Make Stupid Money Chasing Hail

Hear the story of two HIGHLY successful hail techs and learn some tricks

In this Episode we welcome two guests on the show! These guys are solely Hail Chasers and try and work together as a team as often as possible. Tony Frasher and Max VanNostrand  have been chasing a loooong time and have seen stupid done five hundred different ways.

 They have both decided to team up and try and educate as many techs as possible to the revenue possibilities when hail repair is done right. If you like hearing about income numbers, you won’t want to miss this!

Tony and Max will also be teaching an extra day at our 2016 Advanced Skills Seminar in Orlando FL in Januaray 26,27,28 right before the MTE! You won’t want to miss it!! The whole day will be about making stupid money on hail repair. From what storms to go to, to how to attack the cars in the most efficient way possible, they are going to lay it   ALL out.

Get on the email list to reserve your spot today!Sign up here!

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Transcript:

Keith Cosentino: Let’s talk a little bit about hot glue.  Specific for paint less 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 craft store, you can get some from Wal-Mart. In fact, I used Wal-Mart glue for a long time.  Before I really got into the manufacturing side of PDR, Wal-Mart 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 worked amazingly.  Green glue, and then pink glue, and we stock both of them on blackplatepdr.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 want to leave the paint on the car.  So we need something that doesn’t have maximum adhesion for a hot meld glue.  There’s a lot of glues out there that are made for construction and manufacturing that would make this glue look like it doesn’t work, our 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 got to squeeze the last two, three, five, 10 percent of performance out that everyone else is leaving.  It’s just like racing cars.  Everything has to be dialed if you want to go faster than the other guy.  And if you want to do a better repair with less pulls, or do a repair that someone else said couldn’t be done, you’ve got to have the best tools.
And glue is so stinking cheap for how much you use.  I did a $600.00 repair the other day.  I was on it for four hours, and I used two sticks of tab weld, the whole time, and I glued bold 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 short-sighted.  Buy the glue that’s going to 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 going to 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 blackplatepdr.com you’re going to get a sample.  You can go on there and just pick the sample if you want.  You’ve got to pay for shipping if you do that, but very shortly here, in a manner of weeks, the Tab Weld is going to be released, full steam ahead, and you can have as much of it as you would like.
Check out the website, tabweld.com, you can pop yourself onto your mailing list right 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.   I can’t have enough of it.  So buy it, enjoy it, make more money.  Tabweld.com. I’m Keith Cosentino, he’s Shane Jacks, and this is the PDR College podcast, your number one source for paintless dent removal inspiration, guidance, and general awesomeness. We are bringing you stuff every single week that you can put to work today in your business to make more cash. Tons and tons of cash. Shane, tell these boys why you need so much cash.

Shane Jacks: I need more cash for my barnacle relocation program I’ve just started Keith, for the yacht that I have. So every year we have to scrape the barnacles off the bottom of the boat. But I’m an environmentally conscious fella, so we are relocating those bad boys to a safer haven, and that stuff is expensive.
Keith Cosentino: They’re live barnacles?
Shane Jacks: Live barnacles. They come off the bottom of the yacht.
Keith Cosentino: Is there a school that you can go to for jokes, tutoring?
Shane Jacks: I’m not sure. I’m sure you’ll find it for me if there is. I’m running out of money jokes.
Keith Cosentino: I don’t know if you’re running out. You’ve got some, you’re just buying them in the wrong places.
Shane Jacks: Speaking of lots of cash our guest today, I’m not even going to ask you how you are this week.
Keith Cosentino: Funnier than you.
Shane Jacks: Speaking of mounds of cash, our guests today make plenty of it. Keith?
Keith Cosentino: Yes they do. In fact, amounts that have and will continue to make me jealous.
Shane Jacks: I don’t know man. You’re doing pretty well over there.
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, but it’s so easy the money I make. These guys actually work hard, in a nostalgic American way. I’m jealous of that. I guess I could go dig a bunch of holes, something like that, and feel better.
Shane Jacks: Yeah. But our guests today are, I don’t even know what correct grammar to use today, I’m off man, is Tony Frasher and Max Vannostrand. I could probably butcher your name like I’ve heard other people do so Max, are you there?
Max Vannostrand: I am, and that was a 10 out of 10.
Shane Jacks: Sweet. It’s hard to get Frasher wrong.
Max Vannostrand: Well that’s not true. Everybody says Frasher because of the spelling.
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, it’s not spelled like Frasher Crane.
Shane Jacks: No it is not. How are you guys doing?
Max Vannostrand: Good, how’s it going?
Tony Frasher: Real well.
Shane Jacks: Very good. Where are you guys at right now?
Max Vannostrand: We are in Boston, or south of Boston.
Shane Jacks: The land of rearranged Rs. It’s one awesome place.
Max Vannostrand: Yes, exactly.
Shane Jacks: So you’re south of Boston, about 30 to 45 minutes away, staying in that mobile resort of yours.
Max Vannostrand: Yes, the Boston Cape Cod KOA.
Shane Jacks: Well good. And you both have just gotten there? Is that correct?
Tony Frasher: No I’ve actually been here for four weeks. I’m working up in Maine but I came down to see my buddy for the weekend.
Shane Jacks: Sweet. So you’re still up in Maine, Max?
Max Vannostrand: Yes, yes.
Shane Jacks: Okay cool. All right, so I guess that’s the little bit of intro. We know where you guys are, who you are, and now we want to know a little bit about you.
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, why the heck are you on our show?
Shane Jacks: Yeah, why are you on our show?
Max Vannostrand: You called me.
Keith Cosentino: Yeah Shane, tell us who these guys are. Why are they on our show?
Shane Jacks: I’ve already told you who they are. The reason they’re on our show is they’re going to teach us a little bit today and throw some information at us and I think we’re going to learn a little bit more about the hail world and how to be effective in it, so that’s what these two guys are on here for. And they are two studs in this field, that is for sure.
Keith Cosentino: Yes. So so many of you guys listening, you run different kinds of companies. A lot are just like mine, where you’re a local guy and you have a route and/or you try to focus on retail and that’s your world, and then there’s some guys how do that and then you get a little bit of hail at home once in a while, and it seems like that’s half of your world. Hail is half the year or every other year, and you spend a whole year doing straggler cars that come in and then you’re running retail and route stuff in between, and then you’ve got guys that travel specifically for hail, and Shane you do a little bit of traveling for hail, maybe once a year on average, and then stay home and run a business just like mine when you’re home. So you’re kind of what I’d refer to as a hybrid guy. And then you’ve got guys like Max and Tony who have decided they’re going to chase hail full-time. And they’re completely capable of staying home in their home markets and running a retail company or wholesale, but it is really really difficult to beat the income potential when you’re chasing hail, if you’re doing it right.
