Anchors
We’ve talked about price anchoring before, but this time we approach it from a different angle. Let’s talk about the Ultimate Price Anchor for PDR!
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Transcript:
Keith Cosentino: I’m Keith Cosentino. He’s Shane Jacks. And this is the PDR College Podcast. Every week we are bringing you the most valuable information that we have gathered in our dent removal careers, and we’re sharing it with you here on a podcast. We’re excited to be here every week. Were excited to share our opinions on tools, where the market is going and most importantly, the things that we do every day to make more money because that is what this endeavor is all about. We want giant stacks of cash. Shane, why do you want so much cash, such big stacks?
Shane Jacks: It is very simple this week, Keith. I have had a revelation over the last several days and it is because I need to buy the Florida Keys.
Keith Cosentino: I still haven’t been there.
Shane Jacks: All of it. Let’s catch up here a little bit, Keith, in our lives. We haven’t really spoken before this. It’s been a while since we’ve spoken. Right before this show, we discussed business basically, and we haven’t caught up. I wanna tell you about my week from hell.
Keith Cosentino: It was bad. If you don’t know what’s going on, Shane was on vacation last week. The guy actually takes a vacation a year. Apparently, it didn’t go that well. Now, I wanna here what happened.
Shane Jacks: You do know I’m taking another one the week after next.
Keith Cosentino: When you start making Keith and Shane money, you gotta spend it on something, so you end up taking a couple more vacations. I have one in November too.
Shane Jacks: Originally, we had plans. It was set in stone. We ordered tickets and booked a cruise for the four of us. We are on our way down to Tampa to get on that big boat. Not the one I own.
Keith Cosentino: A smaller one.
Shane Jacks: That’s run by Carnival Cruise Lines. Homeboy, we get right up above Tampa, about two hours away from the ports. We had about five hours to spare, so we’re good. We’re ready to go. Someone shot at a cop right there on the interstate.
Keith Cosentino: No way.
Shane Jacks: They shut the entire state of Florida down for the next three hours. We’re sitting there. I was taking a nap while my wife was driving. I woke up and said, “Why aren’t we moving?” We’ve been like this for 20 minutes. I get on my phone and I’m looking it up. I’m, “Holy crap. The interstate is shut down.” They re-route us. We’re sitting there completely still. At this time we’re about an hour and a half to two hours in and we have moved, literally, less than 150 or 200 yards on I-75. It’s not looking good for us. We’re starting to sweat this a little bit.
Keith Cosentino: I was gonna say, right about then is when my heart starts beating.
Shane Jacks: My daughter’s back there and she’s, “Daddy, are we gonna make it?” “We’re gonna make it.” I knew we weren’t. At that point, I said, “We’re gonna make it. It’s cool.” Man, we’re sitting there completely still and we get rear-ended.
Keith Cosentino: Isn’t that nice?
Shane Jacks: I get out. I’m already ill. I closed the door and the guy is not from around here. I start yelling at him, “What are you doing?” “I’m so sorry.” “What were you doing? We were sitting still.” He said, “I was looking at my kid in the backseat.”
Keith Cosentino: Did he just bump you or hit you pretty good?
Shane Jacks: Just bumped us. It wasn’t bad. I was just ill, mainly. He says, “It’s a rental car.” His car was a rental car and he’s starting to say that. I just looked at him, “You’re an absolute moron. Just don’t worry about it.” I get back in. At this point, the little scrub on the back of my wife’s bumper is not worth the time to wait on anybody.
Keith Cosentino: You need a new skin or just the paint?
Shane Jacks: No, it’s just the paint. So, we get back in the car. We finally get going down the interstate about an hour after that. I am flying. I am doing 95 down the interstate.
Keith Cosentino: You took the wheel at this point?
Shane Jacks: At this point, I have taken the wheel. A rock flies up and hits the windshield and cracks it on the car. We’re just saying, “Really? What else can happen?” About 20 minutes after that, it starts raining, and, apparently, when it starts raining in Florida, you hit your brakes and slow down to nothing. Long story short, we missed the cruise ship by 15 freaking minutes. My kids are upset. I’ve got really good kids. I’m really angry at this point. There’s a lot of stress in the car.
Keith Cosentino: First world problems.
Shane Jacks: I know. I’m sitting there, and I’m, “We gotta do something.” I get on my phone and I am frantically searching for what we can do. “Let’s go to the Keys.” I find a really nice resort down there that had one condo left.
Keith Cosentino: I would have gone a different route. Helicopter charter to the boat. That’s just me though.
Shane Jacks: I don’t own a helicopter yet. My yacht’s bigger than yours.
Keith Cosentino: From now on, when you need the helicopter, just call me.
Shane Jacks: Will do. I did seriously think about flying to the port, but my kids don’t have passports, so I couldn’t do that. We’re gonna get them passports, but we’re actually gonna start flying down the day before and bump all that noise.
Keith Cosentino: So, do you lose all that money?
Shane Jacks: Yes. $4,000.00, vanished.
Keith Cosentino: So sorry.
Shane Jacks: I found a really nice cottage down there in the Keys.
Keith Cosentino: In the Keys. Had you been before?
Shane Jacks: No. I’d always wanted to go. Never been. So, I get down there to the Keys and absolutely fall in love with the place. Then, we ride up to Orlando and go to Islands of Adventure.
Keith Cosentino: Horses again? All the way from the Keys to Orlando?
Shane Jacks: You’re so funny. That was my week. Seeing as you’re making fun of me, I’m gonna end the story there.
Keith Cosentino: What are the Keys like? I’ve never been there. Seems super laidback, still America, and mostly old people.
Shane Jacks: Crazy laidback. The resorts are nice and there are some extremely nice homes, but 90 percent of what’s down there are shanties basically right on the water. It’s what Jimmy Buffet sings about basically.
Keith Cosentino: Pop-Tarts on the ground or something?
Shane Jacks: Pop-Tarts.
Keith Cosentino: I don’t know. I’ve only heard a couple of his songs.
Shane Jacks: If you don’t like Jimmy Buffet, we need to just end this relationship right now. It’s better than what I thought it was gonna be because it wasn’t as developed as I thought it was gonna be. It’s still what I think it should be. It’s a Caribbean atmosphere here in the States.
Keith Cosentino: I’ve been to the Caribbean a handful of times. I’m not a huge fan. It’s all this broken down, third world stuff on relatively nice beaches, but it’s not over the top. Coincidentally, I believe you can tell people’s opinions of it by the way they pronounce the term. Pirates of the Caribbean. If they talk about the Caribbean, they’re talking about it being crappy. If they say Caribbean, like “Caribbean Queen,” the song, they usually like it. If you say, “I’ve been to the Caribbean,” it usually means you hate it. If you say Caribbean, you’re a fan.
Shane Jacks: I say Caribbean, and I love it.
Keith Cosentino: There goes that.
Shane Jacks: I don’t say Caribbean ever. I can’t say never, but it’s Caribbean. I’m sorry. Now you’ve got me confused. It’s the Caribbean. It’s just laidback. How can I describe it?
Keith Cosentino: There’s no nightlife.
