Episode Description
As technology shifts and shops become more digitized, the back end of the shop seems to get more of the focus when it comes to implementing new technologies leaving the front end to adjust accordingly.
On today’s episode of Digital Shop Talk Radio, we have Doug Brackett from Downtown Automotive (Nelson, BC) tell us how he is using a technological approach to solve some of the issues that have come up at his shop such as customer engagement, going full paperless and workflow management.
Episode Transcript
*This transcript was generated using Artificial Intelligence. Errors may occur. If you notice an error, please contact [email protected].
Tom Dorsey (00:00):
Good morning and good afternoon. Welcome to this week’s edition, the Happy New Year edition of Digital Shop Talk Radio. It’s episode 48. I’m Tom Dorsey. This is Uwe Kleinschmidt. Hello. Happy new year, Uwe.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:13):
Happy new decade. That’s right. It’s a new 10 years.
Tom Dorsey (00:17):
That’s right. Ahead of
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:19):
Us
Tom Dorsey (00:20):
And joining us
Doug Brackett (00:20):
Today. Welcome to 2020.
Tom Dorsey (00:22):
Yeah, exactly. Joining us today on the show is Doug Brackett from Downtown Automotive. Welcome back, Doug. We’re going to be talking about technology solutions at the front counter. A lot of times when we’re talking digital shop and AutoVitals, we’re focused on inspections and the backyard, but Doug came on today and he’s actually got his setup to show us around his operation a little bit so we can see how he’s implementing technological solutions to the front counter and customer engagement and really making it a holistic solution. Welcome back, Doug. Appreciate you coming on buddy.
Doug Brackett (00:56):
Yeah, super glad to be here and welcome to 2020. We should be able to see clearly this year, right?
Tom Dorsey (01:02):
Yeah. Where you’re from. I’m glad that you could just get into the shop and get internet connection. It’s got to be pretty cold and snowy up there.
Doug Brackett (01:14):
Yeah, we got a little bit of snow in town lately. Most of it’s hitting up in the mountains, but we had a dump of probably a couple of feet of snow pretty recently, so I was out yesterday playing on the snowmobile.
Tom Dorsey (01:24):
Yeah, yeah, a little bit to you would be like a life-changing event for us. Yeah, I’m sure it’s,
Doug Brackett (01:31):
By the way, I still have all 10 of my fingers as well. Oh
Tom Dorsey (01:34):
Yeah. If you folks remember, we were going to have Doug on about a month back, but he had an accident and couldn’t make it on, so it’s good to see you got all your digits left.
Doug Brackett (01:46):
Indeed.
Tom Dorsey (01:49):
Well, fantastic. Hey, real quick before, well, we still got Uwe here, matter of fact, Doug’s coming out next week is digital shop conference in Marina del Rey, and so we’re really looking forward to seeing Doug down. I know Doug’s going to probably give you a little teaser about what he’s going to be presenting on at the conference, and it’s great to have Uwe in here. Maybe Uwe would give us a little bit of a insight into what we got going on next week.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (02:15):
Yeah, sure. Doug and I talked about his presentation already, so I was able to take a sneak peek and I can promise you as every presenter, the main thing about this conference is shop owners share with other shop owners how they implement the digital shop, and I will have the opportunity to show you about what’s coming in the next release. We’re very excited about it. A lot of new stuff and coming your way, and if you don’t know yet what you’re going to do next week, there’s still, I think some seats available.
Tom Dorsey (02:58):
Get on a plane, it’s supposed to be 70 degrees, just saying
Uwe Kleinschmidt (03:01):
Go to AutoVitals.com
Doug Brackett (03:03):
Should be doing any snowmobile in Santa Barbara.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (03:08):
So yeah, digital shop conference is the highlight of the company events and next week is going to be the biggest and baddest ever. Find a slot and still join us.
Doug Brackett (03:26):
I can’t wait to be there.
Tom Dorsey (03:28):
Thank you, sir.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (03:29):
Thank you.
Doug Brackett (03:31):
Thanks, Uwe.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (03:32):
I give it back to Tom.
Tom Dorsey (03:34):
Good. I’ll give it to Doug. So Doug, we got a little bit of a, you’re doing a breakout and we’re talking actually about a technological solution up at the front counter, right? You’re going to be giving us kind of the results of a case study. We’ve been working on how to improve exit scheduling at pickup. Take us into that a little bit. I mean, you don’t have to give away the farm there about what you’re going to be presenting on, but maybe tie it into what you’ve been working on in your operation to be able to implement this technology at the front counter.
