Advanced Skills
Shane Jacks Signature Series Tools
ReCon Pro Automobile Technologies
GET THE PRICING GUIDE:
http://www.designwithenergy.com/custom-pdr-price-guides/
Want one customized with your Logo and Phone? Go Here and order one!!
Transcript:
Keith Consentino: Let’s talk a little bit about hot glue specific for paintless dent removal. What kind are you using? You know, you can get a decent pull from any type of glue, I mean, any. You can go get some stuff from the crafts store, you can get stuff from Walmart. In fact, I used Walmart glue for a long time. Before I really got into the manufacturing side of PDR, Walmart glue was my glue. You know what I thought? All these colored glues are fancy ways to trick me out of money. How much better can they work?
Well, to some degree, I was right. Some of those colors suck and they’re there just to take your money. However, once I opened my eyes and got some of the samples of glues that were the real deal, glues that really did work better, I thought, holy smokes, here I am again doubting the technical progress of our trade. Just because something looks different doesn’t mean it’s not better. It doesn’t mean it’s a scam.
So I started using colored glues. I found two that work amazingly, green glue and the pink glue and we stock both of them on BlackplaguePDR.com. But I wanted a glue that worked even better than that. Now, can a glue work too good? Yes. Superglue and Liquid Nails work too good. They will take the paint off the car. That’s not what we’re after. It’s a fine line of maximum adhesion but not going over the top and ripping the paint off the car putting us further back than we started in the first place. We wanna leave the paint on the car.
So we need something that doesn’t have maximum adhesion for a hot metal glue. There’s a lot of glues out there that are made for construction and manufacturing that’ll make this glue look like it doesn’t work, hot glues that we use. But we have a specific purpose and we need to find the maximum adhesion we can get out of those conditions. And that’s what we’ve done with our new line of glue Tab Weld.
Tab Weld is the new standard for PDR. You don’t think it can get better because what you’re using works now but if you want to function at the highest level you’ve gotta squeeze the last 2, 3, 5, 10 percent of performance out that everyone else is leaving. It’s just like racing cars. Everything has to be dialed if you wanna go faster than the other guy. And if you wanna do a better repair with less pulls or do a repair that someone else said couldn’t be done, you’ve gotta have the best tools.
And glue is so stinking cheap for how much you use. I did a $600 repair the other day. I was on it for four hours and I used two sticks of Tab Weld the whole time and I glue [inaudible] [00:02:39] the whole time. It’s not a lot of money to put in and there’s almost no other expenses in our business. Stop being shortsighted. Buy the glue that’s gonna make your life easier and more profitable. Don’t forget, that’s what I’m all about in this business, making more money. And if you’re using the right tools you’re gonna make more of it, I can promise you that.
You’ve got the right lights, you’ve got the right tools, you’ve got the right tabs and the right glues and you know how to use it all, magic happens. So that’s what I’m trying to tell you about. There’s a glue that works better than what you’re using now and it’s called Tab Weld. It’s still in an early-release stage. We’ve got samples out right now. If you buy anything on BlackplaguePDR.com, you’re gonna get a sample. You can go on there and just pick the sample if you want. You’ve gotta pay for shipping if you do that.
But very shortly here in a matter of weeks, the Tab Weld is gonna be released full steam ahead and you can have as much of it as you’d like. Check out the website TabWeld.com. You can bop yourself onto our mailing list there so you can be notified the minute we are releasing it. But we’ve got some exciting stuff coming out with that. You are going to be impressed, I promise you. And if you don’t like it, I’ll buy it back because I use it every single day and I can’t have enough of it. So buy it, enjoy it, make more money, TabWeld.com.
I’m Keith Consentino, he’s Shane Jacks and this is the PDR College podcast, the only place on the internet that is dedicated to your success in the dent removal business. We are bringing information to you that you didn’t know you needed every week. We’re talking about ways to make more money with tools, with techniques, with technology and with items in your mind. We do it all so that you can increase the size of the stacks of money that surround you to the point that they are giant and difficult to deal with. Shane, why the heck do we need so much money?
Shane Jacks: Well, Keith, bank accounts are better with money in them, dude.
Keith Consentino: Yes, bank accounts generally are better with money in them.
Shane Jacks: Yeah, I don’t like mine when there’s no money in it. It’s been a long time since that happened. Long, long time.
Keith Consentino: Not to mention that the banks will be happy to take the little money that you leave in a bank account that isn’t big and reduce it to zero or negative and then charge you for that.
Shane Jacks: They sure will and it’s substantial what they charge you, back when I was poor.
