World Wide PDR

Today we hang out with Jordan Fisher of TDN Tools to learn a little about his background and his Intl Hail and doording game!

Links from the show

Blackplague PDR NEW Depth Gauge!

World Beating Blending Hammers

Ultra Dent Double swivel set up 1

Ultra Dent Double swivel set up 2

Ultra Dent Double swivel set up 3

 

PDR Nation

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Keith Cosentino: I’m Keith Cosentino; he’s Shane Jacks. And this is the PDR College podcast, where we turn ordinary dent techs into extraordinary businessmen using the tried and tested techniques that we have honed in the trenches of business for the last 20 years. And we do it to make stacks and stacks of cash. Shane, why do we need to make so much money?

Shane Jacks: I wanna make more money, Keith, so I can fly across the pond, as they say, and have fish and chips with our guest today, Jordan Fisher.

Keith Cosentino: Hey, Jordan. Welcome to the show.

Jordan Fisher: Hello.

Shane Jacks: What’s going on, Jordan?

Jordan Fisher: Thanks, guys. Nice to be here.

Keith Cosentino: Fish and chips, is that just what Americans think is a big deal over there?

Jordan Fisher: No. We have it every Friday. I had it yesterday, in fact, yeah. It’s a bit of a tradition, still.

Keith Cosentino: Have you tried them when you’re over here to see how bad they are?

Jordan Fisher: I haven’t, to be honest. When I’ve been in the states, Chicago and Tennessee, I don’t think these – they’re not big places for ports and fish, are they? Every time I’ve over there with Mark Turkey, he takes me to a fish restaurant, but it’s more sushi and expensive fish, not the battered fish and chips we get.

Shane Jacks: It’s probably fish he’s caught himself, that day.

Jordan Fisher: It probably is, yeah.

Shane Jacks: That guy’s fishing life, I am envious of. I can tell you that.

Jordan Fisher: I tell you what, there’s a big connection with the dent life and the fishing life. I’ve never been into it, myself. I went out fishing when I was in Brisbane, with the guys over there. Everyone owns a boat over there. Everyone goes out fishing every week, and I haven’t got that in me. I just get seasick and have a few beers, and then wish I was back in the pub. There is a lot of dent guys and a lot of hail guys that just love the fishing. I don’t know what the connection is.

Shane Jacks: Deep sea fishing is awesome.

Keith Cosentino: I’m with you. I get seasick as well. I tried it one time and it wasn’t pretty.

Jordan Fisher: I’m gonna say, stay away from the – everyone tries to organize something down in Orlando, don’t they, but I can’t keep my mouth shut. Stay away from all that.

Keith Cosentino: For those of you who’ve never heard of Jordan, Jordan, why don’t you tell us a little bit about you, where you are, what kind of company you run. We’d like to hear a little bit of your history.

Jordan Fisher: We’re a U.K.-based company. We are a partnership, there’s myself and Paul Hinchliffe. To give you a background on myself, and it sort of runs into how this company formed, I got into the business – I’m still a baby in this business – it was ten years ago. I actually worked in shipping at the time. I was moving out to the Middle East, to Dubai, where there’s a big port. I got a job out there. The last job that I had was to move the personal effects of the owner of Dent Master, which was a big U.K., European e-book PDR to Europe, by all accounts, and then sold out to Dent Wizard about 15, 20 years ago. I had to move his personal effects, and because I was looking after his stuff U.K.-side as well as Dubai-side, we became good friends, and he said, “Look. If you ever fancied a change in your career, just give us a call. We’ll get you trained up. We’re setting this up in Dubai. It’s gonna be good.”

So I got into that. I got trained up with Dent Master in the Middle East and had a fantastic time out there. We had a few more guys that trained with us and a few guys that were team leaders and had been in the business a long time. And then Dubai sort of – it had the crash there that everybody else in the world had, but Dubai was worse because it was made up of monopoly money over there, you know. There was money flying in and out, and when everyone started getting a bit cautious, Dubai came to a stop.

But that wasn’t the reason Dent Master stopped. Dent Master carried on, in fact, but for us, six years ago, we had our first daughter. My wife wanted to be close to home, so we came back to the U.K. Then, about a year later, I got introduced into hail. I’d never heard of it. My old boss from Dent Master give me a call and said, “Look. There’s been a hailstorm in France.” I said, “Look. I’ve not been pushing for a year. I’ve not got my tools with me, nothing.” I said, “We’ve just had the daughter. I’ve renovated a house back here. I’m not ready to face it.” He says, “Just come across and we’ll look after you.”

Keith Cosentino: How far away is that from you are, France?

Jordan Fisher: Paris is a one-hour flight or a six-hour drive. When we’re talking Europe, it’s smaller distances for you guys in the States – than what you have to do in the States. We can drive to the majority of Western Europe.

I went across and did that, and it was a nice hailstorm to get into because it was quite sporadic hail. It was big damage, but it was platform work. There was 26,000 cars damaged. But some cars just had the one or two big dents in. It wasn’t jumping into hail where there was 600 dents in the roof. So for a door dinger to get into hail, this was the perfect storm.

