Should You Vary Your PDR Pricing?
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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:
Keith Cosentino: I’m Keith Cosentino, he’s Shane Jacks, and this is the PDR College podcast, the only place on the interwebs devoted to perfecting your craft of taking dents out. We want you to evict mediocrity from your trailer park, because that is what’s it’s going to take to make piles and piles of cash. Shane, why are we so concerned about making piles and piles of cash?
Shane Jacks: Well that way I can buy that Pat Benatar-esque microphone cover you’ve got with you.
Keith Cosentino: And Shane can see me today, can’t he?
Shane Jacks: Yes, I can.
Keith Cosentino: We are in studio together for the first time.
Shane Jacks: Which is pretty cool.
Keith Cosentino: And forgive us if there’s technical difficulties because we don’t know anything about what we’re doing with these wires, but we try to somehow manage to get our voices together on the internet.
Shane Jacks: Together, at the same time.
Keith Cosentino: We’ve done it.
Shane Jacks: Wires everywhere. If somebody were to break in here now, there’s about $6,000.00 worth of copper laying on my desk.
Keith Cosentino: Shane even got one of those big silver satellite looking heaters, because he thought that was light a satellite component we could use. It doesn’t even work, but it’s sitting here on the desk.
Shane Jacks: I’m glad you’re here, Keith.
Keith Cosentino: I am too.
Shane Jacks: We are working on a little project for a few days.
Keith Cosentino: Yes. It brought me across country.
Shane Jacks: First class.
Keith Cosentino: Private jet. I had to be a stowaway in the landing gear.
Shane Jacks: It was first class for the animals.
Keith Cosentino: It wasn’t as warm as I thought it’d be. So today we thought that since we’re here in person, we’re going to tell some stories about weird stuff or interesting cars we’re working on, and we got to thinking, “You know what? A lot of guys have given us a hard time about charging different prices.” Right Shane?
Shane Jacks: Yeah, and there are a lot of questions out there about should I charge X for a different model of car or make of car? And that question kind of goes along with what Keith and I preach constantly, and it’s not just about different models of cars, but that is a great excuse for you to charge differently.
Keith Cosentino: Mostly we’re talking retail, right? Everybody is, what? What do you think? I think now we have to edit.
Shane Jacks: You look uncomfortable.
Keith Cosentino: Well it’s a new format. I can’t sit down, I can’t stand up. I’ve got a desk that’s at my waist and a chair that sits down at my knees.
Shane Jacks: We’re not going to edit this. If we’re in studio together, they’re getting the full Monty. So Keith is looking around like he’s lost.
Keith Cosentino: Well normally I have a giant high-backed velvet chair that I sit comfortably in with some hot cocoa, but today I’m at a concrete desk.
Shane Jacks: His robe makes Hugh Heffner look poor. Your smoking jacket.
Keith Cosentino: So the question we’ve got, that everyone asks us, “Hey, should I charge more?” And there’s a lot of dent guys that have a different opinion about, “Should I charge more for a nicer high-line car, even if it’s an easy dent, than I should charge for a Chevy Aveo?” And some guys are of the mindset that you’re a rip-off artist if you charge them anything different than what it costs to fix that particular dent, and other guys say, “Heck yeah you’ve got to charge different amounts. They’re different cars, different customers, different people, different circumstances.” Shane and I are of the latter opinion that you’re never doing the same thing twice, so if you’ve got a high end car and a high end customer, you’ve got to price it appropriately. And if you’ve got a Chevy Aveo with a smashed in fender and the guy wants you to make it look 90 percent better for $200.00, you’ll take that deal too, but it’s all about making the most profit you can make for the time you’re at work.
And if you want to make one price for every dent you do, people are going to love you. But if you want to make the most money that you could possibly make, you’ve got to figure out where the deeper pockets are and provide them the service they want. The fundamental factor that a lot of people don’t consider when they’re talking about this argument for the opinion against ours is that these cars aren’t work anything more than a Chevy Aveo as a piece of equipment. They go from point A to point B, they get you there, and you’re not cold, hot, or dead. But everything else is just the gravy on top. The car is extra fast. It’s extra plush. It’s extra capable. It goes longer. Whatever. But they’re just extra features that people want to have. They don’t need them. You don’t need a 911 turbo, you just want it. So when the people buy those cars, they’re expecting something different and something better, something more exclusive.
So they don’t want just anybody to work on them. They don’t want some cheap dude to do it for $50.00, they want the Gucci service. And you, if you want to take that market, need to be obliged to provide that for them.
Shane Jacks: Yeah, and it’s a perceived value also, and when another argument for that that I hear constantly, Keith, maybe you don’t – well I’m sure you do. You’ve seen the posts and everything about it, is, “Well, people around here don’t have that kind of money.
Keith Cosentino: Right. They’ve got the car, but then they don’t have money.
Shane Jacks: They ran out of money immediately after they bought that S 500. After they bought the S 500 they completely ran out of money. And that was your number one point. We’ve said it two or three times here, Keith. I believe it bears mentioning again. The one question you asked me about three or four years ago, what – do you remember that question, about the cost of a car?
Keith Cosentino: Absolutely. I said, “Hey Shane,” because you were telling me, “Man, people just won’t pay that stuff out here.” And I said, “Okay, let’s talk about it. You can get the same S550 out here in California that you can get in South Carolina,” and Shane said, “Yeah, that’s right.” And I said, “About how much does it cost out there?” And he says, “I don’t know. I figure about the same price it costs out there.” “Gosh darn it, you’re right. That is the same price for that care here as it is there,” so why should it be any less to fix it? And it’s not any less at the dealership. They’ve got pretty set prices. You’re going to pay about the same for a service. Mercedes is going to be making sure that happens. It might vary just a little bit, but basically they’re going to be the same. The parts are going to be the same, the number of hours are going to be the same, it’s going to be the same. So there’s no reason that if you’re in Chicken Lips or Temecula that you can’t get $300.00 to fix a moderate dent on the body line of an S550. There’s no reason. It doesn’t matter where you are.
If that car made it there, then you can make it there, and that was finally some concrete numbers that changed Shane’s mind. Because you’re not changing Shane’s mind without facts. You can give him some emotions, but that’s not weighing anything for Mr. Jacks here. You need to show him hard facts.
Shane Jacks: Yeah, emotions aren’t going to work on me. And when he gave me that fact, it was over the phone, thank god, because in person I would have looked really dumb reacting to that. Well, there was no reaction. It was pretty much silence on the other end. I might would have wanted to punch him and he’d have had to take me down. I don’t like being proven wrong, and he pretty much did it very quickly. I actually did argue back with you at that point. I said, “Well it’s just different here, Keith.” And you know what that was? That was anti-Shane Jacks. That was no fact. That was complete feeling and emotion. “It’s just different here.” “Well explain how it’s different.” “It just is.” Have you heard the way people talk around here? That’s worth -$50.00 a dent.