Keith Consentino: I know. I’ve had little money, I’ve had lots, and having lots is better. I had – selling tools, once in a while crappy stuff happens like you deliver something – you know, if somebody buys something you send it. It says it’s delivered and then somebody said they didn’t get it. What do you do? You don’t think – the guy’s probably not lying. He probably didn’t get it but you sent it, you paid to send it. Well, you’re just out. You gotta send it again or give the guy his money back.
And I got a notification that some guy pulled his money back, it was like 105 bucks, because his product didn’t show up, but I shipped it. I paid to ship it. Now what do I do? I can go file at the post office and they’d give me 50 bucks back or something, but it’s not even worth my time to fool with. It’s 100 bucks down the drain and that sucks, but it’s not that big of a deal to me.
A big deal for me that the guy didn’t get his tools, that pisses me off.
Shane Jacks: That’s a bigger deal, yep.
Keith Consentino: That’s a way bigger deal because, I mean, I take it serious. This is stuff that we use to feed our families with. So before we get started on the show, I wanna talk about our seminar that’s coming up. We’re a ways out still but it’s gonna be in January, and I should know the exact dates but I don’t have them handy right now. Maybe I can look them up in a few moments. But this is the seminar that we did for the first time last year two days prior to the mobile tech expo in Orlando, Florida. Shane, bring us up to speed on what that was all about.
Shane Jacks: Well, Keith, this past year was the inaugural seminar that we did. And it’s the two days before the actual mobile tech expo so it would be the Tuesday and Wednesday of the week of the mobile tech expo. And the reason I didn’t respond to you right away was I was about to look that up for you and had actually gotten out of my chair to grab my keyboard for my PC instead of the MAC that we’re recording on. So sorry about that little pause there, Keith.
Keith Consentino: I’ve got it. It’s January 29 and 30 is the mobile tech expo so it’s gonna be – and, pardon me, there’s the 28th which is a Thursday which is their seminar day [inaudible] [00:07:48] with all the free seminars. But ours will be Tuesday and Wednesday prior to that, so the 26th and 27th of January.
Shane Jacks: 26th and 27th, that’s a little bit lighter than normal. It’s usually in the middle of the month.
Keith Consentino: Yeah, I think they moved them back a week or two.
Shane Jacks: But either way, we’re still gonna have that thing. What we did last year, we had – it went well last year but we have seen some things that we needed to change a little bit, Keith, and we could make it a little bit better this year. And what that seminar’s gonna do is for you guys that want to up your game, that want to learn some new techniques on the PDR, on the technical side of things, we did a lot of that last year and we did a little bit of the in-person sales and the marketing and all those tactics like that, we did a little bit of that, Keith, not a ton.
We are going to up that a bit this year but we’re still going to go over some of the techniques that we went over last year and go a little more in depth with a few of them, I think, and take some of them out that we did last year that weren’t as effective.
A lot of times, man, when you – these things on paper and even in a dry run you think that’s gonna work well. And then with 25 or 30 guys standing around you, it’s doesn’t work quite as well as you thought it would. But we have ironed out those – they were tiny kinks. I’m not saying they were a big deal but we’ve ironed out those kinks, Keith, most of them anyway. I’m sure we’ll see a few this year also.
Keith Consentino: But, no listen, last year was a huge success and everybody was really happy that they were there. But the nature of you and I that we always wanna make something better than we did the last time. And we didn’t have one complaint. I mean, I had to push a few guys and say, hey, if we had to change anything what would you change?” And they said, “Well, it was great.” I said, “Well, I appreciate that but give me some kinda feedback if we could change this or change that.” And almost overwhelmingly guys were saying, “Well, if you change one thing, I really would like to spend more time on pricing and selling.”
And that wasn’t even supposed to be part of the show or the seminar last time. But we just ended up talking because these are guys that we enjoy hanging around with anyways so we’re having a real casual seminar. I mean, we have a structured curriculum that we’re going through but we’re open to spending more time on a subject if there’s a lot of questions and things like that. And guys are saying, “Well, how would you sell this? How would you price this?”
So we spent, I don’t know, an hour or so on that and guys really would’ve liked to spend more time. So this year we’re gonna spend a lot more time on that dealing with customers, dealing with retail customers, even with management and wholesale and things like that, how we write a car, we price it, how we sell it. All that stuff we’re gonna talk about and I’m gonna have fun doing that.
And last year we did a lot of technical stuff that sometimes you just didn’t – and you did most of that because you’ve got the trophy but sometimes we just didn’t have enough time to go deep enough on some of the techniques. So some of that stuff that would really take up too much time, I think we’re gonna kinda pluck that stuff out and spend the – you know, it’s two days so you think you’re gonna go – you think it’s forever but really, man, it goes fast. And you can only cover so many things in two days. So we’re trying to bring just the things that’re gonna make the biggest difference to the technicians.
