Who’s the Expert? YOU ARE!
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Blackplague Smooth tabs and crease tabs
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:
Keith Cosentino: [Speaking foreign language] Keith Cosentino, [speaking foreign language] Shane Jacks. [Speaking foreign language] PDR College podcast. All right, so we are here with our Japanese introduction. Thank you fellas. Head on out. I don’t know what you said but I appreciate the intro, but Shane and I are both here for this fantastic new episode of the PDR College podcast. How are you doing today, Shane?
Shane Jacks: I am good.
Keith Cosentino: Man I love those guys, my Japanese businessmen friends. They come in here, they make multi-million dollar deals, they go to the casino, they get American company, and then they scurry on out of here, man. I love them. One of them gave me a sword.
Shane Jacks: And an energy drink, if you can’t tell.
Keith Cosentino: So what’s going on with you lately? How are you?
Shane Jacks: With me? Same thing as with you.
Keith Cosentino: Fantastic? Best shape of your life?
Shane Jacks: It is radio, so yes. I can’t lie to you, Keith, but I can lie to the rest of you guys.
Keith Cosentino: We’ve mentioned our faces for radio.
Shane Jacks: In case you haven’t seen the caricatures, again, they are very lifelike.
Keith Cosentino: Lifelike, true to form. You know what else is true to form is our fantastic iTunes reviews. And we learned something from loyal listener Ben Necks and he said, “Hey, you guys have not read my review.” You’ve got to look in iTunes under different countries. So we learned something. ITunes has different modes for different countries, which makes sense because my Japanese businessmen would not be able to read my American iTunes, and I would not be able to read theirs. So we looked up the Australian iTunes and the UK iTunes and we’ve got a couple of awesome reviews from there. We’re going to read them with you guys.
Shane Jacks: Yeah, that’s right. Ben, again, Ben at All Dents says, “If you’re a PDR Tech and listen to what these guys say and put into practice, you will make more money. The tips on selling yourself, your skills, and setting goals are invaluable and have given me more control over my business and helped me to earn more dollars.”
Keith Cosentino: Man that is so cool. And you know what the coolest thing is? It’s that this information works worldwide. And for the guys here in Chicken Lips who say, “This doesn’t work in my market,” here’s Ben in Australia. I’ve never been there. I don’t know how to spell half the things that grow there. But he can use our tips and tricks and skills, make them his own, and make more money in Australia doing the same trade. I have no idea about the retail market there. I don’t know what people are like except that they’re super cool and they wear cargo shorts all the time, but he’s making it work with this same stuff. These are principles that work all over when you’re selling this kind of service.
Shane Jacks: We have another one also from the UK and this is Matt Lloyd. He says, “Great podcast. Two very entertaining guys.” Well thank you very much for that. “This is sound business advice that will benefit any business, good, honest tool reviews, and regular updates on Temecula.
Keith Cosentino: Man, we’ve been short on those, haven’t we?
Shane Jacks: We have been short on those a bit, yeah, we have Keith. Do you have any updates? You live closer to there. You’re over here right now, again. I believe we need to mention that again.
Keith Cosentino: We are in studio.
Shane Jacks: Keith is in studio with me, and are the zombies up close to you by now or what?
Keith Cosentino: You know, we were going to do the food drive, and then after that I just decided I don’t really care about those people, and I didn’t do it. So I don’t know what’s going on down there. They might all be dead, or they might be digging themselves back out of the pits of despair.
Shane Jacks: Keith Cosentino, compassion, he has it.
Keith Cosentino: Here’s my favorite Temecula joke. They don’t do very good repairs down there either; you know that?
Shane Jacks: I know that, yes.
Keith Cosentino: The only thing getting glassed in Temecula is the thousand vacant swimming tools full of the tears of the hopes and dreams of the people of Temecula.
Shane Jacks: That took a long time to get out.
Keith Cosentino: You’ve got to build the visual.
Shane Jacks: So what is our topic today, Keith?
Keith Cosentino: So today we’re basically talking about confidence, and being an expert at what you do, and a lot of you guys are already deep into what I would call expert territory, but a lot of you guys are not. Everybody starts where they start, and sometimes you’re a year in or sometimes you’re six months in, sometimes you’re six years, but we’re all on the podcast because we want to get better, so we’ve got that in common. But some guys are just starting their career right around now, which is fine. We all start where we start, like I said. So what I wanted to talk about today was when you’re interacting with customers, being the expert. And that’s easy for some guys and a little more challenging for other guys. Other guys want to be really honest and upright and say, “You know what? I’m only a year into this thing. I’m not the best guy in town, but I’m X, Y, and Z and I’m a good guy.” All that kind of stuff is fine. However, when somebody is bringing something to you that they don’t know anything about, which is a dent removal, they’re looking for an expert.
