Episode Description
Digital Shop Conference 2020 will be here in no time, so we thought we would give you a taste of what you can expect to see at this year’s conference. We will have Fred Gestwicki, Jamey Whitlock, Matt Fowler, Russ Crosby, and more on to talk about their previous experience at Digital Shop Conference and what they will be talking about at this year’s show.
Digital Shop Conference will be held from January 9-11 in Marina Del Rey, Calif., and will feature collaborative breakout sessions by other shop owners and their staff. For more information on the Digital Shop Conference, visit www.autovitals.com/conference
Episode Transcript
*This transcript was generated using Artificial Intelligence. Errors may occur. If you notice an error, please contact [email protected].
Fred Gestwicki (00:00):
Up. Hello.
Tom Dorsey (00:02):
Good morning and good afternoon. Welcome to this week’s edition of The Digital Shop Talk Radio. I’m Tom Dorsey. We’ve got an all-star lineup for you today. We’re going to be talking about the upcoming digital shop conference in January 9th through the 11th and some of these, we’ve got some of the breakout speakers and teachers dropping knowledge. See right here. Jesus has joined us Russ Crosby, we got Matt Fowler and Jamey Whitlock and Fred Gestwicki join us. We might have Frank Scandura and a couple other people dropping in. What we want to talk about guys, just how did you get roped into coming out to digital shop conference and doing breakouts for us? What was your takeaways from last year and if you can give us a little sneak peek into what you got for us this year. And by the way, welcome. Well, Fred, what are you shaving off this year? That’s my opening question. What are you shaving off this
Fred Gestwicki (01:06):
Year? For those that knew me before I shaved my beard, I didn’t have a lot. I’m not like Russ. I mean Russ has got an incredible beard. It’s just a whole everything. And even if I hadn’t shaved since January, there wouldn’t be enough to worry about. So instead I’d like to shave some pain away getting buy-in from your employees. Every shop owner struggles with that exact same thing. Trying to get ’em to do what you want ’em to do, get ’em to do it, how you want ’em to do it, all those things. We’ve developed a pretty clean culture as far as getting everyone hates change. We are all advocates for change. We’re very open and we welcome it and there’s a good bit of talk that I’ll have prepared to help shop owners get buy-in, whether you’re trying to get buy-in on doing digital inspections, doing quality inspections, the quality control process, thank you calls, whatever you’re trying to do, just getting the employee to do what you want them to do. I think that that just fits everywhere and it even works with your kids. It doesn’t work with your wife. I know that anything works with that, not with kind of does the
Tom Dorsey (02:12):
Other way around,
Fred Gestwicki (02:13):
But instead it just kind of take some pain away. I think that that’ll be the best way because that’s something I hear a lot. How do you get your text to be okay with a new tablet update? How do you get your text to tell you what they want with the inspections? There’s just a way of approaching it that really produces a good result and a good buy-in where the goal is instead of the shop owner finding all the problems, telling everyone the problems and then everyone fixes them. You want your shop to self-police find the problems, fix it, and they might not even tell you the solution as long as the problem goes away, who cares?
Tom Dorsey (02:47):
Yeah, no, that’s great. And so we’ve got you doing a breakout, a couple series of breakouts over there. How long? About 45 minutes, something like that come in and 45 minute investment and get out and all of a sudden you can change the world. That’s the promise that we’re making. That’s
Fred Gestwicki (03:05):
The key is this conference instead of it just being a bunch of cool people talking about fun stuff, you get stuff you can take back to your shop and use right away. I mean I had a page and a half of actionable items that I’ve accomplished almost all of them, all the way from descriptions in our can jobs all the way to the way our inspection was ordered. I got a lot from last year’s conference and that’s what it is. It’s not just fun. There is fun, but you get good meat that you can take back to the shop and improve your business with.
Tom Dorsey (03:37):
No, exactly. We were getting a piece of it right here before we even went live between Jamey and Matt and that’s the meat on the bone I’m looking for. We could have just led into this episode and just left the mic open, but you know what we’re going to be doing with Jamey and Matt and Doug Bracket, we started that case study about pickup and how to best practices for pickup and exit scheduling. What was that episode 36 couple weeks back and we got these guys on, they’re going to be coming out to digital shop conference with the final report, the big unveil of No pressure, no pressure how that case study worked out. So where are you guys at now? I mean when we left you we were going to kind of get with Bill and knock out a game plan, give us a bit of an update and tell us about, are you going to be sitting first class on the way out to Marina del Rey to present or are you going to be hiding? We’re going to have to go find you after we get the results in. Go ahead Jamey.
