Coaching From the Future

In this show we talk about the things we would tell our “apprentice” selves if we could go back from the future to coach ourselves in PDR using our advanced knowledge! Fun exercise in theory and open minded thinking!

Resources:

Smooth Series Glue Tabs WATCH NOW

Jackhammer Blending Hammer Series

Australia

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Keith: I’m Keith Consentino. He’s Shane Jacks. And this is the PDR College podcast, your No. 1 source for the highest level of paintless dent removal training you can get anywhere in the world. We are here with you every week, ridin’ shotgun with you, tryin’ to coach you up to the next level. We want you to get out there, kick some friggin’ butt and stack up some cash. Shane, why the heck we tryin’ to stack up so much cash?

Shane: Well, I’m tryin’ to stack up cash to fund my campaign for mayor of possum kingdom, pumpkin town, sugar [inaudible] [00:46:00], chicken lips.

Keith: Oh, man, we had some fun missin’ ya last week, Shane. So tell us, man, what the heck happened to ya? How’d ya get friggin’ salmonella?

Shane: Well, as everyone knows, I’m the adventurous type and also in the spills from my very veins. [Inaudible] cannot spill from your veins if you’re not taking in the right kind of nutrition. So I’ll eat damn near anything to try to better myself, Keith. So I’m oftentimes on the plane to the Serengeti or eating some raw dragon fist lizard. This time it was a very colorful frog. And apparently, I shouldn’t have eaten that bad boy.

Keith: Salmonella from a poison toad.

Shane: Honestly, I don’t know what I got the salmonella from.

Keith: Did you eat boiled peanuts from the side of the road? For all my California friends, that’s a real snack, apparently.

Shane: It’s absolutely delicious if done properly. That was rough. I won’t describe what happened. But it all started happening around 10:00 p.m. Wednesday. And when I say it all started to happen – in about eight hours’ time, I lost 15 pounds of fluid and other stuff.

Keith: In eight hours.

Shane: Yeah, it’s a pretty effective weight loss system. I’m gonna start a fat camp.

Keith: Rotten soup.

Shane: If any of you tail chasers wanna come on board –

Keith: So I guess you were cruisin’ along Wednesday, everything’s fine. And then you just started comin’ around with flu symptoms, stomach cramps, sweats and all that kinda stuff.

Shane: Yeah, really quickly, just stomach, and that was it. After about eight hours, I didn’t have a stomach. It was rough. I started cramping horribly. My entire body was cramping. It was terrible.

Keith: They admitted you, right?

Shane: Oh, yeah, they actually admitted me quickly. Within about five minutes, I was back in a room. It took about five minutes after that before they got the IV started in me. They pumped three bags in me before I left. And I was good to go. Well, not really. It took me down for two and a half, three days, honestly.

Keith: Well, we’re glad you’re better.

Shane: Yeah, me, too. You’re not as bad as I am. I can promise you that.

Keith: You spend most of the time healthy as an average. And when you come down with somethin’, you really start thinkin’ how precious it is when you are not sick. You can’t believe how bad you feel when you’re jacked up like that. You can’t do anything. You can’t enjoy anything. You can’t even appreciate bein’ alive. But man, most of the time, you’re healthy. But you’re worried because you’re late for somethin’ or ya spilled somethin’. When you have somethin’ like that, it really puts everything in perspective, for me at least.

Shane: Absolutely, sure. I can promise you this. I told ya that it started around 10:00 Wednesday night. Starting at around 10:01, I did not think about a podcast, a dent, anything goin’ on at the shop. I did text one of my guys and told him I most likely wouldn’t be there because I could foresee a lot of bad going on that night. But yeah, it puts things in perspective because you’re just fightin’ to be decent again. But I missed doin’ the podcast last week. That was absolutely an awesome open, by the way. It was a good show. But that open was gold.

Keith: I had a lot a fun with it. I had at least one guy tell me that it was terrible, which made it even funnier to me. And then I was worried for a second that maybe it was terrible. Then I had several guys tell me it was funny. We had fun. Today is a cool show. We oftentimes say ask us a question, send us an email, and we’ll help you out. And a lot a guys take us up on that. And I had a fella. And I didn’t get his permission to use his name, so I’m not gonna use it. But he’s one of our listeners in Australia. And he wrote this cool message to me. And he doesn’t even know we’re answering this on the show yet, but we are. So I’m gonna read it.

Shane and I are both gonna answer your question, mystery dude. Here’s how it goes. My old man has been working as a PDR tech here in Australia for 20 years now. He’s trained up my two older brothers to help him in the family business. And at the turn of this year, he hired me to learn the trade with him. He’s got me listening to your podcast while we work. So this dude obviously knows what he’s doin’. We listened to Episode 44 today. And you mentioned that you like to educate and help out PDR guys. My question for you is if you could go back in time and give your “apprentice self” one piece of advice, what would it be?

I’m over the moon that my dad has offered me a position to learn and work alongside him. I know he’s takin’ a hit by getting me on board, as he has to spend less time pushing his own dents and more time teaching me how to do mine. I want to repay him by learning as much and as quickly as possible. Any advice you can share to a newbie like me would be greatly appreciated. First of all, this dude is, like, the best son a dad could ever ask for. Is this guy a class act or what?