And whether or not you’ve got six months or six years of experience, you have more than they do. That’s why they brought it to you. If they had six months, they would have fixed it themselves or tried. Or they would have gotten close and then toll cut the rest, because we think that stuff is really nice.
Shane Jacks: Yeah Keith, you were saying that and the first thing that popped into my mind was yeah, they don’t know any different. PDR is not that well known, honestly, you know? They don’t know what you’re doing, they don’t really know what to expect, and it’s kind of like if you had never eaten steak and you had a hamburger, you’d think that was awesome, right? Luckily for you and I, we have eaten steak within the last 24 hours.
Keith Cosentino: Several times.
Shane Jacks: Twice.
Keith Cosentino: So when they’re asking you questions, you’ve got to come off as the expert in order to instill confidence in them, in order to complete the transaction and make some money. That’s what you’re trying to do. And if you don’t make money in your first six months or a year, you’re going to fail. So yes, there’s probably somebody who could do a better job, yes, there’s probably somebody who could do it faster, and all those things may be true, and that’s probably true with everybody. I’m a great tech, Shane’s a great tech, but probably somewhere hiding in the world there’s somebody better than me. There’s no one better than Shane, but there might be somebody better than me. I’m willing to entertain that possibility. But you’ve got to consider that when you’re dealing with a customer, that’s their entire reality is the one you set for them. You tell them what can come out and you tell them what can’t. So what we’ve got here is a set of five basic principles that you need to remember and work on if you’re not already great at them, or work on them even if you are good and get better, which is the whole theme of our show.
So the first one I want you to think about, because it’s the first one that’s going to come into play when you’re communicating with any customer or prospect, is your voice tone. It’s very very important, and we all have our own voice tones and styles just from the way we speak. If you listen closely, you can hear that Shane has a slightly different voice than I do, and the way he speaks is a slightly different cadence than mine.
Shane Jacks: Slightly is an understatement.
Keith Cosentino: And your local dialect is, of course, paramount, because you speak the way you speak around the people who live around you. But in general, you’ve got to have a confident voice tone, you’ve got to speak like you know what you’re talking about, and you can’t be doing a lot of stumbling and second-guessing yourself verbally. So some things that I do and I help my guys do and I think you can do for yourself to fix your voice-tone problem even if you don’t think you have one, are these. Make sure you are not engaged in some other activity when you are on the phone. That seems pretty small and silly, but it’s true. If I’m checking my email or if I’m talking to someone else or if I’m reading something and I pick up the phone, I’m not going to be engaged with that customer or that prospect, and that’s going to translate.
So the first thing is pay attention to what you’re doing. Do what you’re doing, which is having that phone call. Secondly is, if you’re real serious about it, get to a place where you’re not going to have distractions for that phone call, and physically stand up, open up your body with your shoulders up and your face up, and get some nice big deep breaths so you’ve got some power in your voice, and start talking to this person. Now when they’re asking you specific questions, if you don’t know the answers, it’s okay to say, “I don’t know.” You don’t want to be the eternal BSer and make stuff up, because people can see through that. But when you present them with a statement of fact, you’ve got to present it as a statement of fact.
You can’t say, “Well, the thing is, those quarter panels are difficult to get into for most guys.” You know? That’s not going to cut it. You’ve got to say, “Okay, so the concern or the challenge we’re going to face on your car, which is a 1987 Civic SI, is that the quarter panels are built in such a way that the only access point is A or B,” end of statement. Not, “Maybe this,” “Maybe that.” Don’t be wishy-washy. So when you come across with that kind of tone or with a wishy-washy kind of tone where they’re hearing you and they’re not really buying what you’re saying, you don’t even have to say the wrong words. You can say all the right words with a weird tonality and you’re going to turn them off in a second. Just think about it when you’re dealing with other people either in business or with your family. You’re not listening to their words, you’re listening to their tone. That’s what sarcasm is. It’s the right words with the wrong tone. “Oh Shane, you are one of the best dent guys I’ve ever seen.”
Shane Jacks: Again, an example of that is, “Yes, yeah,” they’re the same word basically, and one says, “I can do this.” The other says, “I don’t really feel like it,” or, “I’m not really sure.” So tone is huge.