Keith Cosentino: So Shane started raising his prices and saw that gollee, you’re right, the people will pay it. I mean of course, if you’ve got – this is something else I want to talk about. People think, “Well my customers, they’re expecting this kind of price or this cost,” like, let’s get real here for a second. How many customers do you have that have been to see you more than once every three years, 10? Five? They’re all new customers. You guys, you have repeats and you have lots of referrals, but it’s not like they’re coming down to the corner store three times a week. They don’t even understand if you change your prices. In fact, every customer that you get that’s a repeat customer is going to think that you’re changing the prices because hopefully every three years you have changed your prices a little bit. And they’re going to say, “Gosh, that’s a little bit more than I remember.”
Say, “Yeah, it’s 2014. The last time I saw you, you had a ’92 Camaro. New. Prices have gone up.”
Shane Jacks: That’s an interesting – I have had one repair Keith, one repeat customer, that kind of went completely away from – I mean, you can explain away, “This dent is in a different area than the dent the last time,” even if it’s the same car from three years ago, back when I was charging $8.00 a dent, comparably speaking, so, I mean, this guy pulls up, it was maybe about six or eight months ago and he says, “Yeah, you fixed a dent in this thing three years ago.” I said, “Okay.” His immediate, “I don’t know what your prices are now, what the difference is.” I didn’t even tell him we’d gone up a bit. I said, “Well, there’s not much difference in them. They have went up just a bit,” but I immediately, in my mind, I’m going, “This is going to cost him three times as much because it’s in a ‘different area’.”
So he shows me the dent, right? And it’s in the left front door on the body line, and I tell him the price and he went, “Whoa. That’s more than twice as much as you did the last one.” I said, “Well it’s in a different,” he goes, “It was in the same spot on the other side on the door.” So I kind of doubted him. So I walk around the other side, there’s a chip, literally, not three inches different, but on the body line, and I’m like, “Yeah, well, my prices are higher now.”
Keith Cosentino: Well here’s the thing. I can do it three times as fast, so –
Shane Jacks: But you can explain it away and –
Keith Cosentino: Did you charge him the price or did you give him a little room on it?
Shane Jacks: I backed off a little. Yeah, I backed off a little.
Keith Cosentino: That’s fine. We’ll all do that a little bit, just give them a little bit of room so they feel good, feel like you’re giving them, as a repeat customer, something special.
Shane Jacks: I mean, and it’s another thing I can explain, again, it’s just excuses, but it makes them feel better. I’m like, “I’ve got to pay for this place,” and it’s true, I do have overhead, and I am tied to this place, so there’s – most of you guys out there are running around doing a mobile route, not route – would you call it a route, Keith? It’s not a route because it’s not a set –
Keith Cosentino: Right, but that’s what we just call it, route retail, which basically means wholesale retail out of a mobile location, so that’s kind of just a jargon term that we throw around, route.
Shane Jacks: So it is a route, it’s just a different route every day. So, but I do have a little bit of a different, and it does save me a ton of time, running around, but I’m also, at times, here, it’s rare that I’m not doing anything. There’s always something to do here, always. The floor needs slept right now.
Keith Cosentino: And that dead fly over by the speaker, you’ve got to get rid of that.
Shane Jacks: That’s actually a pet.
Keith Cosentino: He’s just playing dead.
Shane Jacks: He may be dead, poor guy.
Keith Cosentino: I remember when you were telling me –
Shane Jacks: I wasted money on that leash for him.
Keith Cosentino: When you were telling me what it costs to run the shop, it was an eye opener for me and a lot of other guys. It is not cheap. So the argument that you need to charge more because you have a shop is legit.
Shane Jacks: It is completely legit. Yes it is.
Keith Cosentino: If we had similar expenses, I’d be doing dents out of that Lamborghini sport utility. Remember that thing, from the late ‘80s?
Shane Jacks: Yeah. But it’s – and when I got my first shop almost four years ago now, a little over four years, I was, “Okay, it’s going to cost me this much a month,” and then it was, like, triple that. And I’m like, “Holy crap.” I ended up sinking a little over $10,000.00 in that first shop, just doing some stuff that I wanted. I’m kind of an aesthetics freak, and I spent a bunch of money on this place also, and marble walls and –
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, when you walk into the office, it’s like you went into the spa area of a 1980s four-star hotel. Lots of marble and brass, it’s a little steamy.
Shane Jacks: The steaminess is coming straight off of me. No brass. I hate brass.
Keith Cosentino: And some weird dude just walked out with just a towel on.
Shane Jacks: Asking for more hot rocks. So a major hail storm has affected your area. What do you do now? Your phone is ringing off the hook, dealerships are inquiring about your services, and retail customers and body shops are eager to get in touch with you as well. You want to capture as much as possible while still maintaining your sanity. Now how do you do this? How do you close deals, interact with customers, and answer an unrelenting phone, all while not losing your mind? Enter a PDR management company like The Hail Company. The Hail Company will come into town and manage sites of all sizes and kinds to maximize your profit potential. From placing the correct techs in the correct positions that they fit best, to total management of wholesale operations. The Hail Company will do whatever is necessary to make your storm experience a good and, more importantly, profitable one. So give Ryan a call today at 636-734-5470 or email him at ryan@thehailcompany.com. All right, back on topic. Sorry I took us away with the shop talk there.
Keith Cosentino: Well it’s true though. It ties all in to what we’re talking about. Changing your expenses, or your prices according to your expenses or your situation. So we got to thinking about this because one of the – You know, Shane and I spend a lot of time on Facebook, whether that’s healthy or not, but our buddy Wade just fixed a smashed up AMG down in Texas, did a ridiculously nice repair on it, and I don’t even know what he charged for it, but I know what I would have charged for it. It was a decent collision in the corridor panel, the right corridor, around the wheel lip and up into the corridor a little bit, a couple of creases. I would have been between $1,000.00 and $1,200.00 to repair that. I don’t know where you would have ended up.
Shane Jacks: Somewhere between $100.00 and $1,000.00. I actually only saw the after. I saw the screen shot of the before, but I didn’t actually watch it. Sorry Wade, I’ll go back and watch it.
Keith Cosentino: It was a pretty good shot, but it wasn’t crinkled up and mangled. Kind of smooth, which makes for something you can really screw up when they’re smooth like that.
Shane Jacks: Did he use any Black Plague tabs on it?
Keith Cosentino: I believe he said he did. Yeah, at the crease sections at the top.
Shane Jacks: Is anybody not using a Black Plague tab on any kind of damage out there?