But ultimately we’re leaving it up to the guys attending the show. If everybody raises their hand together and says, we wanna spend more time on this and ditch that, we’ll do it. I mean, we did that a couple times last year. We’d say, hey, right now it’s time to move to this. You guys wanna stay on this topic or do you wanna move on? And sometimes we moved on and sometimes we stayed. And I enjoyed that actually.
Shane Jacks: It worked well. And in that vein, honestly, because we did it that way, that’s why we were able to change it a little bit this year. We saw where our guys were wanting to take the thing and that’s where we’re going to take it this year honestly. So because we let them kind of guide a little or kinda take us down little alleys a little ways, now we know exactly what you guys are wanting more than we thought last year. Again, it was great. Didn’t have any complaints. Everybody was positive about it. We learned a lot but we’re going to not narrow it down but focus better, how about that, on some things that we saw guys really wanted to focus on.
And again, it’s gonna be two days, correct. It’s still two days, Tuesday and Wednesday for –
Keith Consentino: Yep, absolutely, two full days. It’s not like four-hour days. We’re there 8:00 to 5:00.
Shane Jacks: Right, A three-hour lunch and – actually, did we even eat lunch? I think we –
Keith Consentino: No, we took a one-hour lunch. That’s what I was just gonna say, we took a one-hour break but by the time we chatted with a couple guys for 15 minutes before we got away and 15 minutes on the way back, we just barely had enough time to eat the food that someone else ran and got for us, and get right back into it. But we’re not complaining. We had a lot of fun and it was cool but we didn’t really take a one-hour break.
Shane Jacks: No. I think I ate that meatball sub the second day in less than 37 seconds. Man, that thing went – I had to choke it down really quick like, especially since I hate Subway. But we got it down. It was sustenance.
Keith Consentino: It sure was.
Shane Jacks: So how we gonna break this thing down this year, Keith? Now, this is not the comprehensive list of what we’re going to do but this is –
Keith Consentino: No, no, no.
Shane Jacks: — this is a list of things that we’re –
Keith Consentino: There’s a lot of time between now and then when it’ll come – we can get the details worked out specifically, what there’s gonna be. And like I said, it’s still – we may change it on the fly. We’re gonna bring the most relevant information according to the group that’s there. So if the guys vote and say, hey, we wanna spend more time on this, we’ll do it. But we’ve got a basic breakdown of the things that we are excited to share and excited to talk about.
But I think it might be beneficial to tell the guys kinda how it goes down because you’re thinking about, man, how do I – where are we? Are we outside? Are we inside? Well, at that facility there’s this really cool semi-permanent building. It’s a giant tent like you would have a tradeshow in but, I mean, it’s huge. I don’t know how many square feet that thing was, 10,000 or something?
Shane Jacks: Yeah, I believe it was bigger than that honestly.
Keith Consentino: I think it was too. Maybe double that, 20 – it’s huge. I mean, you could put a couple hundred cars in this thing. And it has an Astroturf floor so you’re not walking on asphalt or anything. And they got some circulation going in there but to be honest, the fans that they have, they’re huge fans installed in the walls. They’re kinda loud so we ended up turning them on and off depending on what kind of teaching we’re dong because you couldn’t hear that well when they’re on, they’re so loud. It’s meant for a tradeshow where everybody – it’s loud anyways.
But we were able to bring several cars in there so you can walk all around and be around the cars. And we’re able to set up a classroom setting with a whiteboard. But the best thing about it was we had a couple of different camera guys and then we had a flat screen TV on a cart that we rolled around. And we were able to position that screen when we were doing something real technical when Shane was up on top of a dent and was talking about it. We were able to position the screen so that everybody could see what he sees or as close to it as we could get.
And I think next year we’re gonna have two screens so that everybody can get a perfect view. We didn’t have any complaints but I personally had an issue sometimes and I wanted to see something but I couldn’t quite see the screen And I think we’re gonna work on getting two screens showing the same thing, or maybe two different cameras showing two different screens. That way a group of guys standing around can see little details. Because that’s what some of the stuff comes down to is little details and easy to talk about them but not always easy to see them, so that’s how –
Shane Jacks: And that camera we have that we used for that, it shows crazy detail. It really – you can see everything that’s going on. I mean, you can’t move your head to reposition the light of course because it’s static. You’re not gonna be able to move. Only the cameraman, the camera operator will be able to move to get you a different view within the light, within the reflection. But you are seeing everything going on on that screen. That camera picks up tons of detail.
Keith Consentino: The time has come, the Blackplague 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 [inaudible] [00:16:57] 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 flat 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 wanna 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.
