for those different capacities for drop off and waiting,

getting into the duration of the service. So we do a good job at looking at the duration of the specific service that the customer selects and putting that in the Shop management software. The part we don't do now and that we're going to be launching probably end of September is the full assigning it to a technician and then being able to calculate availability based on okay, yeah, this technician only does inspections. They can't do full diag

stuff. Then being able to limit availability based. On technician, that's pretty cool. That's a neat concept. That's one of the reasons I've never switched from Acuity is because I have so much control in that area, and I have the ability to have it on that. But the thing is, it's a lot of work to build out Acuity to do that. Now, here's the thing that I'll say about Acuity is that it seems less scary to me to try and build that out than build out a trouble tree. Right.

Because I'm thinking, like, as the technically minded guy, I'm over here, like, oh, my God, there's thousands of things that it could be, and there's thousands of questions I would want to ask, and I'm going to end up like, dude, AWS. But you can take me if I sign up, because. You can take Jim Morton's diagnostic questionnaire, dump it in that'll, take, what, 80, 90% of the cases and handle them. Yeah,

that would work. And we have a couple of people that have uploaded well known diag questionnaires that their service advisors were previously using, and they just use them in auto ops. So that's been cool to see. But yeah, the one thing you also have to remember is we can take a lot of that load off. And the plan is with Shopware is that we can already pull in. You'll just be able to go in auto ops. We already have full integration. Well, you'll be able to see all

your technicians. You can just assign them to a calendar. We can pull in if you have durations for certain services that we can match up and correctly map out this if they answer these questions, we connect it to this service in Shopware and then we understand the technician. So there's a lot we can do on the setup side to make that. And the plan is to make it super easy where it's not like a five hour, I'm sure. How many hours have you spent

building out Acuity? The goal is that we can make that build out process a lot simpler by being able to pull all that information in from your shop management software. That's pretty cool, dude. That's pretty legit. That's the plan. But yeah, these are the things. Being a company that

just focuses on online scheduling that we gives you some opportunity yeah. Dive into our developers. We're not building websites on the side or building the crazy CRM is that we just really focus on this kind of stuff and props to the people. We couldn't do our jobs without the people building great websites that drive for sure the viewers to then yeah, we love all the website companies work with because we

need those viewers to actually convert to paying customers online. Once again, a lot of this is just about engaging customers where they want to be engaged at. If Dutch wants to call in his local shop, he can do that every day of the week. And that's why we have a full integration so that when they put Dutch's appointment on the calendar for the person who wants to schedule online, we just updated that availability. So it's

really just engaging the customer we're at. And that's kind of where Auto Ops is heading, is that obviously right now a primary point is people are scheduling from the website. But now even a lot of people a QR code on a mailer that goes to your website and opens up the scheduling. But that's kind of an example of just meeting people wherever they at, however they want to get in your shop. If they want to get in your shop, we want to provide them a way to do that as frictionless as possible.

How do they find out about Auto Ops? As a shop owner? Yeah, Autoops.com. I don't like taking people right to our book a demo page because I want you to go on research. Kind of what we do, see how it makes sense for your shop. But yeah, really the benefit of Auto Ops is how customizable it is for all these specific shops. Yeah, go to Autoops.com and I say it on every show. People call me on it all the time. Give me a call. My phone number is on the

website. 717-4407 Steven zero two. If I don't pick up in 510 minutes, I don't care if you call me at 11:00 p.m.. I'll throw you a little bit of a discount, but I always pick up. You want to hear a good story? David's calling at 01:00 a.m. Man. Dude, I'm cutting all that out. What are you doing? No is terrible. Just throw the form out online and I will get back to you as soon as possible. A guy in North Carolina I almost want to. Give a shop a shout up. He filled out a form at like