Keith Cosentino: If you don’t think you have a problem with it or you don’t think you can get better, it’s probably just because you haven’t paid attention. Everybody can get better on this depending on where you are. Oftentimes we’re getting phone calls all day. You’re in the middle of something else. Your mind is not always in the right place. You’ve got to be a pro at the highest level to be able to flip that switch and put on the right mindset right now and be in that phone call and even especially Shane and I can improve in that department. So everybody has room to improve with their voice tone. If you’re not sure how you sound, set your iPhone recorder or your substandard Android device, set record and speak a little bit to one of your prospects, maybe in person, or just speak to somebody else, and play it back and listen to yourself and see what you think you sound like. And that’s pretty high-level stuff to record yourself and go back and critique it and make yourself notes, but that’s what people who are successful do. They’re always working on themselves.
Are you trying to stay on the cutting edge of paintless dent removal when it comes to your tools? If so, you need to make sure you have two things in your arsenal. One is Shane Jack’s Jackhammer Blending Hammer. Find it at blendinghammerpdr.com. If you want to learn blending, we’ve got an awesome tutorial to go along with the hammer right there on the site. You’re going to love it, you’re going to learn something, and you’re going to get better and make money. In addition to the hammer, if you are doing any glue pulling, you need to have the Black Plague Crease Tabs. It’s a six-piece crease pulling set. The two largest are absolute monsters. They are going to pull out collision damage like nothing else you’ve got available, and the smaller sizes are going to be for the normal everyday kind of door edges and minor minor collision dents in a dog leg in a bottom of a door. I’m telling you guys, it is going to change the way you do your repairs when you have the cutting edge tools, and these are two of them. Blackplaguepdr.com, blendinghammerpdr.com, check out the sites, guys. Bring yourselves into the 21st century.
Do not forget about Recon Pro, the software that we use to run our PDR companies. The stuff is phenomenal. You’re entering all the information on your device, which is an iPhone, you’re scanning a VIN with the camera on it. Everything is populated in there for you. You buzz that little rascal off via magic off to a server somewhere. It’s all living on a server. You can dunk the phone in a bucket of water as soon as you’re done. You don’t lose any data. Everything is paperless. The invoice is delivered electronically. You can send duplicates at a moment’s notice. Guys, get off paper. Quit screwing around. Automobiletechnolgoies.com, Recon Pro, get your business into the 21st century. So voice tone leads directly into our second category.
Shane Jacks: Keith, can I interrupt you there?
Keith Cosentino: Please do.
Shane Jacks: One thing that, I read this somewhere and it wasn’t a self-help book or a sales genius or anything like that. It was another dent guy, I believe. He said before you pick up the phone, smile. And just smile when you say hello. Smile, and it’s really hard to smile and be a grump. And I was like, “I think I can do that, smile and be a grump,” but it is hard. So just grin, because when the phone rings, I’ve got my phone forwarded today, Keith, and walked in and one of the guys that works for me, I don’t think you saw this, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and did like this like he was going to throw it at me. He’s not too happy about all the phone calls he’s getting today. So I’m the same way. The phone rings and it’s, “Oh, not another one. Not another person trying to throw money at me.” So you just smile real big and you pick up the phone and say, “It’s a great day at Dent Pro. This is Shane.”
Keith Cosentino: I think we’ve talked about that on the show actually, smiling when you’re on the phone. So that also leads into our second point, which is your body language. If that phone call went successful, there’s going to be a point at which you meet that person in person, and sometimes it’s the first contact in person. So the same thing goes when you’re doing your consultation or estimate or whatever you deem necessary prior to doing a repair for this person. You’ve got to use the proper body language. You’ve got to keep your shoulders up. You’ve got to keep your eyes up and make good eye contact. If you’re in a place or culture where you do a lot of hand shaking, which 100 percent of the United States, give a good hand shake and you look somebody in the eye. Not a limpy one or no shifty eyes or no shuffling feet. These are all things that people pick up on, and if you don’t think I’m telling the truth about that, I want you to think about a couple of things.
Think about the last time you had an interaction with a doctor or a dentist, and if you felt good about them and you were confident they were going to do good things to your mouth and not screw you up, think about how they held themselves and their composure. Did they look you in the eye? Did they keep their body upright? Were they nice and clean? Did they speak with confidence? Or did they kind of shuffle out there and look disheveled and say, “Oh, go ahead and just sit back there?” No, of course not. Every successful dentist does this really well because they’re experts at dealing with people, just like us. Only difference is their tools work on your mouth and ours work on the car. But everything else is the same. When you say, “I don’t know what’s going on with my teeth,” what you’re really saying is, “I don’t know what’s going on with my teeth,” and that’s the same thing that somebody’s saying when they’re asking about the dents.