Keith Cosentino: Yeah, it sounds like it.

Jordan Fisher: Because you could sit and concentrate on that one dent.

Keith Cosentino: I really like this – I love this image of you’re a moving guy, and I picture you like you’re moving all these golden giraffe sculptures and things from this guy who made all his money, and then you’re asking him, “Hey, I’ve never moved two grand pianos from one house. What did you do for a living?” He said, “Oh, PDR.”

Jordan Fisher: That was it. It was just interesting. That’s the thing. I’m not a – you expect some people to be – there’s different people that was office-based. There’s people that get into it that were body men, you know, people that had been introduced to it while they was – it’s like my partner, now. He was BMW and they actually trained in PDR 20 years ago through the BMW scheme. It was recognized through that manufacturing process. There’s different –

[Crosstalk]

Keith Cosentino: That’s about the same timeframe as Shane with being –

[Crosstalk]

Shane Jacks: Exactly me. I was trained in 1994 in the BMW plant here, Jordan.

Keith Cosentino: In Germany. Okay.

Shane Jacks: No, the one here in America.

Jordan Fisher: Okay. I see you guys; you are a lot the same. You’re more technical-based than I am. For me, when I came into the business, I enjoyed it. I still don’t absolutely love cars. I’m not a motor head. I don’t love pushing dents. But I love the industry and I love – a lot of it’s down to the money, as well. I had a good career going for me. I saw these guys moving to Dubai from Dent Master, and their lifestyle was incredible. I was single – I wasn’t single, I was with my wife but we weren’t married. I was engaged to be married. But we had no kids; we were living in Dubai. It was a playboy sort of lifestyle that I very easily adapted to. I loved it.

Keith Cosentino: Who doesn’t? Did you have to wear one of those robes?

Jordan Fisher: No. No. No. People get the wrong perception about Dubai. It was [inaudible] [00:08:12] central, that place.

Shane Jacks: I wouldn’t wanna wear one of those robes, if I was going.

Jordan Fisher: We did buy them. We did occasionally have fancy dress parties out there where we all decided to wear them, but that was as far as it goes.

Keith Cosentino: What’s the market like there, Jordan? Are they doing dealership work – tell me what the market’s like in Dubai. That’s interesting to me.

Jordan Fisher: It was mainly dealership work we were doing. There were a few companies that got out to Dubai before us, before Dent Master. A few small independent guys, a few that were working direct for BMW. We sort of – it was 50/50. We had, I think, seven guys in the end on the route. And bearing in mind Dubai is just a city. There was Abu Dhabi where we had two technicians, and we had five technicians in Dubai. But the dealerships were huge. We looked after one, just basically the Mercedes dealership, which was – it was a group in the area. We had four technicians busy there every day of the week. But they was fixing everything.

It was new to them as well. Hats off to Lancer, the guy that owned Dent Master originally. He was a born sales guy, so he was out there and he was selling it. I remember when I first got out of training, he’d have us standing in the service centers’ car parks, trying to sell to every customer that pulled in. In a place like Dubai, people would just bite your hand off. If you was trying to sell them a $150 dent, it was change to them. They didn’t even look at the car. They’d say, “Yeah, if there’s a dent in there, just fix it.”

Keith Cosentino: The time has come. The Blackplague smooth series tabs are a reality. They are available for you now on blackplaguepdr.com. If you’ve been living under a rock it is time to come out. We are making money out here with glue pulling, and we’re using the smooth series tabs to do it. We are getting pulls out of these tabs that you cannot get from any tabs, no matter the price. These things flat hook up; strong, snappy pulls every time. These tabs, along with the green glue that we have also on the site are blowing people away. If you wanna be a part of the movement, get yourself over there and get some tabs into your box. Blackplaguepdr.com or deadratstabs.com.

Guys, the game has changed. Don’t get left behind. Stay on the cutting edge.

Jordan Fisher: It was nice. It was easy –

Keith Cosentino: Do they speak English there?

Jordan Fisher: – in some respects. Yes.

Keith Cosentino: Everybody speaks English.

Jordan Fisher: Everybody speak English. It was always nice. It was the same as us when we go to any country. We learns our please and thank yous and good mornings and goodbyes, but yeah. It was 99 percent English. It’s a cool place to go. You need to go.

Keith Cosentino: It sounds really cool.

Shane Jacks: I was about to ask, I know the economy kind of, I guess, to say the word ‘tanked’ would be relative over there, but it seems like a beautiful place, with all those created islands.

Jordan Fisher: It’s quite strong again. But I’ve still got friends there. They’re still working for Audi, Mercedes. They’re saying it’s getting back on its feet again. I just look at the property prices out there to see how well it’s doing, and it’s bloody expensive. So they can’t be doing too bad. There must be enough demand there, people moving –

[Crosstalk]

Keith Cosentino: Do you remember what kind of revenue you guys were doing as technicians in Dubai?

Jordan Fisher: I was new. That was me straight out of training.