Now Shane and I have met a lot of guys, Shane’s met a lot of them in person and I’ve met a few in person at the show but not many here in my hometown, but we’ve met many online and some in person who chase hail and think they’re crushing it. They’ve easily broken into six figures, they’re $150, $200 k, and they think life is good, and it is, but here come Max and Tony to let you know you’re probably about halfway to where you could or should be, and it’s because you’re doing some stuff wrong and you just don’t realize it. So once we started talking details with these guys, we realized they’re on another level. So we’ve got to have them on the show and see if we can squeeze some of that knowledge out to help you guys sometimes double, triple, or quadruple your revenue without working any more hours. So it’s stupid numbers that you’re playing with on the hail side, and they’re going to be eye opening for some of you guys who have never chased hail, never fixed hail, and they’re going to be eye opening for some of you guys who are full-time hail chasing.
So I’m excited to hear where the magic is really taking place.
Shane Jacks: Yeah, and you mentioned hybrid tech. I’m not forced to be a hybrid tech, I’m not technically forced to be a hybrid, Keith, but I kind of am because it’s basically every year or every other year, we have a very small storm here, it’ll be a little pocket storm.
Keith Cosentino: It’s every third year when I’m waiting for a call.
Shane Jacks: You’ll never get a call. It happens every year or every other year. It’s a small pocket storm, and it’ll provide a handful of cars for me and my guys, so I’m kind of forced to, I can’t book up retail. Well I could. I could completely drop the hail and bring other guys in, but I choose not to. So I will book these out for a few months and that kind of forces me into the hybrid tech deal where I’m not doing a ton of retail all the time like you are Keith, but I’m okay with that. I like hail. I’m fairly effective at it. But going back to these two guys, I worked with Max one time, not on the hail side, but on another project that we did here in Greenville for a short period of time. I worked with Tony himself at a storm two years ago in 2013, and I can honestly say I learned a lot from him. And It’s not just on the pushing of the dents that I learned. I also learned some effective techniques for being a shop owner, and we’re going to talk about that a little bit today too and how to be a little bit more effective when it hails in your area, and if you have a shop or if you’re a local guy.
Keith Cosentino: I remember when you went and did that storm. You’ve worked with a lot of different guys over the years, and that’s the one time I’ve heard you say, “I finally found a guy that’s as fast as me and as efficient, and it’s Tony.” I remember you telling me that most of the time if you really put the hammer down you could work circles around whoever you’re working with, and of course that’s not something you were trying to brag to the world, but you and I were just talking privately. But you said, “Once I worked with Tony I finally found a guy who’s got the entire package again.” So I was impressed with a compliment from a guy who doesn’t give a compliment unless it’s due.
Shane Jacks: It was, honestly, I know both of them are being silent right now, but it was honestly refreshing for me to see somebody that was that clean and that fast, because I had become complacent. I’ve said it a few times. I’d become complacent and bam, here was Tony and he was making me look slow and I had to pick it up back to original. And it helped me in many ways. It helped me become a little bit more motivated, or a lot more motivated down there and more motivated overall to pick it back up. I was just tired of sharing cars with guys who were a lot slower than me and I’m basically doing ¾ of the work for half of the pay.
Max Vannostrand: Well that’s one big tip I’ll give you is you really have to be careful who you split cars with, that’s for sure.
Shane Jacks: For sure, unless you’re just a really nice guy.
Tony Frasher: Yeah, you’ve got to find somebody that you work well with.
Max Vannostrand: I was going to get into that. I guess I’ll go first here, even though Tony’s been doing it longer than me, but I got trained by a friend of mine. I was lucky enough to not have to go to Dent Wizard or sign any contracts or anything like that. I had a guy that was nice enough to take me on board and showed me a lot of things and that’s how I got into the business. I’ve strictly done only hail since the very beginning. Obviously I can fix door dings. I choose not to do it. I try to keep my hail season to about eight months a year if I can and try to enjoy the rest of my time off when I live in Florida. Other than that, maybe some of the unimportant stuff. I’m married. I do live in Tampa, Florida, just north of there, and that’s about it.
Keith Cosentino: No kids?
Max Vannostrand: No kids.
Keith Cosentino: I think when you add a family into the hail chasing mix it gets infinitely more complicated.
Max Vannostrand: Without a doubt. I’ve seen it from a distance and Tony has experienced it first-hand.
Tony Frasher: You’ve just got to buy a travel trailer and drag them all with you.
Shane Jacks: I was about to say, you’ve got to buy a home on wheels.
Tony Frasher: And then you can just have all the headaches of home after a long day of hail work. It’s great.
Shane Jacks: So tell us a little bit about you, Tony. You’ve been on the show before, but I don’t know how in-depth we went.
Tony Frasher: Yeah, it was just for the PDR Nation so I don’t remember either, but yeah, so I’ve been chasing hail for 15 years now. Actually when I first trained, I didn’t even know that hail was a thing. It never even occurred to me. I was going to learn to do door dings and I was going to start a route, and at that point in time I lived in Seattle, Washington, and I was going to go back there and start a route, and the guy that trained me, I actually paid to get trained, but the guy that trained me, he’s the one that told me about hail and thought that it would probably be a good fit for me just because I like to travel and everything. At that point in time I was 21 or 22. So yeah, so that’s how I got into it. It sounded interesting and so it just kind of took off from there. Currently I live in Colorado, but unlike Max, I try to stay on the road about eight months a year or so, so that keeps me pretty occupied, but I definitely take off my winters to go snowboarding and just enjoy Colorado.
Keith Cosentino: So those four months when you guys aren’t working, are you not working at all? Are you just checked out for four months?
Max Vannostrand: 100 percent completely.
Tony Frasher: Yeah, other than other investments or whatever, yeah. I mean, I use it just to relax.
Max Vannostrand: Yeah, I mean, I do other things during that time to try to provide some income for myself, but as far as the hail goes, the tools go on the shelf when I get home and they don’t come back off until I go back out on the road.
Keith Cosentino: What months of the year generally are those four months off?
Max Vannostrand: Typically November, December, January, and February.
Tony Frasher: Yeah, usually about March there’s something interesting enough going on that I’ll start to actively look. Seems like the last couple of years, though, it’s actually been April, but I’ve finished later the last couple of years a well.
Max Vannostrand: Probably you ought to talk a little bit really quickly too about Tony and I’s relationship. We met 2006, started working together in 2009. I don’t know that you’d technically call us partners. More we work together when we get the opportunity to, which is pretty often, and we’ve been doing that pretty much ever since.
Keith Cosentino: And what made you decide to start working together consistently? Is it that you guys make more money when you’re working together or just have a better time, or both?
Max Vannostrand: That’s up for debate, as far as more money. Personally, I think working with a partner makes you probably about 30 percent faster just because you don’t get bogged down as easily, it’s more motivating, there’s a ton of different reasons, but that’s my personal take on that. And yeah, we get along great, so that helps as well.
Tony Frasher: Yeah, that’s a big part of it for me. I mean currently, I spent the last six or seven weeks on my own, basically, and in a shop where there was nobody to talk to and man, it gets boring pretty quick at that point in time. It’s hard to stay motivated when you’re just sitting there kind of tolling away and kind of in your own head. You just get bored. So having a partner, it helps on a couple of different fronts. You can do the panels that you’re best at, which is something that Max and I definitely do, but yeah. Just having somebody there to talk to and make jokes with and all that stuff, it definitely helps.