Shane: Yeah, for sure. He’s grateful to his dad. I wonder how old he is. He’s gotta be over 23 or 24. Up until I was about that age, I thought my dad was an idiot. I understand differently now, of course. Keith, you sent me this the other day. Man, I honestly thought it was a really good question, goin’ back and tellin’ yourself one thing – a guy that’s just getting into himself and asking that, ya know. How many things could you actually come up with, Keith?

Keith: I could come up with a lot. But I had to whittle them down to the most potent things or the things that I think would make the biggest impact to me as my “apprentice” self. It’s a great question.

Shane: It’s a really good question.

Keith: We receive a lot a questions. And they’re not usually that well thought out. They’re usually like, what can I do right now, today. But this question made us both actually take some time to think what would I change if I could go back in the past. A lot of my friends who don’t like their lives – well, I don’t have many friends that don’t like their lives – but the couple that I do, they’re always thinkin’ man, if I just didn’t do this thing or I wish I could go back in time and change this thing or that thing. I generally don’t feel that. I feel whatever decision I make, even if it works out badly, it’s overall better for me. I’m gonna learn something from it, and my life’s gonna be better because of it.

So I generally don’t think in the past. I tend to think in the future when I’m imagining things. So this was an exercise for me to actually think back to the past. So we both made our lists. And we will go back and forth like we do sometimes with these type a shows. And we’ll compare notes. Are you trying to stay on the cutting edge of paintless dent removal when it comes to your tools? Well, if so, you need to make sure you have two things in your arsenal. One is a Shane Jacks’ jackhammer blending hammer. Find it at blendinghammerpdr.com. If you wanna learn blending, we’ve got an awesome tutorial to go along with the hammer right there on the site. You’re gonna love it.

You’re gonna learn somethin’. And you’re gonna get better and make money. In addition to the hammer, if you are doin’ 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 gonna pull out collision damage like nothing else you’ve got available. And the smaller sizes are gonna be for the normal everyday kinda door edges and minor, minor collision dents and a dogleg and a bottom of a door. I’m tellin’ you guys that 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 ReconPRO, 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 the VIN with the camera of it. Everything’s populated in there for ya. Ya buzz that little rascal off via magic off to a server somewhere. It’s all livin’ 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’s paperless. The invoice is delivered electronically. You can send duplicates at a moment’s notice. Guys, get off paper. Quit screwin’ around – automobiletechnologies.com, ReconPro – get your business into the 21st century. We both made our lists.
And we will go back and forth like we do sometimes with these type of shows. And we’ll compare notes.

Shane: Yeah, it wasn’t supposed to be a list, though. He said one thing, remember?

Keith: You’re right. He did say one thing.

Shane: He’s gettin’ extra, for sure, for sure. Keith and I don’t normally collaborate before the show on these lists that we do. This time we did, Keith. And he said, “I bet yours is a lot like mine.” And I said, “I bet it’s not.” Well, come to find out, it is.

Keith: That’s because we’re both very intelligent. And I knew that and you didn’t. You thought it was just you.

Shane: Who knew you would’ve gone – last peanut butter sandwiches. I had no idea.

Keith: I’ll start then. The first thing that I would tell my apprentice self is to educate myself as highly as I could possibly imagine to in the area of selling –sales. Even if I hardly learned how to fix a dent, if I could learn how to sell, I can make a living. And when I got into this, the goal was not to be wealthy. Of course, that was my ultimate goal. But my goal at that time was just to make a living at this. This is what I wanted to do. And this is how I wanted to pay my bills. And when you’re starting out, you can do neither. I mean, it’s terribly difficult to learn. We forget how hard this trade is to learn if you’ve been doin’ it a long time. It sucks. It washes out a lot a guys. We’re basically Navy SEALS.

Shane: And they think I’m arrogant.

Keith: Much respect to our nation’s Navy SEALS. That’s nothing like learning how to take dents out.

Shane: I don’t remember there being a hell week in PDR where I got four hours of sleep the entire week. I don’t remember that. I remember hail week, h-a-i-l, where I only got four hours of sleep.

Keith: Made a bunch a money.

Shane: Yeah, there’s a difference. I made a bunch a money. I didn’t jump in 50-degree water and have to be resuscitated/

Keith: They wish they could be in 50. Those guys are friggin’ hard as nails. So anyway, sales is the mother to me of all skills in what we do because if you can’t sell it, you can’t make it. You could be the best guy in the world, but if you can’t deal with customers, you’re not gonna make a living. Some of the things specifically in sales that I would do is I would first tell myself to learn to believe in what I’m selling. And when pricing everything, stop following the crowd. This is a huge problem for guys that are new. They don’t know how to price their service. It doesn’t matter if you’re talkin’ dent removal or any other service. They say well, the market in my area is XYZ. So I gotta be XY or Z.

And that’s just not the case. I mean, it’s the easy choice because that’s what everyone in your local market expects. But it doesn’t have to be. You can be lower – don’t recommend it. You can be higher – usually recommend that. But if you’re gonna be higher, you gotta know how to sell around that. And that’s why I’m talkin’ selling first. But you can’t sell it if you don’t believe in it. So you’ve gotta start believing that you’re bringin’ value to the table, believing that you’re making people’s lives better or happier. And then stop following the crowd to figure out what the compensation for that service should be.