Jamey Whitlock (04:49):
Oh, thanks. I’ve had a couple of weeks, so we’re probably a little behind on getting this whole thing ramped up. Bill and I have had some trouble getting together, but we’re going to get it going and I’m pretty excited about it. Honestly, I think that the changes that we made on the check-in process versus what we’re going to do on the exit, they’re just going to tie together really well. And the struggle that we’ve all had, and part of the big tool of AutoVitals from just using other products in the past was how do we recapture that customer? How do we stay in touch with that customer? How do we get them back into the shop to do the things either they couldn’t afford, didn’t do at that time, or to just be their mechanic? It’s so funny, we’ve always had customers walk in and go, oh, I’ve got my own mechanic, and you’re like, why are you in my shop then? But we want to be their mechanic, so now we have a great way to get that customer to come back. And so letting them know how that works so that they know what to expect, I think is going to make that thing tremendously more successful than it was in the past when we just gave him a receipt and said bye.
Tom Dorsey (06:05):
Yeah, that’s a great point. And Matt, where are you at? You were telling me earlier before we went live that you’re having a great October and looking to kickoff maybe November. So it sounds like you got the game plan in place and we’re just waiting for kickoff.
Matt Fowler (06:21):
Yes. So we had the meeting and then I got with Bill to kind of get the things that I want to accomplish with my checkout process and then also he showed me on the business control panel where I could see some of the accountability to tracking to see if my employees are doing it and then if it’s succeeding as far as appointment booking and things like that. So yes, I’m trying to close out October, which thank God we’re having a really good swarming at the end of the month here. We’re already above goal for some things with that and we still have a fair amount of time in the month, so I’m just trying to punch out October and then come November one I flipped a switch on Protractor. I’ve already got Protractor online. I’m just getting all the training and systematizing that November one.
(07:07):
And so then right hand in hand with that, I’m going to bring on the AutoVitals stuff for the closeout procedure. So then I really get some good data to be ready for the follow-up show and then the conference to really be vulnerable. This is a vulnerable process for our shop because we know this is something where we can, and with the help of Bill and then the flipping of Protractor to then revisit it and ask a lot of questions and what did I learn in this at the conference? I’m looking forward to that to just say, Hey, this is what worked, what didn’t work. And people that have been using the two products can give me feedback on what they went through. But yeah, so I’m stoked man. We’re doing good this month and I’m looking forward to this next few months getting ready for the conference.
Tom Dorsey (07:51):
No, it’s a great thing you guys are doing right because like I said, there’s plenty of people who are in the same boat and can use the help and I think it was Jamey who said we’d like to see episodes showing people that aren’t having that. It’s great to hear the success stories, but let’s hear about the ones that are struggling. And so I really appreciate you guys doing that for us. And so we’re going to have you on a breakout over at the digital shop conference. And then when’s the follow-up episode? Dustin? November. November 20th. November 20th. So don’t forget, don’t miss that episode because we’re going to be having Matt and Jamey and hopefully we get dug in and Bill and talking about where we’re at halfway point and then see if we’re on Target to hit that big unveil when we get out to the digital shop conference in January. So make sure you tune in on that and we want to welcome also Russ. Russ is going to be given a breakout. What’s your breakout on
Russ Crosby (08:54):
Talking about the importance of using the BCP during team meetings and sharing that clear cut vision on where we want to go as a shop so everybody’s heading in the right direction? So that’s what I’m, I’m working on.
Tom Dorsey (09:09):
Yeah, so we’re working with Rus, figuring out how we get the KPI for number of pages read in his book club in the
Russ Crosby (09:20):
Business. It’s a lot.
Tom Dorsey (09:22):
Yeah, right. But how’s that going man? Russ is like the king of culture. I mean that thing went pretty, it was funny, I posted up on LinkedIn and it had like 200 or something views in an hour or something. I dunno if I just hit the right day or something. But a lot of interest in that culture building inside of the shop. And we got some really great Fred’s breakouts about culture Russ going to be talking about developing culture inside of there and getting adoption and it’s something that’s always top of mind and folks are struggling with. So just for that reason alone, get your tickets for the digital shop conference early. Matter of fact, we’ve got some type of specials. I’m sure Dustin will be doing his pitch here in a second about that. But tell us a little bit about how that culture building has been going. It’s been what? It’s been close to maybe a year, nine months since we had you on and we were talking about that after Super Conference, right?