Max Vannostrand: Yeah it’s kind of funny because it worked out so well because I absolutely dislike fixing side-panels and Tony dislikes fixing hoods and duct leds which I enjoy, so that part of it worked out pretty much perfectly.
Keith Cosentino: Are you trying to stay on the cutting edge of paintless dent removal when it comes to your tools?  If so, you need to make sure you have two things in your arsenal.  One is Shane Jack’s Jackhammer Blending Hammer.  Find it at blendinghammerpdr.com.  If you want to learn blending, we’ve got an awesome tutorial to go along with the hammer right there on the site.  You’re going to love it, you’re going to learn something, and you’re going to get better and make money.  In addition to the hammer, if you are doing any glue pulling, you need to have the Black Plague Crease Tabs.  It’s a six-piece crease pulling set.  The two largest are absolute monsters.  They are going to pull out collision damage like nothing else you’ve got available, and the smaller sizes are going to be for the normal everyday kind of door edges and minor minor collision dents in a dog leg in a bottom of a door.  I’m telling you guys, it is going to change the way you do your repairs when you have the cutting edge tools, and these are two of them.  Blackplaguepdr.com, blendinghammerpdr.com, check out the sites, guys.  Bring yourselves into the 21st century.
Shane Jacks: So Max you said 30 percent, and you said you don’t know about anybody else or whether you’re faster. I don’t think anybody that has been doing hail for any period of time and has worked with a partner that is effective and can do good work at the same speed as the person that partners with them, I don’t think anybody that’s ever done that can really, honestly say that they’re not faster with a competent partner. It is way faster. Just the mental aspect of getting bogged down with one car, and panel progression, we’re going to talk about that today probably a little bit. But whenever you’ve, I’ve got only half of the panels to do that you would have to do on one car when you’ve got a partner there, mentally it is huge, and I would say that that 30 percent is probably, I don’t know about 30, but you have to be close to right on that because it’s way faster with a competent partner.
Max Vannostrand: I agree. And the picking your partners is extremely important. If you work with someone that’s not up to your level, it can absolutely have the adverse effect. It can unmotivated you, you can get less done, and you can just be mad all day because that guy is in your pocket.
Shane Jacks: Been there.
Keith Cosentino: I know it’s not me, because I didn’t get the call, although it probably would be. That’s why I don’t get the calls. So you guys are talking about this term splitting cars. You’re working as a team trying to knock out all together and then splitting right down the middle the revenue, yeah?
Max Vannostrand: Correct.
Tony Frasher: Correct.
Keith Cosentino: I can imagine working together as a partnership after a while, it’s pretty efficient because you probably don’t have to ask each other stupid questions like, “Hey, are you going to circle this car? Where do you want to set your stuff up?” And all that kind of stuff. That’s all like a long-term relationship. Now you guys already know that stuff.
Max Vannostrand: Honestly, that kind of happened from day one. We sat down, we figured out what system would be best for us, and ever since then there really hasn’t been any questions ask. It’s not, “I’m going to do this paint on.” That’s important. I think you have to have – whatever your system may be, you have to have a determined system when you’re splitting with someone.
Keith Cosentino: I have a feeling that’s going to be the theme of everything you guys are talking about, systems.
Max Vannostrand: For sure. Yeah, without a doubt.
Shane Jacks: I actually had this discussion with someone the other day, as far as PDR being an “art,” and we’ve had this discussion online several times. PDR is not art, but there is an art to it, so it is really hard to get it down to a science, basically. You can’t say that this dent is going to take X amount of time, X amount of pushes, but you can get really close, and that’s kind of what you guys and some others have done in this field. Some of it you can’t get down to a science due to specifics, but some of it you can. Counter progression, who’s doing what panel, where you put your lights, all of that stuff, right? How many lights you have, the kind of tools you have, all this stuff is a system and it is a science and that is the part of it that is not an art form, if you will. So that’s what you guys have down completely, so that again, right Keith, that’s what the theme of what most of what these two do is the science part of PDR. Not only that, but they are extremely good at what they do.
Don’t get me wrong, at the “art” of PDR, whatever you want to call it.
Max Vannostrand: Yeah I would say that only 40 percent of what you would call our speed comes from the actual dent repair. You know? I mean I would say that a good chunk of it comes from having that system and staying more motivated and things like that.
Keith Cosentino: That’s pretty exciting, because if a guy is a slightly above-average technician, that means without learning any new dent skills he could get twice as fast, just by learning how to start and stop and how to set up and break down.
Max Vannostrand: I mean I’ll vouch for that specifically. Tony helped me immensely when I first met him. I didn’t know, I didn’t have my tool cart organized properly, I didn’t have the right tools, and I would say at that time I was a slightly above-average tech, and it really kind of took me to the next level.
Keith Cosentino: Yeah I saw you highlighted on a few things on Facebook, Max, and you might be shy about that, but it sounds like everybody is starting to give you nicknames and talk about how you’re just ripping through stuff. And didn’t Ryan Hampton highlight you on a Periscope?
Max Vannostrand: Yeah, yeah.
Keith Cosentino: And if I remember right, you answered a bunch of questions but never stopped working.
Shane Jacks: Yeah I’ll do your periscope but I’ve got something to do here. There’s a system, dammit.
Max Vannostrand: Exactly. I mean, you have a limited time to make your money, so you need to be efficient with that time. I mean, the way I kind of think about it is every minute I sit around in hail season is really like sitting around for two minutes or three minutes because you do have a limited time to make your money.
Keith Cosentino: So how many hours a day when you guys are out on a storm are you working?
Max Vannostrand: I kind of go with the 12-hour period. I think a hard 12 is better than a lax 14. You know? I think any more than that you almost become inefficient.
Tony Frasher: Yeah; I feel like if you put in a 15-hour day one day, like you’ve got something, like a car that absolutely has to be delivered the next day, or whatever, if you do 15 hours one day, you’re only going to get the equivalent of nine hours of work done the following day, even if you’re there for 12. If you’re worn out, if you get to bed late or whatever, the next day you’re just not as efficient as you would be if you just worked 12 and 12.
Shane Jacks: That’s a part of the science of the system right there, hours worked. And it all goes together.
Max Vannostrand: Everyone is different but I personally feel like I can work six 12 hour days in a week and still feel the same on, not necessarily the same, but I feel like I can do the same amount of work on day one as I’m doing on day six.
Keith Cosentino: Yeah six 12s is pretty tough.
Shane Jacks: That’s strong. That’s true.
Keith Cosentino: That’s a lot of hours.
Max Vannostrand: I’m not saying you don’t get tired. I absolutely get tired. But I can fight through it. If I’m doing any more than that, it becomes almost physically impossible to do that.