And he says what the reality is. He says, “You’re going to need X, Y, and Z.” You don’t know if he’s telling the truth or not, but you’re judging him on his body language and reputation and you say, “Well, he seems to know what he’s talking about, so if he says he’s got to saw all my teeth off and put him plastic teeth, then I’ll take his word for it.” Maybe you get a second opinion, but you’re probably going to take his word for it. That’s what most people do. And that’s because he’s instilled that confidence in you. Same thing if he did the droopy shoulders and the shuffle and said, “I really don’t know what the best course of action is for you. I would think probably we pull all your front teeth out. But I don’t – Yeah, you know what? I’m going to say yeah. Let’s pull all your front teeth out.”
You’re out of that chair before that dude ever finishes his last breath.
Shane Jacks: You want to do it now? I got time. I ain’t got another appointment for another three days.
Keith Cosentino: So that’s an extreme, of course, but think about that example and incorporate that into your behavior.
Shane Jacks: Keith, I did something the other day that we had spoken about on the podcast before, mimicking the other person’s body language, and minimal but correct contact. I was at Best Buy, I was actually needing some advice, and they said, “Well let’s go over here to John.” I remembered his name. You should be proud of me, Keith.
Keith Cosentino: I am proud.
Shane Jacks: Because I’m horrible with names. Walk in, waitress says, “I’m Debbie,” literally it is gone within the first three seconds, and Keith is calling her Debbie 4,000 times before we walk out the door, making her feel like a special Debbie. That sounded weird, didn’t it? But anyway, John is there, and John says, “Well how can I help you?” And so I’m upbeat, I mimicked his body language, this was just an exercise, and I was the customer in this case. But with those guys, yes they are experts at what they do and he was the guy there that needed to answer my question but honestly, the way he was holding himself, I wanted to instill a little bit of confidence in him. I mimicked him a little bit. I brought him up a little bit with the way I spoke to him. I touched him on the elbow and said, “Thank you, John.” And he just turned around and looked at me and he said, “Well you’re welcome, sir.” And he walked away, and he was standing straighter when he walked away.
Keith Cosentino: It’s like magic, and it sounds kind of touchy feely and half of you guys think I’m an idiot, but it’s the truth. It really works. We were out to dinner having that steak the other night, and I don’t know if you noticed, but I gave that waitress a little elbow touch too.
Shane Jacks: I didn’t notice that. I thought it was something else.
Keith Cosentino: It’s just the elbow, fellas. It’s not a code-word for something else. It is the literal elbow, the bony part of the middle of your arm on the back.
Shane Jacks: I did notice that, Keith.
Keith Cosentino: It’s because I got a little sharp with her when she didn’t leave us a plate. I felt bad about that.
Shane Jacks: I noticed the twinkle in her eye about ¾ of the way through. I think I know where that elbow touch, how it affected her. But yeah, it does work. This stuff works.
Keith Cosentino: It works it works. So I want you to think, if you don’t have a dentist and you never thought of a dentist, I want you to think of someone in your life, either in your family or someone you know personally, that you really respect or even look up to. Think about that person. Everybody has one somewhere, even if it’s someone you don’t know personally. You’ve got somebody that you respect. So picture that person, and now picture how they walk into a room. How do they stand up? How do they hold their body? How do they hold their shoulders? Do they make eye contact with you? Do they smile a lot? I know all the answers to that question already, because those are the people that we look up to. You don’t look up to some joker who’s mean or has a scowl on his face or shuffly feet or crunches down in the corner and doesn’t talk to anybody, stays on his phone.
That’s not somebody that anyone looks up to. Somebody you look up to commands respect and they walk in a room with confidence. So that is the person you need to strive to be in a service business. If you want to be an introvert and hang out in your room with the curtains closed and play guitar all day, that’s cool. But if you’re in the business of serving customers and taking dents out of cars, you need to be the guy who they need to deal with. So whether you’re acting or whether you’re being real, it doesn’t matter. If you’re serious about this business, that’s who you’ve got to be, because that’s who people want to do business with. So you be whoever you want, but if you want to be successful, there’s the person you need to be, so think about that. Now, but you’re telling me it’s hard. I don’t feel like it. I’m crabby. I don’t feel like being this guy, being the smiley guy, touching somebody’s elbow, I don’t feel like doing any of this.
To that I say, congratulations, you are living your life exactly like an infant baby. They live their life on feeling. “Do I feel like crying? Do I feel like sleeping? Or do I feel like crapping in my drawers?” That’s a baby. If you want to act like that and live your life like that, congratulations, you will live just like a baby and someone else will have to take care of you. But if you want to be successful, recognize your feelings, stuff them in your pocket, and do what needs to be done to be successful. What needs to be done has nothing to do with what you feel like. In fact, I would argue that being successful means doing exactly the opposite of what you feel like doing most of the time. Do you feel like having a sit-down appointment with the head guy at a five-dealer franchise group? No you don’t. I don’t. Shane doesn’t. I don’t feel like doing that at all.