Russ Crosby (10:19):
Yeah, I mean it’s great. We haven’t deviated away from our goal and that’s reading every week. The national average is pretty terrible when it comes to how many books are read. And my team has already broken the national average by 300%. So it’s pretty awesome. And we’ve gone from books that are like self-help books to books about business and leadership and now we’re reading the book Dirt by Motley Crue. So we’re kind of all over the place. They wanted to mix it up a little bit and
Tom Dorsey (10:59):
I think and scientists,
Russ Crosby (11:01):
Well what we found is reading this book is literally everything not to do to be successful. So how those guys were able to get anything done was incredible. So we look for teachable moments in anything that we do and this book kind of proves that you can do that if you’re looking for ’em. So it is difficult, but we get it done, but it’s going great and we’ve brought on a couple new people and when they come on and they see that the whole team is behind it and we’re all doing it, we get their buy-in almost immediately. It works out really well.
Tom Dorsey (11:42):
Yeah, no, that’s a trick man. When you have that really strong culture in place, then when you get new people in, boy they can ramp right up and they just tow the line and it’s not about, I don’t know, taking away their expression or making them fit some process, but it’s the opposite. It actually gives them the ability to empower themselves within that culture and get up to speed and it becomes competitive. I got a lot of makeup room to do with these guys tight knit group and if I’m going to be accepted, I got to get on board. So that’s fantastic. So you can be talking about hopefully a little bit about that using the business control panel in your breakout, running your team meetings and identifying what’s been going on. But since we had you on last, I know we had you on a few other times, but I mean how’s business? You guys been busy?
Russ Crosby (12:36):
Yeah, we’re cranking. We’ve basically maxed out the shop as far as how many people we can bring in right now. We’re getting ready to put in three more lifts to be able to handle the amount of work that comes through the door. We’ve changed the way we schedule work and really trying to optimize every process that we do. Becky, my HR, and she’s kind of like a do it everything for us. She’s incredible. She helped put together an incredible packet for onboarding new people and making sure we have all the information right away and something that could be super simple and that you would expect most companies to have. We didn’t have a very good process and she helped build that. We we’re really after trying to be set up to do great things here in the up and coming year, expanding the shop and expanding the people that we have and possibly moving into a second location here by next year. And that comes down to team building and we need to be able to bring the right people onto the next location. So we’ve been working really hard at that.
Tom Dorsey (13:49):
Yeah, man. I mean that’s the thing, right? Build that strong foundation and then the rest is pretty simple.
Russ Crosby (13:55):
Yeah, we’re on track to have the best year we’ve ever had and I think that’s definitely due to the people that we have here. My lead technician had left and I think at the same time was right when we had started this book club and my team has stepped up all become, they’re all kind of coming into their own and what they’re really good at and I truly believe that’s because they’re able to retain some more of what we’re talking about, what we’re trying to accomplish. So I mean this book club thing has really taken off and we love it.
Tom Dorsey (14:36):
Yeah, I mean it helps you.
Russ Crosby (14:37):
It’s not a lot.
Tom Dorsey (14:39):
Alright. Reading helps you focus. I mean it’s as simple as that, right? When you focus, you do better work faster on your feet, you think better. It’s
Russ Crosby (14:50):
You’re able to retain all the information that we need to know as a technician in today’s day and age, you have to be able to understand and read through pages of documents and wiring diagrams and know multiple industries. But if you can’t retain it, if you’re reading stuff and you can’t retain it, it’s not really worth it. You’re not really gaining anything.
Tom Dorsey (15:12):
No, that’s fantastic. And for folks that are out listening in and that’s a taste of what you’re going to get out at the digital shop conferences, it’s not some big pitch for some product. It’s really talking about processes and culture and attitudes and just ways to operate your business that lead to success. And these guys will tell you, I mean it wasn’t overnight and it’s not like it’s been handed to anybody. If you plan your work and work your plan, good things happen. And that’s what we talk about. We talk about how to use that data and how to leverage the tools that AutoVitals provides into this digital market and make it work for you. Dustin, why don’t you give us a little taste of what the schedule’s going to be like. We’re January 9th through the 11th. I know we kicked off at the Peterson Museum, which last year was pretty incredible.
