Improving Attitudes and Respecting Other Professionals The Jaded Mechanic Talks With TobaTech From TikTok

That's plus one today. Yeah. It's, it's not, it's not cold here. It's rainy and wet, which is better than it being snowing. Our snow tire season is just starting to, to taper off in the last couple of days. We do, we do four, we do Monday to Thursday, seven to seven. Oh

yeah. Fridays are off. So it's, it's different because you know how that can be by the end of a 12 hour shift of lifting tires And then it's, it's chaos because you check out a lot of cars and then, you know, you try to sell some work off of, off the tire sale. Right. And then you hope that, uh, the customer can either rebook because we're already overbooked for higher appointments, right. So, yeah, no, we were like, we were hopping there for

like probably three or four weeks. Like we were working overtime. I mean, this is one of the things with my new, my new boss is that, you know, during our busy season, he's given us the option to work overtime if we want it. which is great because I mean then we don't have carryover the next day, we can bring in more cars and it's just, we had some record

So we're already recording here, so when you say new boss, let's kind of kick it off with the intro of who am I speaking with, it's, So yeah, I'm Mark Elliott, also known as Toba Tech on TikTok and a little bit on Facebook. I do have an Instagram account, don't I don't see you much on Facebook. I saw your first on, on, um, on Tik TOK. And then of course, you know, the Canadians are So, I mean, yeah, no, it was honestly by even chance that I even ended up on Tik TOK or even doing

automotive content at all. I never, I never wanted to do it honestly. Like I, uh, I started on YouTube with my outdoor content. And I really grinded that for a year. You know, I, this is what I want to do. I'm like, you know what, maybe it'll, it'll get me out of the shop one day and I can just make money going hunting and fishing and doing all that

kind of stuff. But it was such a grind for, and sometimes you get 30 views and I put, you know, spend the whole weekend filming something, spend 12 hours editing it for 30 views. It was, you know. And no, the whole TikTok thing just kind of fell on my lap. It was just like, I just saw, it was actually Autotech Mike. I started seeing his videos. I'm like, you know what, I could probably do this, you know? So I started doing some quick little videos in the shop and I'm like,

you know, I'll just start uploading them on TikTok. And it just started taking off. I was like, wow. So, you know, my first few, my

first few videos got a couple thousand views and I was like, this is awesome. It So who do you think is more hated on TikTok? Mechanics or people that are like hunters and you know outdoor You know what TikTok just hates hunters like you know because I do have an outdoor channel on TikTok as well. I got my Prairie Mountain Man stuff there. I haven't done

anything with that in the last few months. I honestly, once I got the third kid, it's, you know, I just decided where I want to put all my energy and Tik Tok and Toba Tek was what was giving me the best bang for my buck, I would say. But yeah, any of my hunting stuff, Kaibosh, I got so many community violations. Like you

can't show anything or talk anything hunting wise. You can kill a You can show all the dead fish you want, but as soon as this different kind of animal, it makes zero sense to me, but I, you know, I'm new to the Tik Tok thing. So it's like, I've been on Facebook forever and a lot of people find Facebook to be very. Uh, when I, when I came to Tik Tok, I found a lot of people, it was one or the other. They, they either really like Facebook and they

didn't really care for Tik Tok or they're really Tik Tok and they've got some negative connotations or experience about, Facebook. So I mean, for me, I built my brand, I say my brand, I built my following. And you kind of saw what happened this week with the whole, you know, started right has been. And, um, but I've been doing that for years. So when, when that kind of when I, when I meet new people, through other social media platforms

and they're not familiar with me. I don't always, I sometimes rub people the wrong way. Cause it's just, it's about delivery, right? Like, and I'm not, I'm just, I'm blunt and I'm straightforward and it rubs a lot of people the wrong, wrong way. And I, I, it's never my intention to alienate or offend or seem judgmental. It's just very much like an open-ended observation about something. And then I'm going to leave it to Lee, like, OK, you respond, right? If some people don't engage

in the conversation, they immediately get their backup. And what I've always found with you is you and a lot of the other people in the mechanics of TikTok group, they're not shying away from the conversations, right? And that's why I'm there. I'm there not just to push the podcast, but I'm there to get more people that aren't maybe as familiar with what we've been doing on Facebook to still be engaged in the conversation, right? you've got a new boss, you're at Okay Tire in, can I

You're not missing it much. Although you know what, I have to say the fishing out here is pretty fantastic. Whatever species you want

to go after, it's here and we have like the trophy cat fishing destination in like, I think all of North America. Pretty sick. You go down to the Red River and like you can sit there and catch 30 pound catfish like till your arms are about to fall off your body. No largies. There's a couple of places that might have largies. There's some small mouth, but that's more like by the Ontario border. Uh, but there are a lot of the small mouth,

at least the nice thing is it's a lot of smaller lakes. You know, you can get into these like these back backwoods lakes and stuff and get So how long have you been doing this, Mark? Not just the TikTok thing, So I started like right in high school. So what kind of happened was it was grade 11 and we had a presentation in

our high school that basically the St. Boniface Art and Tech Center, you can go there for half the semester if you want to pick a trade, right? You can do carpentry. hairstylist, automotive, so I'm thinking here in grade 11, I'm like, hey, I get six months away from my high school or whatever it was, five months. I'm like, hells yes, sign me up. And I remember walking into

that first, because I didn't know anything about cars. I always had like a knack of taking stuff apart and trying to figure stuff out, but cars was never on my radar, right? So I walk in and everybody's standing around. I think it was the one teacher's old AMX Javelin. And they're all like, oh yeah, this is a big old 340. Check out the carburetor. I have no idea what the hell they're talking about. And that whole six months there, I didn't really take it seriously. For me,

it was just like, all right, I just don't want to be in high school, right? And then I didn't go back in grade 12 for the second semester because it was the last semester of high school, and I just wanted to be at school with my friends type thing. So when it came time to figure out what the hell I'm going to do with my life, I went to colleges, I went to universities, just to see

what it's all about, and there was nothing that really attracted me. I was like, you know what, that automotive course was kinda neat, right? But I didn't take it seriously, so I decided the year right after high school, I'm gonna go back, I'm gonna retake the six months I took, and take it seriously, right? Let's see where this takes me. And so I was there for a year, so then I started in the trade, I'd say, it was about 2003, 2004. And

my first employment was actually a Midas. So I got a job placement at a Midas and I was at Midas

the whole time I was basically in Winnipeg before I moved out to BC. And there was a time when I did quit because I'm like, you know, it was funny for my first, I'd say nine, nine years of my career, I've always tried to like find something other than being a mechanic. I was like, you know, but I can never, there was nothing that attracted me. Like something, there was something that attracted me to this industry.

And so at Midas, I left to go be in aircraft. The course was like an aircraft mechanical engineering, which I thought was more like working on planes. But then when I found out it was more so like working on an assembly line, building parts for planes, I was like, this is not for me. And at that time, I worked for six months, I think, at Canadian Tire, which was Can I ask you after nine years, why did you still feel like it

wasn't a permanent thing for you? Was it the way the, the way the industry, like the store or was I think the pay had a lot to do with it, right? It was the pay and it was, I was being stimulated, but the problem was, so when it Basically, I haven't worked in a lot of different shops. I basically worked with Midas. I worked at a few different shops with Midas. I worked at Kingtown for six months. Then when I moved out to British Columbia, I was

with Midas for six months because I got transferred out there. And it was a horrible shop. The people there were horrible. Everything about that experience was horrible. So the next job I had was at a Budget Breaking Muscle, which is another big franchise out there. And I stayed there for 11 years. So I was with that company for 11 years. I learned a lot about the business end, but it was a family owned operation and it was a really hard family to work for. Yeah. Right. And, but you

know what? It's funny. I didn't realize until I left there how much it

made me who I am as a mechanic. Right. And the business end of it, especially right. Art really knew how to run that, the business properly and take care of the customers properly and stuff. It was

So at the time, yes, they had a guarantee. Basically you were guaranteed 30 hours and then there was like a bonus. And at the time when I was in Winnipeg, like I was always making bonus, but you know, this is when I started seeing the negatives of incentivized pay. Right. Because Yeah, being an apprentice, you're gonna get the gravy shit, right? You're gonna get the breaks and stuff. So it's not hard for me to make bonus, right? And then the

guys above me were getting upset, right? Because I was just knocking jobs. Like when I was young like that, I was pretty fast at my job at that time. And I was knocking work out and they were getting pissed off because of course they had to do intakes and they had to do this and that, right? Whereas I'm just hammering break jobs out left, right and center. And so, and then they didn't want to help me. They wouldn't want to teach me

things. They, you know what I mean? It was always a burden and seemed like a fat question. So even though we had a guarantee it, the flat rate mentality was there. Yeah. Right. Because you still need to make bonus so you can hit that. Cause I think at the time, the, when I was working there in 2003, the mechanics were making 17 bucks an hour. And if you hit bonus, you got bumped up to 23. Right. So. So yeah, I got to see that at that time. When I went out to BC, theirs

was a little bit differently. So the same thing they had, again, incentivized, but there it wasn't just what you put out, it's also what the team put out. So if the team put out, you also got a half, you know, 50 cent bump, a dollar bump, dollar 50 bump, Yeah. It's, it's funny, eh? It's because, I mean, I spent so many years, I never had a modified plan. I either worked straight hourly where I worked straight

flat rate. There was never, I've never been on a team plan. I've never been on a, uh, like the last dealership we were at, I was at, excuse me, we had a guarantee, but I mean, they just, there was so many texts and so little work that most were always hitting just the guarantee. or just a couple hours

above it. You weren't like just killing it. Like, I mean, 45 hours was a good week, you know, at Nissan because there was just so many techs, not all, if it wasn't warranty, the customers weren't doing it and it was tough. So I, the team thing has always left me really, I kind of wish maybe I had tried it or been on it to try

it, but I hear some horror stories about it too, right? Where you see if you're carrying, carrying a team member, Right. Or he or she is not necessarily be carried, but dragging the average down, then it becomes that person can So I think that that's the hardest part for me because generally like most of the time in a shop environment, I'm usually one of the harder workers, right? Like

