It Takes a Village

Good business owners will tell you they are only as good as the people they have working for them. On this week’s episode of the Digital Shop Talk Radio, we have Ryan Flattum from RMF Auto Service, which has two locations in western Wisconsin, talk about his team and how they work together to accomplish pretty remarkable goals.

We will talk about the ways he structures his team, the way they work together, and how he works with them on professional development to ensure they are reaching their professional goals.

Episode Transcript

*This transcript was generated using Artificial Intelligence. Errors may occur. If you notice an error, please contact [email protected].

Tom Dorsey (00:01):
Good morning and good afternoon. Welcome to this week’s edition of The Digital Shop Talk Radio. It’s the Thanksgiving edition. I’m Tom Dorsey. I’m back in the Santa Barbara Digital Shop Talk recording studio. We’ve got wildfires on one side of us, floods on the other. I’ve got Ryan Flattum with us today from RMF in Hudson, Wisconsin. I think he got 20 feet of snow last night,
(00:29):
But that’s our commitment to you as long as we got internet. We’re coming to drop knowledge, digital shop knowledge, and today we’re going to be talking about our title is It Takes a Village. I don’t know what Dustin was thinking, but actually what we’re going to be talking about is we’re going to be talking about building a strong culture in your shop, how to use the digital shop and leverage the technology to help you to communicate better and just build a big, stronger, more effective family. So Ryan, I want to introduce Ryan Flattum. Ryan, I really appreciate you coming on today, battling through the weather and joining us today right before Thanksgiving. Welcome.
Ryan Flattum (01:11):
Thank you. Thank you. I also brought Jamie, my service manager with me so we could share a little with you.
Tom Dorsey (01:18):
Good. Welcome, Jamie. Thanks for coming on guys. Absolutely. And like I said, tell us a little bit, I mean, I know I saw it on the news this morning coming in as I was checking the mudslide forecast for California. So you guys got hammered pretty hard by a storm last night, huh? You guys? Are you guys open today?
Ryan Flattum (01:37):
We are open. The first storm of the year always gets pretty hyped up. We only got about six inches of snow, which isn’t a huge deal to us, but the first snow of the year always scares a ton of people. So we had a couple of cancellations today, but we have a full parking lot still, so we’re in good shape.
Tom Dorsey (01:57):
Yeah, that’s what I thought too. I mean, it was good on my commute in this morning. I thought, oh look, everybody’s afraid of the fires. And then I ran into a flooded area and traffic was a parking lot, but a lot of people stayed home, which is good. They’ll all be on the road tomorrow though, for Thanksgiving. You guys open? Are you guys working through the holidays? You open Friday?
Ryan Flattum (02:17):
We are open Friday, yes. Yep. The customers are crazy. It’s crazy busy right now, so we’re trying to take care of ’em as much as possible. Yeah,
Tom Dorsey (02:29):
That’s fantastic. No, it’s great. Guys like you that go the extra mile and out there, that’s when everybody’s on the road. It just makes sense to be open and take care of folks and AutoVitals is open taking care of our shops and hopefully we all get together and make it happen. So let’s dig right in. Let’s talk a little bit about our topic today and talk about how long have you been with us, how long have you been a digital shop, Ryan, and how’s it helping you to build that culture in your operation and what’s it done for you?
Ryan Flattum (03:06):
I think I’ve been with you for three or four years. I’m not exactly sure, but
Tom Dorsey (03:10):
Wow. And you’re a multi shop, right? You got a couple locations?
Ryan Flattum (03:13):
We have two locations and we dove in. I thought the product was really cool. So I’m kind of a visionary guy, so I’m pretty good at saying, Hey, this tool is really cool or this thing’s cool here, implement it right, figure it out. So actually I did that for a long time and until we actually went to your seminar like 60 days ago, and that’s kind of when we completely turned everything upside down and started over.
Tom Dorsey (03:48):
So what happened, what magic happened when you guys came out to the workshop?