Keith Consentino: Yeah, so if you’re the kinda guy you got training, you know, a handful years ago and then you went back and worked on your own, and you know you’re doing pretty well but you just wish you could hang around with a couple of guys like Shane and myself and maybe some other guys for a couple days just to fill in those little gaps that you’re missing, this is the spot for you. And there’s nowhere else you would get this kinda training this cheap at this level anywhere else for a couple of days.
And not to mention, meeting another group of guys who are high-level active achievers in PDR. These are guys that are spending money to go learn more and be better and hang around with better guys. So it’s a really cool crowd. A lot of guys have made some really great friendships that are still going strong since last January, and guys that have worked storms together and done business deals together. And that really makes me as happy as anything just to know I’m helping connect other guys who are getting after it, you know.
Shane Jacks: For sure. And this year, Keith, you talk about getting with other guys, we had some studs there last year, man. I mean, honestly there were –
Keith Consentino: We sure did.
Shane Jacks: — four or five, six guys I there that I’m doing these repairs and I’m like, heck, why aren’t they up here? And that was another great – like you just said, that was a great thing about it is walking around talking to some of these guys. And I’m not gonna name them by name but they know who they are, walking around talking to some of these guys you’re like – not only were you and I teaching but these guys were teaching also. They were learning, we were learning.
But within the classroom, the students that were in there – I’m calling them students loosely, but the students that were in there, they’re talking to each other and they’re bouncing ideas off of one another, like you said. And then forming these relationships, working with each other later, it was really cool. And there are some absolute studs that are in the class, which is humbling for me and nerve-wracking honestly.
Keith Consentino: Yeah, [inaudible] [00:19:35], man, so –
Shane Jacks: Well, how much would you charge for this, Keith? About three-fifty. And then one of the guys in there – see, that’s like $1100. What?
Keith Consentino: Just give him the microphone.
Shane Jacks: Give him the microphone. So – and we’ve got a little bit of a surprise on that front also, Keith.
Keith Consentino: Yeah, so we were asking ourselves, Shane and I were talking back and forth like, what would make us even more excited about this seminar if we were attending and not just presenting it? And we thought, man, what if we can just supercharge it a little bit with even more perspective and different styles.
So there’s a couple guys that we’re bringing in addition to ourselves to help present. And one of them kind of unofficially is our buddy Paul Corden. I kinda look at Paul as like the pioneer of high retail pricing. He’s really kinda taken up a torch for that and he’s helped so many guys. He’s been so forthcoming with his strategies and just sharing everything, just trying to make everybody better. And it’s a strategy or a mindset that Shane and I have. And we’re grateful to meet Paul and listen to the stuff that he’s got. And we both learned a lot from him, he’s learned a lot from us and we’re all better because of it.
So he came last year as our guest and he’s agreed to come out again this year, which we’re excited to have him. So I’m sure – there’s nothing on paper now and he and I haven’t even talked about this but I’m sure when we’re talking pricing for the better part of a day, Paul’s gonna be right there and he’s gonna have some key points to bring up from his experience. So I’m excited to have him there just hanging around. I think he’s gonna bring that hotbox again too so we can – if you didn’t have a chance to fool around with it last year and try to fix some dents with it, you can do it this year. We’ll have some scrap panels in there you can burn up and see how fast you can burn up paint with it. And there’s some guys that swear they can –
Shane Jacks: The keyword was try to fix the dent with it.
Keith Consentino: You know what? There’s still some guys that say they’re fixing canners with it and I haven’t. So maybe some of those guys will come to the show and show us all what they’re doing with that thing. And maybe Paul’s got another year with it and he’s better with it, or maybe it still turns out that our opinion is that it’s now worth the money. But you’ll be able to fool around with it on the level with a lot of other high-level guys instead of at a booth where someone else is trying to sell it to you.
So we’ll have that deal going which is always kind of a fun, like, side act. But one of the things that’s kinda groundbreaking is we are having an entire half-day presentation out of the two days by none other than Mr. Sal Contreras, the 2015 Dent Olympic winner. So in the same building for the same two days, two Dent Olympic winners sharing their techniques and their styles. And they couldn’t be more different. Totally different methods to attack the same dent with equal amounts of success.
You know, Shane won in his first and only time in the competition and Sal’s been in it a few times. He placed third his first time and then didn’t show too well the second or maybe third times. Don’t quote me on that. But then just last year he came back and won the thing. So he’s gonna come and show his slapping techniques, how he’s bending his dent dials to get these big pushes. And he’s got such a unique style that I thought this would be really fun. I would attend this seminar if Sal was at it because his stuff is so different. I just can’t wrap my head around exactly how he’s setting up half his big smash stuff half the time. And I’d love to see that in person, you know, his pressure from the back and slapping which, Shane, you do a little bit of, right? You get a tool behind a dent and use your jack hammer –
Shane Jacks: Oh yeah, for sure.