Keith Cosentino: There are several guys who aren’t. They have not come into my fold yet, but they’ll get there, once they start realizing how much better they are and once they are more accessible. They’re going to be at almost, fingers crossed, they’ll be at almost every tool store you’re going to buy tools from. There’s a couple of hold-outs that don’t like to carry other people’s products, but by and large, if you want their tools, they’ll probably have my tabs. Or put it this way, if they have my current tabs, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll have my second set. It’s just a matter of time. So Shane, you had a couple of stories you wanted to share with us about particular cars where you were making exceptions for pricing. Well they’ve both been pretty neat.
Shane Jacks: Yeah, it doesn’t matter which one I go with first. The first we’ll talk about was a reproduction 427 Cobra, ’65, 427 Cobra, and you guys that are car nuts. That and Keith knows this, a lot of other people, that is my favorite car of all time period, bar none.
Keith Cosentino: Have you driven one yet?
Shane Jacks: No, I have not. There’s actually, when I go to California in November, you can rent a replica.
Keith Cosentino: Oh really?
Shane Jacks: Yeah, like $600.00 a day. Yeah – well, I think the total cost ends up being around $850.00 and you can only drive it for 100 miles and then it’s $2.00 a mile after that, so I’m probably going to come back with a $1,500.00 bill from that.
Keith Cosentino: We could do a show down there and then write it off. You can’t see Shane, but his eyes just got about three times larger.
Shane Jacks: We’ll do the show from the road. That’s the entire show will be nothing but wind.
Keith Cosentino: Wind and little girl squeal laughs coming from the front.
Shane Jacks: But one was, and it was the British racing green. Not my favorite, but the British racing green, aluminum body reproduction 427 Cobra and it was in the fender, fairly open area. I had to actually just pry against my hand because of all the nice stuff that was underneath the hood.
Keith Cosentino: Oh you can get it from underneath the hood, it was like a tube chasse?
Shane Jacks: Yes, I mean, and there was no other way of getting it. The inner –
Keith Cosentino: Oh is that a metal house?
Shane Jacks: It’s another aluminum, and I could have taken that off, but –
Keith Cosentino: Oh, like an old American car has the bolts in there where you can unbolt it?
Shane Jacks: Right. So I went through the hood and, oddly enough, the area that I’m looking at, it’s a wave, and the customer had accused the repair shop that I was at, and this guy does high end cars, Ferraris, Lamborghinis. Believe it or not we have those here. It’s very few of them, but we do have a few of them.
Keith Cosentino: They all fit in one building.
Shane Jacks: And it’s not a big building, by the way. You get eight cars in there. Well, no, between the two buildings, maybe 12 cars. So he does maintenance on these high end cars, and there was an F40 in there. But anyway, the guy accused them of putting this wave in the fender, and truth be told, when I go out there, I say, “That is not a dent, that is bad body work. There’s body filler leading right up into there.” You look on the back side where I’m pushing, and there are these tick marks in the body itself where they’ve used a hammer, a body hammer, and just beat this thing out, and the body work had a wave at the edge. So there I am really – yeah. I mean, what it is is it was the edge of the Bondo, whether it be shrinkage or what.
Keith Cosentino: Could you see sanding scratches in it?
Shane Jacks: No, you couldn’t see sanding scratches in it. It was really sanded out well, and it wasn’t metallic. You know that British racing green? So even if there were sanding scratches, with enough clear coat on top, you can buff those out on the top end, but the body work was really nice other than that. So here I am, I’m like, you know, it was a really small area. It was about a two-inch long area. “So what are you going to charge me for that?” And, you know, a lot. A lot.
Keith Cosentino: Oh, but he was paying out of pocket.
Shane Jacks: He was paying out of pocket as a repair shop.
Keith Cosentino: And it’s your account. Right? It’s like a normal – That’s a tough place to be.
Shane Jacks: Semi-normal. It is a tough place to be. So it was something that I would normally – He’s right down the road from here. It was something that if he were to call me so he could mark it up and make him a bit of money on it if he wanted to, it was something that I’d charge $150.00 to $200.00 for, honestly.
Keith Cosentino: On a normal vehicle.
Shane Jacks: On a normal dent, yes. If it were a normal two-inch wave, like he was talking about. So I’m like, “Man, I start,” I’m trying to explain it and trying to be nice, and cautious, but get as much as I possibly can anyway, you know. And he looks at me, he’s German, he said, “Shake, it is what it is.” He said, “I don’t want you to kill me, but I know you have to make money and I know you’ve got a lot of risk involved there.” He said, “However, if it breaks, it’s my fault. If the Bondo, or if the body filler cracks or paint cracks, it’s still my baby. So just do what you can.”
Keith Cosentino: And if he doesn’t bring that up, you make sure you do, you know? In plan English.
Shane Jacks: Exactly. Yes. I had already brought that up. I mean, that was definitely, I said, “I’m going to put some heat on it, but I can’t put an extreme amount of heat because it’s plastic behind there.” So it was Greg and myself were out there, and Greg is holding the light. It’s a really awkward position that I’m in, and I ended up charging him $350.00 for it, and I was there 35, 40 minutes and got it to a level that the gentleman was okay with.
Keith Cosentino: The customer and the –
Shane Jacks: Right. I mean there’s only so much you can do. Metal is going to do. It doesn’t move in a digital fashion. I believe I’ve explained that before. It’s moving in a linear, and I’m pushing on that low and then the body filler is raising with it. Well, I can’t knock that down, so you’ve got to be extremely careful, and so it wasn’t perfect. Everybody was happy.
Keith Cosentino: Did you cut and rub it or just leave it?
Shane Jacks: No, I left it. I left it. I was scared to. A lot of those, that’s something that a lot of you guys need to understand. It depends on who does the restoration on these cars, and I have a little bit of not background, but I know a lot of really high end builders, and if they’re really high end, they’re going to put, my uncle would put between seven and 10 coats of clear on a car. And then he would cut and buff it and when it was done it absolute glass. Well, some guys are only going to put three or four coats of clear.
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, that extra three coats costs you $800.00 in clear sometimes.
Shane Jacks: Yeah, but if they’re just trying to get away with a good looking job and they know what they’re doing cutting and buffing, you know, the amount of clear they put on there, they can skimp on it a little bit, but you have nothing to work with after that, and that’s what scares me. On a factory car, you’ve got enough to work with unless it’s a Honda or an Acura. Some cars have a ton of hard clear, Volkswagen, Audi, I swear you could sand 90 percent of dents out without ever touching the dent. It’s ridiculous how much you can sand those cars because the clear is so hard and so thick. But like, on a Honda Acura, you have virtually nothing there, and that’s what you can run into with these car restoration guys, these classic restoration guys. If they don’t put enough clear on there and they’ve already cut it down, you’re close, and you have nothing to work with. I didn’t know what I was running into there, Keith, so I had no idea how much clear was left.