(16:08):
We had the whole third floor up there and they had just a bunch of the Hollywood vehicles out there, the Batmobile, Herbie love bugs and some just real cool stuff. I think I got to tell you, the thing that impressed me most at all, the stuff that was there was they had a steam powered motorcycle from the early 18, mid 1800s or something like that. Freaking thing was amazing, just the engineering in it and it was all copper and how the condition it was in just blew me away. I probably spent, I was standing there around I think 30 minutes taking pictures. It was incredible. Well, what do we got going?
Dustin Anaas (16:44):
Isn’t that funny how you go back to the old ones and you get all this new technology, there’s a robot car there, the Tron car, and then you go and look at something that’s just a model of engineering from a hundred years ago. That’s pretty cool. Oh, amazing. So yeah, Thursday night, that’s the big deal, right? I mean that’s kind of to get us kind of focused in on why we’re here and kind of get everybody together and just start feeling the good vibes. And then we get right into it. Friday morning we got the keynote speech Friday morning by Tom. Tom is going to be kind of kicking us off and then we just start right into the breakouts here on Friday afternoon. It’s going to be mostly shop led stuff. I mean you’re seeing some of the guys up here. We’re going to have a few other ones.
(17:25):
We’re going to have Glenn Hayward, we’re going to have Frank Scandura, we’re going to have Devin Kelley coaches up on screen too. We’re going to have a lot of great breakouts here. And I think that’s really what the value is for you shop owners, right? It’s hearing it from the shop owners themselves, not from people with AutoVitals on their name tag. How are you guys using it? What features do you guys want to see? I mean, I like that you brought up that conversation that Jamey and Matt were having beforehand. Tom, it was cool. They just dove right into it and I’m sure after this episode they got a lot to talk about when it comes to that stuff. So that’s the schedule there. Meals all across the board. We’re going to have a nice happy hour going on Friday night too, that everybody can kind get together and network a little bit and see what’s new. There’s going to be some vendor boos
Tom Dorsey (18:20):
Friday.
Dustin Anaas (18:21):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Tom Dorsey (18:24):
And can I confirm that we can drink booze on the bus on the way to the Peterson on Thursday night?
Dustin Anaas (18:33):
Yeah. Yeah. That’s a key priority there. I know
Matt Fowler (18:37):
That sounded like a yes. That was a yes to me. I heard a yes
Tom Dorsey (18:39):
Deal breaker. That was almost a deal breaker.
Dustin Anaas (18:43):
Yeah. Yeah, so I mean if you’re looking for a lot of frills and a lot of fancy things to go on outside of the content, I don’t know if this is the conference for you. This is about really learning how to use AutoVitals and learning it from each other and collaborating and having good one-on-one conversations as well as learning from the breakouts and just kind of building a community of digital shop owners and enhancing that community. Right?
Tom Dorsey (19:10):
And it was great to hear the takeaways from last year. That’s just about everybody. I think one that sticks out to me was Joe Seabert and Tyler Hubbard. Matter of fact, they went and caught Billy Catchings breakout and a lot of what Fred was doing too, I remember was stuck with them. And they’ve been with us for years, probably four years already and came out and learned some stuff. But the thing that sticks out to me was a hundred dollars ARO increase about two weeks after the show. And then I see him at Vision in March and a couple months later and he’s up another 75 bucks. So not only did he keep the a hundred, he added 75 to it cranking into the summer. So real strong. And that was from a guy who had been running around four years with us and just kind of making it work and then came in and learned from some other shop owners on how they’re doing it and made some changes and adapted some new processes in place and wham bang, $175 ARO increase in a couple months. Isn’t nothing to sneeze at. I think that’d pay for the price of the tickets.
Matt Fowler (20:16):
Yeah, I actually have, oh yeah, kidding. I’ve got a little bit of a conference story. So we had the AutoVitals product for a year of me coming on board and then having it a year. We just had the tablets with dust on ’em and I went to the conference January last year and that’s when I would say I became really an advocate of AutoVitals at that conference. I figured out all the products, what it could do. I listened to Frank speak and all of that stuff and man, I got home and it was like, man, we have this sitting on the shelf and why aren’t we using this? And then it just took off because then now I had a lot of testimony of how it works. I had the nuts and bolts of what to do and when I came back, I mean it was night and day. I mean it was now this is how our business is moving forward. It’s not something we’re going to kind of tinker with. This is now it. And that conference was monumental because it was like, okay, here we go. This is legit and now it’s going to get real. It’s going to be the way we’re going to use our business with this product. So I will say that at the conference.