Shane Jacks: I like resorts. Don’t get me wrong. I do like really nice places. I love that. That’s not where I wanna live. It’s just too pompous for me. I want laidback. That’s what I grew up in. It’s not exactly where you’re at, Keith. The water is crystal clear. We went snorkeling. The snorkeling was as good as in Cozumel, Grand Cayman, some of the other places I’ve been snorkeling. It was absolutely wonderful. The water was really calm, insanely clear, tons of fish out there. The fishing is one of the biggest fishing destinations in the world. I love deep sea fishing. Basically, I found out what I thought I knew, but I solidified it. I want to live there. I want to own the entire place
Keith Cosentino: Whenever I go somewhere like that and I enjoy it, the first thing I do is check out how much the real estate costs.
Shane Jacks: Yes. I know how much everything costs down there.
Keith Cosentino: What’s the entry point for a place in the Keys?
Shane Jacks: It depends on which Key you’re in, but median, you can get a single wide trailer for about $150,000.00. Basically, you’re buying the lot. It’s a tiny lot.
Keith Cosentino: On a beach or just somewhere.
Shane Jacks: No, on a beach. They’re not a lot of beaches there.
Keith Cosentino: Is it all rocky?
Shane Jacks: It’s a lot of rocky stuff. There are some beaches there, but it’s mainly rocky. It’s not a beach paradise. The water’s just crazy blue. I don’t like sitting out on a beach and doing nothing. I wanna do something in the water. I wanna go snorkeling, go fishing, and I wanna sit on the dock and watch the sun set. I would rather sit on a dock than on the sand. That’s my personal preference.
Keith Cosentino: You like the way a beach looks better than the rocky shores. That’s one of the things that turned me off about the Caribbean. There are some beaches, but generally it’s craggy, rocky areas that you can’t even be comfortable in. You can’t even sit on them and have a good time, but the water looks nice.
Shane Jacks: I hate Myrtle Beach. Myrtle Beach is one of the biggest tourist beaches in America, right? You may not know that, Keith. You would be amazed at the people that come to Myrtle Beach here in South Carolina.
Keith Cosentino: There’s good fishing there too, right?
Shane Jacks: Not really. It’s decent. It’s not great.
Keith Cosentino: Better than at Chicken Lips.
Shane Jacks: Yes, the deep sea fishing is much better than in Arkansas, which is landlocked. They call it the Grand Strand. The reason it’s so touristy and people come is the beaches are very flat, very sandy, very deep and there’s a lot of places to lay out. That’s where I’ve been going my entire life, and I really don’t like it that much. It’s just too crowded for me. That’s the image I have in my mind of sandy beaches.
I like the beaches in California. They’re just nowhere near as crowded as Myrtle Beach. Not even close, when I’ve been. I haven’t been in the dead middle of summer, so there’s that. Venice Beach is about how deep that sand is from the edge of the sidewalk to the ocean. Myrtle Beach and the Grand Strand for 100-some odd miles straight is nothing but that, and it’s really flat. I guess I’ve been going to it my entire life three or four times a year when I was a kid. I don’t like it.
Keith Cosentino: Obviously, nobody asked Shane’s opinion on where they’re going.
Shane Jacks: I want crystal clear waters that are fertile.
Keith Cosentino: So, the Keys are where it’s at. $100,000.00 to $150,000.00 gets you into a shanty. What if you want a nice place?
Shane Jacks: If you want a two-bedroom condo that’s nice, you’re looking at $280,000.00 to $380,000.00. You’re not going to own any land, just that condo. If it’s on the water, then you’re looking at up to half a million dollars. I saw some houses on the water from $1.5 million up to $20 million. These aren’t huge. These are 2,500 square foot houses. There was one that was 3,500 square feet, but it had four more lots that were buildable, nice pool. It was $7 million.
Keith Cosentino: I could do half of that, I guess. So, how do you get from Key to Key? Are there bridges everywhere?
Shane Jacks: There’s a lot of land actually. You think there’s a ton of bridges and there are several, but they’re more connected by land. There are independent Keys, but a lot of them are connected by land.
Keith Cosentino: Are the cars all crappy like everywhere else in the Caribbean?
Shane Jacks: No, this is America. Dude, I saw a Lambo down there. These are pretty rich people for the most part that have their vacation homes down there. The people working there don’t. They’re not driving anything nice. They’re a part of the service industry for tourism, so they’re not super rich for the most part. It’s like Greenville.
Keith Cosentino: It was sounding pretty good before.
Shane Jacks: I’m talking about the cars.
Keith Cosentino: I can’t believe you lost all that money on the cruise. That stinks.
Shane Jacks: Yes, but I found somewhere I like.
Keith Cosentino: If you had had trip insurance, you would have gotten $100.00 back.
Shane Jacks: I had trip insurance. It doesn’t cover traffic jams.
Keith Cosentino: You needed to break one of your kids’ legs.
Shane Jacks: Exactly. We would have had to break everybody’s legs. They would have only paid for one person.
Keith Cosentino: We all broke our left legs. So, you stayed down there the whole time and just drove back?
Shane Jacks: No, we went to Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios also. We took two days. It was a fun time. It was good.
Keith Cosentino: Were the kids happy with all that?
Shane Jacks: Like I said, I’ve got really good kids. They were a little upset, but once I said we were going to the Keys and I showed them a picture of the resort, they were, “Cool, Dad.”
Keith Cosentino: You stayed at a resort down there.
Shane Jacks: Yes.
Keith Cosentino: I thought you were just at a hotel or something.
Shane Jacks: No, it’s a resort. They have duplexes on the waterfront and a big hotel. It’s a pretty neat place called Hawks Cay.
Keith Cosentino: What’s that cost?
Shane Jacks: We did some kayaking and the snorkeling was through the resort. It ended up costing us about $3,000.00 for four nights.
Keith Cosentino: That’s not too bad. It’s all-inclusive food and everything?
Shane Jacks: No.
Keith Cosentino: So, just for the room.
Shane Jacks: Yes.
Keith Cosentino: One room or two.
Shane Jacks: Two bedroom. Two story. It’s a nice place right on the water.
Keith Cosentino: Well, maybe one day I’ll go.
Shane Jacks: It’s nice. You won’t like it. You’re too highfalutin, man.
Keith Cosentino: When I picture going to some waterfront place, I’m wearing those super white little sneakers with almost no tread on the bottom. Then, I’ve got white shorts and a nice white shirt and the sweater over the shoulders with the sleeves hooked up in the front and I have a gold watch. That’s my attire.
Shane Jacks: That’s definitely you. There’s definitely plenty of those people there. Tons.
Keith Cosentino: I throw my head back and leave my mouth open extra long.
Shane Jacks: I have a pretty good story. My kids weren’t with me, but there were some kids right on the dock right outside. I was walking by myself. This young boy with blond hair floating out of his ball cap was coming through in this piece of crap boat, but he had a stereo system on it. He has some rap crap playing that’s saying “F you.” Every other word is an F bomb or a bitch. You know what I mean? I yelled at him. I said, “Hey.” He cut his boat off, and I said, “Dude, there’s kids out here, man. Show a little respect.” He said, “Okay.” He cuts it down.