10:20 p.m. Last night. He filled out the form. He's on his phone. He's awake. Gave him a call right then and there. I said, hey, this is Steven. I just wanted to say hi. I took a look at your shop. If you called me at 1020 after filled out a form, I would freak out. He said, can you just get on the computer now? This is the only time that works for me. My shop. I'm busy at my shop all day. Can you do a demo now? I got on the computer. We sat on there 25 minutes. I showed him all of auto

ops. He signed, give me the name. We're calling this guy out. We've got to know who it is. Hold on. Let me pull it up. CNC Automotive. His name is give me 2 seconds. I was on the bleep it out. Be like, bleep. Yeah, bleep it out. Look, you ready? And he's down in yeah, he's down in North Carolina. Chad Nielsen. Chad Nielsen. You did make sure that you invited him to ASTE, right? Everyone's got to go to ASTE. That's going to be one of

we're having a big amount of our team come down. That's like, one of our top awesome dude. And there's a lot. I've ran into the world of conferences. We looked at, like, 1415. I mean, there's like three that we're focused on. And ASTE is getting I mean, it's blown up. Everyone's talking about it. When I talk to people, it's like, I was at a conference last week, and it's always will you be at ASTE? Yeah, it's where

kind of like, I got my start trying to fix things with my shop. But the three that I always try and make sure I attend is always going to be ASTE, right? It's always going to be Apex, and it's always going to be Vision. Right. If I can make those things work, those are the ones that if I can attend, those are the ones that I'm going to do my best to attend. I say

that sherry's going to kill me. I love vision, but if I had a choice between vision in the freezing cold in March with 200 miles an hour winds and 80 degrees the next day, and Southern California and the Equipment and Tool Institute's tool don't, that list was terrible. It's ETI. Tool tech it's ASTE. It's whatever the Institute's got going on. Yeah, the Institute does some really awesome shows, and man, you got to go. To are they doing the

management thing? Is that every other year? The one every other year, yeah. Okay, so it's going to be Mars in 2024. And then 2025, they'll do the that makes a Manch and Apex and then Tools. Forgot Tools. Yeah. I took my family to Tools last year. Tools was good. Tools needs more vendor support. Poor Tools. I'll be honest. Final thing, I've heard some mixed reviews about Apex, especially on the vendor side. And a quick note on vendors is that people,

I think, sometimes think we're pulling people's tail. We say we have show specials. Talk to the vendors at shows, you will actually I mean, with auto ops alone, you will get the cheapest rate by far. If you're with me at a show, I do a demo and you sign on the most recent conference we're at people are easily saving $450. Not that what we do is that expensive. We just give them a bunch of free stuff. So actually talk to the vendors. If you're serious about if you want even a new shop

management software, go talk to them at the show. You will get a good deal. Yeah, for sure. Good advice. Apex is huge. I could see from a vendor side that you're going to be one of 8000 other vendors there, and you might. Get lost in the noise a little too flashy. They're in the fun mode. They're not really in the shopping mode. They're going to seema the Apex side of it is a little bit more. Serious, a little more subdued, for

sure. My family owns a tourist attraction, and so we go to trade shows for that too. And it is very much like a conventional trade show where you can get tons of really good information, all of the opportunities that you get while you're there. And you get to talk to the people who have the ability to make change in the industry and can actually do things right. A lot of these trade shows you go to, right, you can get to a certain percentage of people who can make change within

a company. But at Apex, the people you're talking to could be executives, they could be engineers, they could be product developers. They bring everybody. And so when you're there talking to these people and you get to see these products firsthand and you can experience it, it's like nothing else, right? All the other trade shows are like, we've got two or 3 hours here, we've got three or 4 hours there. Dude, you go to you especially if you're in the market to build a shop, or you're in the

market to reequip a shop. I could not imagine doing it without going to Apex, because when we were building a shop, that was the thing is, that was one of the first times I'd been to Apex and I'm walking through and I'm learning about these products. I'm like, holy crap, I was getting ready to do this, but this is going to work a lot better in the shop. I like that hose reel a lot better. That's a much better hose reel. And so it was things like where I would have

spent a million dollars in equipping the shop. I was able to equip it for 600 and 5700 thousand dollars. And that's a big difference. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, totally. Yeah. Well, I'm excited for all the shows. We will definitely be at ASTE and but, yeah, thanks for having me on this. Yes, sir. Once again, I posted about this yesterday. We don't have a large marketing budget over here at Autoops. We like working on our product much more than

pitch and shop owners all day. So things like that. The amish marketing budget the Amish marketing. Budget is not high. You put it on the side of a covered wagon, it's fine. Yeah, I know. We got covered wagon.