Doug Brackett (04:07):
Totally. Well, one of the big things in starting to participate in this, a little bit of a case study with exit scheduling and bringing in new processes into the shop, I backed it up a little bit and thought about what’s the most useful thing I can pass on to shops that are working to implement more digital procedures in their shop using more technology to further advance the customer experience involved in everything like that. And I actually am going to be presenting on process change, which is a huge element of what we do as progressive shops that are looking to stay up with the most recent technology and the most recent trends involved, not just in the working on cars, but in how we service our clients and customers. So I’m going to be putting together a nice little presentation on how to manage process change.
(05:05):
It is one of the harder things that I feel we deal with as people, managers. Processes are easy to manage, people are hard to manage. When you get good at managing the processes and the process changes, it makes it easier on the people. I’ve had this discussion with my staff multiple times because we’ve done some testing, we’ve done some turbo, all of those things, all of those new features mean that a certain percentage of our old processes just don’t work the way they were intended before. So identifying when your processes are broken, how to improve on those processes, and building a framework that gives everybody feedback into that as well too is I think really critical to how you can continue to advance a digital shop. Right?
Tom Dorsey (05:56):
Yeah, buddy mean, that’s a lot to unpack there because, and hopefully folks are taking notes and paying attention because really when it comes down to it, when folks are struggling to implement, and I’m not even just talking about AutoVitals, I’m talking about any change inside of your shop that’s process driven. What is a process? It’s really just a plan. It’s an implementation plan. How do you use your point of sale? How do you do an alignment? It’s all a process, and a lot of times that’s the hardest thing. And so people will say, yeah, gosh, how do I use this program? This thing just isn’t working for me. Well, it’s probably because don’t have a plan. You are not looking at it from a process perspective or you’re trying to make this new technology fit into an old process. And
Doug Brackett (06:42):
That is one of the biggest challenges we always run into is that how do we fit this into our old process? Well, maybe your old process doesn’t even apply anymore. You
Tom Dorsey (06:50):
Don’t. And so really literally, this is what Doug is going to talk about is how do you make it work? It’s look at it from the process perspective. What is your big goal? What do you want it to do for you at the end of the day? And then work backwards to see how each step along the way is going to get you to your end result. And then you have a process developed and then fix it from there, tweak it from there, but build a process based on
Doug Brackett (07:19):
Absolutely. And documentation of those processes is one of the biggest things. That includes value in our business as well. Everything we do, we’ve got to standardize how we go about it, provide the same product every single time, and that’s what gives us businesses that are very successful when all those processes work properly, when they’re documented properly and everybody’s on board with making them happen.
Tom Dorsey (07:44):
Yeah, and we’ve talked about the hit by the bus rule right here on the show, and John Long brought that up in the summertime, but that’s exactly how you get the hit by the bus in place, is to have a process, document it, communicate it, train it so everybody knows, and then if you need to take a day off or you do get by a bus, unfortunately somebody can at least operate your business.
Doug Brackett (08:10):
Absolutely. Absolutely. So what I’d like to do is give you guys a little bit of tour of my front office. So this might be a little disorienting. I’ve got you on my iPad today. Awesome. Basically, this is looking in at my front office from the front door. I have two service advisor workstations. We’re going to take a look at the second station here. You see, of course we’ve got our TV in the office, and that’s just playing a little bit of shot media there, some photos that we’ve had over the years. So this workstation is basically our most advanced piece of technology in the shop right now. What we’ve done is we’ve recessed a monitor directly into the countertop so we can present authorizations, invoices, inspections, all from right here at the service advisor desk. So what we used to do is we’ve got paper authorizations. This is maybe a couple of weeks worth. These are all signed, and of course, if you’re not having your customers sign specific authorizations, that’s another process you need to work on. Yeah,
Tom Dorsey (09:22):
That’s for sure. Especially in California.