Keith Cosentino: I work a lot, even before I got into all my other businesses when I was just running my PDR company, I was working a lot. And people would ask me, “So how many hours do you work?” And I would flippantly say like 50 to 60. And then I started doing the math. I never worked weekends. I still don’t. So we’re talking about a five-day work week. And I thought, “Wait a sec. 50 to 60. There’s a lot of ground there. That’s’ either five 10s or five 12s. A 12 is I’m leaving at 7:00 a.m. and getting home at 7:00 p.m. I certainly do that, but five of them in a row? That’s a lot.” I don’t do that many. So I had to stop saying 60 because it wasn’t correct. But if you’re doing a 72-hour week, that’s a lot of working. But it’s a little bit different because you’re in one place and you’re possibly being seeded for some of the work you’re doing and something like that.
So a little bit different than physically running all over the place for 72 hours. But make no mistake, that’s a lot of hours. But you’ve got a teacher’s program with a nice four-month summer in the wintertime, and I’m working 12 out of 12. So, little different story. I might be able to push a little harder if I knew for four months I was going to be able to hang out on a beach or go snowboarding.
Max Vannostrand: I take my four months off as seriously – I take the relaxation and my four months off as seriously as I take the working and my eight months on.
Shane Jacks: I know Frasher does. That guy plays four months.
Keith Cosentino: It sounds like as long as you can stomach or are excited about traveling around all the time for those eight months, it sounds like the ideal existence.
Max Vannostrand: Stomach more than excited, without a doubt.
Tony Frasher: At this point in my life. You know, I hope this doesn’t come across the wrong way, but I wouldn’t necessarily say I really enjoy what I’m doing, but at the same time, you know, it certainly could be a whole lot worse.
Max Vannostrand: Yeah it’s definitely, it can be a hard life, I guess. You know what I mean? I mean, you don’t get to choose. That’s the one thing about hail. You don’t get to choose where it hails. So sometimes you get stuck in some places that you’d rather not be, but it is what it is.
Shane Jacks: Mississippi.
Keith Cosentino: And I’d say, in my experience working hail, and it’s been a fraction of a fraction of what you guys have done, but you lose one of the most satisfying aspects of this trade, and that is the delivery to the customer. You turn into a little factory, and the cars just go to another stage and you never see them delivered. Whereas when you’re doing retail work you’re done, the people come out, they’re all excited, they tell you how great it is, and you underestimate how rewarding that is. You think you don’t care about it. It sure is nice to hear it over and over again, and then they hand you money, physically, so it’s a pretty mentally satisfying thing to do, whereas you guys are just cranking out numbers and moving cars through the system, so you lose a little bit of that I think, at least in the hail that I’ve done.
Max Vannostrand: No I would agree with that.
Tony Frasher: Yeah me too.
Keith Cosentino: So I could see –
Shane Jacks: It’s a little easier mentally. Once you’re there doing the hail, it’s a good bit easier mentally, and you’re not worried so much about sales, you know, and answering the phone 4,000 times a day.
Keith Cosentino: Definitely. The only thing the same is that you fix dents. Everything else is different. That’s one of the most surprising things to me. Although the bending of the metal is similar, that’s where the similarities start and stop. Everything is different.
Shane Jacks: One thing I’ve heard guys say 100 times, and I’m sure Max, Tony, you guys have heard this yourself, and something that we want, every one of you hail guys out there I want you to get away from this, and we want you to get away from it even as retail guys and wholesale guys, and that is, “I’m okay if I make blank amount of money.” That hurts me when I hear guys say that, honestly.
Tony Frasher: Yeah, that’s a great attitude if you want to work the rest of your life. I personally, I don’t. I want more out of life than having to work until I’m 60 or 70 years old. I want to work as hard as I can, as fast as I can, and just be done after that.
Max Vannostrand: Yeah I completely agree.
Shane Jacks: That’s what makes you guys different.
Max Vannostrand: There’s kind of two sides to that though. I will say, there’s, saying, “I’m okay with X amount of dollars,” or whatever, there’s a dollar amount that will get me to go out on the road that is a minimum, you know, so I understand that comment on that end, but at the same time, if you get to that dollar figure, if it’s $1,000.00 a day or whatever, $2,000.00, whatever your number is, if you get to that point and then you go home, even if it’s 3:00 p.m. or 3:30 p.m., rather than staying and getting another half of a car done or whatever, that’s where it really becomes an issue where guys hold themselves back.
Tony Frasher: It’s very difficult to get ahead with that way of thinking. You can float along without a doubt, but if you ever really want to start stocking it away, you’ve got to put in the extra effort without a doub.t
Shane Jacks: There are physical limitations to how much you can make in a day, unless you’re managing this massive storm with 20 or 30 or 100 guys under you. But there are limitations to what you guys can make in a day. That’s not where I was getting at was saying, “I’m okay if I make,” it’s just that there are so many guys out there that they are okay with making $1,000.00, $1,500.00 a day, and they’re going to quit at 3:30 p.m. or they’re only going to look for storms, they’re going to accept storms that are like that, if there’s another one 200 miles away that they could go after where they can make $2,000.00, $2,500.00, $3,000.00 or whatever, I literally heard of one guy in Colorado this year that said, “I’m just happy I have a job.”
Keith Cosentino: Well let me ask a question.
Shane Jacks: That’s mind blowing to me.
Max Vannostrand: Yeah, for sure.
Keith Cosentino: Let me ask you a question. How do you know what you can make at a certain place when you’re not there yet? Is it only when you’ve got one of your pals there already giving you the straight dope on what’s going on at that storm?
Tony Frasher: No for me, I mean, it just depends on what the details are, but I mean, the reality is that it should be the case that a $5,000.00 hail car is pretty similarly damaged in one state from the next. So the money should be the same. So, if somebody tells me that they have a body shop gig and it pays 56 percent of the ticket to me, I have a pretty good idea of what I’m going to be able to make there, assuming that the cars are lined up and there’s no down time waiting for cars to get estimated or approved or anything like that. So for me, that’s really the only specific detail I would need, like in a retail or a body shop situation, is just knowing for sure that the cars are going to be, there’s going to be as many cars as I can get to with no down time.
Keith Cosentino: And how do you determine if there’s $5,000.00 worth of damage or not? Because you don’t know if the estimates are written properly or who’s looking at it, where the damage can be similar from one car to the next.
Tony Frasher: Yeah, you know, that’s the next details or if it’s a direct repair shop or whatever and who is writing the estimate.
Keith Cosentino: How about this Tony. Can you give me a handful of questions that you always ask when someone calls you and says, “Hey, we’ve got some dents. You want to come?”
Tony Frasher: Yeah for me, more than anything, I want to know that they have a lot of cars and there’s not going to be down time. That and a percentage definitely factors into it. I typically try to stay above that 56 percent range, which is like maybe a 30 percent cut to a body shop and 20 percent to the local guy. If I’m the one that’s doing the estimating and whatnot, that’s really got to be an absolute minimum is 56. But for me, the bigger thing is knowing that there’s going to be a lot of cars.