It’s not fun. There’s nothing great about it. But that’s what needs to happen if I’m going to get this account for my guys. So it’s not what I feel like. It’s almost a perfect litmus test for what’s the right thing for my business, is if you don’t feel like doing it. Do you feel like cold calling 10 different body shops today? No sir, I do not. Great, that’s what you’re supposed to do then. So think about that.
Shane Jacks: So a major hail storm has affected your area. What do you do now? Your phone is ringing off the hook, dealerships are inquiring about your services, and retail customers and body shops are eager to get in touch with you as well. You want to capture as much as possible while still maintaining your sanity. Now how do you do this? How do you close deals, interact with customers, and answer an unrelenting phone, all while not losing your mind? Enter a PDR management company like The Hail Company. The Hail Company will come into town and manage sites of all sizes and kinds to maximize your profit potential. From placing the correct techs in the correct positions that they fit best, to total management of wholesale operations. The Hail Company will do whatever is necessary to make your storm experience a good and, more importantly, profitable one. So give Ryan a call today at 636-734-5470 or email him at ryan@thehailcompany.com.
Keith Cosentino: So we kind of lost track of numbers for it, but I think we’re right around number four here, and it kind of ties in back with the second one. Before and after the transaction, you are the only tech on the planet who can repair that dent.
Shane Jacks: This becomes a statement of fact to you in your life, whether it be fact or not.
Keith Cosentino: Right. It’s okay for you to work on you or work on your skills and listen to the PDR College podcast and try to get some training and get better. You do that on your own time. But when you’re out talking to customers and you’re out in the trenches, you’re the guy.
Shane Jacks: You’re it. There’s no one else.
Keith Cosentino: And Shane, you’ve been real vocal about this in the past, about telling customers what you can and can’t do and especially how you market your shop, first as a mobile outfit.
Shane Jacks: Yeah, I mean, I’m constantly – There’s one thing that I don’t have a lack of, Keith, and that is confidence in myself, and mainly in this business, and I can, whenever a customer walks in, not only do they see the confidence that I have in the way I hold myself. But especially, the place that I transfer the best is in this area, where I convince them before they walk out this door, Keith, they understand that, and there’s a difference in them understanding that I believe I’m the best in the area. They can walk out and think, “Well that guy thinks he’s the best dent guy in the world.” That’s one thing. But when they walk out the door, if they think, “That guy is the best dent guy in the world, then you’ve won that customer, and that’s what you have to make them believe.
Keith Cosentino: And you’ve done the first step successfully when you’ve made the keychain sized Dent Olympic trophies that you give out to all your customers.
Shane Jacks: And I also have a box of them that just say, “Champ.” “Don’t do it champ.”
Keith Cosentino: So the last point in our list, number five of our five, is remember you’re running a business here, right? This is the point of this whole endeavor is to make some money. So the last thing I want you to remember to do is to make an invoice. That’s what the experts do. That’s how you get to the next level. You’ve got to make an invoice. You’ve got to bill somebody for something. It’s real fun to give things away and to be sweet on people and to go walk lots and all that kind of stuff. But until you turn in the invoice, you’re broke, Jack. You’ve got nothing. So Shane and I have both been guilty of this in the past, getting sweet on somebody, an old lady or something, and doing something for free or nothing or $20.00 or $40.00, but that’s not the way to success. You’ve got to bill somebody for something. I don’t care what you’re doing. Even if you’re fixing a scratch or her door doesn’t close.
Doesn’t matter. You bill somebody for something, because that’s how you’re staying in business. That’s why you woke up and went to work today. So don’t mistake charity for a lack of invoicing. They’re not the same thing. You can be nice to people. You can be sweet to people. But you’ve got to make an invoice or the business is closed tomorrow.
Shane Jacks: Yeah, and it’s easy to give some of that stuff away, Keith, but learning from you, I understand that buffing out a scratch has value, okay? Now I will throw that in and I will work it into the price and use that as a –
Keith Cosentino: Totally different though. That’s building into the price of something that already existed. If they bring you something that’s just a scratch –
Shane Jacks: You’ve got to bill for that thing. You can’t let them go without that. And I actually kind of teach this to, you notice the paint guys that are outside here, right Keith? Man, they’ll touch up a car for $20.00. They’ll mix up a bottle of paint, custom mix, takes them 10 minutes to do that, they’ll take that bottle, and they’ll grab their paintbrush and they’ll do, if it’s a small touch up, he’ll be like, “$20.00.” And I’m constantly telling him, I’m like, “Guys, seriously, it’s worth more than that.” The bottle of touch up that they’re going to buy from the Lexus dealer –
Keith Cosentino: It’s $20.00.