Ryan Flattum (03:55):
I think collectively the three of us came out, the service manager from Richmond and Jamie from Hudson and me and collectively we were able to see what actually we looked at it as just an inspection tool, like a paper-based inspection for the most part, just add some extra bells and whistles. And now that we’ve really dug in and dove in, it’s been pretty amazing. In fact, I pulled up the 60 days before some numbers, 60 days before we went to your seminar, and now it’s been about 60 days since and we’ve made some huge strides in 60 days. It’s been pretty cool.
Tom Dorsey (04:39):
Yeah, it’s pretty. So just like I was talking about in the workshop actually when I was showing Joe Seaver stuff, he came to conference and then went home and implemented and four weeks later he is got a hundred more dollars on his ARO. It doesn’t take long when you follow best practices and you just trust the tool and let the tool do its job and you do that each and every time. Good stuff happens. And once you get the momentum going, well then, gosh, it’s hard to rein it in, right? Because everybody’s feeling the benefits. The techs are making more money, writers are making more money, shops making more money, customers are happier, they’re telling their friends and it all just starts to snowball what the big, so Jamie, what was the big kind of epiphany that you had from an operational perspective? What’d you get back into the shop and work on?
Jamie (05:27):
Yeah, after that seminar was just, we found a lot more two AutoVitals I guess with some of the training that you provided that was there. And a lot of it was buying more into it and actually making it a focus of our business 100%. So it was basically just buying into it even more.
Tom Dorsey (05:51):
And so what was that like for you then? So you guys have regular shop meetings, I take it every week.
Jamie (05:58):
We do now, yes.
Tom Dorsey (05:59):
Good, good. And then you get back and you tell the techs, Hey, we’re going to knuckle down, and were they smiling or were they frowning?
Jamie (06:07):
It was a little of both. So they’re kind of one foot in, one foot out and we’re kind of dealing with that through the whole process. But to kind of show them the numbers made a big difference for them too. To actually, once they started to see the same benefits that we’re seeing and sharing that information with them was huge for them and that was something that we weren’t doing. So kind of keeping them in the loop as well. They definitely wanted to be involved. And so from a leadership standpoint, I think once they started to see the progress, it only made it better.
Tom Dorsey (06:47):
And that’s critically important. You nailed that right on the head. It’s that, and that’s the other thing, the digital shop allows you to communicate more effectively and it allows you without a lot of effort, with almost no effort, maybe you put some effort up in front and you build some stuff out, but then after that it goes to work for you. And what it happens with your team is that they’re in the loop, just like you said, right? They see the big picture. If they know the big picture, they’ll help you pull the rope that way. If they don’t, well then they sit and spin in circles and they ask you, what should I be doing next? And then you’re micromanaging them and then you can only keep so many balls in the air that you’re juggling all day standing up there at the front counter and it all falls apart or you do a lot less with your hours.
(07:32):
So then initially it’s been, like you said, it’s been a couple months probably since I saw you guys, so maybe they started out a little hesitant, but what’s it like now? I mean, are you continuing those shop meetings? Are you starting to get them to give you input and suggestions on how to improve the process? Because in my opinion, that really is the crossing the Rubicon there when the techs start telling you to give ’em more or to help them to go in the direction you’re looking to do with this process change. Well, you’re in tall cotton,
Ryan Flattum (08:09):
So we have a couple of different meetings once a week we have a leadership team meeting
Tom Dorsey (08:17):
With both
Ryan Flattum (08:18):
Together involves the front staff. And then once a week we also have a staff meeting per location and we’re being super transparent and sharing all the numbers, actually pulling some measurables up on the screen and showing ’em what they mean and how they work. And it’s super simple, right? Because I don’t know if it matters with every shop, but the average research time compared to the ARO, the lines mirror each other identically and it’s crazy. I mean it’s very simple. Yeah, look at this. You can’t argue.
Tom Dorsey (09:03):
It’s funny, you guys were sitting in the back and you didn’t ask me a lot of stuff and I thought, oh my gosh, are these guys, I take it you were just down there taking notes. And so let me ask you something, Jamie, when I was telling you that motorist research time, if you focus on increasing that it’s going to drive the ARO, did you think I was nuts?