Tom Dorsey (21:27):
Yeah, no thanks Matt. I mean I’ve heard that from a lot of people. It’s like you get that epiphany, right? It’s like, oh wait, this thing isn’t just a toaster, it does all this other stuff and now just like you said, you get the credibility of some guy standing up there telling you how he did it in hit shop and then you think to yourself, well why can’t I do that? Right? I got the same thing. I’m just as handsome as he is. I can knock this thing out.
Matt Fowler (21:49):
And then I got to meet the staff and I got to see the infrastructure behind AutoVitals. I got to hear Uwe’s heart as far as how he wants to equip us as the people in the business on the frontline. I mean it was really monumental for our business and we’ve seen the fruit of that now two years later since that conference.
Tom Dorsey (22:13):
And it’s awesome how now you’re going to come out and give back and just carry it forward and that next, because you guys, I like to call you the young guns. You guys are really a group of really forward thinking. Matter of fact, I was talking to Kim Hickey yesterday, Dustin, and we were talking about some other shops. We want to get on the radio and get ’em out at digital conference and the whole deal. And just because you guys are, you just think about the industry in different ways. You risk takers and you’re out there really trailblazing, right? You’re innovating as you operate and some of those stories, it’s just incredible on what you’ve been able to accomplish and a short time and kind of in a market that’s getting harder and harder to compete in. But you guys really come out and open up eyes and I think the story really the takeaway is, hey, if they can do it, gosh, what’s his phone number? They can pick his brain and this is what the opportunity would be to the shop conferences is to come out and hear another side of the story and then just take it away and contemplate that. And if it’s right for you, go after it and you get to see people like Frank, excuse me, like Fred, get up there and take big monumental change steps, shave off their beard or maybe shave their head. What are we shaving this year, man?
Matt Fowler (23:41):
Do we want to know I’m
Fred Gestwicki (23:42):
Part polish. I was going to say I don’t have a lot to with here, so it take me a couple years to recover,
Jamey Whitlock (23:49):
Right?
Russ Crosby (23:51):
Grow slow.
Matt Fowler (23:54):
I think it’d be kind of fun if Russ could borrow his razor and just see what happens there.
Fred Gestwicki (24:01):
I don’t know that my one shave with Russ is a year’s worth of wear and tear on my shaver saying seriously, a hundred to one ratio minimum, man. So I don’t know. I wouldn’t know what to do with all that. The mess, the cleanup,
Russ Crosby (24:14):
It’s going to be a disaster when it finally comes off. I tell you that
Jamey Whitlock (24:20):
Those are fighting words.
Russ Crosby (24:22):
I don’t think I can do it. I don’t think I can do it now we’ve built a great relationship together and I don’t think I can let it go. Perfect. So here’s
Dustin Anaas (24:34):
A question that I have for you guys. I want to know what you guys are looking forward to the most at Digital Shop conference 2020.
Russ Crosby (24:43):
If you guys don’t mind, I’ll take this one first. Everyone that I’ve met that uses AutoVitals and the guys that are sitting up here right now and Tom and Uwe and just everyone, Dustin, every time I talk to them I get a little nugget and I come home and I think this is great and I’m so excited to learn from my peers on what they’re doing and everybody that’s just going to be there in general because if you’re open-minded and you go there to learn, you’re going to pick up some incredible stuff. There’s just really, really talented people that are going to be there and there’s going to be a lot to learn from. And being a young shop owner, there’s still a lot of things that I’m learning and I thank everyone that I’m going to be able to interact with there that I can learn from and that’s what I’m pumped for. I’m pumped to just hear how everybody’s forward thinking and be in a room full of like-minded individuals.
Jamey Whitlock (25:37):
Yeah, that’s priceless. I think my experience is probably very similar to Matt’s and very similar to Russ’s. I hadn’t had AutoVitals for maybe six months, I think Matt, you said a year and mine was pretty much doing about the same. I had this great tool, I had this really big toolbox with all these drawers and lots of tools in it and I wasn’t using any of ’em and it was frustrating because I had a lot of expectations and it’s not something that you buy and put in your shop and let somebody download it and integrate it with your point of sale and sit back and watch it work. You actually have to do the work. And I think that’s what the conference did for me. It was me going, okay, I got to go learn how to use this tool so that I can train my people and it’s not working because I haven’t done anything.