I, I, I'm a hustler. That's just how I've always been. And even you'll see me during the tire scene and stuff like that, like my feet move twice as fast, right? I just, I just know this is the time to make money. This is, we got to just move our feet and just do it. Right. So for me to have an incentivized plan that everybody's kind of, you know, benefiting from my hard work is yeah,

it's definitely hard. I think, you know, and that was the thing is really, I was only in an incentivized pay plan for, I think three or four years of my career. The rest of the time I was always been hourly and, There was a couple of times I maybe thought about trying the dealership, but again, there was, you know, maybe it's misconceptions on my part, but I also like the challenges the independent gave you. I liked working on different

stuff all the time. I just, I couldn't see myself just working on one brand and just like, you know, I remember even going to school and I was there with two Ford diesel guys, right? And they make crazy money, but all they did was heads. had gaskets on six liters all day long, right? I'm like, it's like, yeah, great. The money's great, but is that what I want to do? Like, do I want to just do the same thing over and over and over again? Like, yeah.

So, and you know, and for me too, like I just got to a point where I love teaching. I love, you know, the apprentices and stuff like that. It's always funny when I do get an apprentice that doesn't want to like learn from me, you know, and

I'm like, man, I wish I had a journeyman like me that was like willing to just like, Like I love teaching, as you can see from my content. That's just one of the reasons why I'm on TikTok is it's giving me a chance to talk to other mechanics and apprentices. And it just like warms my heart when they message me and go, Hey, I don't have a good journey, man. I love watching your videos cause I'm learning. And

it's just like, for me, the teaching thing is so important. Like it's just, I think, you know, sorry, go Sorry. Do you think the industry right now is really dropping the ball on the mentorship thing? I think so. I think so. And even like, So Manitoba right now, we're allowed to have two apprentices to one journeyman. And before it was one-to-one. Now the new NDP government that came in, they want to bring that back to one-to-one. And I'm like, whoa, I think that's a horrible idea.

Especially in our trade. I mean, realistically, like let's say my shop, right? Right now it's just me and I have two apprentices. And then we have an older guy that's kind of like part-time. but they're gonna be apprenticing under me. Now, if that changes, who do I decide who I'm going to put through the apprenticeship program and that other guy's just gonna have to sit there? Because we all know finding a journeyman right now is impossible, right? And we're looking for one right now. And we get

the odd one. We had a guy working for us, I think, a few weeks back. Again, 30 years experience, mostly at dealerships and stuff. We're like, all right, give

you a chance he shows up and the tools oh my god massive

toolbox he had like enough to run a whole shop and we're like okay like some of this has to go like it should be just we're small shop right we don't have the room for this but anyways first week on first week on the job and for me because like i'm i get the chance now to run the shop right i'm running the shop the back shop right now And I always like to just watch the guys and just see what they can do before, you know, I want to

instill, like, the way we like to do things. And I'm just watching this guy and we give him a Ford Escape control arm, right? And it pays you 1.7. Three and a half hours with the alignment. There's another job, we gave him two steering knuckles on a Cadillac and it paid you 4.4 to do both of them. Eight hours after the alignment. you know and then there was another thing where he did like a press and wheel bearing on

a jeep patriot and 45 minutes he fucked with this the c-clip don't get me wrong there's some shitty c-clips out there but man you you learn quick that you just take the torch out fucking heat that thing so you at least lose the tensile strength and just hammer it out like it's just like i'm just watching and i'm like this is this is brutal right so we talked to him after the first week we're all like we just you know we see an issue here right and it's not so much Because

it's not like he's walking slow, it's just his process. You just see his process, and it's like, at the age he is, it's never gonna change, right? It's just, this is who he is, that's how it is, and it was just like, it was actually a hindrance to us, but this guy's been in the trade since the 90s, right? And it's funny, because he actually worked at the Nissan dealership that I worked at when I was 16 as a wash bay kid. It's funny, we

were talking, and yeah, he was a licensed tech at that time, right? But Yeah. Well, he spent, uh, the majority of, uh, his career at that Nissan dealership. It wasn't until the ownership changed that he moved. And then, yeah, he was like, Joe, he jumped around a couple of dealerships. And then, you know, what's funny, even when we were interviewing him, you know, he was saying that some places want to put them on flat rate and he's like, oh,

that's not going to work for me here. Da da da da. And obviously there's a reason for that. Cause there's no fucking way he'd make money. And, uh, But yeah, it was just like, that's the thing. Sometimes you don't even know Right. Well, and that's, we see the talk all the time. I see it. And I'm sure you've seen it too, where guys are talking about, they want to do like the working interview where, you know, come in for a day, two days, some guys leave

for a week. on and, and, you know, have a kind of a basic tool set for them to work out of and just start to see how they fit in with the, with the staff, how they, how they do their manager workflow, all that kind of stuff. And I think that, you know, cause I can tell you, I've moved around a lot and sometimes it takes me a good month before I get really into the groove of, Oh, for sure. Not fixing the car isn't the problem. It's like, okay, how did I order those parts again?

How did, uh, you know, what's the dispatch next? What's the process of, you know, one alignment rack and, and four alignment, do that kind of stuff. Like that's where I've always struggled. For sure. But you'll see, you'll see that in the guy, right? When it's, when it's not like, you know, he, that was the thing with even this guy, all he got talking about was like, oh, I understand I'm slowing the machines. I'm like, I don't care about the machines. Like,

I get that that's going to take a while. My issue is the job that Right. When I see you struggling to do it. And he's like, well, I've never done a Ford escape control arm. I'm like, well, you're in the independent now. You're going to be seeing that shit all the time. And if you can't even like take your info, the knowledge you have from doing, let's say Nissan control arm and apply that to a Ford escape, we're going to have an issue here. Right. Because

Oh, they're such a trash vehicle. I mean, they're. Oh no. Mini makers, but They're just, you know what it is? It's, you know, the first generations weren't bad, minus the rot, but it was the next generations. It was just, there's just so crappy to work on. Oh. So many hoses, they're so tight. Everything's just placed in Look at that personoid on the brand new ones, on the two liters. Right. On two little, the tiny escapes that I call them, right? That are just. Yeah.

Like a smaller than a Nissan Rogue. I did one of them on Thursday and I was cursing. Cause it was higher mileage. It was like a 90, but

to try and be able to get your hands around that intake to start to push those stupid connections in to get them. Oh, I was cutting them off and just like, I was in the park. Right. That's the thing, you can't even change just the purge valve. It has to be a whole goddamn line set up. Like, come on. And you know, this is the funny part. So you see cars like this and, you know, the government and stuff are all talking about getting rid of single serve plastics and

all this. It's like, when are we going to go after the manufacturers with these plastic intakes and the plastic valve covers and get a Wendy's and get a plastic straw, but you know, the personoid in a Ford and put a hundred equivalent, you know, straws into the lines on it, instead of just selling me the one little valve that push connect on the valve. What, how smart would that be? It'd be a 12 minute exchange, you know, of the part. It'd

be so simple. It probably costs one 10th the price, you No, no, no. And you know what, you know, the Ford dealers are doing, Oh, they're terrible. It doesn't seem to matter. They use that same valve on everything. And all you're getting with a different part number is a different hose configuration and it sucks. I hate, I mean, I hate Ford with a passion. It's not that I can't make money

working on them or that they're all that difficult to fix. It's just the quality is, you know, I mean, if you gave me like a German car to work on or a Ford, it'd be, I'm That's what I'm doing when I'm German, right? If we don't You know, that's the biggest thing is just the lack of the information to work on those cars, right? So, I mean,

I was going to ask you, so how do you find, you're at Okay Tire, how do you find their training processes and stuff like that? Cause you and I kind of talked about, like you've heard me talk and brag about AST and you really want to go, right? What's the training programs like Nothing really. It's just based on whatever my boss wants to do. So

basically we didn't even become an Okay Tire till January. So, I mean, we won't, it's been less than a year. So when he took over the business basically last November, It's funny because when the place was up for sale, I was at the time, I was kind of looking around, right? Because I'm like, I don't know

who the hell is going to buy this business. I don't know what it's going to be like. And for me at the time, see, when I moved back to Winnipeg, because I was so upset with the situation that happened in Kelowna, just because I would always leave work so stressed out. And it was one of those things that there was never any thank yous, but whenever you made a mistake, it was always throwing your face. And my confidence as a technician at the time wasn't there, right? So when I came to Winnipeg, I

accepted way less of pay and all this kind of stuff. So I'm like, maybe I'm not worth that, right? And then I started working the shop and it was just like, it wasn't a challenging environment, but it was nice. I was five minutes from my house. It was, I never left work unhappy. It was just a good environment in

that sense, right? But it got to a point, I was there, working for them for about four years and it just got to a point where it was mediocre. You know what I mean? There's no advancement in my career. There was no, so my whole career and everything about it was just blah. Like, it was just like, I went

to work and earned a paycheck, right? And it wasn't until I started doing this TikTok thing that really started igniting my love for this industry again, because I started talking to, again, different techs, different, and, but then when, so when the place was for sale, we were hearing in the rumor mill that basically OK Tire was possibly thinking of buying the business or what, I'm like, I don't want to work for a tire shop. I hate tires to begin with.