The other part of this that I would do or tell myself to do is to start from day one to listen to books and reading books –listening, of course, to audio books on the topic of selling. You don’t have to listen to 100 or 50 or even 20 of them. But if you’ve got five to six, ya know, half of those are Zig Ziglar books – just listen and listen and listen. When you’re tryin’ to push dents, just keep that guy in your ears. When the day comes around that you can fix a dent, you’re gonna be so much better equipped to communicate that with a customer. It’s gonna be amazing. You can go right to the top of the pack really quickly once you can do a decent repair.

So the third part of this for me is most of us getting into PDR, we’re relatively inexperienced in life. Some guys went through a career and then switched –like a body guy. So it may be a little different for them. But for me and for you, we were both pretty young guys. So at that point in my life, if someone told me somebody was a salesman, I automatically thought he was kinda sleazy or a scumbag. A salesman is somebody who tried dupe somebody. So I would tell myself is to forget that stigma and just take that out of my mind and understand that a real salesman is like a customer’s guide. They are the industry expert.
And they’re gonna take someone who doesn’t know anything about the industry by the hand, and they’re gonna guide them through this process to make sure that they get the most value and they make the wisest decision and they’re happy with their decision. That’s a real salesman, not somebody who’s wearin’ a crappy jacket and tryin’ to rip you off, which is what I thought it was before. So I would tell myself to learn that and then go through those steps, get my sales game in order before I ever hit the streets.

Shane: Sounds good.

Keith: That’s the first thing I’d tell myself.

Shane: What? that you sound good.

Keith: That is part of my sales process. I gotta tell myself that my voice is pleasing to others.

Shane: I won’t even start there because I know it’s not on my end. So that’s your first one. You want me to share my first one, Keith?

Keith: Yeah, let’s hear your first one.

Shane: It’s much the same. I worded it a little differently and encompass a little more than what you did. You’re a sales guy. That’s your thing. And you’re really good at it. A lot of us can learn a ton from you. I knew that was coming on your end, without a doubt. I’ve got two. And honestly, tryin’ to listen to both of them at the same time would possibly be a little contradictory. The two that I wrote down, I thought man, I wish I could tell myself both of these but be able to turn one off for a few minutes while I’m practicing the other. But No. 1, I would tell myself hey, dude, the sky is the limit.

What do I mean by that? Keith, a lot of it lines up with what you just said as far as sales and not marketing only sales of dent repair but marketing yourself. We have both recently in the last couple of years introduced tools to the market. Honestly, you take me back to 1994. And there was not any hint of that in my mind whatsoever. I’m sure you were the same way, Keith. Am I correct?

Keith: I was always interested in kinda dorkin’ around in the garage and geekin’ out and tryin’ to make stuff. I’m not the world’s best fabricator. So my stuff never really was polished or worked as well, but I could envision a lot of it. So once I got older, I realized my strength is not as a fabricator but as an idea guy. I can envision the product. I can sketch it. I don’t have the tools or the machinery to build it. So once I got older, I was able to actually make some products that had some legs. But it was in my mind. I never really envisioned it as the way I’d feed my family. But it was in my mind.

Shane: It was always in my mind because I was always modifying or making or doing something. But there was never this thought that I could market and sell this and guys are gonna want it. Again, my topic here is the sky is the limit. Believe in yourself. And one of the things that Zig Ziglar says that sticks most in my mind out of everything that I’ve listened to or read is believing in what you’re selling. If you don’t, you’re not going to sell it. If you don’t believe in yourself – we’re selling ourselves, like you’ve said before, Keith. We’re selling ourselves every single day to our wives, our kids and the people in front of us. If we don’t believe in ourselves, how in the flip are we gonna sell ourselves?

And how are we gonna sell our services if we don’t believe that a dime-sized dent is worth $125.00 or $140.00 or whatever you decide that it is? If you don’t think it’s worth it, you’re not going to get it. Believe in yourself in so many ways other than just selling PDR. That’s a big one. That is a huge one in the PDR business but also in your repairs and what can be done. Just don’t listen to people that say X can’t be done or you can’t get X for that kind of damage or you can’t this or you can’t that. Keith, you and I are living, breathing examples that that is not true. And there are plenty of others out there just like us that are maybe better that are the same way.

And they just haven’t said no or allowed the word no to enter into their mind-set and their PDR business. And the sky is the limit for them.

Keith: Yeah, it really is the truth. All the self-limiting stuff is really what keeps you down. When you start believin’ that you can get to all these next levels, then you’re gonna find a way to get to it. But as soon as you start believin’ you can’t, it’s over before it ever starts.

Shane: Yes, sir. So that was my No. 1. What’s your No. 2, homey?

Keith: I’m gonna add a little one between my one and two. I’m thinkin’ back as you’re talkin’ to when I started. And I was rereading this question in my mind from this guy. And I think most of the time when you have an attitude like he does; you feel you’re just a slug, and you’re slowin’ the whole operation down; you’re not producing anything – I can tell just from this message from this guy that he wants – I mean, of course, it’s his family business, and he knows it intimately. But even if it wasn’t, a guy with an attitude like this – he wants to be contributing from day one. He doesn’t wanna be a leech just by taking guys’ time. He feels guilty when they’re slowing down to show him some things.