Doug Brackett (09:25):
Exactly right. So all of our service advisor workstations are two computer monitors. What we’ve done here is this second monitor is actually mirrored right here. So the service advisor can tour people through their authorization, their work order, their invoice, their inspection report right here at the desk. Now we used to Chromecast inspection reports up to that big screen tv, but when you’ve got three people in the office, maybe they don’t want to share what their vehicle looks like
(10:01):
And they’re a little embarrassed about it, but being able to do it right here at the workstation. So this allows us to also get a digital signature capture. This is technology through 360 payments who we’re super excited about being on board with show integrated directly into Protractor Show. Yeah, they’re going to be at the show I heard. So that’s going to be awesome. And that integrates directly into Protractor. So we’ve got a point of sale machine right there that is also a digital signature capture pad now that’s going to record an image of their signature right on the work order. And it’s going to print with authorizations if you got back into printing those, but it’s also going to be included on the final invoice and everything as well too. So this is a really big step for us. I think most AutoVitals customers that are running Smart Flow are actually paperless in the backend, and it’s long been our goal to move that paperless process into the front end of the shop as well too.
Tom Dorsey (11:05):
Yeah, that’s fantastic. And so you got all that equipment and hardware right through 360 payments?
Doug Brackett (11:11):
Yeah, absolutely.
Tom Dorsey (11:13):
So if folks wanted to do something similar, I mean, gosh, they can come see you at the conference next week and 360 and probably get handled right there. Are you going to make that available? How do folks reach out to you even beforehand if they wanted to? Doug, let’s call you at the shop.
Doug Brackett (11:30):
Yeah, absolutely. If anybody’s interested, probably getting ahold of me via my email. It’s a little bit long, but it definitely gets to me. So it’s [email protected]. So if you’ve got any questions about the hardware solutions involved in how we pulled this pretty slick system off, then we’re welcome to provide some feedback and let people know how to do it themselves.
Tom Dorsey (11:58):
And you can always get ’em up on Digital Shop Talk forum on the Facebook. So Doug, what’s the results? I mean, obviously the paper being gone is going to be fantastic, but are you able to see any results yet from an efficiency or productivity perspective in your KPIs?
Doug Brackett (12:18):
Well, we’re just kicking this off. We started out with 360 payments in December, finished our monitor installed just a couple of weeks ago. So this is very new for us. We’re still actually in that second stage of evaluating our process change, making sure that we nailed it dead on for how our service advisors are presenting. A couple of things that this is making a lot easier for them is to be able to provide live updates as people request more services at the front counter. So we’ve long presented all of the deferred work from the previous service at the new appointment, but now we can build that into their initial authorization really, really quickly and efficiently. It provides a much cleaner interaction at the front counter for people. We’re not having to pencil numbers down on the paper authorization to make that happen. We’re being able to show them live.
(13:14):
This is exactly what we’re going to do. And when you take that uncertainty, especially about the money involved, people are a lot happier with it. We live in a pretty environmentally conscious town as well too. So marketing a paperless process is a pretty big deal. It’s part of being an eco company as well too. And the beauty of eco initiatives as well is that in a lot of situations, they benefit the business with the underlying costs involved too. So we’re saving a couple hundred dollars a month on buying reams of paper as well too. Right,
Tom Dorsey (13:58):
Exactly.
Doug Brackett (14:00):
There’s benefits on both ends. It’s also amazing in hearing the feedback from customers of Would you like us to print your invoice? Is it okay if we just email it to you and I’m going to say somewhere well above 75% of customers take that paper invoice and they don’t even read it. They don’t even read it the first time. If you’ve done your job properly informed and educated them throughout the entire process, that paper invoice gets either tossed in the garbage or left on the passenger floor of their car. We’ve had people come in for their next appointment, their old invoice is still sitting there,
Tom Dorsey (14:36):
Doesn’t even have a crease in it. Nope. That’s funny. So gosh, what was I going to ask you? I had a great question. Oh, I know. So when it comes to the customer presentation, so you mentioned a little bit about being able to look at the deferred work. So how are you packaging that up? I mean, do you do a little work beforehand? So who’s on the appointments? So maybe you guys are packaging up all the digital assets you need. You got the last inspection sheet, you’ve got some other educational content, and you almost do it. I mean, gosh, you could put it almost like in a slideshow or something on that monitor once the customer sits down. How are you guys bringing in the deferred stuff into that conversation?
Doug Brackett (15:29):
Well, a couple of the processes that we use, and of course we are a protractor shop and I can’t say enough about the relationship of ProTrac and AutoVitals, how your two companies work so well together and the features involved in both, but with protractor we’re all of our work orders so that at least the day before, often enough as the appointment is actually booked, the work order gets built. That gives us the opportunity to also have all of the previous deferred work incorporated into that work order. And it’s a really easy presentation essentially with three webpage tabs showing up on the Inde monitor. We have your authorization for what you requested today, your deferred work for anything that we’ve previously recommended and an inspection result right there from the last time that you were in. So this gives people a great overview before we even look at their vehicle at all. The number of additional items flagged for people are huge, and anytime we can do that before we’ve even laid hands on the vehicle, we’re improving our technician’s efficiency.