Jamie (09:22):
Well, because your chart kind of mirrored it too, but yeah, I mean I wasn’t a hundred percent on board, but we were at the standpoint where we got to try it and that just started with better inspections and giving them something that they have to look at for a good period of time. So it made our inspections get even better trying to focus on that to give them a good one that’s going to take a while to look at and very thorough. And the customers have responded very well to it too as well.
Tom Dorsey (09:55):
Yeah, no, that’s the magic of that KPI, right? And so for folks that don’t know what we’re talking about, we’re talking about motorist research time and really it’s one of the top things that we want to look at when you’re looking at are you improving your performance here and are you moving towards your goal or away from it? Because it’s a culmination of a lot of things. The tech’s got to take good inspections and make good recommendations and take good pictures, and we got to mark up those pictures and make ’em readable for the customer and we got to send them to the customer and the way that they’re going to look at ’em to their phone or to their laptop, whatever it is that they want. And once we do that, then they’ve got a lot of good information to review. So they stay in the inspection results longer and they consume more information and they watch the educational videos and then they start to approve more work and we see it in the data.
(10:49):
We saw this correlation, gosh, it must have been let’s say a year, almost probably a year and a half ago. And we started to build best practices around it and we started to add that to our training curriculum and we started to go out and just preach the gospel really to say. And that’s why I was saying right in the workshop, I tell you, the service advisor’s job now almost becomes to get the customer to stop their thumb while they’re scrolling through information. You don’t want ’em to just blow past it. You want ’em to stop and think about things. And when they do that, boy they got a lot less questions, don’t they, Jamie?
Jamie (11:24):
Right? Right. Yeah, it’s definitely made the service writing a lot easier.
Tom Dorsey (11:29):
How
Ryan Flattum (11:30):
Much and what can you get it done? There’s the main questions. You don’t have to sell ’em anything anymore.
Tom Dorsey (11:34):
You don’t have to sell ’em. You take orders, right? You educate and take an order and then the magic of it is if you take it to the next level and you say, okay, well here’s the things that we absolutely got to get done today and here’s the things that we got three months for and here’s the things we got. Push out six months, so let’s go ahead and book you some time within this period and we’ll knock these things out. You’ve got time to save up some money, whatever you need to do, find a babysitter, what have you, and then you build a custom maintenance plan and repair plan with these folks, and guess what? They start coming back. So are you guys seeing an increase in that return rate?
Ryan Flattum (12:09):
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.
Tom Dorsey (12:12):
Yeah. Yeah.
Ryan Flattum (12:14):
We’re just start, like I said, we’re only 60 days in here, so we still have a lot of room to work. I mean definitely,
Tom Dorsey (12:22):
But that’s the thing, right? You get the needle moving the way you want it to go, and now you understand what’s making it go that direction. You just start working the throttle. You just do more of the good stuff and less of the bad stuff, and then it just matriculates forward like that and the results come in. It’s like anything else, you just got to let your bait soap
Ryan Flattum (12:43):
And involving everyone helps immensely too. Like I said, our weekly meetings, I buy everyone lunch, so we sit and have lunch together and pull this stuff up on the screen and the next few meetings are all about, we’re basically just going to pull our TVP up and pull like, okay, why did this motorist look for a hundred seconds? And this one looked and dissect them together and just pull the inspections up and say, well, look at this. This picture’s bad, or this arrow is green and it should be red or it’s that technical. It’s crazy, but it gets everyone involved,
Tom Dorsey (13:18):
Isn’t it? Awesome. Teamwork makes the dream work.
Ryan Flattum (13:22):
Absolutely.
Tom Dorsey (13:25):
Okay, so then you guys are setting goals inside of the business control panel for your individual team members. Do your technicians have a goal for number of recommendations, let’s say
Ryan Flattum (13:37):
As a whole? Yes. Yeah, a number of recommendations and a number of pictures, and we’re still working on what we’re trying to increase those goals, but I’m not quite on the individual one
Tom Dorsey (13:50):
Yet.