And ironically, to me, that’s a great trait because the guy wants the business and the other techs to succeed and do as well as they can. And he doesn’t wanna be the guy to drag them down. If I’m gonna speak to him and speak to myself back at that time, I want you to remember that with an attitude like that, you’re bringin’ a ton of value to that company. You may be slowin’ them down for just a few minutes while they’re fuelin’ up. Once they get your gas in the tank, they’re gonna go so much farther, faster than they could’ve without out. So don’t beat yourself up and think that you are slowin’ everybody down overall. You may be slowin’ them down for a couple of days.

But with an attitude like this guy has, it’s gonna be rocket fuel to the rest of the company. As long as he picks it up – and it sounds like he’s gonna put the work in to do that – I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up bein’ one of their top guys because this is the attitude of the highest level guys. They’re always looking to get better and seek out more training and more advice from more experienced guys. And they just blast off to the top. I’m excited for this guy.

Shane: He’s listening to us. That says enough right there.

Keith: I mean, we beat ourselves up a lot and goof around, but we’re honestly sharing more information on this podcast than there really is in any other place and the same types of things that we talk about. There’s some great resources online, and we talk about those a lot. But there’s none just like this one. There’s none as free as this one.

Shane: This one is very free.

Keith: Is there 100 a percent money-back guarantee? And even though he just asked for one, we’re givin’ him two plus. My second thing – and we’ve talked about this on the show over the past year. We’ve been on this podcast over a year already, isn’t that cool?

Shane: It is very cool.

Keith: It really went by fast. And man, we’ve got a lot of exciting stuff comin’ up this year. It’s gonna go by even faster than last. But my second things is do not for a second discount new tools and new techniques that you see or hear about. I have done it almost every single time. I still have a tendency to do it. And I have to remind myself to pull it back and just look and listen, and make your judgment call after, not before. We have to remember that what we do has not been around that long. It’s not like turning wrenches. This is new stuff. It’s 25 or 30 years or whatever. But that’s still pretty new. So the stuff that’s evolving all the time, we are on the cutting edge of all these tools.

We are seeing the innovations now. So there’s gonna be stuff that comes out that looks totally different than the way the guy trained you. That doesn’t mean it sucks. It might suck. But if I list you the things that I was sure were garbage, it’d be like a who’s who of the things I am all up on in my business.

Shane: One of them is the mini lifter. I think you were the same as I; correct?

Keith: Before mini lifter, it was just straight glue pulling. That was retarded. That was the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of. That was before Pops-A-Dent and all that stuff. Like, you’re supposed to glue those things on, and you’re gonna pull it, and it’s gonna come out and like, please. And there were giant tabs. There was a big slide hammer. There was no precision work. And in my company, there was nobody who was the mentor with it who had been usin’ it for a bunch of years who said no, no, here’s how ya do it. And the same with you. You guys were creatin’ your own made-up stuff where glued the whole glue stick to the car and then hook onto that and then pull it. It was just stupid stuff.

That was at the point that you guys were using it. I wasn’t even usin’ the stuff. We had it in the shop. I thought come on, man, are you done showin’ me this because I need to go out and make some money. I’ve told this story before. But it wasn’t until one of my co-workers who was a really close friend of mine lost an account because he said no to a dent. It was a lift gate of a Range Rover, if I remember the story correctly. He said no. They called some other guy who glue pulled it. And the dude says, “There’s more technology out there, bro; you better find it. But for now, we’re usin’ this new guy.” Boom, just like that. So I thought holy crap, I’m next if I don’t figure out this stuff. So I started lookin’ closer into it.

I adapted it for smashes and soft rail dents and stuff with them. I was always makin’ up my own techniques. If I didn’t want the glue to bite too hard, I would actually wax the panel and then put a huge tab on it because all we had was the big Wurth tabs. I’d wax the panel, then put the Wurth tab and then pop it real fast. It came off perfectly clean and hopefully just pulled it just a little bit. And that’s what I would do for a lighter pull. Once I understood that glue pulling really does work, I went down that rabbit hole farther and learned about the mini lifter, which I thought was a joke and then small tabs, which I didn’t really know existed and didn’t think they would work anyways.

Now look at me; I’m the small tab guy. All my tabs are kickin’ some butt. But the little ones that everybody’s most impressed with. Man, you never know what this stuff is gonna be – LED lights before actually looked at them seemed silly. But there was a lot of silly stuff that was silly like that dent dominator thing. You remember that?

Shane: Yeah.

Keith: That grinder on a stick with the little –

Shane: With the loads.

Keith: That thing actually works, too. It just doesn’t work in enough situations to make it worthwhile. Everything works a little bit.

Shane: Hotbox that’s –

Keith: Hotbox works, too. It just works in a really tiny little window of things that isn’t all that helpful. I mean, if it was free, I’d have one. Why not? I would heat up a panel just to glue pull it if it was cold outside. It heats it up in seven seconds. But keeping that closed mind has cost me a lot of money. The other thing I was sure make-believe garbage was blending. I was sure of it. How can you whack a dent and then make it look better? I said this Shane Jacks guy is full of it. And I’m gonna see him in Florida in person. And he’s not gonna be able to do any of this magic that he talks about. And I’ll put this thing to rest. And the opposite happened. He showed me that it works. Well, yet another thing that I shot down and was proved wrong.