Tom Dorsey (16:44):
And so you’re assuming the sales, so you’re putting the deferred work into the, so they have an authorization of the stuff that they asked for. Then where are you putting the deferred work? You’re showing that just from the CRM next visit tab or in
Doug Brackett (16:59):
Fact from ProTrac built into the work order is a deferred work tab. So in that tab is every job that’s been previously deferred with the check of a box, it gets added to the authorization.
Tom Dorsey (17:13):
So
Doug Brackett (17:13):
We can show that authorization real time as they say, Hey, what if we do that air filter today? How much is that going to be?
Tom Dorsey (17:21):
And so for folks that want to set something up like that and even for me to visualize it, what’s that third tab? Is that third tab protractor then? Are you showing the deferred work tab from protractor? You present it and then here’s the inspection sheet. So if you need to go over to conditions and tech notes and then back into the tab check and now it’s on the off form,
Doug Brackett (17:45):
They’re all right there. Absolutely. With we’ve got the ability to export any document that we would otherwise print to A PDF. So it’s using those PDFs exported from protractor that we’re presenting on the additional monitor. We’re not actually showing people our protractor work screen. The huge advancement involved in that with ProTrac. And what makes that so slick when we do it is that you can adjust ProTrac print documents as far as you want to adjust it. I can build a work order print document that looks like an invoice. I can build an authorization that includes some information, doesn’t include others for people as well too. So we also use exporting of inspection results into the can jobs and protractor. So this also involves having all of your actions mapped to can jobs properly, having all your canned jobs in the system. So I wouldn’t suggest that this is one of the first steps people should go after this is you got to have a lot of stuff in place to even be able to consider run a paperless front end.
Tom Dorsey (19:03):
But it’s a plan, right? It is, like you said, it’s get the fundamentals down, get the basics down, set a goal, how do you want it to be? What is the customer experience that you want? What are the sales numbers that you want, the whole kit and caboodle? And then work backwards, build yourself a plan on how to get there. And just like Doug said, start at the basics once you get, you’ll know when you’re at that level and then you start to implement and just take another bite out of the elephant until you get her done.
Doug Brackett (19:36):
I always look at a lot of these, how to improve an automotive repair shop, how to build up your processes as this big giant pyramid. And it’s full of huge blocks. Some blocks are a lot heavier than others. Some have to go way high up on the pyramid. Some have to be right down low. And as you get all those blocks built up and built up and built up, you realize that there is no limit to how high that pyramid’s actually going to get. There’s always advances that we can do in our industry. There’s always technology that makes new processes available to us as well too. And that’s a big thing you have to be very aware of when you’re trying to place a block up high that needs three other blocks down below it to support it. And that’s again, one of the huge challenges with a bunch of process change and shop development and everything like that. And it’s also the part that makes running an automotive shop so exciting because there’s always more, we can always do better. We can always improve on things, and that’s what keeps me coming back every single day.
Tom Dorsey (20:47):
Yeah, that’s a great analogy because, and actually there’s folks out there, Doug, that probably need to just tear their pyramid down and start again because if you’re, and a lot of times this happens is you don’t really have a solid process front to back, but you hear these good ideas and then you just try to implement ’em and you’re starting building a process from the middle out. And then like Doug said, you don’t have the foundation underneath it. You really have to have, and digital shop conference is a great place to do this. Sit down with some peers, have ’em open the books up a little bit, have ’em look at what you’re doing and give honest opinions. And you might learn something and sometimes it’s a bitter pill to swallow, but at the end of the day you go back and you have a vision and you have a plan, and then you should see those results. Once you get the fundamentals built out, then like Doug said, then you can start to fine tune and tweak it to get to peak performance.
Doug Brackett (21:45):
Totally. And for shops that are just starting out on this process, there are so many easy wins out there. There’s so many quick ones. There’s so many that why have we been doing this forever? And then as we kind of build it up, I’m going to say they get harder for sure, and each process relies on all the other ones as well too. So you change one process down at the base level and then you quickly realize that it affected three other processes as well too, right? Yeah.