Then, he couldn’t get the boat started back up. Before he gets it started back up, I said, “Thank you for that.” He said, “No problem.” He gets it cranked back up and get gets about 100 yards away from me. He turns it back up and starts dancing like, “I got you, sucker.” I’m, “What a punk.” Did he think I was gonna jump in and chase him in the water and now that he’s far enough away, I’m not gonna do that? Ridiculous.
Keith Cosentino: We’re still in America.
Shane Jacks: ‘Merica. So, how’s your life?
Keith Cosentino: It’s been kind of bananas. I’ve been working more than I wish I was, but getting a lot of stuff done. We are getting ready to hit a vacation here in just two days.
Shane Jacks: Good for you.
Keith Cosentino: Going wherever I want. Apparently, I want to go to Disneyland. Why are you laughing? I haven’t seen enough the first five times. We are gonna check it out again because my youngest daughter is just old enough to understand what she is going to. She’s 17 months, so she’ll kind of understand being there. My second youngest is almost four, so she’s kind of going for the first time. My other two are just old enough to act miserable in a place that’s costing me thousands of dollars a day.
Shane Jacks: I was about to say, that place is not cheap, man.
Keith Cosentino: No. We’ve had this conversation a couple different times. We talk about Disneyland a lot when we have kids. I was getting ready to pull the trigger on that guided tour again.
Shane Jacks: those are very reasonable.
Keith Cosentino: I even sent you the link. I actually wanna bring that up. That’s kind of the purpose of the show today. We stumbled on this, but it’s a fact. It’s the Disney Concierge Tour or Service. I can’t remember what the term is exactly, but for some reason I couldn’t find the [prices posted the last time we talked about this when I did a trip a year ago. This time I could find them. If I remember correctly, for each tour guide that comes with you, they need to be with you a minimum of six hours. You can keep them longer, and most people do, but it’s a minimum of six hours. It’s $360.00 per hour per cast members they would call them, or tour guide, as you would call them. So, $360.00 an hour for somebody whose skill set is “I know Disneyland pretty well.”
Shane Jacks: Disneyland is not huge.
Keith Cosentino: It’s not. There’s a lot of stuff to know. I’m not taking anything from these people who will be running around with you, if you buy this thing. Oftentimes, when you’re there, you’ll see people with two of them or three of them or four of them, and you know they’re not just there for the six hours. They’re kicking it with them all day, which is, oftentimes, a 12-hour day at Disneyland. You can double the one-person cost and quadruple that for some of these guys. That’s just your time at the park. That doesn’t include your tickets or food or anything. They just cart you around and show you some cool stuff and get you into some rides that maybe you would have had to wait longer. They don’t even guarantee that.
In fact, they say that will not happen, but I’ve seen it happen. The reason I’m talking about it is that a lot of us in the retail business talk often about believing how much you’re worth. Coming to a place in your mind where you are worth $800.00 an hour, $1,000.00 an hour, even $300.00, $400.00 or $500.00. Everybody has their own number that they either are stuck at or are trying to get themselves to in their mind. A lot of guys have trouble with that, Shane. A lot of them can’t come to the place where they feel like their PDR skills are worth $500.00 an hour.
Shane Jacks: For sure.
Keith Cosentino: These guys carting you around Disneyland are getting –
Shane Jacks: With a very slim skill set. I’m gonna defend that a little bit. They’re not getting it.
Keith Cosentino: They’re not, but you’re paying it.
Shane Jacks: Right.
Keith Cosentino: That’s an interesting point you bring up because when we are charging that, we’re not getting it either.
Shane Jacks: Correct. I was actually going to bring that up.
Keith Cosentino: If you’re running a real business, you don’t just take the $500.00 and stuff it in your pocket and go buy a bunch of Twizzlers. You gotta pay some bills, man.
Shane Jacks: And grow. There’s more to just taking money.
Keith Cosentino: There sure is. There really is. You gotta factor that in. If you’re running a complete business and you’re paying for everything and you’ve got people working for you and you’ve got administration you’ve gotta pay for, you need $100.00 an hour just to keep the boat afloat. Forget about making anybody any money. I know that seems like a lot to a lot of you guys, but you’d be surprised at how expensive it is to run a business legitimately. A lot of us are running them in half in and half out. You have one foot in the legitimate circle and one foot out basically running a garage sale. There’s so many of you guys out there with no or improper insurance.
I’ve seen them on Facebook, and we’ve talked to some because we had that episode a while back with Austin Bowden who’s taken it upon himself to learn this industry and he knows what insurance you need and don’t need and what the limits should be. We happen to be friends, and he tells me all the time about guys calling him and they’ve got some policy they’re paying $400.00 for, but they’re paying for nothing. They’re not insured for any conditions under which they’d be working. They just think they are because they don’t ask enough questions. They figure, “If I’m paying for something, I’ve got insurance,” and that’s it.
The fact of the matter is you’ll almost never use it. When this dude arcs a battery and burns down a car and half a garage, he’s gonna find out who had the right amount of insurance and who didn’t real fast. Stuff like that adds up. That guy doesn’t wanna spend $2,000.00 a year. He wants to spend $400.00. That little $2,000.00 a year and professional shirts and all that stuff you don’t think is expensive all adds up.
Shane Jacks: Another completely unrelated, Keith, but life insurance. What’s that?
Keith Cosentino: Assuming you have a family, it’s huge.
Shane Jacks: If you don’t have a family, and you’re by yourself, it’s really inconsequential. I constantly see where someone has died or is terminal and you just wonder what’s gonna happen at the end. That stuff’s not cheap. It’s not outrageously expensive, but if you’re gonna have at least ten times your annual salary, which is what is recommended, then for most of you, that’s gonna be well over $1 million. It should be anyway. It could be closer to $3 or $4 or $5 million worth of insurance, and that’s gonna cost you a few hundred a month, $400.00 or $500.00, depending on how old you are. That’s not cheap. Health insurance. It’s crazy for the four of us. I can only imagine what yours is, Keith.
Keith Cosentino: If I could put that money in the bank and start hiring Native Americans to dance around and try to heal us, I’d be ahead.
Shane Jacks: In the past couple years, I’ve averaged over $20,000.00 in a year in health costs.
Keith Cosentino: We’re over that by probably 25 or 30 percent.
Shane Jacks: It’s absolutely crazy.
Keith Cosentino: And the coverage we’re buying isn’t all that great. I would have thought, if I’m spending this kind of money, I would walk into the place and they’d be, “Mr. Cosentino, please, we’re gonna bring three doctors out and we’re gonna carry you up to a room and give you some refreshments and find out what’s wring with you.” I’m still paying $30.00 copays and I wait in line and I gotta go see three different doctors. I literally had one guy tell me the other day that I have gas when I’m dealing with the stomach pain that I have. “I don’t have gas, brother.”
I wish I had a jersey on my back and I played for a sports team because I’d have nine doctors out there all fretting over what’s wrong with me and doing every kind of scan available to find out what was going wrong. Apparently, it takes a few more $100,000.00 a year in medical costs to get the coverage that I think I should have. Obama coverage. Not Obama plan, but Obama personal coverage.
Shane Jacks: You’ll never have that, cuz.