Shane: This is a little side note to that and somethin’ that I always go back to in my mind. And I don’t think you and I’ve really talked about it that much, Keith, was on Doording.com in those first few – I guess the first you and I knew each other online before we actually met. I can’t remember what repair it was. But I posted the time. And you said, “And the repair times that this guy’s posting is just unbelievable.” And there was so much sarcasm in your post. I was panning over to the clock on the wall, which could’ve been easily manipulated to read. I mean, I could’ve just run the thing back. And I know that’s what was goin’ through your mind. And that’s when I started usin’ an actual cellphone or somethin’ like that so it couldn’t be faked.

That’s another instance where you don’t quite believe what you’re hearing. I did it with a mini lifter, man. The only way to shock a glue tab out –pull a dent is by using this huge hammer right here and yanking as fast and hard as you possibly can – knew that they’re stupid. I actually had two guys who looked up to me. They’re like, “Hey, what about this things?” Man, that is the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I saw a guy usin’ one. And he explained how it’s holding the panel down. And I was like, uh, idiot – really well.

Keith: So what I would tell my apprentice self is to be the most open-minded guy that you know. Don’t discount any of this stuff. As dumb as it looks, just listen –even buy it. I’ve bought some dumb tools just because I’m done shootin’ stuff down and costin’ myself money. The other major thing that I discounted was my good buddy Sal and his crazy techniques. I thought this dude doesn’t use a reflection. He’s usin’ a natural reflection. He can’t even see what’s goin’ on. And he’s got all these crazy homemade tools. And he’s wrappin’ them with things. He doesn’t do anything the way we do it. It can’t be good. It can’t be right. But he’s very consistent with his repairs. And he’s a nice guy.

I got to meet him in person. I got to talk to him. We talked on the phone a bunch. And I realized what he does works. It’s totally different than what I do, but it works. And it works really well. It works better for him. It doesn’t work better for me, but it works better for him with his style. But there’s no doubt in, I’ll say anyone’s mind, that what the dude does produces killer results. He won the Olympics this year with his style of repair and some crazy goggles. But I was the first one to say the dude doesn’t even use a reflection. I mean, come on, man. He doesn’t use a light. He uses some friggin’ PVC pole on a stick. He uses his light to shine on his PVC pole. But it works for him.

So I realized from him and line board guys that it doesn’t matter what you look at. If you can make the thing flat, you can do it. If you wanna look at a picket fence or a pole or an LED light or whatever – I prefer an LED light. That’s my style. But I’m not gonna discount you if you use a line board. If you can glass it with a line board, it’s super straight. The lines don’t lie when they’re done. And if Sal can glass it lookin’ at a freeway overpass reflection, that’s it. I mean, it doesn’t matter what it is.

Shane: Reflect tree –

Keith: Or the reflect tree. The reflect tree actually lives off the clay inside of that lock [inaudible] [34:29:50]. It gathers moisture from the air. So talkin’ about this reminded me of an Abraham Lincoln quote. You know the one I’m gonna talk about?

Shane: Ask not what your country can do for you.

Keith: I think that’s an Army commercial. There’s an Abraham Lincoln quote: “Better to remain silent and thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.” I was always the most vocal dude on all this “stupid” stuff. And now I’m eatin’ crow after the fact. If I could go back, I’d say just keep your mouth shut, stay on the sidelines, look and listen, and keep your mouth shut. And then try it, and then keep your mouth shut. And only after you’ve tried it and have proven to yourself that it doesn’t work, go ahead and run your mouth. But up until that point, just keep it quiet and listen and learn.

When your hands are in your pockets, they’re gonna be poppin’ out because your pockets are gonna be full of money because you’re actually learnin’ things that are gonna make you money. We’re not just talkin’ about sports stats. These are the techniques that you use to make a living. So if you can learn something new, it’s gonna benefit you greatly. So stop discounting stuff, start buyin’ stuff – blackplaguepdr.com.

Shane: Shameless, absolutely shameless.

Keith: It has to be.

Shane: Well, this is a free show. So I guess it’s okay. So my No. 2 – there was a lot of it last Wednesday. My No. 2 is – it took you a minute.

Keith: It sure did.

Shane: No. 2 for me – and again, this is a bonus round for ya –

Keith: Do you still feel the best part of that thing last week was goin’ to pick out new underwear at Kohl’s?

Shane: I’m shooting you a bird through this – oh, man – my No. 2 – again bonus here for – I wanna call him Mr. Vegamite because we can’t use his real name – is much like what Keith just said. Back to the past and tellin’ our apprentice selves, ideas were much the same. Mine was slow down and learn, absorb, calculate, then move. That’s a lot what Keith had to say just now. Slow down and learn. There’s so much that you learn during the process of how to repair even a simple dent. And Keith, you and I were involved in a training program a couple months ago down here in South Carolina.