(26:35):
And I knew that I was trying to hold myself accountable. So the conference was great. I mean there were so many people there up there. Not just the people talking on stage, but also the people sitting in chairs next to you that used the tool, used it well, the networking is awesome. You get ideas in the breakout classes, sure they’re only 45 minutes, but you can condense a lot of information and that 45 minutes about one topic and you might not take all those topics back and put ’em in play, but there’s always going to be, like Russ said, there’s going to be nuggets that you go back and go, man, I can do that and that’s going to help my shop. And going to the conference is really more of a personal investment. I think if you’re going to take the time to implement this and go and ask your employees to use it, well then you’ve got to go and put your hands on this thing.
(27:30):
And I think that’s what the conference does. You’ve got guys named Fred was up there last year and I’m looking at that guy going, man, we all came from the same place. We all got uniforms on. And that’s great because it gives you a sense of accomplishment that, Hey, I can do what that guy did. I might not do it as good as he, but I’m going to try. And so this year, my big hope is that I can get my manager to come with me. I need him to buy in and he’s bought in really well. He’s great at everything that I ask him to do, but there’s a different buy-in going to the conference than there is here at the shop. And me regurgitating that information to him with my enthusiasm, of course I can get that done, but going to convention, a different buy-in, and I think that it’s important that shop owners who are on the fence about maybe wanting to go, just sign up because it won’t be a waste of your time.
(28:30):
The only reason why it would be a waste of your time is if you make it a waste of your time. There is so much there to learn and just the enthusiasm that you’ll come back with I think is going to make a difference in your shop. If you can bring along your service writer or somebody that is a frontline guy, I mean absolutely do that. If you’re not ready for that, come yourself. Find out exactly what it’s all about and start chipping away at all the things that AutoVitals does. I haven’t even figured it out yet. I’m still figuring it out. We all are. But how do you get that ball rolling? Somebody’s got to push that snowball over the hill. Heck yep. Pick up speed. I promise. You got to make that first push. And I think the conference is it. I don’t know if there’s any other way to say it then if you really want this thing to start working, this is a great push for a shop owner to get there, get the information, get it going, come hang out with us. Yeah, hang out with we’re cool. Come hang out with us and stuff.
Tom Dorsey (29:23):
Yeah, right, shy. I mean that’s a great point, right? Is bring somebody who’s influential in your staff, right? And have ’em take a couple sips of the Kool-Aid because it’s infectious man. When you hear and because that’s the thing too is that we’ve got Matt and we’ve Billy Catching and we’ve got guys that they’re not just sitting back as the owner. They’re out there working it and making it happen. And it’s great to hear. We want to bring some texts out, give them a voice and have them be able to talk to the challenges. Because you know how we roll is we don’t shy away from the challenges. We embrace ’em because we always just look to solve them. And that’s why we get the input from guys like you and all the rest of the people that engage with us on Facebook and whatever we’re doing. I go out and do the workshops all the time and I want to hear the good and the bad, bring it both barrels, give it to me because then I can go back and make stuff change and happen and we can collaborate to create more solutions or to make the ones that you’re trying to implement easier to implement. And so it’s just about, like Jamey said, is just the networking and the collaboration is what’s really makes it happen and makes us just one big happy family. Well, I
Jamey Whitlock (30:48):
Think I said this
(30:50):
On a show before, but I think that it’s something that applies to everything. I don’t care if it’s live. I mean, I’ve coached shooting, I’ve coached football, I’ve played football, and it all circles around this, how do we breed enthusiasm in our shop owners or in ourselves. We could only do that with success. There’s a bunch of successful people on this show, and if we weren’t successful, we wouldn’t be really, people wouldn’t be wanting to go and use the tool and do a better job. So breeding enthusiasm only comes with success. Watching people who have done it successfully makes you enthusiastic about wanting to go do it. And then when you see success yourself, then it’s off to the races. You got
Tom Dorsey (31:30):
Nobody else to blame but yourself, right?
Jamey Whitlock (31:32):
You got to taste the success in this thing so that you’ll want to go then to the next level.