Keith Cosentino: That’s the truth. So, when you’re talking about what you’re worth, you gotta consider these Disneyland guys. $360.00 an hour and they’re booked all day every day by people with the money. There’s a lot of people out there that don’t have the money. They’re not the customers for that service. Whatever your number is, I want you to try to find a way to convince yourself that you’re worth it because it’s gonna bleed over into your estimates. You’re gonna start getting those numbers up where they should be and start making the money you could or should be making.
Shane and I both regularly do jobs that average out per hour at $500.00, $600.00, $700.00, $800.00 an hour. We’re able to do it because we’ve come to a place that we feel like we’re ready to accept that wage. I call it a wage. Unfortunately, that’s what it is. We’re still working, doing a trade in a time. That’s a wage. That’s a precursor to the actual topic today, which Shane’s gonna spearhead, but we’re bringing up price anchoring again, aren’t we, Shane?
Shane Jacks: Yes. I’m gonna act like Keith in that I failed to mention this in the previous podcast that I did by myself on price anchoring because I wanted to bring it up with you. Truth be told, I just did not connect the two, and you brought it up the other day, and it was a eureka moment. I was, “Holy crap. How did I miss that on the price anchoring show we did?”
Keith Cosentino: In case somebody missed the first show, why don’t you give us a refresher? What is price anchoring?
Shane Jacks: Price anchoring can be used in a variety of ways, but basically it’s this. Whenever you have a product, that price is anchored in the consumer’s mind by some outside force. A lot of times, that is us. A lot of times, it is something they have heard before or something they have seen before or work they have had done before. Automatically in their brains, they think, “That’s what it’s supposed to be.” Does that make sense? Is that clear enough?
Keith Cosentino: I think so. So, we’re saying, if it’s something, say, you’ve bought over and over again, like a bottle of water, you’re gonna be anchored by your experience. The bottle of water should be somewhere between $1.00 and $3.00.
Shane Jacks: Then, when you go to a hotel and there’s a bottle of Voss there, and you look at the little ticket that’s on there that says, “You will be charged $9.50 for this bottle of water,” you immediately do what?
Keith Cosentino: You freak out.
Shane Jacks: You freak the flip out. You’ve been anchored with that $1.50 to $3.00 for the past ten to 15 years that bottled water has been in prominence. Before that, 25 or 30 years ago, had you said a bottle of water was gonna be $1.50, that would have been absolutely absurd because the price that was anchored in your mind was, “All the freaking water I want out of the tap for $10.00 a month.” Honestly, that’s what was anchored in your mind before that. Slowly, with commercialization of water and putting it in a plastic bottle, that anchor has developed itself to be $1.50 or $3.00. Things can change. Those anchors can change, as with bottled water. That was a really good example, Keith, because you go back 30 years and tell somebody they’re gonna pay $1.50 for 16 ounces of water, my dad would have slit your throat.
Keith Cosentino: Just on principle.
Shane Jacks: Yes, just on principle. Correct. You can affect people’s emotions with those prices too. One of the things we talked about in that episode were these cakes of deception. Two cakes, different shapes, but they were baked in the same oven at the same time made with the same ingredients. One of them was a $45.00 cake and one of them was a $15.00 cake supposedly. People tasted them and swore up and down the $45.00 cake was better than the $15.00 cake because the people that were doing the trick on them had anchored in their minds the quality of the product is based upon price.
Keith Cosentino: Right. They had presented the same exact cakes in different shapes and said, “I’d like you to try them both. This one’s $15.00. This one’s $45.00. Tell me which one you like better.”
Shane Jacks: Without exception, at least on the show, everyone said, “This cake is much better.” Even after they were told the cakes were baked in the same oven with the same ingredients at the same time, people refused to believe it. “No, that cake was better.”
Keith Cosentino: More frosting, not enough frosting, too much frosting. They made up all different reasons. No two reasons were the same, but they all convinced themselves the more expensive cake was better.
Shane Jacks: In a nutshell, anchoring is the consumer’s mind on the quality of a product based on the price or anchoring the price of a product or a service based on a previous transaction they had or based on something that you give them. We can use price anchoring in our businesses in so many different ways. One effective way is using body shop pricing.
Keith Cosentino: I’d say that’s the main one when we’re talking about retail work. Sometimes even wholesale work for bigger dents. Instead of anchoring yourself at a smaller number, “Well, our normal price is $100.00 to do the whole car, but this is bigger,” you say, “The body shop would be about $900.00 to do this. Here’s what we can do.” You’re anchoring off that bigger number.
Shane Jacks: The most effective way to anchor off that bigger number is not just your price. “This at the body shop would be about $900.00, but we can get this out for you about $625.00. No. 2, you’re gonna save your factory paints.” You start anchoring the quality side of it also. So, you’re doing everything. You’re giving them a better quality product for cheaper. That’s typically reversed when we see the cakes of deception we were speaking of a few minutes ago. It’s reversed from what you’re typically used to, but you can explain that away and you’re justified in doing so by telling them, “This is a different process. It’s fairly new.” I know some people are gonna give me a hard time about this, Keith, but I use it quite a bit and whether I believe it or not, it’s more of an art.
Keith Cosentino: I say that all the time.
Shane Jacks: I know, but people will argue with you about it. I see their point, but honestly, I do some artwork myself also, and I can see the correlation. There is some artistry in this. I’m not gonna say we are artists, but this is some artistry involved.
Keith Cosentino: There’s a lot. I won’t argue with that at all.
Shane Jacks: Especially when you get up to the more complex stuff.
Keith Cosentino: I tell the customers, “The only way someone determines this repair is done is when the technician says, ‘It looks pretty.’” That’s it. You better know who’s on the other end of that tool because if some guy decided it’s done and you don’t agree, it’s still done.
Shane Jacks: Very true.
Keith Cosentino: So, that’s a refresher on what anchoring is. Let’s talk about this new angle.
Shane Jacks: Why don’t you bring it up, Keith, since you’re the one that brought it up to me? Honestly, what we wanna talk about is one of the biggest anchors in the PDR industry today. Everybody’s thinking, “He’s gonna use the body shop. He’s gonna use something positive.” It’s in a negative aspect, honestly, towards our profession.
Keith Cosentino: Sure is.
Shane Jacks: What is it, Keith?
Keith Cosentino: The hail matrix.
Shane Jacks: Greatest price anchor ever in this industry.
Keith Cosentino: The insurance companies have been using their magic techniques on you and me and everybody else for umpteen years. We have fallen right in line. It’s a testament to how effective price anchoring is because they spoke first. They talked about the price, and they put it down on paper, and now we’re all playing off that number. We’re all branching off of that. We even had a whole show about how to use the matrix effectively and how to flip it on the insurance company. It’s like a big joke. They are now setting the base number and we’re frantically working around it trying to make it work for us.
Shane Jacks: Ironically, Keith, what gave me the idea for the price anchoring show in the first place was an insurance company commercial. I will have to look it up again, but I’m 99 percent certain is was. A guy was in a store and he was talking about anchoring. It wasn’t a commercial. It was more like a YouTube infomercial, but at the end, it was sponsored by someone. I’m not gonna guess. I’m gonna look it up.
Keith Cosentino: Every time this matrix comes up, where does it come from? The insurance companies got together and said, “We once had work done this cheap. Let’s go even cheaper and let’s say that’s all we’ll pay. We’ll just start them right there. Some guys are gonna say yes. The other guys, we can just use this sheet here we made up to argue about it.” It’s just numbers that they made up. There are categories of a number of dents, which is the most ludicrous idea ever. I don’t even know the breakdown because I don’t use those things, but one to five dents. What’s at the top? 75 to 100 or something like that, Shane?