Keith Consentino: — on the outside. But I don’t so it’d be great to see you guys riffing off of each other and to see what Sal’s gonna do.
So Sal’s committed to spending a half day minimum with us and showing all that stuff. So I don’t think anything’s ever been done like this before where we have this caliber of technicians all in one place for this much time just sharing everything they know. So I’m pumped about it. It’s gonna be a blast.
Shane Jacks: So am I, man. I was pumped about it last year. I’m a little more pumped this year because of what the students are gonna see, what the people that are coming in are gonna see and what I’m gonna see with Sal and myself, again, two completely – well, you say completely different, couldn’t be more different. We do a lot of the same things at times but it’s just that sometimes we’ll approach the start of one the same way and then others it’s completely different how we start it.
Keith Consentino: Right.
Shane Jacks: So you are half right there.
Keith Consentino: Are you trying to stay on the cutting edge of paintless dent removal when it comes to your tools? Well, if so, you need to make sure you have two things in your arsenal. One is the Shane Jacks jack hammer blending hammer. Find it at BlendingHammerPDR.com. If you wanna learn blending we’ve got an awesome tutorial to go along with the hammer right there on the site. You’re gonna love it. You’re gonna learn something and you’re gonna get better and make money.
In addition to the hammer, if you are doing any glue pulling, you need to have the Blackplague crease tabs. It’s a six-piece crease-pulling set. The two largest are absolute monsters. They are gonna pull out collision damage like nothing else you’ve got available. And the smaller sizes are gonna be for the normal every-day kinda door edges and minor, minor collision dents and a dogleg and 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.
So we’ll be – in addition to the stuff we talked about, some of the major key points that guys always wanna see and what we’re gonna continue to show is deep nasty dents, especially on metallic colors. That’s like a Dent Olympic dent, so Shane will be showing his strategy for that, how he gets them so damn flat and still keeps them looking right. And glue pulling, lots of glue pulling.
We’ll be talking about glue pulling smashed dents and where we’re starting and the techniques for that. And glue pulling rails like heavy-hit rails. We’ll have some of those simulated of course and chances of us getting an actual hail-damaged rig are pretty slim at the rental agency. But we can simulate a pretty beat up rail and show the technique that Shane uses to blow through that stuff.
And I can get them flat but I don’t think I’m as fast as Shane. So we’ll have Shane teaching that and it’s gonna be a combination of blending and glue pulling that he uses to get through these rails so fast and make so much money on those things.
So, man, there’s so many areas where you’re gonna learn how to make more money at the seminar that it’s not even funny. It may seem like an investment at first but it’s really just buying a ticket to a fatter bank account for the months to come.
Shane Jacks: Yep, and blending. I know you kind of touched on that but blending will be spoken about also in depth. That will be –
Keith Consentino: In depth, that’s a big one. I mean, that’s almost like where you’ve hung your hat as the defacto expert on blending. And I know you didn’t invent it but you got real good at it real fast. And you’re the only guy to win the Dent Olympics only using a hammer not a knockdown. So that’s your world and you of course make the hammers. So we’ll be getting through quite a bit of blending training.
And of course we’ve got the blending tutorial that you can buy on PDRCollege.com. It’s relatively inexpensive and you can learn blending and run that video back a thousand times from a computer or phone or tablet or whatever. And a lot of guys have learned a lot from that, myself included. There’s some interesting footage in there that you’re not gonna see anywhere else.
But if you really wanna get in depth and ask questions and have hands-on and have Shane look at you and say, “No, no, no, not that way, this way,” this is the place to do it because he’s not gonna be teaching you this stuff in the parking lot. As many of you guys have gotten out there and gotten some tips, that just ain’t happening anymore because the dude is way too busy at this show. I mean, it wasn’t just the hour seminar days we didn’t eat. Every day when we’re at the booth we hardly had a break.
Shane Jacks: It’s crazy, man. It was four intense – five, sorry, five intense freaking days. But you know what? We did well, Keith, and talked to a lot of guys even at the booth. Not just at the seminar but even at the booth. You know, we couldn’t spend an hour on a subject with guys but when they come up, I don’t think you had any time to spend any time with anybody doing –
Keith Consentino: I spent a little bit but –
Shane Jacks: — but I would spend two or three, four minutes with some guys walking up that would ask me, hey, what about this, this and this. And we were happy – we’re happy to teach in the seminar. We’re also happy to talk to you at the booths in the limited time that we have. But we were crazy busy, man, selling tools. Our booth was –
Keith Consentino: Yeah, we sure were.