Ryan Flattum (13:51):
That’s how fresh we are. Yeah,
Tom Dorsey (13:53):
No, that’s great. Like I said, it’s just more room to improve and if you’ve already seen those good results in 60 days, imagine what you’re going to do in six months, right?
Ryan Flattum (14:01):
Absolutely. If
Tom Dorsey (14:02):
You just keep incrementally adding the value, the features that are going to bring you that value, excuse me, and then setting those goals and it’s just move the bar up incrementally, right? Hey, I need you to take four pictures. Hey, you could fall down and take four pictures. Alright, well now I want you to take 10 and now I want you to take 15. And they just work themselves into it and pretty soon they’re like, well, this is a piece of cake. They were telling you last week, they’d never be able to do it. It’s going to take way too long. And now they’re knocking out the best inspections that you could hope for and they’re doing it probably in faster time from the moment that the inspection starts to the minute that it reaches the customer’s eyeballs, they get it done quicker because it’s already in a digital format, it’s ready to go. You spend more time marking up the pictures and building the story for the customer when they get it to their phone than you do actually digging around and measuring stuff. Excuse me,
Ryan Flattum (15:08):
Jamie took some time off. You went on vacation last week. So I was able to actually implement it and do it myself a little bit. So I learned a lot. It was wonderful, it was great. But I got to the point towards the end of the week where I was like, oh crap, they didn’t look at the inspection. Now what do I do? So then they call ’em and be like, Hey, can you go look at your inspections so we can talk about it when you’re done? See?
Tom Dorsey (15:39):
Yeah, that’s funny. It’s always funny when we get to that point in the workshop where we say, Hey, you know what you do when they call and they haven’t looked at you, there’s no motorist research time. You hang up on ’em. What? Be crazy you. You’re going to be kidding me.
Ryan Flattum (15:51):
Yeah,
Tom Dorsey (15:52):
But it
Ryan Flattum (15:52):
Works. I haven’t tried that yet, but that’s great.
Tom Dorsey (15:57):
Yeah, it works. Oh gosh, okay. Yeah. Gee, I forgot. And then guess what else? And then here’s the greatest thing too. And then that customer comes back and says, Hey, where’s my inspection sheet? They’re holding you accountable, they’re calling you out for it. Then you’re in the sweet spot there. So what’s next? So from a team building perspective, it sounds like you’ve got, so let me put it this way, they’re catching more hours now, right? Let the techs are starting to get more build hours.
Ryan Flattum (16:27):
Absolutely.
Tom Dorsey (16:29):
And so they see the incentive there. And so I would imagine their inspection rates are increasing, the number of pictures, the work that they put in to help you out, Jamie in the inspection sheet is increasing. What’s the next step from a culture or a team building perspective? Are you guys incentivizing those guys? Are they getting bonus off of hours sold, that kind of thing?
Ryan Flattum (16:54):
We’re not yet, but we have talked about, we have a lot of work to do on our average ARO. Once we get to a certain point, then we’re going to start profit sharing with everybody. Absolutely. Oh wow. And we’ve already talked to them,
Jamie (17:11):
Set that goal. Yeah, it’s out there right now. So they have something to work toward. We all have something, I guess I should say to work towards. So once we get to that magic number, we we’re consistent. Absolutely. That’s Huge.
Tom Dorsey (17:23):
And so have you already posted that up? They all know where the brass ring is?
Ryan Flattum (17:28):
Absolutely. Yep. We also post now we’re posting weekly numbers like four different measurables and they’re excited to see ’em Monday morning when we come in. That’s the first thing we do. And
Tom Dorsey (17:40):
So lemme ask you this, are you getting guys showing up to work early, staying a little later, spending a little bit more time detailing stuff that maybe wasn’t their job last week?
Ryan Flattum (17:50):
Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, they’re starting to buy in and it’s a slow process, right? Yeah. And it’s funny, you have one bad day where stuff doesn’t go so good. And like I said, I put together these numbers this morning and Jamie comes back from vacation and a couple bad days, Monday and Tuesday got off to a little slow start. We had a ton of stuff to do. It just we were spinning our tires a little bit, so it was a little discouraged. So I just took these numbers and I said, look what you did the last 60 days and put that into perspective now it’s not going to happen overnight. We need a little bit of time. And he was like, yeah, wow.