Shane Jacks: What’s at the beginning?
Keith Cosentino: No, the bottom is one to five.
Shane Jacks: It depends on the company. Some of them are 150 to 200.
Keith Cosentino: So, at the top of the spectrum, there’s at least a 25 or 50 dent swing in that category, right?
Shane Jacks: Yes.
Keith Cosentino: Then, at the bottom, one to 15 is a category. How come 15 or 25 dents is enough to be a whole category on the bottom, but at the top, they don’t even matter anymore? It’s nonsense. You still have to fix every single one of them. I could see if you’re painting something. You’re just gonna paint over everything, but you have to fix every single one of those dents. So, how can they have some value on the bottom of the scale and no value at the top? It doesn’t make any sense at all. Except if you were just using it to say, “You have no idea what you’re doing. You’ve never seen a car or a dent. We need you to do some estimates. Just use this thing. It’ll get you close at least.” Go ahead.
Shane Jacks: We’ve fallen for it because some of the big companies have gone in with the insurance companies and said, “We can do it for this.” That’s the argument that’s gonna come out against us, Keith, against you in this whole thing. When you said they come up with it, honestly, some of the bigger companies went in with these insurance companies and said, “We can do it for this.” It doesn’t change the fact that they are price anchoring, whether it be the insurance companies or the insurance companies along with some of the bigger dent companies. We’ve allowed it to happen. We’ve basically said, “Our hamburger is the same quality as McDonalds over there, the big dent company, so we’re gonna fall in line with them because they’re charging 59 cents for their hamburgers. Mine are worth no more than 59 cents also.”
Keith Cosentino: Unless they’re double patty. Then, I can get them 25 percent more.
Shane Jacks: Double patty. I see what you did there.
Keith Cosentino: It’s really the craziest thing I could think of. I can’t believe we didn’t notice it sooner. I believe you should use your own pricing structure when you’re trying to price something, hail damage or otherwise. I know you guys who chase hail full-time, it’s a different story than my life and the way I run my business. I’m not trying to tell you it’s the same. I am trying to tell you that letting someone else dictate the prices that you charge at your company is bonkers. Unless you’re selling government contracts, you can charge whatever you want. It’s up to you to find a way to make that happen. You will recognize that they’re using a pricing tactic on you by saying, “This is what we’ll pay. This is where we’re gonna start.” What they’ll pay, if there’s no PDR guy there is conventional. That isn’t on the matrix.
Shane Jacks: Precisely. Nope.
Keith Cosentino: That’s what they’ll pay. If there’s nobody in Chicken Lips to push those dents, that car’s still getting fixed. They don’t bring that matrix to the body shop and say, “This is as cheap as we’ve had it done, so this is what you’re gonna have to pay.” They really should be saying that. “For every hail repair, this is the price. I don’t care how it’s fixed. But there’s some guys with metal sticks and glue who will fix it for this. You either fix it for this or don’t fix it.” They don’t say that though, do they?
Shane Jacks: No, they do not. They will try to tell dent guys that the other guys with metal sticks can fix it for this much, but they’re not gonna tell the body guys that. We let it happen to us.
Keith Cosentino: If it really was all they would pay, then it really would be all they would pay. Then, it might be a different story that Shane and I would be telling right now. It isn’t all they’ll pay. It’s all they’ll pay for this technique, which is better. I had a car the other day that came in from out of town with hail on it, and it was a complete repaint, except for one panel on the deck lid. It was a decent repaint for being an entire car. Some panels looked factory, and I saw a few flat spots, and I started looking closer. They taped off the front of the roof, and it was starting to peel just an eighth of an inch at the molding. Most people wouldn’t notice it, but I see it.
This car’s junk. It’s garbage now. The paint looks different. I ended up pulling paint off of it because you could see the spot I pulled was almost not sanded at all. It had one pass form a Brillo pad. It wasn’t prepped right, and it was junk. A repainted car was so crappy. It was amazing. Our repair is so much better. It’s not even in the same category and to say that you would pay less for it is bonkers, absolutely bonkers.
On a different car a while back, I had an estimate for this hail rig, another out-of-town car, and I said, “Here’s my price. Body shop said that’s fine. I show up the next day to start. Everything’s torn apart, and I’m just getting ready to put a tool on it, and the adjuster’s supervisor shows up. He was nice, but cautious about how he spoke and what he said. The long and short of the conversation was, he said, “Your estimate’s about $5,700.00 and some change. I’m just wondering where you’re coming up with those numbers.” “Well, I happened to use the PDR estimate app to generate those numbers.” I like playing good cop/bad cop with the pricing strategy. “Where did you get the numbers?”
Instead of saying, “I made them up because that’s what I think it takes,” I said, “We use this application. It’s available to you or anybody else who wants to purchase it. It calculates all the factors about the car, the number of dents, the depth, etc., and it calculates a price that it should cost to repair.” He said, “Again, I’m not trying to say anything about you personally. I’m sure you’re a great company and a great technician, but if you finish this in eight or even ten hours, that’s $570.00 an hour. It seems excessive, and I’m trying to understand where you come up with the figure.”
I said, “First of all, there’s no way I can guarantee I’m gonna finish it in eight or ten hours. I’m gonna try. I had one the other day that I thought would take me one day. It took me three days. I don’t know when I’m gonna be finished with it.” It was a Friday. .He said, “How about this then? What if we say, if you finish it today, then we can pay you $4,000.00? If it goes to Monday, then we can pay you the additional $1,700.00.”
Shane Jacks: That is funny.
Keith Cosentino: Isn’t it funny? I was really nervous. I’m usually pretty good at negotiations, but I had so much invested in this particular transaction. I was there a day before doing an estimate and it had to get approved. I had to come back. All my tools were all set up. The car’s all split apart. Now is the time when I’m gonna start making some money on this thing. I’ve been spending time just setting it up. I was getting nervous for this transaction, but I said, “Well, the short answer is no. I won’t do that. I work really hard to repair these cars in a timely manner. To get this car out on time to help the body shop and the customer and ultimately help you and keep him out of rental for any more time than they need to be, I don’t want to de-incentivize myself to drag my feet, check the Internet 42 times today and come back on Monday and actually finish the car. So, I am not gonna do that for you.”
I did say, Shane, “However, I’m here to help you. I wanna help get the car fixed and get it out. I’d be happy to work with you a little bit, if the numbers look a little bit better to the higher-ups for you. I’m willing to do the repair for five percent cheaper than what I’ve estimate it for.” I know a lot of guys would balk at that and say, “You’re just giving up money,” but this guy was the area supervisor. He made a special trip to be there before I was there, so he could justify this pricing that I put on this car, which, of course, was cheaper than a conventional repair.
What I want is this guy on my side. I wanna work with him and make him happy and five percent on this deal is not really gonna change my world. It’s just under a few hundred bucks. It was $5,700.00. Ten percent of that is $570.00, so it’s half of that. I had priced it really well, and I had room in the car to do it. I had told the body shop manager the same thing prior. “This is my quote. If you guys are close and you’re having trouble, let me know, and we can move some numbers around and make it happen.”