Max Vannostrand: Yeah without a doubt, I mean, that’s the hardest part of this business is you have to find the work. The thing is is if you have a ton of cars and there’s other problems, you can get there and sometimes resolve those issues. But the most important thing, without a doubt, is you’ve got to have the work in front of you.
Keith Cosentino: 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 Recon Pro, 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 want to run specials, you want to reach out 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 Recon Pro.  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.  Recon Pro. So do you have a set of specific questions you’ll always ask, or do you just kind of go through a conversation and talk it out with them?
Tony Frasher: No, I mean, that’s a big thing is that I feel like there’s not a lot of guys that are up-front, and I don’t know why they don’t want to bring this up, but we tell guys that we’re working for that, we give them a dollar figure and what we need to stay busy per week, and if there’s any hesitation that they don’t know that they can get to that, then that’s probably something that we’re going to look for another deal first.
Keith Cosentino: So what’s that figure that you’re looking for?
Tony Frasher: For us typically, we work with a couple of other guys as well. It’s not just Max and I. We have a couple of other buddies that we partner with. It’s storm dependent. But typically it’s a minimum of 5,000 per-day per-dent guy worth of work. So if they tell us that they can bring in $100,000.00 worth of work per week, then that’s going to be enough for us to have our other buddies, Bob and Curtis, they can all come with us. But if they say that it’s only $25,000.00 gross per week, then that’s really only enough for one of us.
Keith Cosentino: So that’s when you’ll determine one guy will go and then if you need another one later you’ll try to work that out, but you won’t go team if there’s nothing else going to take that storm.
Max Vannostrand: That’s kind of the cool part of having partners too is we each have our own set of contacts that we have gained over the years. So one storm it might be Tony’s contacts. The next storm it might be mine. Next storm it might be Bob’s, Curtis, and so on. So it’s advantageous to have a network of guys that you’re close to that you work with.
Keith Cosentino: And these are guys that you guys met out on the road at a storm, you just ended up hitting it off.
Max Vannostrand: Yeah.
Tony Frasher: Exactly. There’s been a small small handful of guys that I would consider splitting cars with through the years. A very small handful.
Shane Jacks: Why is that? I mean you’ve kind of gone over it. It’s speed, being able to get along with that person. What are those factors?
Tony Frasher: Yeah speed, being able to get along with the person, their work ethic, without a doubt. I mean, that’s super important.
Max Vannostrand: I would really say work ethic is more important than anything. Because if you’ve got somebody that you get along with, I don’t want to say you don’t mind carrying them, but if you’ve got somebody that you know is going to put in the effort, you can help them along. You know? And eventually, they will get faster if they put in that effort. That’s kind of how Bob kind of came about. I mean when we first met Bob he wasn’t super fast, but man he just worked his butt off all the time.
Tony Frasher: And that hasn’t changed. He still works his butt off, but now he’s fast.
Max Vannostrand: Yeah, he’s just as fast as we are.
Keith Cosentino: So I have a question. Both of you guys, before you met, were heads down, working as many hours as hard as you could, right? I know you guys aren’t the guys scrolling around the shop trying to chit chat. So how do you determine how fast the other guy is when you’ve got your head down, headphones on, and you’re just cranking? You don’t even know what’s going on in the rest of the shop.
Max Vannostrand: Oh you’re not that focused. I mean, you can still see what’s going on.
Tony Frasher: Yeah.
Keith Cosentino: See who’s bringing in cars and pulling them out at a good pace?
Tony Frasher: Sure. It’s pretty easy to tell a guy that works hard as opposed to telling a guy that’s not working hard.
Keith Cosentino: One of them is at your car and one of them is not.
Tony Frasher: Exactly.
Max Vannostrand: I mean, a real easy way to tell is if a guy is talking to you and he stops working to talk to you. Why do you have to stop working to talk to someone?
Keith Cosentino: That’s how they do it in Shane’s neck of the woods. They just stroll over, lean over, “Let me tell you something, Bubba.”
Shane Jacks: We build entire cars here that way.
Keith Cosentino: I’ve seen it. We’ve all seen it. So when you’re a local guy and you get hail done, when would you say you need to start looking for some more help or for guys to come in, or when does it make sense for you to not even push at all and call in guys to do all the work? Can you guys speak to that at all? Because that’s a lot of guys are in these little tiny towns and they can fix a hail car just fine, but they’ve also got their local business to do if they’re hailed on. What’s the best thing to do? Well you guys have seen it. You guys have seen local guys knock it out of the park and you’ve seen them crap the bed.
Tony Frasher: Right. Well for me, my opinion is that I think that if it’s any type of decent sized storm, they need to get somebody there pretty quickly. Because the reality is that the local guy should be pretty busy day in and day out, you know? And he’s going to have enough on his plate that keeps him involved with his normal day to day stuff. So if he’s getting more than one or two cars a week that he can possibly knock out on the weekend or in the evening, he’s probably going to need some help pretty quick.
Keith Cosentino: So I had a relatively local storm for the first time this year, and it’s a place that was a couple of hour for me, and they didn’t have a local guy, so it was me. So I went up there and kind of got the lay of the land, looked at some cars, and it was right after the storm so it was difficult to tell how many were really going to show up, because I drove around and didn’t see damage on anything. But then they all started coming out of the woodwork. But it took me a couple of weeks to determine, “Should I call somebody in?” And it wasn’t agreed on my part. I was thinking, “I don’t want to call somebody from across the country and have them get here and there’s 15 cars to fix and I screwed them basically.” I don’t want to broker somebody and tell them something that wasn’t the case. It’s really tough to determine how much help you’re going to need if you’ve never done this before.
So, I was talking to guys like Shane, and Tony you and I talked a little bit about how many cars are coming in in the first day, the first week, and then with your experience you were able to tell me, “If there’s so many in the first week, there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to have work for another month or two.” Do you have any kind of advice for guys that are going to go through that same situation that I went through?
Tony Frasher: Yeah. You’ve got to try and get to the root of how many claims there’s been. Usually you can do that by talking to an adjuster. They’ll have some general idea of how many claims there were. If they set up a cab site, that’s a very good indicator that there’s going to be a lot of cars.
Keith Cosentino: Okay but here’s an important question I have to ask about that part. What time frame, like the hail falls right now, while we’re speaking. What time frame do you start measuring results? Because obviously it takes a day or two, or three or four or five or six for all that stuff to get into motion for a cab team to get put together and get shipped out there. Is it a week or two weeks or three weeks when you really should be judging it?
Tony Frasher: Two weeks, the two-week point you can have a fairly good handle on how the storm is going to go.
Max Vannostrand: Yeah, as far as a cat team goes, I mean, that’s typically based off of how many calls the insurance company gets. It just depends not he insurance company. But it’s usually based off of how many calls they get within, I think, 48 hours. And they can, at that point in time, they can kind of have a decent idea. You know, there are some storms that are not always like that. If it’s light damage, sometimes it takes people, they might not see the damage until they wash their car. So it just depends on the damage as well.