Keith Cosentino: That’s why, I haven’t actually put my money where my mouth is, but I’m serious about bringing a paint gauge out there with me on the road. I think I’d make $10,000.00 extra a year if I had that paint gauge. Just between explaining to people what’s here, what we can do, what we can’t do, getting out of jobs that are going to go haywire, which most of the time you can see them. Your eyes are tuned, you’re going to see something’s wonky. But if you just get in the habit of measuring it right before you start working on it, man. And then for somebody who’s on the fence thinking, “I’m just thinking about making an insurance claim and having them painted.” Well, let me show you, when you paint this panel, nobody wants this car anymore because of this very reason. And I haven’t actually pulled the trigger, because they’re expensive. They’re $700.00 for a nice one. You can get some $200.00 on EBay, I just don’t know if they’re any good. Maybe I’ll try one out.
Shane Jacks: Yeah, that risk versus reward you’re talking about there, $700.00 versus $10,000.00 a year, yeah. I mean, it seems to be well worth it. The only problem I would see there is you’re really not telling where the thickness is. We all know Dodge, Chrysler and Jeeps, their ecoat is insanely thick, so you’re going to show a thick –
Keith Cosentino: I didn’t know that.
Shane Jacks: That’s why they crack.
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, I heard you talk about it, but I never measured it myself.
Shane Jacks: Oh, it’s insanely thick and hard. I mean, I didn’t know. I didn’t know why those paints were cracking more than others. And Keith, you may argue with me about that, but Chrysler and Jeep will crack in a minute. And I said something to a body tech about that and he said, “Yes, because that freaking hard, thick ecoat, and it resonates all the way through and breaks all the way through,” and I’ve had more than one tell me that, because I brought it up after that to body guys. I was like, “Yeah, it’s like,” that ecoat or primer on Chryslers, I hate that. So it’s pretty common knowledge with body guys out there that that stuff is insanely thick.
Keith Cosentino: Well it might take a sacrificial lamb for you to determine how much you can sand on a dodge, and then you just keep track of it.
Shane Jacks: Yeah. The other story, Keith, was, I’m not going to say the name of the guy. Or should I?
Keith Cosentino: Why not? Makes it a better story.
Shane Jacks: I got called to one of these high end restoration guys. He does a ton of cars –
Keith Cosentino: There’s a 60 percent chance he does not listen to the podcast.
Shane Jacks: The, well these rich people like to keep their lives a little private though. But Rick Hendrick Motor Sports has this gentleman down the road from me. He builds all of Rick Hendricks, well I believe all of Rick Hendrick’s personal old classic toys, and he commissioned this gentleman to build a ’70 Chevelle for Dale Junior, and there’s an interesting story. Dale Junior drove one of these Chevelles for a Mountain Dew commercial, and I think it may have been an internal commercial, and it went around on the circuit with Mountain Dew and he expressed interest in the car, and they said, “You can have it when we’re done with the circuit.” He says, “Cool,” and then they backed up and said, “You can’t have the car.” Dale Junior got mad. Rick Hendrick said, “Calm down homie. I’ll have one built even better for you.” So they built this ’70 Chevelle, the chrome trim around, or the stainless trim around the wheels, they had it nickel plated, it’s a dark grey, and then this thing was – they probably have – it’s well over $300,000.00, probably over $400,000.00.
Keith Cosentino: After the PDR, $400,000.00.
Shane Jacks: There you go. So they call me out here, this thing is just a body, and it’s that old ugly green that they had on them and it was chalk, and it had 40 or 50 dents all the way around it, and nothing major, and he said, “I want zero body filler in this car. When I sell this to Rick Hendrick, when I give it to him, I want to be able to tell him there’s zero body filler in this car.
Keith Cosentino: Did they build the whole car where you’re at or just the paint body?
Shane Jacks: They do everything at this spot, yeah, and it’s pushing over 800 horsepower I think and it’s ridiculous. The car is, I think they told me underneath the hood there’s more than $40,000.00 worth of covers, just covers. That’s all it is. And so this thing is absolutely sick. But anyway, it wasn’t sick when I – it was just a 1970 Chevelle body. It’s been three or four years ago, Keith. This was before we had our talk actually. So this was a few years ago and I charged him, it was between $500.00 and $600.00 is what I charged him to go around it. And honestly with these people that are building these cars, if you could get the customer, I was dealing with a middle man here, you know, and dealing with the gentleman that was building the car, so it was a little bit different. But he still paid it with no problem at all. Rick Hendrick is worth – look up Rick Hendrick’s yacht. That’ll tell you what he’s worth. It’s insane. So he would have paid for it no problem, but I didn’t charge him quite enough.
I was only there a few hours doing the repairs on the car, and there was no body filler. So there’s – you’ve got these situations, Keith, where they didn’t want body filler in the car. You know what it’s worth to them? It’s worth an insane amount of money to be able to not have that shrinkage later from the body filler, just like the shrinkage that happened on the 427 Cobra that I fixed. Those are problems that are inherent in body filler, and they’re going to happen at some point or another, and a 1970 Chevelle is not something that you’re going to sell in two years that you’re putting a quarter of a million to half a million dollars into. That’s something that’s going to sit in your garage, it’s going to be a trailer queen, and in five years you still want to be able to show that thing, and once that’s shrinking. Once the body filler starts shrinking –
Keith Cosentino: So what you did is actually worth closer to $1,500.00 or $2,000.00.
Shane Jacks: At least. They would have charged them that for the body work I would guess, at least, and then you’ve got body filler in it. So learn from us, learn from my mistakes, this stuff is worth what it’s worth.
Keith Cosentino: That’s right. It’s worth what that particular customer will pay for it and it’s worth what it’s worth to them. And sometimes that’s an emotional thing and they’ll pay according to how deeply they’re invested in it. So you’ve just got to ask a lot of questions and know what you’re getting into. And by the way, I’d rather never do another classic car. I don’t care if we’re working on them at all, because I don’t like dealing with all these weird issues of Bondo and how much paint is on there. We’ve talked about this before, but nine times out of 10 you see this car, it’s a 1950 something whatever, you look down the side, it is like glass, and you go, “Man, the car is beautiful. I really want to work on it. I want to make it perfect for you. But I know to get a car this old this perfect, you’ve got to put a lot of body filler on it.” There’s no body filler on this car. It’s all metal. Built by the same guy that does Johnny Hendrick’s cars.