Shane Jacks: Yeah, it’s $15.00 to $20.00, and then they’ve got to go get it, and then they’ve got to put it on themselves. And here’s their excuse. “Anybody can put touch up on.” No they can’t, and that’s what you have to convince them of, is that they can’t do it. They don’t believe it the value of their service, and I have no problem, I do it quite a bit. Those guys will ask, my customers will ask for touch up and I’ll say, “If those guys are going to do it for me for $20.00,” they’ll do it for anybody. They’ll do it for me for $20.00. I’ll tell them $40.00 or $50.00. I’m making $20.00 to $30.00 myself. Most of the time I actually give a good bit of it back to them just being a nice guy to the paint guys, but it’s worth more than that, especially if you sell it as being worth more than that. It kind of ties in to the other stuff we were talking about there, Keith.
Keith Cosentino: It sure does. So keep that revenue coming in. Stop giving stuff away for free. You can be a great resource. You can help people with a lot of things. And some of you listeners who’ve been with us from early episodes remember that I like to say we’re not taking dents out for a living, we’re making people happy. Doesn’t matter what that is. Pushing out a bumper, buffing out a scuff, or whatever, generally we’re talking a dent out. But there’s a lot of things we can do that are not taking dents out. And I’m by no means telling you to change the way you bill your services on your website and say, “Hey, we’re a touch up guy. We’re a scratch guy. We’re glass guys.” That’s the opposite. But even if you’re just a dent guy, they’re going to bring you this other crap anyway.
Take the opportunity to bring in some revenue, and if it’s something you can do easily, do it. I’m not saying paint a bumper and all that kind of stuff. It’s normal stuff that we’re going to do anyway. We’re going to polish the scratch because you can’t see the dent with the scratch on it. We’re going to remove a stuff because you can’t see the dent. If you can remove a scuff in five minutes and they’re there, it’s worth $75.00 or $80.00 and send them on their way. Everybody’s happy.
Shane Jacks: And you can sell that also. There are tight-wads out there, and you start talking about, if you don’t build the price into, if you separate it like this, okay, “You’ve got this dent and scuff mark on your left quarter panel, sir. We can get the dent and the scuff mark out for $320.00,” he’ll go, “Oh, well I’ll just have that, I’ve got a buddy, Bob, who does paint repair. He said he could buff that out for me. He’ll do it for free.” Then you’ve go to build back into it, “Well I have to do that to begin with. Sure, if you want to take it to Bob and have him buff it out before he brings it back to me, but then I may have to cut and buff it a little myself. You’re running a risk of burning your clear coat there,” you have to sell it back that you’re the guy to do that, even if Bob, his best friend, does paint work.
Keith Cosentino: If he was that tight, they would have fixed it before it got to you.
Shane Jacks: Exactly.
Keith Cosentino: So, those are the five things that I want you to work on this week. Put them into practice. Make some notes. If you didn’t make any good notes, go back and listen to the show again and make yourself a few notes and work on this stuff. I promise you, I can reach through this podcast and shake your hand and promise you that if you do one of these five, you’ll make more money this week than you did last week.
Shane Jacks: For sure. I’m a living testament to that. I’m putting this stuff that Keith’s been banging into my head for a few years now, and it’s working.
Keith Cosentino: Shane, tell us about the next tool we need to have.
Shane Jacks: That is a very good question, Keith.
Keith Cosentino: Have we talked about those door-hook tools from PDR Finesse that you like so much, with that weird bend at the bottom? It’s a J tool but it kind of bends out toward the skin.
Shane Jacks: I believe we have. Hey, if we haven’t, it can bear repeating. One of my guys just go the shorter ones. There are two different lengths there. I’ll have to pull that up, Keith.
Keith Cosentino: So while Shane pulls that up, if you’re not familiar with this tool, it’s a normal window-style tool, like a J shape or a gradual L bend, that similar to what we were talking about from A-1 tool the other day, those two workhouse door tools that I go to all the time. But the ones from PDR Finesse, they have a weird bend at the very tip where they kind of come out towards the skin and they’re sharpened a little bit.
Shane Jacks: Yeah there is, the ones that I just pulled up are the number 226 L 24 inch, 5/16th diameter, and again, go on pdrfinessetools.com to find that number 226.
Keith Cosentino: And that’s a pair. That’s both of them.
Shane Jacks: You really need both of them.