And I learned so, so friggin’ much from the giddyap, okay – taking somebody from nothing to repairing pretty good-sized dents. It required me to really stop and think about why I do what I do or why we do what we do.

Keith: Ya know what’s interesting about that too is that was straight up from, like you said, the giddyap because these were not people who were patient about PDR and pursued training.

Shane: True. I hadn’t thought about that. Good point.

Keith: They would just say hey, you wanna learn this? Okay, great, go to this training. They had no preconceived notion about how it was supposed to be done or anything. They were just comin’ in cold and blind.

Shane: In some instances, forced to learn –

Keith: In some instances, literally blind –

Shane: Three that I know of. It really forced me to really dissect why we do what we do in each and every little action. I would get these questions where I would think that is the dumbest friggin’ question I’ve ever heard. And then I back up, and I think that’s not a dumb question because they have no idea what I’m doing right here. And I’m bringin’ this around to my point of what I would tell myself back then is really absorb everything you’re doing and why you’re doing it. I’ve said this a few times. And it’s kind of becoming a catch phrase with me that PDR is more reactive than proactive.

Keith: I thought you were gonna say it’s easy if you know what you’re doin’.

Shane: We’re gonna drop that one. You’ve made fun of me way too much over that.

Keith: That’s what you’re known for. One of my guys said it at the meeting the other day. He said, “It’s easy if ya know what you’re doin’.”

Shane: That’s awesome. Slow down and really understand what you’re learning and why you’re doin’ what you’re doin’. Absorb, calculate – that comes around to one of the things I was going to mention were buy tools, try stuff, do new stuff, don’t say no, don’t discount methods, don’t discount tools, don’t discount ideas. Keith, I tried to discount a huge idea a couple of years ago on the phone with you when you asked, “Why do you chase hail? My answer was because I can make a ton of money doin’ it, which is a good answer. And it’s true. I can make more money chasing hail per day, per week than I can at home.

But that wasn’t my reason to you. I told you that I can’t get the same amount of money here that I could in California. And you asked that question about what does an S500 cost in South Carolina versus Sacramento? And from that point forward, I kind of started listenin’ to you then. I’m way too prideful of a being to say that I immediately snapped and went your way. I discounted the ideas that you were bringin’ to the table at that time and said they wouldn’t work here. And I stopped discountin’ that. I’ve said a million times that I’m still learnin’. I’m still learning here just like everyone else out there.

Don’t discount these ideas, these tools, these methods, like Keith said, with Sal and many other guys. Try them for yourself. If they work, that’s great. You may find one tiny thing that he says or that I say or that Keith says or some of the other guys out there that are doin’ some insane stuff – you may learn one little thing. And it’s gonna change many of the repairs that you do. So just don’t discount that stuff. The calculate part of what I was saying is trying all that stuff out, figuring out which works for you and combining it with everything else and then start moving onward and upward with your PDR career in regards to repairs and in regards to sales, marketing, everything else out there, the whole shebang.

Keith: 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 makin’ money out here with glue pulling. And we’re usin’ the smooth series tabs to do it. We are getting pulls out of these tabs that you cannot get from any tabs, no matter the price. These things flat hook up strong, snappy pulls every time. These tabs along with the green glue that we have also on the site are blowing people away. If you wanna be a part of the movement, get yourself over there and get some tabs into your box at blackplaguepdr.com or deadrattabs.com.

Guys, the game has changed; don’t get left behind. Stay on the cutting edge. Can ya get salmonella through a podcast? I might’ve gotten it from ya. Does it start in your chest?

Shane: I don’t think so.

Keith: I’ve got somethin’ in my chest tonight.

Shane: I think you got that frog that I tried to eat.

Keith: So those are the things, Mr. Vegamite. I wasn’t gonna use his name. I’m sure he would have allowed me if I would’ve asked him, but we didn’t ask. Those are the things that we would go back and tell ourselves about and try to convince ourselves of before we ever really got into the career. And if you did that, man, you’re gonna be so far ahead. The things that I discounted are the things that I do more than anything now – glue pull, use leather on my tools and use a blending hammer. Man, I do that every single day on almost every repair. If it’s anything over just a normal little, tiny door ding, I’m usin’ one of those things, if not all of them.

So if I would’ve kept my blinders on and stayed right down the middle, I would be that same dude who’s out at dealership somewhere with a busted plastic board and a bunch of rusty tools and have no idea that the industry is passing me by. So don’t be that guy. And I don’t think this particular dude is because he’s listenin’ to podcasts, and he’s askin’ questions. So he probably knows about all the stuff we’re talkin’ about. But there’s stuff comin’ out. Every couple of months, something new comes out. At this pace, there’s stuff popping up left and right. And everybody is really quick to discount it. The one that keeps poppin’ in my mind is that new Moonlight –that curved light.

There’s a lot of people that are really excited about it. And there was an equal amount of people talkin’ about how it just wouldn’t work. And I personally didn’t get a chance to look at it. And I really wanted to. But we were so buys at the show that I didn’t get a chance. But I’m keepin’ an open mind. I think it’s probably great. I wanna try it because I’m gonna do the same friggin’ thing again if I say it’s different; I don’t like it. It’s not worth it. Check it out or even buy it, and then use it. If you don’t like it, then talk about it. Nobody is hangin’ around in their garage workin’ all day pushing dents and then workin’ all night and tryin’ to make some product that sucks.