I had taken a tip from a guy on Facebook. I can’t remember who he was, so sorry if it was you, and I didn’t give you credit. But the guy started applying$125.00 line items to adhesives and solvents for a hail repair car. I’d started applying that, so I figure right off the top of the bat, I got $125.00 more than I normally would have. So, I’m $125.00 up. I’m gonna give back $275.00 or whatever. I’m okay with that. Now, I really wanna finish it in one day. So, I gave him the five percent. He was happy. I was happy. I did the car that day. I finished it, and it was good, and we never needed to have another back and forth.
It’s an interesting little story about their numbers and where they come up with them. When you’re trying to work with these adjusters, I’ve found that it’s quite easy, if you’re actually trying to work with them, like you’ve talked about Shane. If you wanna fight them, they don’t mind fighting with you.
Shane Jacks: I have a pretty good example close to what you’re saying there, Keith. Remember when I shared with everybody here –
Keith Cosentino: Hang on. Before you tell me that. You’re the hail guy. Am I on the wrong track giving up five percent?
Shane Jacks: No. That’s actually where my story is going. I had a gentleman a while back from Geico come up. He worked at a big body shop in the area. He said, “We have guys that will wipe that roof for $550.00.” I said, “Cool. I’m gonna call the customer and let them know.” I’m being a lot more stern with it right here just for the sake of time. “I’m gonna call the customer and let her make the decision.” This was a retail customer’s car that brought it straight to me. “I’m gonna let her make the decision about what she wants to be done. If she wants the roof painted or if she wants to do PDR. I’m gonna be completely forthright with her. I’m gonna let her have her decision. I’m gonna tell her the pros and cons of each situation. We’ll probably see you back here tomorrow.”
I call the customer. I told her, “It’s totally up to you. If you want your roof painted, we’ll paint your roof. They’ll put Bondo in it. Or you can have me do it.” She said, “Which would you do? You’re being honest with me. It doesn’t sound like he really wants to be honest with me.” I said, “If it were me, I would wanna do PDR to save my factory paint, but I’m leaving that totally up to you.” She said, “I wanna do what you would do because I trust you.”
No. 1, I’ve created trust with the customer there because I was completely open. I told her she could do whatever she wanted to do with her car. Then, I called the adjuster back. He told me, “$550.00 is all my system will allow me to go on this.” I didn’t argue with him. I didn’t say, “You’re full of crap,” and he was. I didn’t tell him I knew the system would go higher than $550.00. I just told him that I’d tell the customer and let them decide. So, he comes back the next day. You know what he tells me? He says, “I figured out how to manipulate the system. I got with my superior and he told me how to manipulate the system. We’re gonna give you what you want.”
Guess what? The guy had to come back out for another retail customer’s car. He was really cool when he walked in. He was actually a little bit nervous. I could tell he was nervous to deal with me. He was out in his car for an hour and a half. He came back in and scratched his head. He’s showing all these signs of being a little bit nervous. He says, “Shane, I got you within $75.00.” I guess he’s expecting me to blow back at him for that $75.00. I said, “Dude, we’re cool. I could sit here and argue about it, but for me and you both, it just isn’t worth it.” He said, “Okay, cool.”
I will never have another problem with that adjuster. I can guarantee it. He may come up short $50.00, but I will be willing to bet, and I will bring it up again if I have him in there again, that he will over me on some of these estimates that are coming up. He will give me more than what I ask. I’ve had it happen before. It may only be $25.00 on a panel, but he’ll say, “I saw a couple more than you did and it threw it up into this category. We’re gonna give you $75.00 more.” I’ve had that happen more times than not whenever I’ve decided not to be a total jerk to these adjusters. To answer your question, no, I don’t think you’re on the wrong track, Keith. People will argue with you about it, but my experience is, if you’re not a total prick to them, it will pay you back in the long run.
Keith Cosentino: Ultimately, whatever system you use to generate the pricing, whether it’s your brain, your balloon know matrix or program, you’re generating the numbers that you want. It’s your number and you can manipulate them all. If you think you’re gonna have to come down, it’s not that hard to put them up real high to start and have some room to wiggle down to something that you’re happy with. There’s nothing wrong with that. If it’s a situation that you know where you’re probably gonna get negotiated with, throw them on up there. Get them high and look like the hero, like the guy who’s really gonna work something out when you come back down a little bit.
My numbers were way higher than most guys would have been on that car. For a guy like you, that was probably a two or three hour car. I’m a lot slower on this kind of stuff because I don’t have the experience doing it. They’re hard to do, if you don’t have all the lighting and all the tools and a system on how you’re gonna attack the car. Which panels are you gonna do first? It all makes a difference. You lose five minutes here, ten minutes there, and 20 minutes there, it adds up fast.
Shane Jacks: It’s a muscle memory thing too, man. I honestly believe that. You’re working on smashes all day long. Your body is used to doing that. When I do that all winter long and it’s the first storm of the year, it takes me several cars to get back into the swing of it. It’s just my body getting used to working in that manner, other than doing caved-in, crushed doors. It’s definitely a different ball game, for sure. And somebody who can do both is few and far between.
Keith Cosentino: Go ahead and pat yourself on the back a little bit there.
Shane Jacks: Why not? I didn’t say I did both well.
Keith Cosentino: You know what? I had to run a report the other day because it was the end of the month for my guys. You know how easy that was for me? Five seconds.
Shane Jacks: It was easy. You know why?
Keith Cosentino: I was using ReconPro. Hopped right into their back office, as they call it, which is the hub for the administrator of the system. You get online, log into their system, and I can see everything I need to see at the push of a button. I can tell it what date ranges I wanna look at. I wanna know where that money’s coming from, what invoice specifically or group of invoices or what type of work, like retail, body shop or wholesale, where’s all that money coming from. All that information is there through ReconPro. It makes me a more effective owner and manager of my company. I can determine if we’re spending too much time on a given account for the revenue or if my guys are too heavy in wholesale and we need to push more retail in a certain geographic area. All that information is there, if you take the time to set it up properly and monitor it.
I would not be where I am today without that software, ReconPro. I can’t imagine that we used to do this business on paper before. It’s just bananas to me. Like we were talking about earlier, Shane, about running a real company or running a half company, when we were on paper, we were still running a real company. There’s a lot of guys I’ve talked to around the country, and around the world, who are running what you would think are really legitimate companies, but their accounting is almost non-existent.
They have paper invoices and at the end of the month, they are just going through this stack of paper and determining what everyone owes them and sending handwritten statements out to everybody. I hate to remind you of it, but remember that check that you got that stayed stuck in your glovebox or your change drawer that never got deposited.
Shane Jacks: Yes. Thanks for making my week even brighter.
Keith Cosentino: Sorry, Shane, but that’s the paper system. Papers get lost and you lose money. You guys that are on paper, what would happen if somebody stole your clipboard?
Shane Jacks: You’d have no idea what anybody owed you.
Keith Cosentino: Clueless. You’d have a basic idea about where you did work. You and I both know that if you do a lot of wholesale, and you don’t turn in a bill to these clowns in a timely manner, they are happy to pretend it never existed. They’ll even argue with you, if they sell the car and you send the bill later, which is a topic for another show. The paper system is broken, fellows. I am so much safer, and I am accounting for all the money that’s owed to me electronically with this system.