Keith Cosentino: Because they have that custom bend that you’re not going to use it on the other side.
Shane Jacks: And this is really hard to explain over just by telling you about it, but these things crook on the end and when they contact, you have a soft, where it bends to curl back out, there’s a soft, in the – imagine using the back of the tool, and it’s bent enough to where it contacts in a fairly small area, but you can use it as a pretty blunt tool. I use these on body lines. It’s a heel, yeah. I use these on body lines quite a bit, and you’ll use the hell to start muscling that body line up and then you grab the other one or turn it around, whichever is ideal, and then you use the sharp tip. The thing I like about these sharp tips on these tools is they bend back towards the door, or towards the panel. These are going to be used in the doors 99 percent of the time. They curl back and your contact point, instead of being the side of a sharp tipped tool, Keith, it’s actually more the point because they curl around and point back towards the outside of, or back towards the panel that you’re working on.
And they actually seem to grip better too. It doesn’t seem like they’re going to slip as much, and I think it’s because that contact is more perpendicular to the panel than it is with any of the, most of the other door tools out there.
Keith Cosentino: So I might have to try those myself. I don’t own them, but I know you’ve been a fan for a while.
Shane Jacks: Yeah, we actually have both lengths now, so I’m not certain what the shorter ones are. The 24 is what we’re looking at right now.
Keith Cosentino: Okay, so that’s PDR Finesse 226L is the set, right?
Shane Jacks: That is correct.
Keith Cosentino: So we’ll have a link on pdrcollege.com where you can go and find that if you don’t want to look it up yourself. I’ll give you guys an update as well on the smooth series tabs. They’re still rocking and rolling as they should be. Everybody’s been happy with them. I’ve been excited about that. We’re just now getting some inventory in the next week or so where I’ll be able to ship everything everywhere. We’re finally getting production where we need to. But one question a lot of guys have presented to me – well there’s two, really. The first one is Keith, you have five different kinds of glues on your site. What the heck is the difference between all of them? Well two of them are relatively new, and I’ve just been testing them myself. There’s an orange one called Orange Fire and a gold one, like a sparkly gold, called Gold Rush. Orange Fire seems very similar to those amber glues, if you’ve used any of those. They’re kind of like a clear but maybe a little more solid than a clear.
It comes into the gun safety orange. It comes out in an amber color. So it’s been a pretty good all around glue. I don’t have anything bad to say about it. I still go to the green in this climate when I have the two back to back, but I’m just now getting into the cold weather. So I have a feeling that orange glue will be a little bit better in the cold than the green is, because I think the green is going to get a little brittle in the cold. The other new one is that gold one, and to be honest, the gold has not been hooking up as hard as some of the other stuff I have. And at first I thought, “Well, I’m not going to use it at all.” But, those smooth tabs hook up so freaking hard sometimes, especially the crease tabs, they’re pulling more than I want on a certain dent. So I’ve actually enjoyed having a glue that doesn’t bite as hard chalked up in a gun ready to go.
And if I’m working on something real soft, I can go to this softer glue and get a little more easy pulls on it. I’m still pulling it early, because those big flat tabs, they hook up like nuts, and they move a lot of metal, sometimes too much if you’re trying to do some precision work. So a little bit of a softer glue and a little faster pull and you can do a little more finesse kind of glue pulling. So I’ve actually found an advantage to using that glue that doesn’t stick as hard. So I wouldn’t advise you to buy 10 bags of it, but maybe one bag just for that scenario when you need to get it out. And glue guns are so cheap. Unless you’re buying the most high-end glue guns, if you’re running a basic Sure Bonder or something and it’s $10.00, buy five of them.
Shane Jacks: Good point.
Keith Cosentino: Put a different color in each gun and quit wasting $1.50 every time you’ve got to clear out that gun. And more, it really takes two sticks to get all these colors all the way out. So just stick a new stick in each gun and put them in a little plastic tool box and use that. That’s my solution and I enjoy it. I don’t waste any glue burning through trying to get to the next color, and that takes a lot of time, too. You can’t melt a whole stick. You can melt the whole chamber, which is a quarter of a stick, and then you’ve got to let the rest of it heat up and blow that through. It’s done. So, and you think you pull the stick out backwards, you think you’re going to save it and use it again. It never goes back in the gun. It ends up in the garbage or in the bottle of your tool box.
Shane Jacks: Every single time.