Tom Dorsey (31:37):
Yeah, that’s what my grandpa used to tell me all the time, right? Tommy, you want to be successful. Do what successful people do. Grandpa, super
Fred Gestwicki (31:48):
Exciting. Super exciting is if there was a store that had everything, and I mean when I’m saying everything, big picture, everything. That’s what this conference is between the AutoVitals staff running it, the vendors there, the shop owner’s attending. There is literally an answer to every single question that a shop owner has. You get an opportunity to go to a store that has everything. So pick what you’re going to get, be open to everything and anything because you never know. Last year I had a couple takeaways I was not ready for. I wasn’t thinking that. I thought I had my DVI as good as it could be. I really did. I thought I had it as good as it could be. In talking to Carmine, talking to Frank and just talking to a couple other shop owners that weren’t doing speaking, I picked up so many ways to make our awesome DVI even better. So just be super open-minded, be ready to get hit with anything and have a couple things you want to get. And you’re going to the store that has everything you can get, all you can eat, buffet of auto shop owner information. That’s what this conference really is, Tom.
Tom Dorsey (32:52):
No, that’s a great point, Fred. Come with a list, have a plan, write a list down and be aggressive. Go out and get your questions answered. Like I said, the good, the bad, whatever, you’re going to run across people who have experienced the same thing as you and have a solution for you. Now, whether you like that answer or you want to put in the work to make happen, but that’s up to you.
Fred Gestwicki (33:14):
Truth hurts, man. Truth can hurt.
Dustin Anaas (33:16):
What Matt was saying too, you guys is let’s say the store doesn’t have that one thing like Fred is talking about. You get access to the owner of the store to tell ’em to go order it for you or how to implement it into the software or how to come up with ideas on how to fix this too. So that’s kind of cool. You get to meet all the trainers, you get to meet Tom, you get to meet Uwe. That’s kind of the fun part too, seeing the guys behind the scenes.
Tom Dorsey (33:41):
Yeah, and like you said, man, you get a hand in the development of the solution. I bet everybody on this panel has probably had some influence. There’s something that they’ve said typed into Facebook somewhere that now exists in our product.
Fred Gestwicki (33:53):
Oh yeah.
Tom Dorsey (33:53):
So you have nothing but blame but yourselves.
Fred Gestwicki (33:58):
That’s funny.
Tom Dorsey (34:01):
Well man, we’re about out of time Again, appreciate all you guys coming on. Looking forward to seeing you out in January. It’s January 9th through the 11th. Dustin, how can people find us if they want to learn more about the conference? You didn’t even have to bait ’em with fancy pictures of the Harbor and Buffets full of food and free booze. That’s pretty good. We just bait you with opportunity right here.
Dustin Anaas (34:28):
Yeah, yeah. Well, hey, AutoVitals.com/conference is the website they can go to kind of look at the information. Make sure you do that before October 31st. October 31st is the last day. You can save a hundred bucks per ticket. Okay, so a hundred bucks per person. That can add up pretty quick. Get in there now. Start making your travel arrangements now and you get your hotel through us too. So it’s pretty easy. You just register and we take care of the rest.
Tom Dorsey (34:54):
Yep. And come out and meet all these guys. We’ve got John Long coming out. He’s a guy who added 58% to his ARO, 81% to his weekly revenue. We’ve got Frank Scandura back again. Devin Kelley, who is another one of that young guns crew that’s just really putting up some pretty impressive numbers from his operation. So don’t be shy.
Dustin Anaas (35:15):
Glenn Hayward.
Tom Dorsey (35:16):
What was that?
Dustin Anaas (35:17):
Glenn Hayward’s going to be joining us.
Tom Dorsey (35:18):
Oh yeah. Yeah. Mastermind shop.
Dustin Anaas (35:21):
He’s a trip. Yeah. Yeah. You guys got to get on with him. His breakout.
Tom Dorsey (35:25):
Yeah, for sure. No, it’s going to be great. And so you can see the speakers, you can see what the agenda looks like on that website and get signed up. But until next week, get out there and make some money. Tune in next Wednesday, 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 PM Eastern for the next episode of Digital Shop Talk Radio. Dustin, what are we talking about next week?
Dustin Anaas (35:49):
We’re talking about we up to Halloween, right? We we’re talking about some scary things, right? Halloween, we’re talking about how to avoid the scary pitfalls with your staff. So yeah, Halloween theme.
Tom Dorsey (36:03):
You’re not going to make me wear a costume.
Dustin Anaas (36:05):
Costume.
Tom Dorsey (36:06):
You’re not going to make me wear a costume, are you Dustin? I voted. Should you dressed up as Russ Crosby. I’m going to dress up like Russ. I’m going to dress up like Russ. Nice. Perfect. Alright guys, thanks a lot.