Tony Frasher: Yeah, I mean, if people’s windshields are busted out, they’re calling to make a claim instantly. If you notice a couple of dings on your car you may, “Oh, I’ve got some stuff to do with the kids this week,” and sometimes you get cars months after the fact in storms like that.
Max Vannostrand: Yeah, I mean, unfortunately there’s not just one specific answer. It does depend on the damage more than anything.
Keith Cosentino: But generally two weeks sounds like the number. That’s kind of what I saw too here.
Tony Frasher: And in my experience, in a retail setting, it’s that two-week point is your make or break point. That’s when things are either going to get busy or they’re not.
Keith Cosentino: So, if you’ve never heard us talk about hail before, and we’re talking about retail, setting up your own location whether you’re in a tent or you rent a building, but you’ve decided you’re going to try to work directly with vehicle owners and the insurance companies, versus going into a dealer or body shop and working underneath them, right?
Tony Frasher: Or you’re working for a local guy that has a retail shop.
Max Vannostrand: Yeah when I say retail, that’s what I mean specifically is working for a local guy that’s already set up in the area. The reality is that if you’re going into a fresh market and setting up your own deal, there’s just a lot that goes into that. You’re not going to have any type of web presence or anything like that, so when they do a search for hail damage repair on Google, you’re not coming up. So the way that, unfortunately the only really good way to get customers is to hang up those signs that say, “We’ll save your deductible and we’ll give you an iPad,” and blah blah blah blah blah. And that’s how they’re convincing those people to come to the building that they’ve rented that’s in an industrial area that nobody can find or whatever.
So that’s not the type of retail that Max and I do.
Shane Jacks: So you’ve brought up a really good point about retail, and some guys don’t understand that. They go nuts about saving deductible, blah blah blah blah blah, but there’s something to be said for a local guy that has a presence because they’ve been there. If you type in Greenville Dent Repair or Dent Repair Greenville, I’m going to pop up. I’m going to be number one or number two, number one on pretty much all of the searches or both. So I have a presence. Now, I can greatly screw up a hail storm as a local guy. I can have an unbelievable presence in the local area and it can be screwed up. That’s something that you guys are kind of specializing in right now is you guys know exactly how a storm should be run even on that side of things, correct?
Tony Frasher: Yes.
Shane Jacks: And you guys kind of want to get that out there, what guys like myself, whenever it storms, if it storms in Greenville next week and, we’ve always had very small storms here in Greenville. Nothing really to speak of.
Keith Cosentino: Too small to call your friends from California, that’s for sure.
Shane Jacks: Well since my friend from California can’t shut up about me calling him, I believe it hailed in California not too long ago, and guess who did not get an invite? That was me.
Keith Cosentino: Whatever, you were the first guy I called.
Shane Jacks: I was not. I was on vacation. That’s why you didn’t invite me. But a guy like myself can screw it up greatly if a big storm hits Greenville, and I know you guys have seen it and I know I have seen it, it’s not effective.
Tony Frasher: Yeah it’s really a shame because there is a lot of potential there that a lot of guys just do not capture, and it’s a shame. I don’t know any other way to say it.
Max Vannostrand: Yeah if you have a good sized storm in your area, I mean, the money that you should make from that should just be incredible. If you have people calling you, you should just be able to load those cars up, you should have a good crew of guys that can come in and help manage the storm and everything. But, I mean, it’s easy to mess up. There are so many moving parts to running a deal like that that you can really just squander the opportunity pretty easily.
Keith Cosentino: I can attest to that, actually.
Max Vannostrand: I think it really starts with mindset, because it’s a whole different mindset from just running around doing a door ding route to managing a large hail storm.
Shane Jacks: Definitely. I’ve managed tiny ones, and it’s a completely different mindset. So what percentage of the storm – you guys do a lot of retail as far as working for local guys that have a retail presence, like, myself, in various cities. I know you guys do work for, we don’t have to use names, but you guys do work for one guy in St. Louis that is dialed in, correct? He knows what’s going on and he knows –
Max Vannostrand: Yeah I don’t have a problem inserting that information. I think every local guy should go to dentdouble.com and take a look, and I think that that will really put things into perspective for what’s capable.
Tony Frasher: Yeah we’ve been lucky enough that, I mean, St. Louis is a hail town. They get hail there quite a bit, but last two years they’ve, well, this year’s storm was a little bit bigger, but it was pretty localized to the area. But anyway, the last two years they’ve had not big storms, and we’ve stayed there in St. Louis, Terry’s shop, for months staying busy, when everybody else is there for two weeks or three weeks and they found a dealer that had a little bit of damage or whatever so they worked there for a bit. But he absolutely maximizes that, and he has no body shops or anything. I mean, it is literally, 100 percent retail. People calling and walking in the door, and yeah, it’s just awesome to work.
Max Vannostrand: I just spoke with him yesterday and he’s still doing four to five hail cars a week from the storm that was back in April.
Shane Jacks: Good stuff. Especially a city like that that is just overrun with dent guys, and he’s still crushing it even on a localized storm like that.
Max Vannostrand: These were not cars. They were $6,000.00 and $7,000.00, so he’s getting in four or five of them, it’s still a lot of money that he’s generating.
Shane Jacks: Yeah Bob sent me a video of Tony in the background swearing at a car that will prove that that storm was a challenge. I still have that. That was one of the funniest things. I hate the term LOL, but I literally LOLed. That was good stuff. So you guys, since you guys met each other and Bob and Curtis, but since you two met each other before you guys got hooked up with Bob, correct?
Max Vannostrand: Yeah.
Shane Jacks: So how much, just you guys partnering up and fitting up with one another, what is a percentage that you have increased just knowing one another and working with one another as far as income?
Max Vannostrand: When I met Tony, the very next year I doubled my income.
Tony Frasher: So 2008 was my first year big year, but man, I mean, it took me all, I mean I want to say that I was on the road non-stop for almost nine months. And that was my first real real big year, but I just told myself that I was going to stay out as long as I had to to hit the numbers that I wanted. In 2013 I did the same money working with Bob and Max pretty much the whole year, I did the same money in six months. So, from nine months to six months.
Shane Jacks: So this stuff, kind of what I’m getting at here, is a lot of it can be learned, a lot of it is technique, and we’ve already spoken to that, but that’s what we’re doing here. That’s why you guys are on this. We want you guys to help us learn, help the rest of us learn how to maximize that money on hail for those that want to learn. So let’s talk about that for a minute.
Keith Cosentino: Can I sidestep for just a second? Because we talked a little bit earlier when I was leading in about the numbers that you guys are turning, I think they’re going to make a lot of people pee their pants a little bit. Do you guys want to talk about that? What was your starter year pushing hail and what’s your best year been?
Tony Frasher: Starter, like the very first year I ever chased?
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, do you remember?
Tony Frasher: Yeah, I made $56,000.00.
Max Vannostrand: I mad $90,000.00 but only $60,000.00 my second.
Tony Frasher: That’s interesting. Yeah, I made $56,000.00. I mean I’ll say this though. At 21 years old, $56,000.00 was probably more than the $300,000.00 or more that I make now. It went further; I’ll put it that way.