Tom Dorsey (22:21):
And then of course then there comes the staffing issues and stuff like that that might come in and some people might just not be able to adapt or don’t want to adapt, and that’s just more hurdles, but you have to address ’em. And if you stick to the plan, if you build that plan, you stick to it and you say, here’s the results we’re going to get and we’re going to get there, come whatever challenges get in our way, well then sometimes you got to make business decisions and you got to shuffle the deck chairs a little bit. But at the end of the day, and we’ve seen it a thousand times, you talk to these guys at the digital shop conference and they’ll tell you, I was at the end of my rope. I was ready to give up. Hey, then I had to make some pretty hard choices and I had to learn some stuff, which sometimes, depending on how seasoned we are, is difficult to do.
(23:08):
But at the end of the day, once it was done and all the heavy lifting at the end of now 2020, I can look back to that year of that struggle and that journey. And you know what? Now you’ve got sailing out into the future because your numbers are in line, your business is behind it, your customers are more loyal, your CRM numbers are up, your turnover is lower, the tax are actually starting. We’ve heard from Russ and a lot of these guys that are working on that culture in the shop techs are now starting to give you ideas and starting to be engaged in your business instead of just the clock all the time, man. And then you’re in high cotton.
Doug Brackett (23:49):
Absolutely. Yep. It’s all about building that culture, isn’t it? And build up that culture of the constant improvement. And having changing marks all the time is hard on a lot of people, but when people see the benefits involved with it, they see that it’s worthwhile, which is another huge point. And I think definitely a weak point for a lot of shops that are struggling at times is metrics. You’ve got to measure what’s going on. If you’re not measuring what’s going on, you’re just kind of feeling around in the dark trying to figure out what you need to improve on. But building that looking regularly at your BCP, knowing what your KPIs are, knowing what affects your KPIs, then it’s this really weird thing. And I swear I’ve seen it so many times, but the number that you watch the most gets better. Whether that’s a ton of conscious decisions or not, but when you’re paying attention, things will get better.
Tom Dorsey (24:54):
Yeah, no, that’s a great point.
Doug Brackett (24:56):
That’s a huge lesson.
Tom Dorsey (24:57):
Yeah, that’s a great point. And really that’s how we have the business control panel set up with your top three because it’s really hard to focus on more than three really in the human brain. And so if you figure out what are those top three metrics that are really going to drive you to that goal, what’s missing now? What do I need to do to get there? And then focus on those top three drivers. It could be inspection rate, it could be picture edit rate, it could be dollar spend on Google AdWords, whatever it is that’s trying to get you to that goal, focus on it, communicate it, tell everybody you’re focused on it, back it up that you’re focused on it. Go out and have one-on-ones with folks who aren’t really moving the needle the way that they should be so that they say, oh yeah, he wasn’t kid and he really is focused on this. Let me help. And then like you said, then once you’ve got that plan in place, folks are going to get on board because it’s better for everybody and they’re all going to pull the rope the same way with you, and that’s a lot easier day
Doug Brackett (26:01):
And everybody wants to win. And when you share those wins with the whole staff, it can make a huge difference.
Tom Dorsey (26:07):
Then they go out, get more wins, right?
Doug Brackett (26:10):
Absolutely.
Tom Dorsey (26:10):
It’s not a bad habit to develop in your shop of winning. They just expect to win. No, that’s fantastic. So speaking of that, what are some of those KPIs that you’re looking at from the perspective of bringing this technological solution up? Let me put it this way, since it’s kind of new, at least from the paperless at the front counter, what will you be looking at to make sure that you’re on track there?
Doug Brackett (26:39):
One of the big numbers that I’ve started tracking recently through both management group as well as looking at the auto vital stuff is sales of our deferred work. I think that’s a big area where we’ve had a lot of room for improvement in the past. We’re lucky that our shop management software attracts it really well. The numbers are a little bit mind blowing as we get into them on a month where we’ve done say 120 K in sales, the deferred work that we did not sell is in the 250 K mark.