I don't want to do more tires. I'm going to do less tires of anything. But when Champ and his business partner Ali came in, so the first day that they come in, it was funny. I'm like, we need to go upstairs. We need to go talk right now. I'm like, this is basically what I want. I want to be the head mechanic. And I want to be able to run the shop. I want you guys to trust me. You know, I want to move my career forward. I want, you know what I mean? Like if you guys

are making more money, I want to make more money. I'm tired of making money for people and not seeing those benefits. I will work my ass off for you guys, but I want to see some return on that. Right. And basically I was like, you know, COVID kind of put training out the window for a while. So I'm like, I want to go back to training. If there's training coming, I

want to go to training. I want to, you know, all this kind of stuff. So they're like, Hey, yeah, you know what, like, especially since I came to them with a plan, you know what I mean? I'm like, this is what we need to change to make more money. This is what, you know what I mean? I, it's not like I just came, I'm like, Hey, I want this and not offer anything. Right.

So they're like, okay, yeah, let's give, give this kind of kind of shot. The other, the other guy, the other technician that was there, he's been with the company for 17 years, but he kind of wanted to transition to the front. So I said, either me or Joe has to go up front. We know our customers. I think it'd be good for the transition to have one of our faces up there. Right. So Joe kind of started moving over the front and I ran the back. Joe never wanted the head mechanic role. You know, even

when I came in there, he just like, again, he was a jaded mechanic. And, uh, and even when the apprentices came in, he had nothing to do with them. So I said, I saw my opportunity when they came in. And then it was funny, it was like two days after that, they're like, so how do you feel about, you know, if we went to turn to an okay tire and I said, slide out, I'm like, I would, I probably leave. I'm not interested. And they're like, oh, well, why? I'm like, honestly, I'm at

a point in my career that I don't want to do more tires. I see tire shops and in the winter time, all they do is tires, like in the tire season, they don't have time to do any other repairs. It's fucking tires, tires, tires, tires. And I just, I don't want to do that. And he's like, no, you know what? We don't have a requirement being an okay tire, right? That we like, we know it's going to bring us more tire business, obviously, but he said, it's not worth it to us to have you do

tires, right? It's not cost effective. So we'll, so we'll, we'll get an apprentice that, you know, a tire guy and stuff like that. Don't worry, you won't do more tires. You still get to do what you you're doing. And I was like, all right, well, I'll give you guys a shot. You know, let's see how it goes. And it was, You know, it was neat because They didn't even know what a brake rotor was. So they bought an automotive shop without even knowing what a brake rotor was. They're

just, you know, they have money. They came from owning some Huskies and stuff like that. So, you know, they had some money and they want to change, change industries. So

luckily me and Joe stuck around or else they would have been just hooped, hooped. But you know what the beauty thing about that what I learned especially when

it's somebody that's because they're young to like champ He's 31. I believe 32 and but they're like so willing to learn and listen and like respect my opinion on things because I've been doing it so long and Again, like I said, I learned a lot about the business when I was out in BC and unfortunately my last boss didn't even want to hear any ideas You know, like I brought break servicing. We didn't even service breaks at our shop Yeah. When I came in, I begged him for five years to buy me a

brake fluid flush machine. I think I'm like, just give me one. I'll sell you brake flush. I mean, we're sending vehicles out the door with the brake fluids black. Yeah. You know what I mean? We're not even servicing our customers' vehicles properly. We had no flush machines, we had nothing. And so when they came in, I'm like, get me this stuff, I will make you money with it. And again, it's not about like upselling stuff that you don't need to do, but I

mean, you need to flush brake fluid once in a while. I mean, when you do four calipers, it's just better to flush the whole system out and start fresh. And It's finishing the job off properly. I find it, isn't it funny though, like how we talk in the industry all the time about some of the old ways of doing things and the old stereotypes of what is proper to

sell and what's ripping the customer off and all this kind of stuff. And I'm seeing more and more people that are working for people that haven't got a long-term second generation, whatever you want to call it, link to the business. And they seem to be so much more receptive. about what the younger people, and we're not young, you and I are not young, but we're not 60-year-old shop owners either, right? We're late

30s, early 40s, 20 years of mechanics experience. And I'm finding that every day it's getting to be where our input is a little more welcome. It's still a big obstacle to get through, right? Because everybody's so I don't want to be known as the shop that's the most expensive. I don't want to be known as a shop that's ripping people off. We had a conversation this week about what's valuing ourselves, right? At the

end of the day, if your customers are satisfied, it doesn't matter about the people that are not your customer. Exactly. of you. It doesn't matter. You're not your customers. You're not their shop. It's cool. But we have to start

valuing what it is that we bring every day to work. You have to value yourself, right? You talked earlier about how you settled for probably less pay than what you should have because you didn't think you were that good a mechanic. And I'm not any kind of superstar. I'm not Chuck Engine Chuck, that guy's super smart. Brandon Sloan, super smart. But after 20 some years of doing this, I've got a pretty refined process of

how I solve problems and fix cars. And I can take a bit of an authoritative stance and say, here's a better way to do some things. And this is what, when that gets shut down, we don't make any progress in this industry, Yes, and that's the whole funny part. What like the neat thing about this whole transition right now is talk to my wife about that the other day. was because the old owner was so not receptive to my ideas,

right? And said, well, it won't work in our, it won't work here. It won't work here. Our customers aren't like that, you know? Cause I always talked about like, again, you know how I have a hate for Dorman, if you've seen that, but it's just because that's all they ever sold. And we just saw come back after come back after, I'm like, man, we know that this is not going to work as a cam sensor. Why are we not getting from the

dealer or they don't want the deal? How do you know? Did you even try to sell it? Right. So when chap took over, I was like, hey, this is what we're seeing. I don't want to be putting in cam sensors and anything electronic. Let's get from the dealer as much as we can. Right. And because I'm tired of this, I'm like, put it this way. I'm like, champ did put his door right up a little bit. Right. And but again, I got a pretty big raise when he came in because I demanded it. And

I said, you know what? Let's focus on quality. I'm telling you

this right now, champ. is that, you know, we might lose some cheap customers and that's whatever. But I'm telling you right now, if you, if we can do a quality repair and we stand by it, it doesn't matter what you charge. It doesn't matter what you charge, right? Because I will always go above and beyond for my customers. If there's a new customer, I'll bring them out and I'll show them everything. You know what I mean? Like I, I'm all about honesty. I, there's

enough honest work on a vehicle. You don't need to be ripping people off is what I've always said. but what I felt was that the last owners weren't even servicing our customers properly. It's not even about overselling, but if you're not even selling the proper maintenance, you're just not even servicing the customer properly, which at the end of the day, if you service them properly, you're gonna make more money. So this whole one year thing

is basically CHAMP has followed mine and Joe's guidance. We changed a lot of the stuff that they said wasn't gonna work in our shop, and guess what? We matched our numbers for last year. So, you know, and again, yeah, there was a lot of changes. I mean, we changed to an okay tire and all this kind of stuff. But, and of course I saw some of the customers that wouldn't even give us a shot. You know, I always thought that was weird. It's

like, you're going to go to a different shop. Wouldn't you at least give us a chance before, you know what I mean? But whatever, you know what, we still kept a lot of our customers. And we've been gaining tons of new customers. We're building our own rapport, right? So, and I see the nice thing now too, is I get to talk to my customers again, which that, like when I was at Budget in Kelowna, that was one thing.