But you’re looking at sanding scratches, and you’re looking this guy in the eye where all he did was stroke a big check to some guy across town to fix it and he says, “This is done by Bud Budson and his sons over there. They don’t use any body filler,” and what do you tell the guy? You look him in the eye and say, “I’m not saying the car is a piece of junk. It’s a beautiful car, but it’s spent the first 50 years of its life in a field, you brought it back to life, made it even better than it was, and the way you make the body straighter than it even was the day it was made is by using a little body filler here. And it doesn’t make it a bad car, but I can’t flex that body filler like I can flex metal. It’ll crack before it bends. So it’s a tough situation to be in, but I tell them when I have to do them, and like I said, I try to avoid them, but I tell them, “These old classic cars are just like children. No two are just alike. We’ve got to really get to know it, find out how it’s built,” and that’s the first conversation on the phone when they’re saying, “Do you do this or that on this or that car?” I’ll say, “Well what kind of car are we talking about? Is it a driver? Is it a concourse car? Is it in the middle of a restoration?”
So right off the bat I’m kind of telling them, “I understand your world a little bit. I know the different kinds of cars you could be dealing with. Let’s talk about which one yours it.” So if it’s a car I want, and I almost never do, but if it’s a car I want, I’ve got a really good chance of getting the job when I start the conversation like that. If it’s not the car I want, I just kind of go off a little more abruptly and tell them, “I’ve got to see. It’s going to be between $500.00 and $800.00,” and they’ll flow away and call somebody else, which is fine with me. But if I want the car, I tell them, “Is it this, that, or the other thing?” And they tell me it’s a concourse car and I say, “Okay, well we have to have a long conversation and I want to see the car in person. I’d like to see what we’re talking about as far as damage,” and really let them know we need to have a whole consultation before we even talk about if I can fix it and how much it costs, and they’re used to that because they already think the car is a one in a million, so they’re happy to have that conversation.
And usually if you get that far, you’re going to get the repair at whatever price, because repainting it is not an option if it’s a concourse car. They can’t match it, they can’t get, the dude who painted it is dead now, you know.
Shane Jacks: And you touched on something there, Keith, that it keeps coming up in your and my lives here lately was when you said, “We need to have an entire consultation,” I would sound more like an expert if I could pronounce words correctly. A consultation with the customer and you tell them, “We need to have a consultation,” that immediately puts it in their minds that you’re an expert and that you’re just not this guy with some bent metal sticks. Sell yourself as an expert, guys. I mean, the way you present yourself to people, especially to these high end customers, is paramount. Even this shop, I know it sounds, Keith, you’re a mobile guy. You sell it well. But I have people, and it happens quite a bit, that come up to me and say, “I want you to do my car, because this other guy was working out of the back of a truck, and he said, ‘You can meet me here at this time, here at this time, here at this time, here at this time,’” and there’s a perception thing there.
Now Keith has a way of selling that, and you guys that don’t have a shop have a way of selling that. It’s a lot easier for me, actually, because it’s a perception thing.
Keith Cosentino: No I agree. There’s a certain amount of retail that you can capture from a shop you couldn’t get form a mobile. And you can sell it as well as you want, but some guys would rather bring it to a shop. I think more people would rather have you come to them, because most of the time you’re working on 2012 Honda Accords and the BMW three series, and they’re at work and you go hit them at work, that’s the best. But there are a few people that’d rather come to a fixed location. Whether that’s worth five figures a month to pay for the shop I don’t know.
Shane Jacks: It’s an albatross at times, I can tell you that.
Keith Cosentino: And it’s a prison too. You can’t leave. You’re sentenced here 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., five days a week.
Shane Jacks: 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.? Who works those kinds of hours? I’m not a banker.
Keith Cosentino: Nobody.
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Keith Cosentino: So similar to yours, I had a guy with, and I might even have the year wrong. I think it’s a late ‘80s Cadillac, whatever the biggest one is. It’s the last year when they still had the chrome trim around the tail lights.
Shane Jacks: Where the plastic piece goes missing all the time? You’ve got that floating ghost tail light thing going on.
Keith Cosentino: And it has the hood that you couldn’t even grab with your arms spread all the way out. It’s like a 10-foot hood. It’s just a huge car, big plush bench seats, a land yacht. It’s like the worst car I could imagine ever driving or owning.
Shane Jacks: Big flat panels to repair, too.
Keith Cosentino: Tons of chrome trim everywhere, but this guy loved those cars. It was the last of those bodies. After that they went to the more modern unibody thing, and maybe that’s unibody too, but whatever it was, he loved this car and he bought it as a 20,000-mile car, paid good money for it. It’s not a collector’s item really, it’s kind of a niche collector’s item, but for him, it was the car. All original paint, and it had a handful of dents, maybe 10 or 15 on like 10 different panels. Well, they’re easy to fix, except for the fact I don’t know that car because it was made when I was still riding tricycles around, you know? So I got to go in there and learn it, and everything’s old and crusty, so you’re going to try to get the hood insulator down, it’s going to fall to pieces, and stuff like that, so it’s a little bit of a pain, and you want to do a really nice job on it.
So most guys would think, “This car is junk, even if the guy loves it. It’s kind of a piece of junk.” It’s like a gangster car. But I knew he loved the car and I knew the service he wanted. He wanted the thing as nice as it could be. He didn’t want to paint it because he was proud that it was all original. He searched all over the country to find it. He had one before and got it back and it was painted on a couple of panels. He got rid of it. This is finally one he’s going to keep, and he’s going to drive it actually. He wasn’t going to just collect it, but he wanted it perfect. So you can price the job relatively high, but break it down to the point that it’s pretty reasonable. There’s nothing you could look at and argue with. He has 10 dents on 10 different panels. I think I did them for like $100.00 a panel or something like that. That doesn’t sound hard to swallow, but at the end of the day, or the end of the couple of hours I worked on it, it’s like an $1,100.00 job, or $1,000.00 job. I can’t remember exactly on this one.
You know at first when I was calculating my estimate in my mind I was thinking, “I don’t know. That’s a little bit high. This thing might not be worth $8,000.00 and I’m going to charge him $1,000.00 to take the dents out,” but I said, “Okay, our average dent repair is $150.00 for a door ding,” and he says, “Okay, I understand that,” and I said, “If we have multiple dents like this, I can give you a great discount. We can do them sometimes 50 percent cheaper or 30 percent cheaper. So we’re going to be $100.00 per panel, let’s make sure these are the dents you want to fix, this one here, this one here,” and we talk about each one as we go around, talk about the challenges, any kind of potential drawbacks, and he’s on board with all of them, $1,100.00.