Jamie (18:33):
I totally wasn’t even thinking about that. I was just in that moment of the one, but it’s a lot of work, but it’s nice to see when you look back the paying dividends already and I lost sight of that I guess on the short term.
Tom Dorsey (18:47):
Right? Definitely. That’s why you want to look at the short term for actionable stuff. It’s something about to break and you can head a lot of stuff off and you want to look at the long-term. So you see that trend. The trend is your friend, and if it’s going up, you’re doing good. There’s going to be peaks and valleys and there’s going to be good days and bad days, but as long as you beat last month, you’re headed in the right direction.
Ryan Flattum (19:09):
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Some days it’s hard to remember that.
Tom Dorsey (19:14):
Yeah, no, of course. Yeah. When you’re in the weeds, but you probably get in the weeds a lot less once you get kind of the training wheels off and you’re coasting downhill a little bit, you start to avoid, you have less bad days. I mean, at least that’s what I’ve been told. Yeah,
Ryan Flattum (19:31):
Absolutely. Yeah, I think so. Absolutely. Your bad days just turn. Yeah, you’re still going to have problems, right? But not big problems. There’s no cars in the parking lot or we’re only doing oil changes all day today.
Tom Dorsey (19:50):
Yeah, now you get more good problems. It’s good to be busy, especially when you got two locations is how far is New Richmond? Is it New Richmond that you’re in?
Ryan Flattum (20:00):
New Richmond? Yeah, it’s only 14 miles from here.
Tom Dorsey (20:06):
Oh, that’s not bad at all. No, it’s not bad at all. So do you get a time where you guys get to come together, both teams together and have those types of meetings or maybe are they joining through what we’re doing through internet?
Ryan Flattum (20:24):
I haven’t yet, but I’ve been looking into it. I do share, we share numbers, all numbers with both shops, but we don’t all get together, so I am working on that right now.
Tom Dorsey (20:37):
That’s awesome. Yeah, that’d be great to be able to bring them in on your regular meetings and vice versa if you’re over at the other location to have the team meeting and the other shop to come in online and just bring them together that way. Absolutely. Because it really, I mean I’m preaching to the choir, but like you said, once you get ’em bought in and you get ’em involved, bringing ’em all and you don’t want to leave anybody out and even if they just get to log in online and pay attention and give their 2 cents, boy, it does a lot for somebody’s morale and you don’t feel like you’re in the dark or you’re getting left behind. And as long as my input is listened to and considered and taken seriously and whether it amounts to nothing or it makes some change that benefits us, I’m much more bought into the program. I’m much more likely to come in on time and do my job and contribute and go the extra mile and all that good stuff you want to see out of your team. And man, it sounds like you guys are right on the right path because that’s got to be a huge incentive profit sharing for those guys, huh?
Ryan Flattum (21:50):
Yeah. Yeah, I hope so. And it seems like it’s, like you said, it’s trending in the right direction. And not only that, I mean to ask people for their opinions and there’s collectively, even though I own the place collectively, everyone here is way smarter than I am. So of course to not utilize that resource and ask their opinion or input would not be very smart at all on my part.
Tom Dorsey (22:19):
Yeah, no, I mean isn’t that the first step of being a successful shop owner is hire people that are smarter than you?
Ryan Flattum (22:26):
Absolutely.
Tom Dorsey (22:28):
I don’t know everything. Lemme get somebody who, that’s great. That’s really great. So Jamie, what are you guys working on next? I mean I know you’re bringing up your inspection rate, you’re bringing up your picture edit rate. From an operational perspective, what are you working on to improve now? What are you taking from the workshop or from our other online resources or even are you active in the Facebook form? Jamie, are you talking to guys in Facebook?