I'm the one who brought my customers out. I talked to him about everything and the service advisor

just sold the job afterwards, right? Which, and this is why I always said to Richard, I'm like, which is my old boss is like this is why you're scared to try to sell the better parts you don't know how to market it properly Mike I've been doing this that way for 15 years I know or 11 years I know how to do it and I know that you're just not communicating properly you're Let's see, the cheap, Mark, the cheap customers, I see it all the time

when I'm talking to groups and whatnot, the cheap customers beat them down, right? They beat them down where they just make the assumption that everybody is the cheap type of customer. Exactly. And I struggle with it too because we put some Dorman parts on at my shop, right? It's not Dorman, it's Napa Advantage, which is still Dorman. And we struggle with it because it's like, well, we offer, you know, we'll put a two-year

guarantee on the parts and labor. But the encoder motor say, as an example, only lasts 13 months and then we're doing it for free. What's the sense of that? None, you know? And I could understand that when there were so many OE parts that were unavailable because of the COVID thing and everything else. And there's still a lot of OE parts that are available. But man, now, like I priced an encoder motor for a Silverado Sierra. It was five. 55 cents more money at the dealership than it was for

the DAPA one. And I would have gotten, the

only difference you're paying for at that point is warranty, but I'd already had the encoder motor was only 13 months old and it was already screwing up again, right? It's like the dealer one in the truck that had been in there from the OE lasted 10 years, right? Let's put another one in that, I'm not going to say that the OE replacement is For sure. And a lot of times you'll look at the Dorban price

The prices aren't that off, right? And you know what, a lot of times when you tell the customer, even if you have to wait a day, let's say, I go, hey, I can put the OE part in, which I know it's gonna last, I mean, look at this, you've had it in there seven years, right? Or I can get you this aftermarket part, put it in today, but from my experience, we've had some issues, right? And that's why we're kind of

going this way. Guess how many customers usually say, no, I won't wait. 5% maybe right it's it's it's just funny it's like i said it's like i knew all these things from the other shop and have somebody tell me that these things don't work i'm like well you're not even willing to try i'm how about you let me sell the job to the customer i'll show you i'll but he would never let me do that right so What Isn't that something you think about? People have

heard me talk in different episodes and everything about my exit strategy, right? From how to get off the floor to still being in the industry, but this is hard on the body, right? I've got shoulders and knees and elbows that are just like every other mechanic that are starting to hurt. Do you see yourself as like that's what you want to transition to? eventually like, not necessarily head tech, but like service manager or service writer? Well, funny enough, right now, like I said,

we're trying to find another red seal. And the whole plan is to get a young enough red seal that like my, my boss, he wants to leave me the business to Right. he wants to go to the next thing, right? Which, awesome. But for me, it's, I don't, me just sitting at a computer doing estimates, that's just, it's a waste of my skill, my talent, and all that kind of stuff. So where I see myself is running the day-to-day, still doing, get to doing the diag and the stuff

like that, that I really love doing, right? I mean, realistically, like, it's only in the last, let's say four or five years, I've been like really, really hard in trying to like, learn as much learning the scope and like even my last boss didn't give me the opportunities to even work with the scope but my new boss is like hey you know what use whatever tools you want like and then even when it's slow i'll bring my truck in and i'll start plugging the scope in

and you know what i mean like i know that especially when you see people like you know check engine chuck and scanner danner and all these people in the industry you know and i always laugh because my one apprentice manny amazing amazing human being great heart, but he always calls me the goat, right? And I'm like, I'm not, I'm just some regular guy. Like it's just, it's just

that, you know what I mean? I've, I put a lot of my heart into my, into my work, but, and yes, I can usually figure out most problems, but like, I, I, I feel like I'm down here compared to those guys. You know what I mean? And, but I'm again, I'm 38 and I'm like, Hey, in 10 years from now, imagine where I could be if I just keep applying myself and It's, it's, it's crazy. Like you think you're, you know, we always

say it's the big fish in the little pond syndrome. Right. And then what the beauty of Facebook for me was 10 years ago when I started really is like, I thought I was at the dealer. I was the guy, I was the guy that made all solve the problems and so on and so forth. Then you start to work with these other people that like either work at a bigger dealer than you and see a lot more cars, or

they work at the independent side where they work on anything and everything. And then you work, you see, you get to talk to people like a Chuck who are doing mobile solvent. They don't know what the heck to expect when they get to the next car. All they've got is a phone call saying it won't crank. And you realize, man, I don't know. All right. And that's Super guy, isn't he? He's just and you know, it's the it's

the running joke. But I mean, this industry is so lucky to have the social media platforms now where people are going out and sharing training methods and processes and stuff because there's, this stuff moves so fast. There's no way you Especially like my boss, like now he, he wants to get into the EVs and the hybrids, like, which I'm all for. Honestly, like, again, I, I don't worry about the politics behind it. That's whatever. For me, as a person that loves technology and stuff like that, it's

neat. It's something new to learn. I mean, there are benefits to it. I mean, they're clean to work on, very little fluids, lots of room to work on, and they're easy once you know them. It's straightforward. You're not going to be rebuilding the motors anyways, right? If you find a motor issue, you'll just plop in a whole new electric motor and or a whole new battery pack, you're not going to be just changing cells out

of it because it's not effective. And even this year, my boss sent me out to BC there for a week to do the EV course at BCIT. And that was just like, it was amazing. If

You're dealing with the EV stuff. You're dealing with the, I want to say the higher disposable income kind of customer, right? Where a $400 ticket or an $800 ticket doesn't break them. It doesn't mean that they don't pay their rent, right? It's $800, okay, or $1,000 or $2,000. You see it, right? Look at the price of tires. It's $1,200 or $2,000. You know, four tires for an Equinox, like I priced them

a month, $1,300 for some Pirellis for my mom's Equinox. I can remember when four tires for that same type of car, 800 bucks, you know, installed. So, I mean, when we see now with everybody's struggling so much, I think the EV thing, and I don't love the idea of it, but I mean, I understand why so many, because it is,

they are for the most part are pretty reliable. You're dealing with a type of customer that certainly has the money to be able to Should have to fix it and it's it's going to be something that if you can offer it To

your customer base is going to push you to the next level exactly demographic, right? A lot of people don't want to get into it and it's going to be, you know, my buddy Lucas uses the term all the time, the barrier of entry, right? Which is going to be, what's going to be the one thing that's going to start to push some shops to just closure instead of advancement? And he believes 100% that it's going to be the EV. Because, you know, a lot of people just

don't want to invest, they don't want to tool. Tooling's one of those things that's kind of what started this whole conversation this weekend, right? It's such an expense, you know? The Ottawa feature that you've got to have just to be able to go in and look at a secure gateway vehicle, right? You want to clear the codes. Are you running into obstacles at your shop or

We got auto off this year, because I was starting to run into those issues. Funny enough, it was because of guys with rams that they were throwing diesel in their goddamn rams, and then I couldn't even activate the relays anymore to pump the goddamn shit out. But yeah, we got auto off this year, because again, it's one of those things that something simple like using your scant, it's not that expensive. At the end of the day, I

think it was like 60 bucks for the whole year. You And if you have a on tool, it's already part of your subscription So, I mean, we charge shop supplies. That's what that should should go towards. Yes, you know, I mean, I would love it back in the day, I can remember, you know, every RAM when they first came out needed a new jar valve, it used to just be able to, you know, go out, scan it in the parking lot, chuck the jar valve in, clear

the PC, reset the memory, gone, done. Now, there's a whole process where it's like, oh, cool, so you can get the code out of it, you have to read it on the generic side, but you can't clear the code. Idea that, you know, people don't want to invest in that tooling. or haven't yet, to be able to serve that customer, and then they want to gripe about what somebody that is forced to... I'm not

trying to kick this hornet's nest again. That was... It's hard for me to wrap my head around, because I mean, my own personal tool, my own snap on Zeus does it. And I'm not a shop owner, right? I'm just a tech. So my own tool does what they need it to do, and I'm sitting there going, Well, what do you have for tooling then if you don't even have that? How are you getting? If you can't even pay for the $50 for the subscription to hook your tool up to it. I mean, like, yeah, it's such

Yeah. And I get it. I love norms. I love norm norms. You know, great guy. I mean, I love you guys, but I mean, he has some fantastic perceptions on this, but the reality is, is that like, we might have to tighten our belts a little bit figuratively. with what we charge and what we do and how we operate our businesses because this tech is going to move so fast that if we don't get ahead of it, and we don't figure out our processes and

update them, we're not going to be able to be competitive. Because the dealership, it's like I mentioned, they have no choice. It gets sent to them. They build it. And the guys are forced to go on training, and they use it. Us that sit out here in the aftermarket, we can pick and choose a little bit. But your customers ultimately dictate what it is that you're going to need to have. And if you choose not to have it, that's,

again, your right. But we can't run down the other shop that has it, especially when we need everybody in this industry to be working together. I've said it so many times. There's so many more problems that we could get ourselves out of if we

Well, yeah. And see, that's what's happening with us with programming, right? Not that I don't want to program. Right. I would love to learn that. But when you look at the value, you know what I mean? The cost and how, like, again, if I was bad at diagnosing, I'd probably find more PCM issues where I need to reprogram more PCM. But honestly, I maybe do

Do you know what I mean? And It's not always going to be a GM, sometimes going to be a Ford, or it's going to be a, yes, I know I can buy the subscription just for, you know, the three days or whatever it is. But when I look at how much, you know, buying a J box and then getting a laptop and you know what I mean, doing all this kind of stuff and then the whole like rigmarole of actually learning to do it, is there any value

in that, right? Whereas we have a mobile guy that comes right to our shop, charges 250 bucks to reprogram, You know what, we pass it on to the customer, comes in, flashes our thing, and no headache on us, and it's done, right? If we start seeing more of it, maybe at that point, but again, we're a small shop, right? At what point do you decide, okay,

I wanna do this, but I don't wanna do, you know what I mean? And so, again, even transmission work, I remember you just, I listened to one of your podcasts, I think it was your first one, and the guy was talking about how he sublets the transmission workout, right? And we do the exact same thing. I do not touch a trans, I'll diagnose it, but I won't pull it out. I won't do any of that thing. We send it to the tranny shop and we make 400 bucks

I think on it. Yeah. Don't have to do it. Don't have to work with, but warranty, none I mean, we're not even to the point anymore locally where a lot of the new, like, like the ones that Brandon talks about, but Brandon's doing all day long, right. The six, eight and 10 speeds. We don't, I want to say this when I tried to take a, I think it was an eight or a 10 out of an X, to our local guy.