It’s a great job to have. He’s happy, I’m happy, but if you priced it like, “Shoot, I’m doing 12 dents on a dealer car for $80.00,” I’m going to charge him $250. It’ll be three times as much. It’s a win win. Maybe it would be, but you just left $800.00 on the table and it was there for the grabbing. But you don’t just get to those jobs, give the price, and start working. You’ve got to put 30 or 40 minutes into that talking, send me pictures, let’s talk about it. When can I meet the car in person? I say stuff like that on purpose. “When can I meet the car in person?”
Shane Jacks: The added value that we’ve talked about before, Keith, when you take that extra dent on the other side that they didn’t see. Or maybe it’s the one, we get this constantly, every one of you gets this. “Okay, I’ve got this one here,” and it’s the size of a fist. You talk about that one, and then he goes, “You know what? I’ve got another one over here. I’m not that worried about it.” That is code speak for, “How much is this one over here going to be?” And that depends on whether I’m going to fix this one over here. That’s exactly what they’re telling you when they say that. Now there are times, Keith, where I don’t, I used to not do this but I do it now. I go around and point stuff out, as long as it’s not something that’s terribly hard to get on. If it’s a dent in the middle of the roof and they didn’t see it, screw that. I’m not telling them about that dent. But if it’s a door ding on the other side, it’s so much easier for me.
I’m not as good a salesman as you. I’m okay with that. The left front – well, I’m not okay with it.
Keith Cosentino: But you remember the steps? Right? When to talk about the other dents and when to be quiet. You can make sure you do the negotiation on the first dent first. You get that done, hand shake, it’s finished. Then you go around, because you can sticker shock them if they come in for the one dent and you go, “You’ve got seven more dents. That’s going to be $800.00.” And they go, “Blah, I have to think about this.”
Shane Jacks: But there are a lot of times, I love seeing those extra dents on the car, especially when they say, “I’m not as worried about this one over here,” because you can hit them with that first, and read their body language, you can hit them with that first dent, “Okay, this fist-sized dent right here is going to be $350.00,” and their eyes do this little dance where it hurts a little bit, making them feel the cold water. Yeah, it hurts just a little bit, so you can then, “Well, let’s talk about your other dent over there. You know I can do that one.” I can throw that in if it’s a dime-sized dent. “You know what? I’ll throw that in for $50.00,” if their head is swimming with the price of the other one. So they’re thinking, it tones it down a little bit if, it just happened yesterday, when Keith and I were on the phone a gentleman drove up and he had two dents in a car. He had about a four-inch light-ish crease in the left quarter panel, and a dent on the body line of a Hyundai, 2011, and he said, “Well how much for these two dents? I’ve got this one over here, and then I’ve got this one over here I’m not so worried about.”
But man, I hit him with the price of the crease. I told him $280.00 on the crease, and zero flinch whatsoever. “All right, how much for that?” And it’s a small dent right on the body line. It’s really accessible. I said $100.00 more for that one.” He said, “So $380.00. I think I can do that.” So 45 minutes later we’ll be out of that repair and on to something else. So I love it when there’s multiple repairs. I can adjust that, whether it be correct or not, I adjust that second price depending on what the first price did to them.
Keith Cosentino: Yes, all the time. You’re calculating on the fly every time you do that. You’re trying to read everything they give you. And sometimes they’re poker players, but almost never. They’re almost always going to show all the cards. And when you give them the first price, they go, “Oh.” And you’re like, “That second one I can throw in for nothing.”
Shane Jacks: “I’ll do it for free.”
Keith Cosentino: And sometimes that’s a fantastic way to close a deal, because you might be looking at a dent that takes you two minute or five minutes.
Shane Jacks: And you’re going to lose $400.00 over five minutes.
Keith Cosentino: Right, so you can really sweeten the pot with a couple of those free dents, and, “I’m going to do this for you for nothing if we do this repair.” Or you can use them to make more money, but you have options. But you’ve got to look around and do that. I’ve been guilty the last few jobs, last few jobs, the last few weeks, I had a guy, a new guy on my team who is already a PDR guy but he’s learning some advanced stuff for me so he’s been riding around with me. And we go over kind of what we did right and what we did wrong at the end of the day. And I had noticed a pattern riding with him that the last job of the day, I don’t any upselling on because I want to go home. It’s 5:00 p.m. and I’m looking at an hour and a half dent, and there’s two other easy dents that would be a good upsell the guy just didn’t see them yet. He’s going to see them at some point. And I just say, “All right. Here’s the price. Cool? All right, let’s get going.”
And having the guy with me forced me to go back and audit my process and I think, “You know what? I’m seeing this pattern. I’m leaving money on the table.” I mean, I can only work so much. I can’t work until 8:00 p.m. every night. But knowing that I am neglecting the upsell, this caused me to look a little bit deeper, slow down a little bit on that process. Some guys have had great benefit by leaving their phone in the truck or office when they’re out talking to the customer, so you don’t feel that draw of other people calling or texts or emails or calls coming through and making you feel like you’re out of time. You slow it down a little bit and spend the time with that customer. Imagine if you’re on the other side, the salesman is trying to talk to you about the features and benefits of something, and their phone keeps going off and they might be checking it or at least silencing it and letting you know that they’re paying attention to something else. You lose that connection. So if you want to try that trick, just leave your phone in the truck or in the office when you go talk to the fella or the lady or whatever, and do your negotiation just looking him in the eye and talking to him only or her only and see if you can go through that process a little more smoothly or generate a few more dollars without being distracted.
Shane Jacks: I need to do that. I need to start leaving my phone in the shop, because it happens.
Keith Cosentino: Oh yeah. Your phone rings, I mean, both of our phones ring like crazy.
Shane Jacks: Yeah and, man, having to say, “Can you excuse me for a minute?” That just destroys everything. You’ve got to resell. I mean, you’ve actually –
Keith Cosentino: It’s over with.
Shane Jacks: Yeah, yeah.
Keith Cosentino: That’s like asking a girl out for the first time and then you say, “Hang on a second. I’m getting a call from somebody more important.”
Shane Jacks: There are times when I will look, I mean, I will glance down at it and if it’s something that I have to take, I’ve taken it before, but man, it hurts.
Keith Cosentino: It’s no good.
Shane Jacks: It’s not good at all. It is not good at all.
Keith Cosentino: The only time I’ll take a call – There’s two times. One I’ll take it from my wife, because I made a promise to her that I wouldn’t send her to voicemail. So if she calls anytime, I take it. And she can tell just by the way I answer, she’ll say, “You’re with a customer aren’t you?” “Yes I am.” “Okay, call me back.” But if I’m on an estimate that I think is not going all that great and I get a phone call from somebody that I know is a deal, like a dealership that I deal with a lot – Like I had this happen the other day. The guy was hemming and hawing and I got a call from the Porsche dealer, and I know they only call me when they’ve got work that needs to be done. I said, “Can you excuse me for just a moment? I’m going to go ahead and take this call here and book this call while you decide what you’re doing.”