They would figure out it sucks and stop the project. If they’re keepin’ on with it, it’s probably good. At least it’s decent. It takes a ton of effort to get a product to the market, even simple ones like a glue tab and a blending hammer. They don’t have electronics in it and all kinds of 30 different pieces that go to it. They’re pretty simple parts. But if you guys knew half of what it took us to get those things to the market in the state they’re in now, you would’ve told us to quit a long time ago. It is not easy. So if some guy actually brings somethin’ to the market like Sal’s Dent Dial – that thing is built by hand.

Nobody’s gonna spend that much time makin’ somethin’ like that if it’s not fantastic and if he didn’t believe in it with everything. So if there’s a tool that’s actually out and it’s of a high quality, just get it and figure it out later because there’s gonna be somethin’ great about it. It may not change your life. But there’s gonna be somethin’ about it that you didn’t think was there or you didn’t appreciate how good it really is. So I’m buyin’ stuff now, man; I’m spendin’ money.

Shane: On that note, I’ve got somethin’ for ya.
Keith: What?

Shane: You said you’re buyin’ stuff. I said on that note.

Keith: Oh, what’re ya sellin’ me?

Shane: I don’t know. I’ll figure it out tonight and send ya a text in the morning.

Keith: So we’ll move on to our tool review today. We always do a tool review because they are important. And today is a big one for me. Today we are talkin’ about a tool that I created that debuted at our training seminar at the Mobile Tech Expo in 2015. And it was not for sale because I just brought prototypes there. But I brought them to gauge interest and see if it was something we should go into product full steam with. And the answer was a big yes; please make this. What is it, Shane?

Shane: I was tryin’ to make a joke, but I’m too tired. It’s the dent depth gauge.

Keith: Let me take two mini steps back, and then we’ll talk ya into how and why we have this and what it’s for. When you look at a dent now and you think it’s stretched, how do you know – you wanna say I think it’s stretched. You just eyeball it. And with enough experience, you think hmm, I think that looks pretty deep. And I’m kinda lookin’ around it. Maybe I put a light on it, maybe I don’t. But you just pretty much know that thing is gonna be really tough; it’s deep. It may be stretched. And that’s about as in-depth as the analysis gets. Are you with me so far?

Shane: I go a little deeper than that. If it will hold a goldfish – if it will sustain a goldfish’s life, then it’s stretched. But yeah, that’s it. You’re just looking at it and going by what you’ve seen in the past and guessing. And that’s pretty much it. There’s no measurable; let’s say that.

Keith: And it just wasn’t good enough for me. I didn’t like that. I didn’t like knowing this one looks deep, but I actually got it out. This one looks deep, but it oil canned on me, and I couldn’t bring it back. This one was somewhere in the middle. It wasn’t enough for me to go in blind like that. So out of curiosity, I wanted to develop something that I could put on that car and measure how deep is this dent at its deepest? And I didn’t even know what that number was gonna be. It looked to me like a deep dent. It was about an eighth of an inch deep. Like, when you looked at those Dent Olympic dents, man, they’re not big; they’re not round.

But they are deep. And you look at that thing, and you go man, that is a sharp, nasty little dent –especially to make perfect. But how deep? Who knows? We made that gauge. And we started foolin’ around with it here at the local market. And then I started to get some real numbers on dents. And we brought it out to the show. And we were askin’ people, “How deep do you think that Dent Olympic dent is?” I mean, the guesses were all over the place, everything from half an inch to – I don’t think anybody was close to the real answer, were they? The closest guy had it by a factor of two or three. They were high. They were deeper than it really was.

Shane: Yeah, factor about two to three. And some were factors of 50.

Keith: We’re not takin’ shots at anybody because we didn’t know either. You have no basis for that measurement. And it’s a circular base. And it has an electronic depth meter on it with a probe that sticks out of the bottom that has a little ball bearing. That little ball bearing is what’s gonna make contact with the car. So you’re gonna kinda look at the dent in a light and put the probe as close as you can tell into the bottom of the dent and then set the rest of the base flat on the car and move it a little bit up-and-down, left and right and watch the gauge and see if it gets a little deeper or a little more shallow. And you’re gonna find the deepest point like that.

So when we put it on the Dent Olympic dents, they were about .9 millimeters deep, less than 1 millimeter. And a lot of Americans are like, what’s a millimeter? Think about an eight-millimeter socket that you use once in a while takin’ apart a Euro taillight or somethin’ like that. That’s eight millimeters. It’s one-eighth of that. That’s one millimeter. And these dents are less than that – crazy shallow. But for a dent repair for PDR, it’s very deep. So the numbers that we’re actually working with are very, very slim and very tiny. So after I created this tool, just for my own curiosity, the vision started developing of mostly hail techs being able to use this tool to supplement the insurance companies.