He couldn't even get parts to rebuild it, he said. So it sat at his shop for 10 days before he called us and said, hey, I can't get parts for this. We literally picked up the phone, called the dealer. The dealer's like, OK, I'll have one tomorrow, which was unusual because for a while they were in order. But then it's like, so we now had that thing pushed outside and leaking transmission fluid all over the pavement for 10 days to put back in the shop. to jam the

rebuilt right in. The rebuilt's not got a warranty, right? I have to then truck it over to the dealership to get the relearn done and the programming. But it's done. You know, the customer gets a warranty on a bit. I'm not liable for anything that happens after the fact. You know what I mean? It's just as long as anything that was involved in the re-and-reprocess is good. So

Tranny's to me, yeah, I'm thinking it's going to become even more specialized. Like when I did my tournament, At Nissan, it's like you might as well, this customer comes in and you know what it is, it's a Nissan, it's crap. You might not even bother looking, I feel, for a replacement unit unless you're really, really willing to be able to

get the software out of the old unit, do the rewrites, do the reprogramming. Because otherwise, you can jam that sucker in, it's not going to last six weeks and it'll tear itself up. You don't do the programming on it. So what are you really doing by, you know, putting that unit in and telling the customer, okay, I got it in. It's not going to really shift. Right. You got, I've got to go, you know, here's a Vintag off your old case. Take

that to them and say, Hey, make these two work. Customer doesn't have time for that. You know, you might better. Like if you're going to do the job, you might better have the car until you set the appointment up with the dealer, you truck it over there, tow it over there, drive it over there, do whatever you want, have them do it, or just refer the customer to them in the first place. And that's what sucks. But some of us for so many times, as we've had these conversations,

when I was at the dealer, somebody had to sublet something to me. I saw how they treated that customer in the sense that they tried to steal that customer from a shop like yours or a shop like mine. I get where they're coming from. I mean, it's a dog eat dog industry. Oh, for sure. But you know, if more and more, if we had like how I want to handle it is I want to say, okay, I'm going to have the customer's car this date. I'm

going to make the appointment. I'm going to get in. I'm going to take the car over. I'm going to leave it and I'm going to pick the car up. I don't want my customer going into Right. And it's just, I definitely believe in that. Like, just like glass, we have a glass guy that comes right to our shop and changes windshields for us, right? Like we are a full stop auto motor shop. It doesn't mean that we're personally doing all the work ourselves, but

we will take care of you, right? Just like, just like I had a Toyota Matrix that we needed to put a new PCM in, same thing. I need to go to the dealership. Well, we took it to the dealership, right? Yeah. I don't like sending anybody to a different No, not at all. No, I know it's, you know, we went to the courses and all that kind of stuff, but I haven't. Realistically right now, we're just start, even with our alignments where we're just starting

to see the vehicles with ADOS. I mean, I know that we're probably not taking the precautions and, you know, recalibrating the things that we really should be all the time. I am fully aware of that. Just like how they always say you should always, you know, recalibrate your steering angle sensor when you do an alignment. I mean, how many shops actually do that, right? And will it cause a problem? I'd say 99% of them won't, but it's

Yeah. And it's going to wear more and more. it's becoming an even more critical, you know, that, that angle sensor, right. It used to not be, but now with lean departure and all that jazz, it's, it's a huge thing, right. It's like, you know, the oxygen sensor used to be not that big a deal in, you know, 1989. Yeah. We're around

my area. We're not, we're not seeing it a lot, you know, but I mean, I know when I worked at the dealer, Uh, we had a recall on the, on the, on the sensors, on the Nissan's like they were, we were doing five and six of them a day and having to set up, you know, it was, it was such a, a bunch of shenanigans because these, and then you'd put them in and then the parts that they gave you under the recall, they're recalling those parts. And

so it's like the four door latches thing. Right. And it's just like, when are you guys going to finally get this right? You know, just cranked up and I look at it and go, Well, once that sucker's at a warranty, if it's not under warranty and it's not a recall, those customers are

not fixing it. To me, it's TPMS later or... Those are the funniest. You know, you got a guy that comes in with a blown tire and it's like, oh, I don't know how that happened. I'm like, well, how old is your tire? Oh, that thing's been on for months. I'm like, and you just didn't think of checking. He's like, I just thought it was just another warning light. It's just like warning lights mean nothing. Just like the, you

know, it was the last week we had a girl come in with a Kia. 13,000 kilometers overdue her oil change and her motor's just, her oil light comes on, it's ticking away. And she said she would, you know, oil light came on, didn't stop her. She kept driving until it stopped, right? Luckily she didn't blow the motor. But I'm looking at this and then my, you know, I talk to Champ and he's like, yeah, I was talking to

her. She's like, yeah, I just don't know how to maintain my vehicle properly. Your oil change light for the last 10,000 kilometers has been going, hey, change the goddamn oil. And you don't know how. Just I didn't hear it right. I don't know. It's the same thing. Everybody says Hyundai and Kia are junk. But I mean, honestly, think about how many engines. And we've heard the stories. They've changed out just because they've They have to have some of the worst owners is what it comes down to.

I even had a girl two years ago, 60,000 kilometers, she bought a brand new, never changed the oil. By the time it came in, obviously the motor seized up and it was like, just gunk, just gunk. She didn't even know an oil change was a thing. I'm like, how do They're not taught it in school though anymore, right? It's not a gender thing, because I've talked to equally both people. My own brother, if I didn't ever explain to him how critical this stuff was. You know, he

runs over his oil interval all the time. My mother does the same thing. It's almost I know, my family's horrible for that. Same with my wife's family. I give them shit all the time. Because at the end of the day, who's the one who's going to be changing the motor for Hopefully not us. I really like Kia's in high end days. I mean, honestly, when they come in, when they're fixed, they drive not bad. I mean, they're pretty good car for

Oh, you look at it, you know what I mean? And you compare it to like an Econox or a Cruze. Look, is a Chevy Cruze better No, it's not. A Hyundai or Kia is better built than a Chevy Cruze, any one. But yet, you get this terrible reputation. And a Cruze is, I don't care what, you can maintain the hell out of a Cruze. It's still going to constantly leak, break, and you're going Look at the brand new escapes of the two-liter, right? Coolant intrusion in the block. On

a misfire, put an engine in it. Put a cylinder head in it. At least put the cylinder head in it and look, oh, look. Well, we got it off. You can see it's leaking past the cylinder wall. How do you cast It's like the new Broncos there with their valves get hardening up and break. How does it go through all that R&D and you don't discover that before it goes out to Same with the Chevys and their lifter issues. You guys have been having lifter issues

I worked on a ton of six liters in an ambulance fleet. None Oh no, the 5.3 and the six liters before active fuel management, that is a great, great motor. I don't care what you say, I've seen so many of those come in with 600 plus thousand kilometers. I mean mine, my truck has 370,000. The 140 I

put out were not easy at all, especially up in BC. I used to beat the absolute piss out of that thing. I'm obviously like a, I'm a Chrysler Dodge Jeep guy from way back. I mean, but, and, and people, they get ripping on the Pentastar

and they get ripping on the Hemi. But I mean, really, if you do the maintenance, if you treat it like it is, which is in Canada is extreme service interval, you know, and you change your oil at 5,000 kilometers and use a decent synthetic oil, lifters and rockers are not as big a thing, but half of these guys, they show them, they're doing one and it's like, you can tell by the color of the metal. that sucker has been cooked, you know, it's been reheated, it's been

You know, like, I mean, that's even with the Fords. I mean, that's one of the big issues, the phasers and stuff. It's the maintenance. Every one that I've taken apart that's had timing chain and phaser issues, like it's cool. Everything's golden brown and black inside of it. You know what I mean? So yes, they're complicated systems. Don't get me wrong. But the guys that maintain these things, they last, right?

especially certain years, certain years of those Fords are great trucks So what do you, like you're, you're pretty big on social media, obviously. Do you think that it's been good for, for the industry to get as many of these conversations happening? Or do you think it's been kind of like, cause you, you hear some people, you know, talk about it's toxic, you know, or some, it

gets to be into a dick measuring contest. Right. And, and a lot of people, You see me, we've talked about the DIY thing, right? And we had that conversation, like you and I are kind of on the same page about that, but that's not a popular topic, right? No. Talk about what the industry is doing and what the social media does to the industry. Do I think it's a little bit of both, put it that way. So where I like it, Again, it's the conversations and

the community that gets built up, right? I mean since I've started to talk I mean now if I run into like, you know, good example was that Ford I did last year and it was it came in for an issue with the shifts like the four-wheel drive shift solenoid that was the code right and When I tested there was no ground going to the solenoid So I go back to the module, no ground on the module. I'm like, well, fuck, it has to be the module. I'm like, that's the only

thing that makes sense. Right. And so I did a video on it and it was just like, of course, some guys are like, oh, you're a fucking idiot. And you know, you shouldn't be testing that. If you don't, I'm like, well, let me know what, what did I do wrong? Right. And then it's when Rich got, he, he, he, he got out to me, he's like, watch this video. And when they changed it, I think it was 2019 or 2018, where you have to drive these things now for a mile or mile and a half before that the

four wheel drive module will actually send the ground signal to the solenoid. But it'll give you a solenoid code. And then what I ended up finding was, yeah, it was one of the actuators on the freaking wheel that's giving you a solenoid code. But I thought it was the solenoid because there's no ground going to it. But this is the beauty thing is, you know what, that one video saved that customer a module. and a

misdiagnosis on my part, right? So I ended up doing the update on the module anyways because they even in the TSB it says, you know, first thing you should do regardless is put the newest update in there. And then, uh, and that's what I found the actuator issue, right? But it's, it's, it's that

end of it that I really, really like. I like how all these mechanics with all these different experiences can get together and help each other solve these issues because you and I both know within a city like no shop wants to help another shop we just see each other as competition and you know unless you have a buddy that's working here they're like good luck you I'm not gonna call you know the local Ford dealership here and talk to, you know, Joe, he's not going to give me any, he's going to