It probably pays for itself ten times over during the course of a year just by not losing an invoice here or there. If you lose one $200.00 or $300.00 invoice and you forget to bill somebody, they’re not gonna come knocking down your door and say, “You never billed us for the $300.00.” Some will, but most won’t. I can’t endorse it enough. ReconPro. It’s AutoMobiletechnologies.com. ReconPro is the product.
They make a lot of other products, so it’s not just a little tiny company with a technician who also makes software. It’s a bunch of nerds working on software all the time. Those are the guys. Check them out. Talk to them a little bit more about your situation and see what it takes to get yourself on board. You will thank me later, when your business is real and accountable and it’s there online for everybody to see when you want them to see it. Man, Shane, we got through an hour pretty quick there, didn’t we?
Shane Jacks: Yes, we did.
Keith Cosentino: Tell me what’s going on with the Edge Jack tools. I’ve seen a lot of chatter about them lately. I’ve been using them in some weird situations and have been real happy. What’s going on? Are they everywhere? Are you changing them? What’s going on?
Shane Jacks: They are everywhere. They are beginning to get in the hands of pretty much all the tool companies pout there. There are a few that still aren’t on board, of course. You can get them at PDR Outlet, Dentcraft, TDN Tools, BlendingHammerPDR.com, of course. They are selling well through my site. They’re changing things. They are changing the ways guys fix the edges of doors and hoods.
Pretty much every week somebody is sending me something, “Did you know you could use it here?” A tech was fixing a range hood it looked like. He said, “I never could have fixed it without the Edge Jack.” I definitely wouldn’t think of using it that way because I don’t fix range hoods, but he got a ton of money out of it. It was an expensive range hood. He repaired it and got his money out of it. He was very happy with that. The thing just works.
Keith Cosentino: Give me his number. I’ll send all my appliance dents to this dude, whoever it is.
Shane Jacks: I had somebody from your area or about an hour north of you, Keith, who wanted to send a range hood all the way out here from California for me to repair it. I told him about you. I said, “Why don’t you get somebody there to do it?” He really didn’t have an answer for me. He called me two or three times. “No, it’s not worth it to me. Find somebody in your area, like Keith Cosentino.”
Keith Cosentino: He would have gotten the brick wall from me, if he called, because I’m not into that stuff. It makes me so happy. I can’t say that. I like to help customers of all types. It doesn’t make me happy to just say no to them, but it makes me happy knowing how much money I’m saving by not dorking around with these stupid repairs. Garage doors, range hoods, and all that stuff. Unless the range hood is $45,000.00 and it’s leased and it’s gotta be turned in next month, I don’t need to work on it. It doesn’t have the value. Even if it’s $5,000.00. What’s a $5,000.00 car? How many dents are you gonna do on that thing? Not enough.
Shane Jacks: None. But they’re selling well. The hammers are selling well. So, head on over to BlendingHammerPDR.com and get those. It’s the only blending hammer out there, I believe, that I know of. You’re not gonna break that thing. I knocked down a concrete wall the other day with it just for giggles. So, you’re not gonna break the handle on that thing. I can try to tell you how well the Edge Jack works, but until you get one in your hands and try and see how strong it is and how little pressure you have to put on your mini lifter handle to make it push through that double panel and push the dents out and how much power that thing has, you’re just not gonna believe it. I didn’t believe it until I tried it myself. I don’t think you believed it until you saw it yourself, Keith.
Keith Cosentino: No.
Shane Jacks: You thought, “I see how it would work.” Everybody who sends me a message about it personally asking, “What should I know about this thing?” My one thing is, be careful on your first try. That’s all I can tell you.
Keith Cosentino: Respect the power.
Shane Jacks: Yes. Respect the power. It is coming, in droves. Another thing that needs to happen is I need to make some new tips for mine, so I can experiment with different shaped tips. We’re slowing down on all the hell that we’ve had finally. I’m eager to see some of these tips that are gonna go in this thing from you guys. If you have some that you think are cool, and you think guys could profit off of or they could use and I could profit off of, tell me what that is. I’ll get them manufactured and sell your idea back to you. I am shameless, aren’t I?
Keith Cosentino: You gotta be. I also wanna talk a little bit about Tab Weld because I’ve been using it, of course, every day. I’ve seen a couple people on Facebook post that they can’t get it to stick. It’s almost like they’re living in another universe. I’m using this stuff just the other day. It’s tiny tabs, and I’m just blowing up this metal and getting these huge pulls out of it. I’m overpulling a lot of stuff still on accident because I’m thinking, “That’s a tiny tab. It’s not gonna bite that hard.” Pow. I get this huge pull out of it.
I just stopped and put my hand on my forehead. “Why is this not working for some guys? How can this work so well for me and 99 other guys and for one guy it doesn’t work? He tells me it doesn’t stick. It’s obvious that it sticks. Not only does it stick, but it sticks better than anything else that I’ve ever used. So, how can these guys have issues with it?” I’ve taken time to make phone calls with guys over the past couple of years since I’ve gotten into the tab business and troubleshoot their glue pulling and see why a particular tab doesn’t stick. That was the other question I used to get. “I can’t get your tabs to stick.”
I’ve spent time talking to the guys, and it almost always comes down to one of a couple small things. When you’re glue pulling, it’s gotta be in a temperature that’s comfortable. It’s gotta be in room temperature to get optimum pulls. Yes, you can pull in the heat and you can make it work. If you want the best pull, it’s gonna between 70 and 82 degrees. Any hotter than that and you’re gonna start losing performance, even for the hot weather glues. It’s hot melt glue, fellows. It melts when it gets hot, so it can’t be too hot or it doesn’t work. So, you gotta be in a good temperature range. I’m not saying you can’t use it if it’s hot, but if you want it to really pull, you gotta be in that room temperature range. That goes with any glue, hot, cold, whatever. None of it works, if it’s freezing or boiling hot.
You gotta prep the surface right. You gotta make sure there’s no wax on that thing. Use regular rubbing alcohol, which is what I tend to use, or you wanna use window cleaner, which I’ll use in a pinch sometimes, anything to clean the wax off that car. You can use denatured alcohol. It’s a little more aggressive, and you can use lacquer thinner. If you really wanna strip that thing fast without a bunch of monkeying around, you can use lacquer thinner. Not my first choice because it’s a little more abrasive on my hands, my fingers and the paint itself.
When nothing else is working, hit it with a little bit of lacquer thinner and one quick wipe. Make sure it’s dry. Make sure the glue’s nice and hot and put it directly on the tab and try to put the glue on the tab close to the dent. You don’t want to walk 25 feet. It’s in a state of cooling the minute it leaves the gun. So, you wanna get it on the tab and get it on the dent as quickly as possible. Then, as far as pulling times, with Tab Weld and Smooth Series time, Shane, that’s sometimes two or three seconds, right?
Shane Jacks: Yes.
Keith Cosentino: It’s not a lot of set-up time.
Shane Jacks: No.
Keith Cosentino: It’s one way I’m able to make a lot of money with that product because I’m not spending any time just staring at glue tabs waiting for them to dry. Place it. Place a little bit of pressure.