Tom Dorsey (27:20):
That’s something,
Doug Brackett (27:20):
Yeah. So we’re selling a third of the work that we’re identifying on vehicles that leaves an awful lot of opportunity out there, right? Yeah. Experiences has started to show that our deferred work sales needs to be measured as a percentage of deferred work. So on that two 50 K of deferred work that we didn’t sell, we sold $25,000 in deferred work. So that’s not from that same work order, that’s from previous work orders as well too. So that kind of 10% range seems to be about where we’re hovering now and putting even just a couple of percentage points on there is going to make a huge difference. We’re able to better take care of people’s cars because they’re actually doing the work that we’ve recommended that they do. We’re talking about ARO and technician efficiency increases. We’re dealing with less vehicles, higher repair orders on the vehicles we do have. And if anybody’s not paying attention to their ARO, that’s kind of one of those big bottom line indicators. A healthy ARO can tell you so much about how well the rest of the shop operations are working. It’s difficult using ARO to pinpoint exactly where to improve, but it’s very easy to say, Hey, we’ve got A through D working quite nicely because our ARO is where we want it for now, right?
Tom Dorsey (28:52):
Yeah. And you can tell from the level, are we just selling the stuff folks are coming in with or are we adding recommendations, sold recommendations to it? Because unless you’re working on BMWs or diesels or something like that, the sweet spot for your ARO, you got my wheels spinning man, when you were talking about selling that deferred work and how we can support that and pull KPIs for that. And I think it’s brilliant because the deferred work number should be low hanging fruit. If you’ve done your process and you’ve done your job from front to back, right, from the technicians inspection, find and recommend and documenting through setting the expectations and building a plan around what that work, that service or repair needs to be at the front counter with that customer
Doug Brackett (29:39):
Educating, right? The
Tom Dorsey (29:39):
Rest of that should be low fruit. You should be able to harvest that with a plan. And really, I don’t know why I’ve never really thought about it until this conversation, but that should be almost one of the first things you target from a monthly strategy perspective to go out and say, here’s the work that should be coming in from deferred. Set a goal for that. Here’s everything else that we need to get in the door, new to make up the rest of the money to hit our monthly number. It’s just, man, it couldn’t be more clear really. And really from we’re talking process, that’s a simple process.
Doug Brackett (30:19):
Totally. And then I mean from there, when you think about the customer perception and evolved as well too, right? You’ve already educated on the work that needs to be done, and what we find time and time again is when we give people predictive costs, right? Next time you come in, we’re going to want to take care of this deferred work. That visit is going to be about this much when people have three, four months to plan for that, it’s not a problem when you have to present that at the spot and say, you really need to do this right now, and it’s December and they have a credit card bill to deal with, or January, let’s say, right? So the giving people more heads up on the work that they’re going to have to be doing on their vehicles, and that all ties into deferred work. It all ties into quoting every single recommendation from the technicians. And again, those are some critical building blocks that you’re going to struggle with selling that deferred work unless you’re doing the inspections and the quoting properly as well too, right? If the education’s not there, that’s going to be a struggle.
Tom Dorsey (31:33):
Yeah, no, that’s brilliant, right? Is that exactly. No surprises, so I know what to expect. Yeah, I’m going to drop 600 bucks, but I’ve known that for the last three months. Matter of fact, I’m probably going to drop another 600 bucks and three months after that for some other work, but I know that too and I’m saving for it, and I go there and guess what? That gives me peace of mind. It takes all that anxiety away for a lot of people. That is worth more than a $50 coupon or $20 less hourly shop rate than any of your competitors can bring towards you. It’s giving that peace of mind in a plan for folks, and then they can just do what Doug told me to do. I got to save this money and then I’m going to show up on this day and woo, he’s going to drop the car off at the office and I’m back on my way. Exactly. That is so valuable to people nowadays, the digital consumer. Brilliant man. Absolutely brilliant. Doug, I got to tell you, like I said, you just got me. I’m going to go bug after
Doug Brackett (32:34):
This. Sounds like we’re looking for a few more new KPIs on our
Tom Dorsey (32:37):
Bccp, man. No doubt about it. He’s probably back there right now. He’s expecting it. Maybe he’s already working on it.
(32:47):
No, that’s genius, man. That’s genius. So that’s the type of brilliance we’re going to be having at Digital Shop conference next week, Doug. I’m really excited to be seeing you. Next Thursday. We’re going to be out of Peterson Museum looking at fancy old cars and swirling champagne and having hor d’oeuvres or as Uwe called them, horse de overs. No, he didn’t say it that bad. Dude. I really appreciate you coming on the show today. Really looking forward to seeing you next week out in Marina del Ray. Have a safe trip down from British Columbia there. I know you got a long travel day and I really appreciate you taking the effort and excited to see you next week. And I know a lot of folks are, man. Like I said, just got me excited. This is a great show. I think that I hope folks took a lot away from it, at least from take the first step. You’ve got support from guys like Doug. Anybody else in the AutoVitals Forum is going to reach out and help you and just get it done. Just do it.