Jamie (22:57):
No, I haven’t. No. And not on the Facebook one. With the rest of the AutoVitals, we want to be kind of a hundred percent implemented is our goal by January 1st where there’s some of the tools that we’re trying to get to where tracking the texts, clocking in on the iPads so then we can track their hours, which we touch base at the seminar. So with that aspect of more, I guess a better workflow with that tool. And then with that then we can track their hours and then we can look at are we giving the techs the right work? Are they working on their efficiency I guess with that part of it? So trying to implement that. So it’s like for the guys and everything else, we’re kind working our way into it. Otherwise it would be way overwhelming to just one day if this is what we’re doing. So we’re kind of doing it a little bit slower so it can kind of get it to work, I guess. So I think that that’s our main goal moving forward is to try to get that so we can start tracking their productivity and like I said, getting the right guys to work on the right jobs and just make our process more efficient with that one. And it’s a great tool right there. It’s just getting it implemented and getting that process done. So that’s our goals.
Tom Dorsey (24:24):
Yeah, you’re right at a great point because once you get that stuff down, I mean the increase in the profitability of your shop is it’s going to be amazing to you when you can start to fit the puzzle pieces together tighter, you run more consistently at capacity. It’s really what takes that ARO increase and puts it in the bank and at the same time, you couldn’t be at a better time because internally we’re working on some great new training collateral and programs specifically for workflow. So maybe we’ll have you, Jamie, as one of our initial Guinea pigs in our new training collateral when we come out with it. And so yeah, that’d be great, man, because we can benchmark you guys and then we can really see the improvements since you’re right at the cusp, right? You’re ripe for it. That’s fantastic.
Jamie (25:28):
Ready?
Ryan Flattum (25:29):
It was kind of nice. So the leadership team decided what we’re going to do is a hundred percent focus on inspections. Let’s get our inspections rocking and rolling, get everyone on board with that. That’s kind of phase one. And then phase two is let’s get everyone clocking in and out of jobs and on the front side, we’re still not implemented fully on the front side, like drop off. That’s kind of phase two. We’re working more on our drop-off procedure to make it more seamless. To utilize this properly is a whole entire process change. Exactly.
Tom Dorsey (26:06):
I
Ryan Flattum (26:06):
Never understood that Everything, if you do everything, that’s what makes it work. Just taking one little piece and utilizing that one tiny little piece, the whole tool doesn’t work properly
Tom Dorsey (26:23):
And you get some benefit. You might get a slight ARO increase, but then you probably tend to lose somewhere else. Maybe you’re not getting back to the customers fast enough or you’re doing a lot of duplication in trying to piecemeal the process. And most people come into it and they go, you got to be kidding me. I just was looking for a tool. I wanted to be able to text some pictures of folks. I’m not changing this, or I’ve been doing this for 25 years in this location. You got to be kidding me. You’re telling me I’m going to do this thing.
(26:57):
And then all of a sudden you’re like, wow. Because not only is it, we talked about it in the workshop, it’s really your folks are conditioned. I mean there’s doubt no two ways about it. The cell phone, the internet, Amazon has just really changed the way we think and the way we make decisions. And it’s there for you to take advantage of, right? It’s wide open door. You just got to work the game. And once you do that, boy, you find out that things happen faster and folks become more loyal and they’re telling their friends and it just starts to snowball from there and it’s easier. It is committing to making that process change. It’s not easy, but it sounds like you guys are on a good path. Are you coming out to a digital shop conference? Are you going to be able to get out of the snow and the storms and come out to sunny California and see us in January? January 9th is our digital shop conference.
Ryan Flattum (27:59):
It’s up in the air right now trying, but not a hundred percent sure yet.
Tom Dorsey (28:04):
Yeah, even if you could get Jamie out or something like that, it’d be great. Just somebody to come learn some stuff and bring it back to the operation. We’ve got some really strong breakouts on drop off and those, each of the really critical touch points and give you some really good insight. Probably one of the best things you got going for you there is to just be able to network with shop owners that are doing it, shop operators that are doing it because it wasn’t easy when we first introduced things like the status notifications. Oh, you got to be kidding me. I don’t want to send an automated message to anybody. I just got done with the inspection. They dropped their car off six hours ago. But it’s just expectation management and when you see the amount of time that you save in the efficiencies that you gain from using those types of tools, it’s really, it’s a big eyeopener. And so if you get a chance to come out, we’d love to see you, man. I’d love to see you guys again come out and I can introduce you guys to some people that had really spent the time with you to listen to where you’re trying to get to and just give you honest opinion about where they’ve been and what they went through and how it’s working for them and give you a big bucket of ideas to take back to the shop and work through.