Shane Jacks: You have a wife and child now.
Tony Frasher: Yeah, exactly.
Max Vannostrand: Yeah, it’s not what you make, it’s what you keep, right?
Keith Cosentino: So that was the first year. What’s the best year?
Max Vannostrand: Best year is just under $400,000.00.
Keith Cosentino: That’s impressive. And that’s still in an eight-month year. And you guys are both about the same pace now?
Max Vannostrand: Yeah.
Keith Cosentino: So that’s best, how far off of the average year is that?
Max Vannostrand: Say that again?
Keith Cosentino: What’s your average year looking like if that’s your best? Or is it pretty consistent?
Max Vannostrand: At this point it’s pretty consistent. That’s kind of the, that $300,000.00 is just an absolute bottom line goal. If I don’t get there, then I messed up. Something didn’t go right throughout the year. I made a mistake someplace along the line.
Keith Cosentino: I love that mindset, Tony, because that’s my mindset as well at home. It’s not that I go to work and wonder, “How was the market this month?” Or we just didn’t have the volume or whatever. I look at it like, “If I don’t do this number, I screwed something up. It’s nothing about the market or the customers. I made the wrong choices at the wrong time. I didn’t make the right phone calls at the right time, and that’s why the numbers got there.
Max Vannostrand: Exactly. Yeah, I mean, you know, there are good years and there are bad years for hail, that’s for sure, but the guys that are really motivated, I mean, that just doesn’t affect them all that much. They might have to travel more. For me specifically, I think this will be, here in Boston, will be my fifth storm, which is really really rare for me. I mean, I typically work two storms per year. But that’s what it’s going to require this year is it’s going to be more travel or whatever, but I’m pretty confident that I’m going to get to where I need to be.
Tony Frasher: Yeah I mean I’m sure the majority of guys are saying this is a bad year. Well last year when everyone was probably saying, “That was a great year. That was a great year.” Well my numbers are dead on. Now granted, it’s taken a whole lot more hustle this year, but they’re still exact, almost literally to the dime exactly where they were at this time last year.
Keith Cosentino: That’s awesome. At that level, that’s amazing. The time has come.  The black plague smooth series tabs are a reality.  They are available for you now on blackplaguepdr.com.  If you’ve been living under a rock, it is time to come out.  We are making money out here with glue pulling, and we’re using the smooth series tabs to do it.  We are getting pulls out of these tabs that you cannot get from any tabs no matter the price.  These things flap hook up strong, snappy pulls, every time.  These tabs, along with the green glue that we have also on the site, are blowing people away.  If you want to be a part of the movement, get yourself over there and get some tabs into your box.  Blackplaguepdr.com or deadrattabs.com.  Guys, the game has changed.  Don’t get left behind.  Stay on the cutting edge. So I interrupted Shane because I wanted to kind of give a frame of reference of what we’re talking about and see what kind of numbers that you guys are doing and that you’re able to show how you’re doing, and Shane was just getting ready to ask you some more questions about that.
Shane Jacks: Yeah I was actually going to ask that question within this question, but that’s okay Keith. It’s not a problem. So that’s what we want to get to those levels. We want to get to those numbers, a lot of the guys listening, and I already know that some are going, “There’s no way I can do that.” But I think we can challenge that. I think you guys can challenge that, and we want to bring you guys to the table and let you guys teach us how to do that. And we are going to give that opportunity. One of those opportunities will be at our seminar, at the mobile text expo. You guys are going to be teaching for a day. If not an eight-our day, very close to it. On Thursday, we’re adding a day to the seminar, right Keith?
Keith Cosentino: Yeah this is that thing that we were alluding to when we were working the details out and now we’ve worked it out, so Tony and Max are probably going to be there together guys? You think?
Tony Frasher: Yeah.
Keith Cosentino: Both of them together for an entire day on Thursday which is an overlapping day with the education day at the Mobile Tech Expo. That was one of the hang-ups that we had. We tried to determine, “Should we add this third day?” It’s the only day we could do it. We could not get the venue earlier in the week. The first day we could get it is Tuesday. So we’ve got Tuesday and Wednesday and then we could add Thursday. So if you want to get a couple of free seminars on getting swirl marks out, if you want to make sure you make those, then you’re not going to want to go to our hail part of the advanced skills seminar. But if you are serious about PDR and especially hail, I don’t think there’s ever been a day like this where you’re going to have all day with two guys who are turning stupid numbers who are going to try to tell you every single thing to do to make that happen for yourself. So I’m really excited about it.
I know I’m going to learn a lot, and I didn’t think I would ever need hail information and then boom, it hails in my market for the first time in 20 years. So you never know when you’re going to need this information, and that’s assuming you know you’re going to stay put. There’s a lot of guys that would say, “No, I’m not going to chase hail,” and then when we share the numbers we’re talking about they might say, “Well, let’s revisit that conversation.”
Tony Frasher: Yeah, honestly though, I mean, what we’re going to go over, it doesn’t even matter if you aren’t a full-time hail chaser. This is going to be just as much for somebody that doesn’t chase hail that they’re going to be able to improve their income as well, for a local guy that sees hail sporadically. I mean they’re going to get just as many tips to really maximize what they can make in their own market even from small storms.
Max Vannostrand: It’s just so important to maximize that storm when it hits your area. Because you can literally make three or four years of salary in a short period of time if a storm is run properly.
Shane Jacks: This stuff will cross over also. It’s not, the information you guys provide, the technical side of things, setting up your light and panel progression, yeah, that’s hail, but a lot of the other stuff is common sense that will cross over into just a typical door ding business, a retail guy’s business. Last year, some of you may be thinking, “I can’t learn anything from these four guys,” us four speaking, we had Derick on the show a few weeks back, Keith you did, and the guy was, before last year, an absolute stud high-level tech. You can do crazy repairs and works for a large company, works for Dent Wizard, and he’s making 30 percent more than he did last year just from the information he got at the seminar.
Keith Cosentino: And working less, he said. I was like, “30 percent of more, same amount of work?” he goes, “No, less. Less work.”
Shane Jacks: So these, we can learn a lot from these two guys.
Max Vannostrand: That attitude you mentioned earlier about guys who will say, “Oh I can’t do that,” they’re right. They can’t. With that attitude there’s no way they will ever be able to get to that level.
Keith Cosentino: Yeah that’s a quote, right? Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.
Shane Jacks: But the seminar is not the only thing you guys are doing, right? We’re going to expand on that in another way also, right?
Max Vannostrand: Correct. We are planning on offering some advanced training classes this winter. This will be very hands-on. We’ll actually, at that time, be doing physical repairs to cars, showing techniques, it’ll be pretty intensive. Also some role-playing, handling body shop managers, handling adjustors, that type of thing.
Tony Frasher: It’s really a top to bottom class. I mean, we want to have guys come in with their own tools and everything and we can go through and show them what they can improve on their setups and just go through it really line by line on every possible aspect that they can use to improve themselves.