Shane Jacks: — crazy, crazy busy.
Keith Consentino: And thank you. All you guys who came and bought tools from us, thank you so much. It was humbling, honestly, to see how many guys were willing to come up and spend their money with us to give us a chance to help them make more of it. And I believe a good portion of those guys came from the podcast and decided to come on out because we talked so much about the seminar – I mean, about the MTE itself.
And of course there’s a lot of guys that always come but there were some guys that – I mean, that was a record attendance. And I don’t wanna take credit for the entire increase but, dang it, I’m gonna take credit for some of it. We said come and then the MTE broke a record. So thank you guys for coming out.
And I don’t think anybody regretted it, man. It’s just a cool time for PDR guys, especially if you’re working in the middle of nowhere, you don’t have a lot of buddies in the business. And all the information you get is online through Facebook or [Inaudible] [00:30:17].com or something similar.
You know, I was talking to a fella the other day and he said, “Gosh, I just don’t know if I’m as good as some of these guys because I see all these pictures posted.” And I said, “Well, let me tell you something about the pictures posted. They are not posting their everyday repairs. The only ones that make it to the screen are the ones that turn out amazing. And even then it’s a glamour shot half the time.
So if you’re judging yourself against the fake ideals that people are posting online, you’re not really living in the real world. The fact of the matter is, there’s a lot of repairs that don’t turn out as perfect as you’d love them to but everybody involved is happy. Those don’t make it to the Facebook page.
Shane Jacks: Some of those pictures also are, “I’m gonna take a before of this dent. It’s kinda bad.” And you take that before picture and then you look at the – you just happen to catch the right reflection or you had the right light and you’re like, “Man, that looks a lot worse than that dent actually was.”
Keith Consentino: Yeah, no kidding.
Shane Jacks: Yeah, this one’s gonna get an ad for –
Keith Consentino: I’m gonna look like a stud. It’s funny. I mean, like people joke that their Facebook page, their life looks so amazing. They take the vacation pictures and all the kids are happy. Nobody posts all your garbage on there. It’s just the highpoints as the brochure of your life.
You know, you’ve got a lot of options when you decide what to do with your invoicing and your data capture for your dent removal or other reconditioning business. But the choice I’ve made for my company is ReconPro by Auto Mobile Technologies. This stuff has proven invaluable.
I had a mountain of paper invoice books stacked up in a room in case I wanted to look something up. It was archaic, ridiculous. Now all of my technicians are on iPhones. They scan the vin of the car, they enter a few pieces of information including capturing the email for your customers. It’s 2015, you need to be building a mailing list for your customers so you can keep them updated. If you wanna run specials, you wanna reach out to them and touch them you need an email. This prompts you to capture their email so you can send them the receipt which comes via email, no paper in the truck to get lost.
Guys, this is the way to do it. There’s a lot of options you can take. There’s lots of competitors but this is the one I’ve chosen. Check them out online AutoMobileTechnologies.com. The product is called ReconPro. It’s not one guy who’s also a PDR tech building software. It’s a team of nerds dedicated to making your life better and that’s what you want. Check them out. Tell them we sent you over there, ReconPro.
Shane Jacks: Well, I’m looking forward to those two days, man.
Keith Consentino: Yeah, it’s gonna be awesome. There’s no way for you to buy it yet or get into it yet. We just wanna remind you that it’s coming up. The way we released it last year is as we got closer, maybe a month or two out, we started opening up the sales. And we opened them up in order to the people who are on our mailing list. So even if you’re on there already, just to make sure, go ahead and hop back on our mailing list on PDRCollege.com. And that’s when we will send out an email saying, okay, it’s coming up. We’re gonna start taking registrations tomorrow or next week or whatever.
And just make sure you’re in line because we’re not selling as many as you’ll buy. It’s gonna be too many people. And when there’s that many it’s just gonna dilute the training to the point that it isn’t really worth it anymore. So it’s gonna be a relatively small group. How many people, I don’t know yet because that’s still up in the air. It’s probably gonna be a couple more than last year but I don’t know exactly how many. But I can tell you there won’t be an infinite number, not by a long shot. I mean, we’re not gonna come anywhere near filling up 10 percent of that giant building. It’s still gonna be a small group.
So if you’re thinking it’s something you wanna do then when you see the email that says we’re starting registration, don’t dillydally. Hop on it because a couple of guys got left out in the cold last time and I was bummed out for them. But we had to shut the doors. It’s an elite little group.