Right. And I can remember what used to be able to phone, you know, independent shop. You bought a certain amount of parts from, you know, the parts dealer. You might be able to call the parts department. I've done it years ago. Nobody wants to help you. Like you said, anymore, nobody even answers the phone and say, Hey, can I talk to one of your techs for a minute? Now, I find it is so much easier if I'm networking with so many more people to be able to say, hey, Rich, or, you

know, hey, Mark, have you guys run into this kind of stuff? Because none of us know everything. And that's the thing. It's like, everybody's like, well, did you read the damn service information? There's a whole lot of

stuff that's not published in the service information. And even when it is, if you've got an hour, hour and a half, maybe allotted to diagnose and repair, or at least diag, you can spend that 90 minutes And for sure like this Ford, I mean they've been doing it a certain way for 15 plus years So you just never even think of going to the service information, right? Because it's like you didn't know that they changed the protocol on that

because it's again They've been doing it this way for 15 years. It was an eat like I How many Fords that we fix the solenoids and vacuum lines and actuators and all this kind of stuff, right? It's it's you know So I didn't even think about looking at service information. I know that that's one of the first things they always say,

always look no matter what it is, go look at service. But something like that, you're And they don't put it in a big red flag in service information saying, hey, Mark, last year we were going to do it like this, this year and going forward we're going to do it like that. If they just had a paragraph that was like a big shiny red arrow, look here, look here, I

wouldn't be so befuddled so many of the time, right? Exactly. It's like they just make the assumption that everybody that's reading their service information has been a guy at the dealer that's taken his quarterly training and the quarterly training shows them the updates and it's like, okay, because I've sat through those classes. You remember how they all used to do Yeah, okay, so now we've gone to a different type of crank. If you don't sit through that

class, you're not going to know that, right? You're going to figure it out on the first couple that you do that, whoa, wait a minute, That's the key I worked on the other day. If I didn't go read the service information, it sends a 3.3 volt signal to You know, the tranny, that's what it uses a 3.3 volt. Well, you're always so used to five volt references. You see 3.3 volts, you're like, well, shit, something has to be wrong. So. But so no, I see that the networking is positive, but I

do see the toxic end of it, right? I mean, you get the trolls and that, you know, just people that just want to ruin your day because they just suck in life. I don't know what it is, right? And no matter what you do, no matter what you say, they have to like be against you, right? So I see that end of it. But that the toxic parts that I see is just the The ones that just wanna, again, do the mudslinging and the giving bad advice or, you know, calling this guy a hack

because he does a different, you know what I mean? That, I've always said you can put 10 mechanics in one room, you're gonna get 10 different ways to do the job. It doesn't mean that that guy's a hack or this, you know what I mean? Like, it's just, we just, our brain might process that problem differently. As long as you get to the end result and it's

Yeah. I, I see, you know, like I got to meet rich at AST right this year and he's such a cool guy when you meet him in person, he's, he's pretty much just like he is, but you see him once in a while, like we see him online and he's always, you know, talking back to somebody that's trolling him or to set somebody straight when you, when you are with that guy and he's just. Like, we're just having

fun and we're just having a conversation. He's a super cool guy, but I mean, such Even me and Richard had a little, like, situation there, right? And I just said, come on, Rich. I'm all like, you know, me and you are two very opinionated people. He's like, yeah, but you should do it. I'm like, you go after guys all the time. I'm like, yeah, but it's like, that's because

they deserve it and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, this guy was being a dick. Honestly, I don't call people out over my social media unless they're being fricking dicks, right? And it's just like, I mean, I've always been an antagonist my whole life, but I know that trying to build up my brand and like putting my, you

know, okay tire and all that kind of stuff. I don't want to just attack people and look like, look like this, you know, this, this guy, but at the same time, if you're being a real big dick, I use it kind of also as a learning experience. You know what I mean?

Just like the video I just put out today with the whole, it was from last year, you know, where I, you know, Again, I know your thoughts on flat rate, and I have my thoughts on flat rate and stuff, but my biggest issue is when guys can't do the simplest job on a vehicle to get the quality repair because they can't get paid for it, right? And then when there's been such dicks about it, I'll point it out, and I'll be, these are my

issues with it. Why? Because cleaning a rim, let's say even if it cuts into your time, you're gonna make it up on the next job. and what you want that tire to go flat, or you want the wheel to fall off. I just don't get that mentality, right? Especially it's a 30-second job on a goddamn rim. And if you're that slow, you still can't make money on a tire, you know? I don't know. I'll tell you where that mentality comes from. And it's not me defending the way it happens, but I was that guy. I'll go

back to break to an example, right? Because it seems to be the one thing you put 10 guys in a room and 10 guys do the job. But I was that guy that everything was like cleaned, lubed, you know, and then I got paid the one and a half for pads and rotors on the front and they got paid and they would do theirs in 15 minutes. It was literally like chucking off, rolling back on. The hubs didn't get cleaned. The back of the rim didn't get cleaned. Nothing got

cleaned. The saddles didn't get cleaned. Nothing got lubed. Back on, I'd be over there like grinding and grinding and grinding. The attitude comes from at the end of the year, he'll do a thousand more brake jobs than you. At 1.5 per, that's a substantial kick in pay. So I understand where Exactly. That's where my problem is, is because if you do the job properly, it can bite into you feeding your

You know what I mean? Brandon is such a cool guy and I don't know if him and I are still going to be friends after this whole week, how that's all gone down. But I mean, when you see him, how he approaches a transmission, right? There isn't another guy out there that's approaching it the way he is, that he's putting it out there where it's at engineering level. Like he's not just rebuilding it, right? He's making it better every one that he does. There's

so many of us that aren't doing that. And I'm not saying we all have to do it, but Or when I watch Rich, how Rich understands how to break down the system on a Ford, to where he can show you... Just like you said, that example, we need, we need to be able to keep the, the conversations going and being open and everybody not get so offended and so hurt. If somebody calls you out on a better way to do something, because

you can defend your method of why you do it. And you don't have to, when you click the computer off, you're not forced to do it the way Mark does it or the way I do it, but you gotta be open-minded to hear why the other person does it. And that's what I, when I see rich and he's constantly, he gets trolled so bad, you know? Just, you see the guys and you know the comments. You see them too, I see them. They don't even work in jobs that I have no

friggin' clue what they're talking about. They're just disgruntled. You know, like you, you laugh, but I keep saying that, you know, the favorite flavor of crayon is salt because that's what they are. Is there a lot of people that are just like, they're, they're, they're bad at the industry. They're not working in the industry. They're mad at the industry from a customer standpoint. And I long ago didn't even give a

crap. You know, I'm not on here networking to try and make the customer experience, you know, because you're never going to satisfy them all. My goal has always been to get us on an even playing field, get us where we're sharing information and supporting one another, because at the end of the day, that makes the customer's experience way better than me trying to constantly defend what it is I have to charge for I was going to say, but along that same

topic. You know, and this is where I've even changed

as a mechanic doing this content. I would say my first year, I was very standoffish, you know, where I, you know, thought that maybe my, but you know what, I started, I started stepping back whenever somebody called me out on something, let's say they said, oh, you know, the way you're doing, it's not, you know, I start just thinking, I'm like, hey, you know, maybe my way isn't because at the end of the day, you're only as good as what you've learned or what

you've been taught, right? So when somebody calls me out, I'll go and do, even if I think I'm a hundred percent right, I'm like, you know what, let's, let's go look at it. And I'll spend that night researching this and I'll read so much about it. So then the next day, if I, if I'm going to go after you, I'm going to make sure that I'm going to bring the receipts and I'm going to prove why my way is better than your way. And if you still think you're better than

me, then you're just a fricking idiot. And it's the tire patching thing. Now I start balancing I would say that this podcast has been the best thing for me to help my attitude in terms of not, because I used to be awful. I used to just roast somebody, right? I used to snap judgment immediately on what they were, who they were. you know, and, and then just roll with it. And what the podcast has taught me is that it's like, Hey, it's not good for the brand, even if you are right, right. At

the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. You know, they have a customer base and a clientele that they have and they've built, then I'm not interested in stealing that customer base from them. I just want us all be more respected and more appreciated and paid better. That's what I want. Getting and fighting with somebody about how they do something, especially with another professional, I've never been about that. I've

always been like, if you're a disgruntled customer, I don't even care. You're in the mechanics of TikTok, trolling Rich or trolling Brandon or trolling me, I don't care. You're grouchy because you can't fix it yourself and you're mad because it costs a lot of money. I understand, but I'm not going to enable you. But when I see other techs out there and it's like, they're, they're challenging, you know, Richard or you or myself or somebody on how to do

something, I'm like, so what's your credentials? Why do you do it that way? And if they've got nothing, then kindly, politely bow The best is when people try to come at me about break work. I mean, I've worked in a break shop 14 years in my career. I know brakes better than most people. Same with exhaust. Like I've, I used to build a high end, like a hot rods and stuff like that. Like custom bending was my thing. When I came to Winnipeg, I was like, I don't

want to do exhaust anymore. I I'm done. I've done it my whole career. Now I missed the custom aspect of it. I hate hanging a muffler, but like the custom work, I have, I miss that every day because you know what? Not everybody can do it. Yeah. There's very few pipe benders out there anymore. And it was just like, especially like, you know, you get an old, an old Bel Air or something like that. Like it's, yes, it had to be in a certain area, but it was your own, like,

it was almost like an art form. You know what I mean? Like, and, and the thing was about that kind of work was there's people that want to spend money on their cars. And when they saw it, you know, it's just that it was that when they saw it and just how happy they were that they were dropping a thousand bucks or 1500 bucks for me to build some. And they were just so proud of the job, you know, it was, because there's a lot of ungrateful parts of our job. Nobody wants to come see you. Nobody's

happy when the vehicle breaks down. But the hot rodders, oh my God, those were the best customers. It's like they want to spend money. But they want it to be good. And when it was good, oh, and it was neat going to the car shows and be like, oh, I built that one. I built that. It was cool. So that I do miss. I never thought I'd miss any part of the exhaust business. But custom bending, 100%. Especially when I see the crap that comes out from other shops. Sometimes we sublet,