Shane Jacks: And I’ll watch you drive away.
Keith Cosentino: “It’s been a while since they made the AMC, sir. Maybe you want to declare this a collector’s item.” How we doing on time there, Shane?
Shane Jacks: Wrap it up.
Keith Cosentino: Okay. So anyway, that’s the lesson for today, fellas. Make sure you find out what your work is worth to these fellows who own these cars and ask a lot of questions. I know we’ve talked about this kind of stuff before, and today we kind of focused on classic cars, even though I hate them. When I make my millions, I won’t have any classic cars. I might have that Cobra kit that you’re talking about, but that’s it. Everything else is going to be brand freaking new with computer controlled wheels and all that stuff.
Shane Jacks: It’s going to end with “uh,” as in Porsche.
Keith Cosentino: I’ll definitely have a Porsche or too. I don’t know if I’ll go Italian.
Shane Jacks: This cat loves Porsches.
Keith Cosentino: You know I didn’t until I started working on them. They are freaking cool cars, man. And I haven’t even driven hardly any of them. I won’t drive them, because I’ll just want –
Shane Jacks: You know who else likes Porsches? My daughter.
Keith Cosentino: I knew you were setting me up. I don’t know if that’s some kind of weird thing where you’re trying to set me up with your daughter, but I think that’s gross.
Shane Jacks: No. I’m not setting anyone up with my daughter. That’s funny, I said, really quick before we get out, I told my daughter, I said – my daughter and son are standing there and I do this all the time. It’s a joke we have. And I’ll hug my daughter and I’ll say, “I love you a bunch, kid. You can stay as long as you want.” And I’ll hug my son and I’ll say, “I love you too, kid. 18 and you’re out.”
Keith Cosentino: That’s the truth too. I have a baby girl at home. I’ve got three of them. I don’t know what I’m going to do when they turn into teenagers.
Shane Jacks: Yeah, it’s, yes.
Keith Cosentino: So we talked about classic cars, but it applies to late model cars too. Just get a feel for where these guys are. But with the classic cars and the weird stuff, the weird Bondo and all this kind of stuff. You can work around it physically. We’ve got a lot of techniques to deal with that stuff. They are special babies and, like it or not, Shane and I have learned the hard way over our long careers what not to do and what to do why jacking some stuff up. I hate to say it, but that’s how you learn, you know. So let us make the mistakes for you and if you have questions about that, reach out to us and we’ll get it to you. And maybe at some point in the future we’ll put something together that you can get ahold of a little and it’ll teach you to work on the classic stuff. That might be a fun little video to do, or series or something like that. But now is the time when we move on to a tool review, and I’m going to give you guys a little sneak peak here. I’m hanging out with Shane here in person, and Shane has a new tool coming out. He’s not ready to talk about it.
Shane Jacks: I think I’m ready to talk about it. Everybody –
Keith Cosentino: What’s one complaint everybody’s had with your hammer? Zero.
Shane Jacks: I thought that was a trick question. Because it translates well into other areas in my life.
Keith Cosentino: But everybody talks to me and Shane about our tools, and the one, I can tell you the one major request I get from my tabs is to quit making them grey, because everybody loses them, and one request Shane always gets for his hammer is to please make a longer version.
Shane Jacks: That is correct. And we’ve got one, I just haven’t picked them up from the machine shop yet, but they are ready and will be off to the anodizer’s within a week, to the anodizer within a week, and then these bad boys will be ready to go and get – I’m going to get it into the hands of a few of you to test them out. These things, we, again, went through, it didn’t take but only two iterations of this thing this time, Keith, as opposed to last time, because I wanted the balance to be pretty much exactly the same. It’s a little bit, the balance is awesome. It’s a little heavier on the end, but this thing strikes way truer than I thought it was. I’m going to be straight up honest with you. I didn’t want to make a longer hammer because I don’t like using longer hammers. All the longer ones that I’ve used get squirrely on the end. And this thing, I’m using it almost exclusively now, and that’s the god’s honest truth.
Keith Cosentino: In place of your normal jack hammer.
Shane Jacks: In place of my normal jack hammer. And it looks cool too.
Keith Cosentino: It does look super cool. I got to try it out here. We did a couple of repairs before we started the recording, and that thing is beautiful. You can’t tell the difference holding your hand that it’s not the regular hammer. It feels exactly the same, the handle is the same, the shaft has a little bit of a different design to give it that strength and reach farther when maintaining the proper balance, so it’s kind of a trick to look at. But right away I was able to pick it up and just move right into using that hammer, because I’m used to using the jack hammer at home. So already as I’m blending more, I’m seeing the limitations of that size hammer. It works great for door dinging, which is what I do, but when you’ve got something far away that you’re working, like a hail rail, or sometimes I’ll have a situation like that, I’m stretched all the way out. And Shane can stretch his entire body out like a basketball player and still do good work on his tippy fingers, finger tips, but that’s because he’s got years and years of practice. I can’t lay myself out on the car and still be real accurate. I need to be a little tighter because I’m only a couple of years into this thing.
And that’s where a lot of you guys are. So I think the benefit from a stretched hammer is going to show up a lot more prevalently to you guys, and myself included. So I don’t have one yet. I’m going to steal that one here from the shop that I was using.
Shane Jacks: That’s news.
Keith Cosentino: But I’m excited to get them in the hands of all my techs as well.
Shane Jacks: Yeah, it’s 17 and a half inches long versus the barely over 12 and a half inch jack hammer current model, and man, again, it’s, when I started on it, because techs asking for a longer hammer, and I’m like, “How am I going to make this thing?” Because I just don’t want to sell something that’s not going to work right.
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, you were asking me, like, “Keith, I don’t know if I really want to make a longer hammer. I don’t think it’s going to be any good.”
Shane Jacks: Because all the ones, again, that just got a little squirrely on the end. So a 17 and a half was as long as I wanted to go, but of course god only knows, maybe next year the guys are going to ask for a 42 inch one and I’m going to have to figure out a way to make it actually work.
Keith Cosentino: It looks like a little Golden Gate Bridge.
Shane Jacks: Yeah Keith, that thing will be –
Keith Cosentino: When will it be available? What do we do? How do they get ahold of it?
Shane Jacks: Make sure you sigh up on our email list, pdrcollege.com, and you guys will be the first to get those bad boys, and I’ve got a limited amount of them. I’ve only got, like, 20,000 on the way. You sign up on that email list, you’re going to be the first to get them, and they also will be available at MTE. But make sure you get on pdrcollege.com, sign up for our email list, and we will offer them to you first.