Max Vannostrand: And I think, without a doubt, that a guy like I was when I first met Tony can easily increase his income 30 percent with a class like that. That intensive. You’re going to get things that you already know, without a doubt, but without a doubt you’re going to learn something that’s going to make you more money.
Keith Cosentino: So this is everything you’re going to teach in the seminar with PDR College, but there’s only so much you can cover in a day, right? So when you guys are talking about teaching your class, it’s going to be several days, and knee deep in nothing but hail. So you’ll get a small taste of what you guys are going to offer eventually with our seminar, but you’re talking about just going super deep with an intimate group of guys and just drilling deep on hail stuff.
Tony Frasher: Yeah, exactly.
Max Vannostrand: Yeah the numbers we’ve thrown out, and it’s still in the infancy stages of planning. We’ve got a generalized curriculum that we’ll follow, but we’ve talked two days of classes, eight guys is the initial thought.
Keith Cosentino: That’ll be awesome. So we’re going to have a car or two for you guys to work on when you guys come out to Florida with us, so you’ll be able to do some technique stuff and show guys exactly what you’re doing. But there’s an element to that too. You’ve got to be able to get through the work clean, and then once you get to that point, then you can make all the other gains everywhere else. But it doesn’t matter how efficient you are if you can’t do the work, and most of the guys coming to the advanced seminar are pretty good techs already, just looking to get 15, 20 percent better with some new information. So you’re going to find the caliber of guys there are already really good. There’s not many brand new guys. At least, there wasn’t last year.
Max Vannostrand: Yeah I really like the idea of helping guys that are currently doing it advance as opposed to bringing more and more new guys into the business.
Tony Frasher: Yeah we definitely want to help the guys that are already in there and they’ve been doing it for a few years, but there’s just something that they haven’t quite figured out yet. That’s kind of the reality is it does take a long time. You really have to sit and think about every single thing that you do. So it’s not that these guys might not get there eventually, we’re just going to cut that time way way way down.
Shane Jacks: I can attest to this. You guys know, all three of you, and literally everybody listening knows I’m a very proud individual. I do not mind saying that Tony sped me up in 2013. I learned some things watching him that I’m not going to say I didn’t know, but it reinforced some things and got me to hustle more, and you said sitting down and actually figuring out exactly what you’re doing. Tony, we were helping another tech, another Tony, in that storm, and it’s really when you’re sitting down trying to figure out why you’re doing things faster than someone else, you really have to sit back and think about it, and both of us struggled with that a little bit down there trying to teach Tony some of the things we do. I remember specifically, I don’t, I can’t remember what technique it was, but Tony asked you why, and you went, “I don’t really know.” And you had to sit back and think about what was actually going on and how you were doing what you were doing.
So you two are going to have a little bit of a tough time, and I know you are already doing that, actually figuring out exactly what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.
Tony Frasher: And that’s some of the stuff that I feel like I have a better handle on that after the training deal that we did last year. It helped me kind of process what I do day in and day out.
Max Vannostrand: And it’s nothing to see Tony at a storm go over and help someone that’s struggling. And I do it too. I think Tony does it a little more. But I think it’s just part of improving the business. I think the more reputable guys that do good work in this business, the better for the business.
Tony Frasher: Yeah, I feel like that’s a big part of it too. There’s a lot of guys, like you mentioned about just working for a certain dollar figure a day. If we got everybody to where they would not accept working for $1,000.00 a day because they know they’re much faster than that, I feel like that improves everybody because not as many guys will go work those deals. They’ll know that they’ll be able to go make more money someplace else.
Max Vannostrand: We really want to get guys to a point where they can say no to bad deals.
Keith Cosentino: And I want to speak to you guys who are thinking you’re going to the seminar, you’re excited about it, and then you’re thinking, “Well; I’m not ever going to go and chase hail anywhere so I don’t really know if I need much hail information,” or maybe you’re already running around a little bit but you’ve got a local presence where it hails more often, even if you go to the seminar and you don’t pick up any new techniques yourself, getting to spend the entire day with Max and Tony and getting them in your rolodex, in your network, what do you think that’s going to do when it hails in your town and you need some help? You’ve got two guys that you know now, you’ve spent an entire day with them, you know what they’re made of, you know the numbers that they do, you’ve seen them work. These guys are going to come in, instead of you calling some lazy dude that you got a reference from three other guys, you’re going to be able to go straight to the top of the talent pool and get these guys to come help you at the local storm. So there’s a lot of benefits to just coming and being a part of this later, for the upcoming year.
There was a lot of guys last year who ended up working storms together because of the advanced skills seminar and the relationships they made there, so think about that as well when you come in.
Max Vannostrand: Yeah, I mean, in my opinion, that’s what the whole world is about. It’s not what, it’s who. You could be the best hail guy in the world but if you don’t have a proper network, that’s not going to do you any good.
Tony Frasher: Yeah, for sure.
Keith Cosentino: Well guys, we’re coming up, we’re just a little bit past an hour now. We’re super excited. We’re grateful that you guys have agreed to come and teach for a day. So the dates are January 2016, and that starts on Tuesday the 26th, Wednesday the 27th, and then completes on Thursday the 28th, so three days of the highest level PDR training that I’m pretty confident to say has ever been in one place at one time. I’ve never heard of anybody putting this many studs together in one place and giving you an opportunity to come and learn everything they know. You guys ever heard of anything like this before?
Tony Frasher: It’s pretty all-encompassing. I mean, it’s definitely going to cover everything that any guy should need to know.
Max Vannostrand: There’s an awful lot of training out there, but I don’t know of any advanced training.
Shane Jacks: Especially not with studs like this. You two on the hail sides, different techniques, Sal’s techniques are different from a lot of different people, and he does a big smash high-level. Bryce Kelly is the same way.
Keith Cosentino: Did you see that challenge that Bryce did the other day?
Shane Jacks: Oh the door, yeah, impressive. The guy’s a stud, you know, and all of that talent in one place for three days. It’s ridiculous. It really is.
Keith Cosentino: I couldn’t be more excited about it. So thank you Max and Tony for coming on the show. We look forward to seeing you in person. If guys want to reach out to you between now and then and ask any questions, what’s the best way to reach out?
Max Vannostrand: Probably just shoot me a message on Facebook.
Keith Cosentino: Both of you have tongue-twister last names, so why don’t you spell them out?
Tony Frasher: So Tony, T-O-N-Y, and the Frasher is F-R-A-S-H-E-R
Max Vannostrand: And then it’s Max, that’s pretty simple, M-A-X, and then the last name is spelled V as in Victor, A-N-N-O-S-T-R-A-N-D.
Keith Cosentino: Thank you guys for spending the hour with us. It’ll be immortalized for eternity on pdrcollege.com.
Max Vannostrand: It’s exciting.
Shane Jacks: We are excited for sure.
Max Vannostrand: Well anytime guys, don’t hesitate to ask.
Keith Cosentino: Fantastic. Shane, until next time.
Shane Jacks: Get better.

[End of Audio]

Duration: 77 minutes