The diameter of a dent matters. But the depth is what’s hangin’ us up. The depth is what makes somethin’ nasty. And we all know that the depth and the diameter are tied together. Something isn’t generally gonna be very, very deep without also being wide. But it’s not a perfect science where it’s X wide, it’s gonna be X deep. It doesn’t work like that in the real world. All the dents are random. And they’re hitting different parts of the metal that are a different strength, under a brace and open. I want a tech to be able to estimate a car, get the gauge out. And put it on some of the deep dents, get some numbers and take photos of that gauge and send it right in for a supplement and have no problem saying these are oversize or these are over depth or whatever term we end up using in the industry.

Every time you get that tool out of your box, I want it to make you another $300.00; $500.00 or $600.00. That’s what I want to happen. So I sent the prototypes out with a few guys around the country. Some of the guys are just doin’ retail with it. And they’re just using it to estimate retail damage so they can show their customers that they’re professional and they’re putting actual numbers and measuring the depth of that dent to tell them what the success rate is probably going to be and what the cost is gonna be. Not many guys are comfortable yankin’ figures out of their rear end; although, after a few years, ya get pretty good at it.

But if you can throw some actual numbers on the depth of a dent and price it off of that, I believe that’s much more convincing.

Shane: Showing a number is a solid sales tactic.

Keith: It really is. So Shane had a little bit of time to fool with it. Some of those dents you were doin’ for the advanced training were super deep. And what is super deep? Well, we know now what they are.

Shane: Yeah, we were smackin’ the roof of that poor rental car with a really sharp steel knockdown. These dents kind of resembled I guess what you would say a BB gun shot, right, Keith. It was really close to that and hittin’ these things really hard with a sharp tip – so really small in diameter also. Did we have one at 1.5? There was one pushing 1.5.

Keith: I think 1.4 or somethin’ –if my memory serves me right.

Shane: Yeah, it was pushing 1.5 –really close to it. These things looked insane and deep, sharp. It’s still amazing that it’s only 1 1/2 millimeters deep.

Keith: It doesn’t seem like much.

Shane: You look at the underside, and you’re like, holy crap. An eagle could nest on that.

Keith: But if you think about the Dent Olympic dents – anybody who saw them in person knows there’s no joke. It’s not a gravy dent by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a tough dent at .9. And at 1.5, that’s another 50 percent or 60 percent deeper. That’s a nasty, nasty little dent. And now we’re able to discern the difference with this gauge. But if you’re lookin’ at them side by side, they may not look that different. But a 1.5 and a .9 are two different worlds. And by the way, nothin’ to do with the gauge, but Shane was fixing those dents. If you wanna learn how to fix deep dents, keep your eye on Shane because he’s gonna show ya one of these days.

We’re gonna put somethin’ together for that because that’s somethin’ a lot of people struggle with. And Shane is insanely good at it.

Shane: Thank you.

Keith: So the dent depth gauge is real. It’s being made as we speak. It should be ready for purchase probably seven to twenty-one days. I’ll give myself a little wiggle room there because we’re workin’ on gettin’ a case for it so you can keep it nice and safe when you’ve got it. We don’t have that yet. But I’ll have them up on the site pretty soon. I might be able to put somethin’ up there where if you’re interested, you can get your name on a list. And we’ll get one out to ya as soon as you want them.

Shane: Hey, can I go ahead and get my name on there since I didn’t get one?

Keith: Yeah, you didn’t get one of the prototypes. You didn’t sweet talk me like some of the other guys did.

Shane: Well, I pretty much had confirmation that I was going home with one of them, like day one. And it didn’t happen.

Keith: It sounds like when I was single. This one’s basically a lock, fellas.

Shane: Yeah, but unlike those times, you’re still talking to me.

Keith: So keep your eye on blackplaguepdr.com. And we will have the dent depth gauge up there soon. And you’re gonna start hearin’ more about it as the guys who have been testing it start getting a little more vocal both on pdrcollege.com and probably a lot on Facebook and some of the dent groups. And if there’s an off chance that you’re listening to the podcast and you don’t know about the groups on Facebook, hop yourself on over there and start lookin’ for PDR related stuff in the groups. And you’re gonna find a few groups that are pretty cool. And guys are talkin’ dent stuff in there.

And if you like that idea but wanna do somethin’ like that on steroids with guys that are vetted and you know they are the real deal, then you like the idea of our inner circle networking group. We are gonna be launchin’ that sometime soon. I know I’ve been draggin’ everybody out a little farther than I want on that deal. But Shane and I just wanna make sure we’ve got everything in order before we open it up. And we’re gettin’ closer all the time. Our software for the form is almost complete. And we’re gonna start testing that soon. But if you’re interested in that, hop over to pdrcollege.com and click on the inner circle link.

And you’ll get on the list there. As soon as we start opening applications, you’ll get an email for that. That’s it, man. We appreciate that question that came out of Australia. We thank you for askin’ us. And all of you guys that have your own questions, pop them on over in any medium you choose – email. Right on the comment section pdrcollege.com, there’s a great place – that’s been a little quiet right now. I’m gonna reach out and smack a couple of you guys who have got somethin’ to say but haven’t actually taken the time to put somethin’ on there. It means a lot to Shane and I. If you have a comment, share it with us. It makes us happy. It makes our free podcast feel like we get paid.

Shane: Yep.

Keith: We’ll see ya next week, fellas. Until then.

Shane: Get better.

[End of Audio]

Duration: 59 minutes