Shane Jacks: I’m sorry. Go ahead.
Keith Cosentino: No, what were you gonna say?
Shane Jacks: I was gonna say, the set-up time is very small, but the window is larger. Most of the glues that set-up really quickly, the window to pull is very short also. Does that make sense?
Keith Cosentino: Sometimes it can be short with the Smooth Series Tabs. If the temperatures are not ideal, the window can be small. There’s not a lot of glue there. It’s very thin. If you place it the way I want you to place it with a lot of pressure and squeezing all the glue out, there’s a very thin layer of glue. You don’t use a lot of glue. So, if the car is hotter or colder than you wish it was, it’s gonna bring that pull out of its optimal range really quick. If everything’s room temperature, the window’s huge.
Obviously, in the real world, we’re very seldom in perfect room temperature, unless you’re working on some guy’s collection in an air-conditioned garage. Most of the time, it’s crappy outside and too hot or too cold, so you gotta work around it. Once it’s on, it doesn’t really matter what you pull it with. Shane’s a slide hammer guy. I’m a mini lifter guy. Neither of us are 100 percent because the conditions are different sometimes, but we both get stupid pulls out of that glue and out of the Smooth Series Tabs. That’s it, fellows. It’s pretty simple.
Make sure the tabs are not ice cold as well or boiling hot. It’s gonna make a different too, if they’re boiling hot. The glue never quite sets up. If it’s cold, it sets up too fast the minute you touch the tab, and the tab will come right off. What I believe is common sense, and it’s kind of insulting to say because not everybody is a tab nerd and a glue nerd like I am, so it’s not common sense. Relatively common, but it’s not that common. If you go through all those steps, you’re almost guarantees to have a great pull and snap up the center of that sharp little dent that’s been fooling with you.
Everybody can put any kind of tab on a big soft dent and yank some metal around. It doesn’t take special tabs to do that, but getting the pit up out of a tiny dent, that’s when you need everything to be perfect.
Shane Jacks: That’s where those tabs and glue shine.
Keith Cosentino: They are on the money. So, BlackPlaguePDR.com is my site, if you wanna go check them out. We’ve got a little video there, if you haven’t seen it. It’s eye-opening to see what happens underneath when you place a Smooth Series Tab and a Textured Dome Tab. You can see what’s going on with the glue underneath if you check that video out. I’ll give you a little insight as to why they work so well.
If you wanna buy them anywhere else, they’re in a lot of places. They’re in most of the big tool companies, Dentcraft, Ultra, PDR Gear, PDR Outlet. I’m sure I’m forgetting some other companies that have them. Anson has them. They’re basically anywhere you’d wanna be. You Australian guys can find them at Dent Tool Warehouse. They carry our stuff out there in Australia, so you don’t have to wait so long for this stuff to come on a boat. I feel bad for the Australiana and European guys who wanna buy tools. It sucks for you guys. It’s not easy.
Shane Jacks: No, it is not. I feel bad. I don’t wanna ship it over there because guys get mad at you because it takes forever, unless you’re paying $60.00 for shipping.
Keith Cosentino: It takes forever and it’s expensive. Even the cheap stuff is expensive. You think you’re ripping them off, but the truth of the matter is, I lose money on everything I shop over there because I’m trying to do it competitively, and it’s still expensive.
Shane Jacks: Speaking of tabs, we haven’t really talked a lot about the LAKA Tabs, Keith.
Keith Cosentino: No, we sure haven’t.
Shane Jacks: I use those things quite a bit. They’re a couple of them I use more than any of the others. I do use them all. Well, not all of them. That’s a lie.
Keith Cosentino: Are you cheating on my Smooth Series?
Shane Jacks: Every now and then. There are other tabs out there that work in certain situations, but they’re not ideal. Ninety nine percent of the time, I’m a Smooth Tab guy, but there are other times I need something a little bit different. I like the black square one that’s got the funky wing shape.
Keith Cosentino: That has a weird bend to it.
Shane Jacks: That thing hangs on like mad. The blue and red bigger crease tabs won’t pull a tight center like your Smooth Series Tabs do. They’ll pull more of a broad area, which is not ideal most of the time on a crease, but it will pull up some bigger areas pretty good. It will pull up some more board areas, if that makes sense. I use those every now and then. Those are some really good tabs.
Keith Cosentino: Those are black now, by the way. Same tab, but they’re black.
Shane Jacks: They are? Okay. Well, I still have the red, blue and yellow, I believe. I use the red and the blue more.
Keith Cosentino: They had them in all different colors, and it was very confusing as to which ones they were. You may or may not know that I’m selling LAKA tabs on a separate site called LAKAToolsUSA. The only reason I’m selling them, because they are a direct competitor to mine, is that they’re very good. They’re awesome tabs, and in some situations, I like them better than mine. In some situations, I like mine better than theirs. It depends on your style and what the damage is. It ultimately comes down to the damage.
Their tabs are more stout and thicker on the bottoms. Sometimes that’s beneficial and sometimes that’s not. But I like having options. When I used these tabs and figured they’re as good as mine in some situations, I wanted to carry them as well to give guys as many options as they can get to make money. With all those different colors, it was really confusing as to which ones were what, so we’ve narrowed it down. Now, if they are a small LAKA tab, they are yellow. If they are medium-size, they are red. If they are large, they’re black for the squares and the creases and such. So, that helps.
Shane Jacks: It’s a lot easier.
Keith Cosentino: To understand which ones people were asking about and which ones we’re selling. Same exact product. We just changed the colors, so they’re easily identifiable. If you wanna check those out, LAKAToolsUSA.com. When I first got them and put the site up, we had a really slamming sale on them. Then, we ran out of stock right away. It was a total bummer because they are imported from Germany, and it takes forever to get the stuff through customs and get it over here. If you went to the site later, everything was out of stock.
Everything is back in stock now, and we’re ready to sell you some more tabs, if you wanna try some. As we do once in a while, we like to give you guys that listen to the show the day it comes out a cool deal for being loyal listeners who listen to the show on time, bright and early on a Monday. We’re gonna offer another discount on LAKATools, so hop on there and enter the discount code 8315, which is the date. It’s 8315. Enter that in there, and it will take 35 percent off of the LAKA tool orders of any value. If you spend a lot of money, you can save a lot of money with that.
That’s just for the day the show comes out, on Monday. Enjoy it. If you’re hearing it on time. If you’re late the party again, learn to listen and listen to learn. You’ll get a deal, if you’re on the ball, Johnny on the spot. Man, Shane, we have a lot more stuff we wanna share, but it’s gonna have to be next week because we are super long on time.
Shane Jacks: Yes, we are.
Keith Cosentino: You guys gotta get out there and make some money. You’ve been hanging out on a podcast too long.
Shane Jacks: Good show though.
Keith Cosentino: It’s a great show. I’m excited for you and I to be back on together. We’ve been doing solo shows because we’ve bene so busy. This is really when the magic happens, when we’re both on the show. I’m glad to do it again.
Shane Jacks: Yes, sir. Good to be back.
Keith Cosentino: Until next time –
Shane Jacks: Get better.
[End of Audio]Duration: 75 minutes