Keith Cosentino: So just get new guns. And don’t get the super cheap ones. I tried that. They’re terrible. Get the Sure Bonders. If you have to get them on Amazon or something, do that. In fact, we’ll put a link for the Amazon Sure Bonder guns on the show as well. So the other colors we have are black, pink, and green. Black is probably going to be my go to in cold weather stuff, normal to cold weather, and green and pink, pink is what I’m using in room temperature kind of normal circumstances, and green is what I’m using when it’s a little warm out. And all three of them hook up stupid. They are the best glues I’ve had a chance of getting my hands on. That’s why I carry them. I could carry just about anything I want, but I’m only putting stuff on my site that I personally use that when people call and ask me, “Should I buy it?” I can say, “Yes.” I don’t want to sell junk. And we do have that dent tape coming that I like to use for Mercedes. I found a source for that, and that’s going to be on the site soon.
It’s in route to me now, so I’m excited to give you guys an easy place to get that stuff instead of chasing down a dealership. So here’s a pro tip for using the new Smooth Series tabs. You guys that have them know what I’m talking about. But the round tabs that we’ve got are relatively thin, the middle sizes. The 30mm is our biggest round tab. It’s solid. Really stiff. It pulls hard. Sometimes too hard. So a lot of guys end up going down to the 25 and 20 mm tabs. Those are like what you would call a nickel and a quarter, roughly. They have a pretty thin wall. They hook up nice and they pull a nice little point, but they don’t give that monster snap and over pull something. Sometimes you need to pull really really hard on a round dent. You need to snap that thing up, and you almost want to volcano it because you want to unlock the center of it. Those tabs aren’t really meant to do that. They’re meant more of kind of a finesse tab to pull up just a little point out of the center, and not over pull it.
That’s why I designed them like that, and they’re fantastic for that, or if you’re working on a really soft sail panel, you don’t want these big giant tabs to over pull a big volcano. You’re going to spend three hours knocking it down. But sometimes you need that pull. When you need that pull, what I want you to do is get out the crease tabs, the small, the three smallest sizes, and put one round dab of glue in the dead center of that tab, and place it very gently. Not hard like I tell you to put the other ones. Place it gently and just tap it down, and spread that little dot out into a circle. The dent doesn’t care that there’s more tab hanging over the edge if it’s not touching the car. It doesn’t know any better. So as far as the glue and the tab and the car are concerned, it’s a circle tab, because that’s the only thing stuck to the car. You want the hard pull for a smaller circle tab, but you want a little harder than what you’re getting with the other smooth series tabs, use the crease tab. Just be careful, because it’s going to pull stupid. It pulls like a freight train.
So experiment on something junky, but that thing’s going to hook up a lot harder than you expect it to, so much so that I’ve considered making a follow up set that are round tabs that have a really thick base to give you that same pull without having to goof round with the creases tab. But if you want, you can cut a crease tab down or sand it down and make it into a circle. Nothing’s off limits with glue tabs. Nobody modifies them, but you can modify them. The crease tabs, I’ve got a couple that I’ve ground down to a skinny little crease tab. I can’t believe how hard they hook up. It’s kind of retarded. In fact, my CT38, that little 38 millimeter crease tab with the wings on the back, I’ve got one ground down to about ¼ inch wide. It needs a slide hammer to come off the car. It pulls stupid. So try that. If you have a couple of extra tabs, throw them in a grinder and experiment.
Don’t be afraid also to make a custom tab for a weird dent that you have. It’s a $2.00 tab.
Shane Jacks: I’ve cut down one of your original crease tabs, the two and a half, is that correct? Two and a half inch, the skinny one. I’ve cut it down to the point where my mini lifter feet will go all the way around that tab. In certain positions, you can’t get the mini lifter to – you need it perpendicular to the way the tab is running instead of parallel, the feet, so I cut it down and I use that thing quite a bit.
Keith Cosentino: And I can neither confirm nor deny that we’ll have a new Black Plague size just like that coming out in January.
Shane Jacks: All right.
Keith Cosentino: All right fellas, we’ve enjoyed this show with you. We thank our Japanese business men for doing our intro. Those guys are fantastic. Until next time –
Shane Jacks: Get better.
Keith Cosentino: The time has come. The black plague smooth series tabs are a reality. They are available for you now on blackplaguepdr.com. If you’ve been living under a rock, it is time to come out. We are making money out here with glue pulling, and we’re using the smooth series tabs to do it. We are getting pulls out of these tabs that you cannot get from any tabs no matter the price. These things flap hook up strong, snappy pulls, every time. These tabs, along with the green glue that we have also on the site, are blowing people away. If you want to be a part of the movement, get yourself over there and get some tabs into your box. Blackplaguepdr.com or deadrattabs.com. Guys, the game has changed. Don’t get left behind. Stay on the cutting edge.
Duration: 45 minutes