Ryan Flattum (29:21):
Yeah, sounds great.
Dustin Anaas (29:22):
Yeah, Tom, actually, to that point, I mean digital shop conference is the perfect spot for that, right? I mean if people that have all either are going through it right now or have been through it before, and so what better place to all get together and kind of talk about it.
Tom Dorsey (29:33):
Yeah. Yeah. I think Dustin’s buying a round of drinks too, so I mean, there you
Ryan Flattum (29:38):
Go. Perfect.
Tom Dorsey (29:40):
There’s that too.
Dustin Anaas (29:45):
Yeah, I got an AutoVitals card that’s ready for you. Go for that.
Tom Dorsey (29:49):
Was buying some drinks. Yeah, I like it. I think it’s got a high limit on it too. We better get started early.
(30:02):
But yeah, it’s January 9th. I mean, get out of the snow banks for anybody out there who’s still on the fence thinking about it. I mean come out and like I said, at least come out and argue with us, come out and tell us we’re all full of it. I mean, we love to hear that too, but really come out and take advantage of getting to meet some shops that have really had some big turnarounds. We’ve got some really incredible presenters this year and people that have gone from low points in their business career to high points in a pretty quick time once you commit. And it’s funny, Ryan, because it’s kind of to tie onto what you were saying, it’s like, yeah, you’ve been on the program for so long and you’re just like, if thing’s sitting on the shelf collecting dust and we’re using it, this and that, and it is pretty amazing that once you decide to commit and you really implement those best practices, how quickly you can see some results in the shop. So the sky’s the limit there. It is amazing. What’s that? It is amazing how fast
Ryan Flattum (31:06):
It happens.
Tom Dorsey (31:07):
Yeah, yeah. Well, I’m super stoked, man. I’m really glad that I’m going to take full credit for it. You guys came to my workshop before you did it, so it’s all on me and I’m going to put another trophy in the case.
Ryan Flattum (31:22):
Perfect.
Tom Dorsey (31:23):
I’m glad, man. I’m just really excited. I’m really happy. I’m glad you guys came on the show to share the story and I’m really glad that you got to take something away from the class and I hope I get to see you guys in January, come out and put more in place. You guys got my cell phone number, right? Absolutely. So yeah, so if you ever need anything man, just give me a holler. If I don’t get to see you in January, I’ll be bugging you again and hopefully you guys come back on the show maybe in a couple more months and tell us where we’ve gotten to since then and what new features you’ve implemented and things like that in your growth. So congratulations.
Ryan Flattum (32:07):
Thank you.
Tom Dorsey (32:08):
Thank you.
Dustin Anaas (32:10):
Hey, Tom, given that it’s the Thanksgiving season, I thought maybe we could take a minute and just kind of say thank you to our listening audience, thanks to all the aviators who help us make our product better. Thanks everybody for coming out to all our events that we’ve had this year, and those have been awesome. You’re seeing the product of some of those events sitting right in front of you right here with Ryan and Jamie. But yeah, just a big thank you from the AutoVitals family to everyone out here listening and watching and for taking part in this really kind of cool thing that do in digital shop talk radio.
Tom Dorsey (32:40):
Yeah, no thanks Dustin. Yeah, I hope everybody gets time to spend with their families tomorrow. I was out in Texas last week, did early Thanksgiving, got to see my brother, who the first time I seen him since he went to Texas, he almost lost his life getting there. Got to bring my mom out and it was really great. And this is a great time of year. Just be with your family and enjoy your success, right? Enjoy the success of being a digital shop and pay it forward. And that’s what that digital shop conference is all about is shop owners helping other shop owners be successful and keep the independent aftermarket alive and kicking and really, yeah. Thank you, Dustin. To everybody out there, happy Thanksgiving and enjoy your family.