So we’re putting all the stuff together now, fellas. We start quite a few months out getting everything organized and making sure there’s gonna be a bunch of new lights there and a bunch of cars there and panels and new tools and everything else. So there’s a lot of work going on behind the scenes that you don’t need to be bothered with, but that’s why we’re talking about it now. We’re getting rolling. So keep an eye out on the email for that.
So today what we’re gonna talk about is we got a couple of call-in questions. You may or may not know on PDRCollege.com we have a voicemail feature where you can hop on there and click the buttons and just talk in your computer or your phone and leave us a voicemail. So often guys will do that, and let me see if I can pull up one of those calls. Shane, to be honest, I’m not sure you’ll be able to hear it through the system that we’re using today.
Shane Jacks: That’s gonna suck.
Keith Consentino: Yeah, it will, it will. Let’s see if it’ll come through for you. Hang on just a second here.
Male Caller 1: What is up Keith and Shane? Duane here. I’m a longtime listener, huge fan. Been listening to the show for quite a while now. One of my biggest questions I have for you guys is that when you’re starting your own company and it’s just you, do you start with a sole proprietorship or an LLC? I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from other people who say if you’re by yourself just go with a sole proprietorship, it’s much easier. And then as you grow, you incorporate LLC. I was hoping you guys could give me a little info on which way would be the best route to go. Thanks guys. Get better.
Keith Consentino: All right. Well, through the magic of editing you just heard that Duane has a question about setting up his company and whether he should begin business as an LLC or as a sole proprietor. And that’s a pretty common question. I’m glad you asked it, Duane, because a lot of guys get hung up on that. And there’s a lot of information on the web about it but you can get really deep down a rabbit hold if you’re searching and searching trying to figure that out.
But here’s the long and short of it. If you start your company as a sole proprietor, it’s the easiest way to start, especially if you name the company with your own name in the title of the company. You don’t have to do any kinda fictitious business name stuff if it’s your last name or your first and last name as the name of the company.
But what you’re saying as a sole proprietor is that you yourself, you are the entity. You are the company. And the reason this is a bad idea, and it’s a very small reason that can turn into a huge reason, but here it is. As a sole proprietor you have all of the liability for the company on your shoulders. And I know you think that just you, you are the company so you should be liable, etcetera.
But in this day and age people are so litigious, you’ve gotta watch out, man. You never know what’s gonna come your way. You never know what crazy customer you’re gonna encounter or something happens that’s seemingly out of your control that someone’s trying to pin on you.
So the reason you don’t wanna be a sole proprietor is that if something goes haywire, even if you have the proper insurance – -say you’re insured to a million bucks and you’re only working on one car at a time – and Shane and I both have more liability than that, but assume you have a million, which is a pretty safe bet for working on a $150,000 car, even if you burn it to the ground you’re still safe.
But heaven forbid somebody’s personally injured through maybe a fault of your own or maybe not, but somebody thinks it’s yours and they decide to sue you over and above a million, they decide to sue you for 5 or 10 million. And let’s just say that they win that judgment, you are now personally liable for that difference over your insurance and it’s coming out – your house is gonna get sold, your wife’s car is gonna get sold, you’re gonna have to declare bankruptcy personally. It’s a bad deal. You’re opening yourself up to a lot of exposure that you don’t need to be.
That’s the purpose of creating an entity like a corporation or an LLC. They make a pit stop between a liability and your person life. And that’s where those entities for the business live. So that is what I suggest when you start, whether you’re a corporation, usually as an S corporation, as a designation of – sub-designation of a type of corporation, and it kinda gets nerdy.
But your accountant or lawyer can help you figure it out completely. But whether you’re a corporation or an LLC, again, there’s a couple little differences but they’re the same in the sense that they are going to offer some protection to your personal life from the goings on in the business itself. Does that make sense the way I’m explaining it, Shane?
Shane Jacks: Exactly. I mean, that’s the main reason. There are other smaller tax reasons for an LLC, but that’s the main reason is the liability. With an LLC the company is liable for whatever happens, for whatever lawsuit is gonna be brought up against you.
Keith Consentino: Right.
Shane Jacks: And you can’t – you’re not gonna lose your house or your car. The entity, the LLC itself is who’s going to be responsible.
Keith Consentino: And like Shane said, there are some tax strategies that you can use with those entities that you cannot use as a sole proprietor. So basically unless you’re selling like walking sticks that you carved yourself to people at the flea market, you probably don’t wanna be a sole proprietor. You wanna skip right past that and move onto a legitimate business entity.