I'm like, oh my God, like, just let me go over there and bend it myself. Like, I just, I just, I have so much pride in my work that I, it just bugs me. Like when you We talk about the shop all the time. Cause we do a fair bit of exhaust repair.

And then it's like, you look at the quality of the Walker stuff and it's like. Oh, I'd rather, I'd rather weld a flange onto the OE piece and leave the OE metal in there than put that Walker crap on because it's not even going to last two years, you know, and you make a good point about the break thing. I laugh at the guys that it's like, well, my friends in South Carolina or North Carolina. You

break, they're not doing it wrong. But I mean, I'm like, you just when they talk about the rust that they have on their brackets, right, like on on their saddles, and it's like, we we throw it in the blast cabinet and you're in there an hour getting well, I laugh at the southern guys Heating up front-end parts. They're like you shouldn't be putting heat on a front-end part. I'm like, okay Then how the hell do you fix cars out in the north like good luck? Could you imagine never

putting heat on a front end? We're not changing the whole goddamn thing and Like I get where they're coming from and I understand what it's like and I yeah okay so you heat it up that changes the metal composition of the jam nut. but it's a jam nut. If you really want it to be secure, then throw a stitch of weld on that jam nut up against the tie rod. It ain't coming off. I'm going

to back off. It's not going to crack. It's not going to break. I don't want to run down people for how they do things different than me. I merely want to understand better why they do it that way. And if they can get away with doing it, if their

environment and their shop, whatever, it dictates it, cool. But when people like, you don't have to clean a hub before you put a rotor on the If you really want to get the internet fired up, what you do is you post a video about cutting off a wheel bearing off of a CV shaft. My goodness, I've never had so many angry trolls and people. I'm a mechanic in New York, 30 years I've never had to You're obviously a hack, and I'm like, okay, well, it's not coming out. I got on

my 20-ton press. It ain't coming out. What's your next step, bud? Exactly. I haven't cut a whole lot of wheel bearings off, but I've definitely had to cut a couple of wheel bearings right off the freaking axle. It is I had an owner that fought me like six months ago, and it was literally like by the time we were done, we were putting and the bearing in it because it was so seized to get that I literally had to cut the bearing out of the knuckle, just the CV shaft so I could get the CV shaft out.

One with the bracket on the back of the engine, whole thing, the expensive one. And at the end of the day, the customer was not impressed because he'd done the wheel bearing on the driver's side himself and it of course came apart. He had no issues. He started doing his passenger side at home and he had to get it towed into the shop. And, you know, he's like, I don't understand why this one's so difficult. And I'm like, I don't know, either.

I wish I could tell you why the other side came apart so easy for you, because I'm looking like I really don't know what I'm doing now, because you probably tacked, you know, tapped on the driver's side. My theory is maybe the driver's side, it's not the original one. It's already been changed once. So, but at the end of the day, I can't, I can't control what comes apart in my hand. I mean, there's methods, but if it's seized up

in Canada, it's seized. Oh yeah. We see the guys that they fight with, you know, and it's like the Ford ones and the Subarus, right? The wheel bearings and post knuckles. You're just, you're, you gotta be upfront and say to your customer, well, this is where we could be going, you know, like, and if they don't like that, well, take that down to one of your southern mechanics in Florida, drive down there, take a holiday and see if they

can get it out. Because I see it's just a different world, So, oh, yeah, just like when we do press and bearings, we always recommend a sensor because yeah, most of them won't come out. Same when we do struts, a lot of times if they're attached with a sway bar link, we'll recommend the links because we all know that some of them won't come out. Once you start heating up a sway bar link, I mean, there goes the plastic bushings and whatever. Are

you putting the cam bolts in the front of struts? Funny, I

used to a lot, especially the days before quick struts. So my last shop, we did a lot of like basically out there it was ICBC so there was like the provincial run insurance company but I did a lot of the ICBC alignments right so you had to have it in the green so I did a lot of Campbell's and again this is before quickie struts and all that kind of stuff but since since the quick struts have been around I mean they they seem to fix a lot of those camber

issues that we've that we have after doing a set of struts yeah and but I do do the odd Campbell but no I've run into a lot more alignments lately where I can put that airbag up in there, fill it right up and I can get it to come in to green, but I can't get that bolt tight enough to lock it where it'll stay in the green, you know, and the air goes away and the camber comes right back into the red again. And you're always just, just off. You know what I mean? Like. And it's frustrating, dude. It

stresses me right out because it's like that it's off. But I mean, it's like the struts not making noise, the struts not bent. Like, it's just how would I fix that? Well, I go out there and say like, and most of the time the customer doesn't want to buy the bolts for me, you know, they don't

want to go and do the alignment over again and all that kind of jazz. I get it. I Anytime it comes to alignment parts, it seems some of them like for the adjustable arms and stuff, they're so goddamn expensive So what's the goal for Toba Tek in 2024? Where do you Well, if we can find another red seal, I guess it's just going to be running the shop and just seeing where that brings me, honestly. which is super exciting. I mean, when the business was for sale, I

wanted to buy the shop. That was my plan. I knew I was ready mentally and stuff for that. I had a lot. I wasn't there financially, unfortunately. I didn't have the finances for it. And I had some reservations where I was like, hey, if I'm pulling myself out of the bay to be running there, am I going to be able to find somebody like me that's going to be able to turn the hours and make me money, right? So I had, and if I went into this, I was all in, right? leverage my house. So if I

failed, like my family's on the street, it's all this kind of stuff. So the fact that I'm going to get to do all this kind of stuff with somebody else's money, in a sense, is kind of nice. So I think I think that's, that's where I'm at right now. And just develop myself better as a, again, diagnostic tech, I want, I want one day to be known as the best guy in Winnipeg. I want, you know, I'm already It's neat. The neat thing with the Toba Tech thing is I'm

already, I think, the biggest TikToker in Winnipeg. So I do get recognized on the streets sometime, which is kind of freaking cool. And I have people coming to me all the time, right? I had a guy drive out from Brandon, which is three hours away, just so I can do a GDI service on his vehicle because he saw my video. And he's like, you know, I probably could have c-phoned it myself, but if there was

misfires, I wouldn't be able to deal with it. You know? I think in that sense, since I've been so rejuvenated with my career, with this new boss, you know what I mean? He's even talking about sending me to ASTE next year,

And he's even talking about coming himself. I said, you know, just come yourself. I think it'll be The two owners definitely, Mark, could definitely benefit from it because their eyes should be opened up to, I don't want to say that they're doing anything wrong right now, they're probably not by the sounds of it, but I mean, they see the potential that's there. Oh,

exactly. Through some of the coaching classes, especially on the business side, the technical training is one thing, but when you see the business side of it at all, You're, I, I've taken a couple, like, well, I didn't take any classes when I went this past and the year before I took two business classes. My mind was so opened up to just how it can really work. You know what I mean? All the stuff that they teach you, the technician shortage thing though, is, is I think it's the number

A hundred percent. And it's just finding good. good people right i mean you can find bodies that's that's not not really an issue but like what i'm finding too is you know you're finding a lot of a lot of immigrants coming in i'm not saying it's a bad thing i mean manny manny he's a punjab One of the best apprentices I've ever had. We just hired Demo. Demo is a Chinese. He's Chinese. He's been in Canada for five years. Again, phenomenal kid. Just a hustler. Just smart. Super smart. And

I always laugh because right now we have a Chinese Punjabi. The owner is Hindi. And then there's me that I'm a French Canadian. And then we have a Croatian guy that works part time. Like the accents in the shop are freaking hilarious. But, you know, but some of the immigrants are coming in. It's just like, oh yeah, I, you know, I drained the oil and I rebuilt my, my car. I'm like, okay, well, do you have any tools? Well, no, it's just, you

know, so we're seeing a lot of that. I mean, finding that, like, realistically what we need as, even for Red Seal is somebody in their thirties. Somebody that's willing to learn more, that's going to be able to build into this EV, hybrid if we want to go into that direction right like getting a 50 60 year old and we're getting a lot of that too we're getting 50 60 year olds applying and it's like well you're kind of at the end of end of your career at this

point Right. I mean, you're not going to be learning the new stuff. You're probably going to be slowing down and all this kind of stuff. So it's, it's hard, especially being a four bay shop, right? It's just, we're not, we're not a big shop, so we can't have the wrong guy with us for too long. It's, it's going to be too much of a hindrance. We need those four, four bays pumping Do you find the language barrier? So in a shop like that, with that many cultures and whatnot, is

it hard sometimes to teach? No. No? No. The funny part is, and I was saying that to my wife the other day, so I understand them all fine, right? And obviously there's words and stuff, even Champ when he does his, I laugh at some of the stuff he writes, but where it's an issue, it's sometimes like when Champ is talking to Demo because you have like the Punjab English, so they're not understanding each other. So they get a little frustrated. I'm sitting there laughing.