Keith Cosentino: It can be a little confusing. We haven’t changed the verbiage on the form, but it’s the one that says, “Sign up to receive email alerts about new podcast episodes. Never miss an episode,” or something like that. So that gets you on our general list so we can reach out to you about all things PDR College. You know what we didn’t do today is read our iTunes reviews. I think we got a couple of new ones, so we’ll have to hit that next show. But we appreciate everyone who’s taken the time to get on iTunes and leave us an awesome review. It makes us feel great. And for everybody reaching out to us personally. We get, seems like countless, private messages and emails and even phone calls from fellas saying how much we helped them out. Keep them coming, because that fuels us. We’re not making a living on the PDR College. We kind of do it because we love it and we like helping everybody. The other thing we haven’t talked about is our advanced skills seminar.
We opened registration for that just earlier this week, and we’ve got a thing almost full, but there’s a handful of spots left. I could be wrong exactly, but there’s around five or six spots opened just. And we’re limiting the class size to a really small, manageable size, like we talked about before, and we’re not going to go over that. So these five or six spots, that’s all that’s left and that’s all that’s going to be left. So if you want to be one of the guys to fill those last couple of spots, there’s a form on our website as well, on pdrcollege.com, that says, “Advanced Skill Seminar,” or something like that. I should know the exact name of the button but I don’t, because I don’t create them, but it’s on there. Fill it out and you’ll get an email back with the information about the training and how to register for it, and we’ll get you coming there. But that’s going to be a tight little group of guys that’s going to spend two entire days with us and with each other talking dents and learning stuff all day long.
So that’s going to be a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to making some new friendships with these guys there, because these are the guys I want to hang around with. These are the guys that want to invest in their career, put some real money up front so they can rise to the top and be one of the best guys, not these guys that are just jacking their jaws talking about how great they are, but these are guys who, trust me, most of the guys here are going to be already fantastic technicians before they ever take this training. Because that’s how the best guys get to the highest levels. I was talking to a buddy of mine the other day and he was sharing this story that he heard on a podcast or something like that, and it was about this guy selling sales training and development tapes. It was way back when there wasn’t even CDs. These guys were selling tapes. And he heard the tapes and they were so powerful and he learned so much from them as a salesman, he thought, “I’ve got to sell these to people.” So he’s like, “The first people I think that need this are these salesmen who I know who are brought. They don’t know who to sell.”
And he showed them all the tapes and everything and they said, “Yeah, it’s great, but we’re not ready to buy or anything like that,” and he couldn’t sell anything. He sold, like, two sets of these tapes in a matter of a year or something silly. He was ready to give it up, but he really believed in them. He got so much value out of them, he couldn’t understand why nobody would buy them. So he finally presents them to a guy who’s a multi millionaire. He’s the richest and most successful guy that he knew. And the guy heard the tape and he said, “I’ll buy it.” He heard it for one minute and he said, “I’ll buy it. I love it.” And he said, “Well buy what? There’s a whole series of 12.” And the guy’s eyes got real big and he said, “There’s more of these? I’ll buy them all.” And he said, “But this doesn’t make sense. You’re already the most successful guy I know. Why do you need all these motivational tapes?” And the guy said, “Well, these things, that’s how I got here, and I need to be reminded about these thing sand I need to keep working on them, because that’s what got me where I am today and I want to continue to improve.”
So this guy figured out, he was after the whole wrong market the entire time. He needed to get with people who were already successful who wanted to stay successful. And I know that’s going to translate over to this advanced skills seminar. The guys coming are already going to be fantastic dent guys, who just want to get the last 15 or 20 percent squeezed out of their skills to bring them even higher. So I know I’m going to hit it off with a lot of these guys personally, so I’m looking forward to it. That’s January 13th and 14th in Orlando, Florida, right prior to the Mobile Tech Expo, and if you’ve never been to that, you are really missing out. I would go as far as to say you’re not actually in the dent business if you haven’t been to that show, because there is everything PDR under one roof. There’s probably 10 percent of the tools made that are not represented at that show. Everything is there, you can hold it, you can feel it, you can talk to the guys how made it.
You can request that they make something custom for you. You can talk to other PDR guys and share war stories and make new connections, especially if you’re a hail guy, forget about it. If you’re going to be traveling all over the world, it’s all about connections, and everybody’s there in one spot. You’d be an idiot not to go. You’re going to just, if you didn’t buy a thing or talk one tool, just making connections with other guys that’s going to make you money the next hail season is priceless. So if you don’t come to the seminar, come to the MGE. But if you’re thinking about coming to the MGE and you want to learn a little bit, come a couple of days early and hang out with us. Not to mention we’ll be around for the whole show, so if you’ve got some questions that pop up later, come and see us. We’ll be there in person. So it’s going to be just a fantastic week. We’re really looking forward to it. We’re excited to see you guys there.
But make sure you’re on the list. If you want the hammer, that’s where it’s going to come out first. So if you want to be on the cutting edge, that’s where it’s happening. Hope you guys have got something you can act on this week. Let us know how it works for you in the comments, if you’ve made some more money on a classic job or if you sent one down the road because it’s a piece of junk with Bondo, let’s share the story. So until next time fellas, get better.
Are you trying to stay on the cutting edge of paintless dent removal when it comes to your tools? If so, you need to make sure you have two things in your arsenal. One is Shane Jack’s Jackhammer Blending Hammer. Find it at blendinghammerpdr.com. If you want to learn blending, we’ve got an awesome tutorial to go along with the hammer right there on the site. You’re going to love it, you’re going to learn something, and you’re going to get better and make money. In addition to the hammer, if you are doing any glue pulling, you need to have the Black Plague Crease Tabs. It’s a six-piece crease pulling set. The two largest are absolute monsters. They are going to pull out collision damage like nothing else you’ve got available, and the smaller sizes are going to be for the normal everyday kind of door edges and minor minor collision dents in a dog leg in a bottom of a door. I’m telling you guys, it is going to change the way you do your repairs when you have the cutting edge tools, and these are two of them. Blackplaguepdr.com, blendinghammerpdr.com, check out the sites, guys. Bring yourselves into the 21st century.
Do not forget about Recon Pro, the software that we use to run our PDR companies. The stuff is phenomenal. You’re entering all the information on your device, which is an iPhone, you’re scanning a VIN with the camera on it. Everything is populated in there for you. You buzz that little rascal off via magic off to a server somewhere. It’s all living on a server. You can dunk the phone in a bucket of water as soon as you’re done. You don’t lose any data. Everything is paperless. The invoice is delivered electronically. You can send duplicates at a moment’s notice. Guys, get off paper. Quit screwing around. Automobiletechnolgoies.com, Recon Pro, get your business into the 21st century.
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Duration: 63 minutes