And it’s not free. You’ll pay anywhere between 700 and two grand to use a lawyer or some, you know, Legal Zoom or something to form these companies or these entities. And there’s a little bit of maintenance that goes along with them. It’s not all that easy but it’s necessary if you’re gonna run a legit company. So I would never recommend sole proprietorship. I would always be an LLC or an S corp. And picking which one is gonna be up to you and your accountant and your lawyers, so dig a little deeper on that, but that’s the answer to the question from our perspective.
So the next question we got through our voicemail, let’s kinda pull that sucker up and –
Male Caller 2: Hi, this is Daryl. I heard you guys talking about the PDR price guide on several episodes now. I’d like to incorporate one of those into my company. Would you happen to have one that I can view so I can make modifications to it to use for myself? Thanks, appreciate it. Love the podcast.
Keith Consentino: All right. And that question was from Daryl. And Daryl wants to know – we talk a lot about this pricing guide and he wants to know if he can see or have or use a copy of it so he can take the basic idea and make his own price guide at his company kinda based on the theories that we’re talking about.
And I’ve – it’s funny, we were just talking about Mr. Paul Corden earlier and the pricing guide I use is based on the theory that he started with his. So it’s really his guide and I’ve contacted him prior to the show and he said he’d be happy to share his format. Of course it’s up to you and your norm and your company and your market to determine what those prices are, but he can show how he formats it on the page.
It’s a little eight by – gosh, I don’t even know how wide it is – eight by five or eight by six card. And the 8″ side has a little ruler on it and then there’s a number of inches listed in the guide and it has a dollar figure attached to each one. And then when you flip it over, or some guys have it on the same page, there’s conditions you wanna apply to the dent or that apply to the repair that increase the price such as the dent being through a body line or involving laminated glass or having obstructions behind it, etcetera.
So by the time this show is live we will have a link up on PDRCollege.com in this episode, which is episode 79, with an image of that that you can have a look at. And you should be able to download it there and fool with it. And keep in mind, we don’t want you to use the prices that are on there. In fact, we may even remove the prices on there and you can input your own. I don’t want anybody to think that we are setting the nationwide pricing but I can tell you that for my personal company, we start at $150 for anything up to 1″ with no other conditions. And then it goes $50 an inch for everything after that, in addition to the conditions of obstructive damage, etcetera, etcetera, the things I just talked about.
So we’ll have that up. Daryl, you can feel free to have a look at it and use it for yourself and likewise everybody else, even if you just use it as an idea and hand it off to a print shop and say, “I want something like this but this is what I want it to say.” I am a real, real fan of that pricing guide. I talked about it before and I’ve probably talked about it too much, but that’s really helped my company as we grow. It helped all the technicians stay on the same page. And where two different guys do an estimate two different times on the same car and we’re gonna be within 10 percent of each other, if not right on the money. So I really like that.
We’re always nervous if one of us did an estimate and then someone else was going out to look at the car and, hey, how much did you bid that car for? I wanna make sure we’re not just making up prices here. So the pricing guide enables us to do that. And it enables us to play kind of a good cop bad cop and say, “Hey, I’m not making up these prices. These are the prices.” And, man, I’ve encountered so little –
Shane Jacks: — resistance.
Keith Consentino: — resistance – sorry, I couldn’t pull the word there out of my mind – resistance from customers using that guide. It’s kinda comical honestly. I think, gosh man, this is easy. Once they just see that the number comes from the process and not from the mind they just roll right on down the road with me and everybody’s happy. So thank you Paul Corden for helping the PDR industry get better. And thank you Daryl for asking for that because probably a lot of guys wanted to see that and that’s why we played that question.
So if you’ve got a question that’s been knocking around in your mind and you wanna ask it to us, hit the voicemail button on PDRCollege.com and send it to us. If you’d rather not have it asked on the show, just let us know and we’ll reach out to you and see if we can help you. But we like to use these questions because if there’s one guy that had the gall to get on there and ask it, there’s a hundred other guys who wanna know and just haven’t gotten up there to ask. So we’re gonna put them on the show unless you ask us not to because they’re gonna help more people.
And that is what we are about. Don’t forget to get yourself a Shane Jacks jackhammer if you don’t already have one. You’re ridiculous. You need one to be profitable and quick, especially doing hail damage rails. I found that out personally. You gotta be doing some blending. And if you didn’t know how to do it, buy the tutorial. Shane’ll teach you how. It’s not a lot of money. In fact, I think it’s even cheaper if you buy the hammer and the tutorial together.
So today’s kind of a quick show. We just wanted to make sure you guys got a heads-up on the seminar that’s coming up and get a few questions answered. And let us know if you’ve got questions. Hit them out to us and we will knock them back to you with some answers. Until next time, fellas, get better.
[End of Audio]Duration: 47 minutes