I'm like, this is what he, what he means. Right. So, but, and no, you know what, like some days obviously you get them to repeat what they have to say, or you're all like the thing with Manny. So, which is really interesting is he, he So a lot of where we had miscommunications is because the words he was, the English words he was using, I, It's a British way of saying it. He was calling a squeegee a wiper. So I was like, hey, go grab the squeegee. And he's looking

at me. He's like, the squeegee, you don't get the fucking squeegee. And No, and even like certain car parts, like he'll talk about like the heater coil or this, you know, it's just like, it's just so different because you learn a British English, right? But he speaks well, it's just It's the beauty of Canada, right? Like everybody, but I mean, cause I'll go down there and it's like, I'm not fluent in French, but I can speak

a little bit of it. And so it's like when I'm at the shop and something's fighting me after so many years of working in Ottawa, I tend to curse in French. Like, Oh, I can't be going good. If Jeff is like, what are those words mean? And I'm like, it's, it's just all church stuff. You know, it doesn't sound like church when you're saying it. So. Well, I want to let you get back to your family and everything. This is a Sunday afternoon, and I just wanted to say... I'm glad you came on

and did this with me. I really appreciate it. And I was looking forward to it because, I mean, you were one of the first guys that when we were on TikTok, you started to really support the podcast and you wanted to hear it and you wanted to be on it. And I mean, that warms my heart, man, because I mean, that's all we're just trying to do is we're not trying to, you know, we're just trying to have conversations. We're just trying to get people's stories out there

You know, I honestly, I love your podcast. Like I've, I've even tried to listen to the changing the industry and stuff like that. Honestly, I couldn't get into it. Maybe it's just the topics at the time, but it's just, there's something about your podcast and the people that you bring on and just the way, I don't know, it's like, It's just so real. It's just, you know, it's, I just love everything about it. Like I honestly, as soon as you told me that you even had a podcast, cause I know you've

been commenting on my videos for quite a while. And I think your old picture, you had you standing with a bass maybe. Yeah. So I remember, I remember you like laying to some guys, a couple of guys, stuff like that. So I always saw

your name. Like I knew the, this Jeff Compton. And then when I had made that one video about, just you know where I am in the industry and how and how how this whole TikTok thing has just rejuvenated myself and also and how I would like again I've always been the center of attention my whole life and for me it's like yeah I want to be at 2 million followers I want to have like 10,000 trolls every day telling me I'm a freaking idiot like

I want to be that guy Yeah, right. And I just like, there's just something about it. I don't know what it is. It's just I love going down the street and be like, Hey, it's Tobit tech. Like, it's just like, there's just something so

exciting about that. And then when you told me the podcast, it's just I just started binge binge listening and yeah i want people to listen to this stuff because it's just again it's it's real it's real man like and it's just you having the conversations that need to happen and you know we can sit there and bitch and complain about everything you know and pay and wages and lack but like we're not even willing to to fix the issue we aren't willing to help the

apprentices we aren't willing to you may you know bring up our wages and Scared to bring up the door rates, and we're scared of all this stuff We're so willing to give away so much of our diagonal this and free this free that it's just like and then we sit there and bitching a plane It's like I you know Your podcast and tick-tock has given again a new lease on life, and I want to see this industry change I want to at least try to leave my mark on this industry as best as

I can and to like engage as many people as I can in this industry as much as I can and you know maybe that's that was my destiny for being a mechanic maybe that's you know I spent all these years trying to like get away from this industry but maybe I have a higher purpose in That's and people have heard me say it if it wasn't for Facebook and starting to network with all those people years ago that I did and then

now this podcast, I wouldn't be doing this for a living. I'd go work in a restaurant or something like that and start doing something else because I just like, I didn't have love for it until I started to actually really network with

people and it's the same thing. You know, I'm never going to be somebody that can put all this technical stuff out there like a chuck and show all these different repairs and fixes and diags and stuff like that but I can get people talking about what they've struggled against, what they love about it, what they hate about it, what they want to see improve. And if we can do all that, then we

all become a little bit of a superstar. And that's all that it's ever been for me, is just to try and get people on the same wavelength. Stop judging. If you want to do something for free, stop judging that person. as being a crook. Here's why I don't do it for free. And then let's have a nice open-ended conversation about why it isn't so that you can maybe see. You don't have to change your method, right? But you can certainly start to understand why some people then do it

that way. Yeah, value at a different level than you do. Your method is your method. My method is mine. But we got to stop the name calling. And I'm just as guilty of it as the next person. I make snap judgments. I make stereotypes that can't do it. I'm trying. I'm better than I was. I'm better than I was. But it's still, every day, is a struggle to. And Well, it's so easy to let your emotions take over. That's

what it is. so i've always been a fighter my whole life right when i was a kid i used to scrap a lot yeah and you know i always it's always this this instinct of mine if you're going to come after me watch the f out because i'm going to take you down right you're going to come after me but again building a brand i can't just be like all the time so i and you know what it's funny because like I even did martial arts. I used to do Wing Chun for about three years and

that honestly started centering myself, right? It centered myself mentally and it's been able to handle my rage in a sense a lot better. So starting with that and coming to this and just being able, like Wing Chun taught me to just step back and assess the situation and then give yourself some time to process it instead of just like going in with fists first, you know? It's made me

a better person. I think it's you know and even conveyed my point a little bit better than just like coming out just fully aggressive It's tough, you know, it's because it's just the internet and everybody all of a sudden, I think it's so, it's so condensed how we're supposed to, you know, because I mean, we can't have a conversation. It's you're just typing. So there's no, there's no dramatic pause. There's no, when I'm thinking about how to give my answer, you don't see that when

it's being typed out. Right. You don't think you don't hear it. You don't see it. So. Yeah, it's been tough for me and I'm working on it. So this this past week has been really good because we've got some people. And I'm not, I'm not, if I could do it all over again, I'd do it exactly the same. 1000%. Cause the conversations that, what Norm brought to the table, what Chris brought to the table, what Brandon brought to the table, it's been fantastic. What Chuck brought to the table.

It's been fantastic to get us. I feel like we're all a little bit more, you know, closer in the sense of understanding. I understand better how they all think. I understand better now what they think, where they, where their line is in the sand on, on what their certain issues, what certain topics, certain, it helps me understand everybody so much better. So we, you know, confrontation is not always a bad thing. and disagreements and

arguments are not always a bad thing. It's still another level of communication. We just have to keep it where it's like, you know, reasonably That was like that time that me and Rich kind of, you know, had that little head-butting, I'll say. And you know, at the end, he was all like, well, you just, you know, don't fall. I'm like, no, you know, whatever. We've had a little confrontation. It's not a big deal. Like, whatever. I love your content. You know,

you love my content or whatnot. Hey, we're just two opinionated people that are going to say our piece, but it doesn't mean that we need to, oh, I need to totally block Rich now because maybe me and him didn't agree on this one thing. You know, there's some stuff that I probably don't agree with you or anybody else, but it's impossible for you to 100% agree with anybody over everything, right? And I think that's what the internet is almost forgetting, in a sense. People

no longer can just agree to disagree, right? It's like, if you just don't believe the way I believe, you're the worst person, and I'd love to have more guys from guys and gals from Tik Tok on. I really would. And, you know, Brendan talked a couple of months ago about he almost made a day SD and he almost was going to record and

then he didn't make it. And I'd love, you know, all everybody that's in this little group to eventually get on here and, and, and share, you know, I think it's such a powerful, powerful way to do it. You know, it, it gets everybody more familiar, you know, I know your backstory better now than I did. And, you know. It helps me understand when I see where you're coming from or why you're doing something the way you are. I understand better. Okay.

I know exactly why he does it that way. Cause I've heard his heart, you know, I've heard it in his voice as to why it's so important to him. I think it's great. So I won't keep you. I will let you go. I want to thank you again for being on here and, uh, you Heck yeah. Anytime, buddy. Anytime. I love what you're doing. I love doing this. It's. Everything that's happened from this TikTok channel, I'm just so grateful

and excited for. Everything with Ulsa Tools, everything that, you know, it's just, this has opened doors for me that I never thought possible. And this is amazing. You don't understand how excited I was. I've been over the last couple of days. I'm like, I'm finally gonna get on the podcast. I'm like, yes. You know, because I don't

know, you've had some greats on here, man. It's just like, it just feels like to be talking to you You know, you were just talking to Scanner Danner and, you know, Mario and all these freaking amazing, absolutely amazing texts. You know what I mean? It's just, yeah, it's They're all people just like you and I, man. They all got a place they're going and it's just, that's what it's about. I'll