Doug Brackett (33:45):
It’s a wonderful community and man, there’s so much to learn from this whole community. I’ve picked up a ton of stuff that’s just a little picture there of us snowmobile and yesterday.
Tom Dorsey (33:58):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Doug made it back from the great wilderness to be able to show up today. Dustin, you want to show us?
Dustin Anaas (34:07):
Yeah, that’s the best picture I got right now. So this is Doug here. Yeah, maybe you can explain what’s going on here, Doug,
Doug Brackett (34:14):
What is that? Oh yeah, so these are a couple of my buddies. I’m not actually in this shot right now. We’re climbing this hill that looks fairly steep. There’s a couple feet of fresh snow as you can see there. And Keith, the guy on the right decided he was going to try to go straight up that tree. That’s a stuck snowmobile. And that snowmobile is about 10 feet long. You can see about three feet of it above the snow level, so it’s buried in there pretty good.
Tom Dorsey (34:39):
How did you get it out? Did you have to just tow it with another snowmobile?
Doug Brackett (34:44):
No, there’s no towing snowmobiles. You just bust out your shovel. And that one, in fact, we flipped it over, so we pushed it over backwards, rolled it over and out you
Tom Dorsey (34:54):
Go. Rolled it out of the hole.
Dustin Anaas (34:55):
Yeah.
Tom Dorsey (34:57):
Wow.
Dustin Anaas (34:58):
Oh man, that’s awesome. That
Tom Dorsey (34:59):
Looks hardcore, man. So how many times did you have to do that in that trip?
Doug Brackett (35:05):
Let’s see, there were about three minor stocks and two major ones like that. And that’s just part of snowmobile and what
Tom Dorsey (35:16):
Makes it fun.
Doug Brackett (35:17):
Absolutely.
Tom Dorsey (35:19):
Other than that, it would just be a drive with cold cheeks.
Doug Brackett (35:22):
Yeah.
Tom Dorsey (35:25):
Well, awesome dude. I appreciate it, man. I’m glad you made it back safe and sound. Really excited to see you next week. Thanks again for coming on the show. Gosh, what do we got, Dustin? We got one more show next week. What are we next episode
Dustin Anaas (35:37):
49 next week gearing up to the 50th episode in Marina Delray. Yeah, we got Roy Foster on next week and he’s going to talk about his goal setting, but he’s not going to just talk about his goals. He is going to talk about the steps that he takes to achieve his goals. And you guys kind of talked about this a little bit today too, but how he sets his goals, how he evaluates his goals to decide if he could hit them or if they’re too easy or if they’re too high and the plans he takes. We all have goals, but how do we actually achieve them at the end of the day? And he’s going to talk about how his shop does that.
Tom Dorsey (36:08):
And then we got episode 50 is going to be live from digital shop conference, so don’t forget to tune in for that one. It’ll be on the Facebook forum, just pay attention. You’ll see it coming through. Hey,
Dustin Anaas (36:18):
Let’s talk about that quick, Tom. That’s going to be a fun one. We just saw Uwe introduced to the show here. We’re going to have a little bit where Uwe is actually going to flip the script on Tom and we’re going to interview Tom during the 50th episode a little bit. So that’s going to be a really fun one live in front, front of a bunch of people and we’re really looking forward to that a lot.
Tom Dorsey (36:35):
Yeah, and we’ll have some special guests on there, all the folks out at Shop conference, and a lot of folks that have been on the show over the last 48 episodes and maybe some new folks too. And so make sure you tune in for that. It’s, it’s going to be a good time. Really appreciate everything you’ve done, Dustin, putting this together and just really coming up with great, I mean, this was a great show today, really getting the juices flowing, right? I mean, anybody could sit up here and talk about the weather, but we’re talk solutions on Digital Shop talk radio. Sometimes we talk about the weather too. But alright, until next Wednesday, get out there and make some money. Tune in 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 PM Eastern Digital Shop Talk Radio with Roy Foster, setting some goals for the new year. And if you’re a digital shop with AutoVitals, you got to set those goals high because logos are easy to get. Thanks a lot, Doug. Thanks Dustin.