Keith Cosentino: No, I know that.

Jordan Fisher: The experienced techs were – I think they were generating about – I’m trying to get how many – it was, what, seven years ago I was last there. I’m trying to remember the exchange rate. I’m pretty sure it was somewhere in the region of 20,000, 30,000 dirhams a week, which was about – was it a week or a month? I think it was a week. It was generating about 4,000 pounds, which was about $6,000.

Keith Cosentino: In a week.

Jordan Fisher: But that was for the company, and then it was commissions. That was my first taste of it, was working for them. But they looked after us. We was looked after with a nice car, fuel – not that fuel costs much over there, but…

But that was my first – that’s how I got into it. Since then, since I left, I did about five years in Dubai on the door ding run, and then I came back to the U.K. and got straight into hail. That’s probably 80 percent of our business now. I carried on with the hail, and I ended up finding Paul, my partner now, who was my trainer in Dubai, the guy that trained at BMW. He came across to Dubai for Dent Master, as well. He trained me. He was sort of my mentor out on the road for six months. I always had that respect for him. But Paul’s 100 percent technician; he just wants to be pushing. I was more in the sort of business side, thinking we could make something out of this.

That’s why we came together. I knew that if I had something to sell that was as good as he was, it would drive the business forward a lot easier than me on my own.

Keith Cosentino: That’s a great combination.
Jordan Fisher: It’s developed lots since then. At the minute, we’re going through a bit of a restructuring phase because we’re with the, as you know, with the tool cart that we brought out. The story behind that, we originally made that for ourselves because we were doing so much traveling. Then people turned to us and said, “Look. You need to sell this thing.” That sort of happened naturally.

Then we decided – obviously, we have our managers meetings, quarterly meetings, and we look at which direction things are going in. There’s no denying it that you need to sort of – PDR’s not gonna last forever, so if you can diverse into different things, like you guys do with your tools, like we’ve done with our tools, these different routes you need to go down to help the market keep up, like you’re doing with PDR College, and John Harley and Mike Thredo are doing, and PDR Nation, obviously, I’ve got to mention them. We’ve got to help keep that market up because it could go – everything’s on a slight slope, just because of supply and demand. But the longer we keep that up the better.

And if we diversify into different parts of the business, you know, the tool sales, eventually the training, we’ve got fantastic facilities in the U.K. Dealing direct with insurance, trying to educate them as well as technicians, that’s what stage we’re at now. The way we’re restructuring it, it’s grown in a way that everything’s been together. People knew us as a dent network, and then TDN Tools came along, but it was all running through the same sort of accounts. Now we’re separate companies for the separate parts of the business. So there’s some exciting things happening in the U.K.

Keith Cosentino: I’m going backwards a little baby step. You were pushing hail by yourself for a while. Then you decided to bring Paul on, and you guys were working as a partnership or just kinda working the same storms together?

Jordan Fisher: Yes. It started off the same storms together. We was working on one storm in Austria, which I – this is another story. How long have we got? We was due to go to Australia, I think it was about five years ago, when Perth first got hit. The guy that I was going with was the guy that had the big deal in France, the initial deal that I worked on. And he heard a few things. He said, “I’m not too happy about going there.” I had my flight booked. I was at Heathrow airport. We was flying out the next day and he pulled the plug on it. He said, and he was Spanish. He said, “Look. Change your flight. Get a flight to Spain. Come and see me. There’s been some hail in Austria. We’ll have a drive up there.”

And again, on the hail side of it, I was fresh, you know. I’d never sold hail. I’d only been doing it a year. So we drove up to Austria, which is a 25-hour drive from the south of Spain. We ended up finding a small body shop that had enough work for – we ended up being there eight months, but just for two or three guys. And it was perfect. In the mountains, it was what you’d see on some film, some old film, with people standing at the top holding the big beers and their dungarees on and everything like that. It was old school. It was beautiful. I go back every year to see the customers.

During that storm, the Spanish guy, a good friend of mine, Miguel, he got a call there was damage down in his home area in the south of Spain. When that happened, he had no choice but to – it was insurance work. He was obliged to do it. So I had to fill the spot. It was an ideal opportunity. Paul, my partner now, he was back in the U.K. working for a dealership group. I said, “You’ve got to get into this business.” He quit his job that day. He came across, and then we set up the Dent Network while I was over there. It was just natural.

There’s a lot of things that happen in this business, but I always follow my gut instinct in people that I know and people that I trust. You soon get to know people.

Shane Jacks: A lot of what you’re saying here is kind of exactly how Keith and I got together. It’s just a natural progression of events that happen and mutual respect, friendship, ideals, whatever. They just kind fall into place. I have a question about – this is just about the hail side. Keith doesn’t do a ton of hail, of course. No traveling for Keith, but I’ve done a little bit of traveling here in the States. You see a big difference between city to city, state to state, here in the States, as far as what kind of cars you’re working on, the kind of money is in the town which translates into how much work you’re going to get, and how many people are there.

I don’t guess it’s a question as much as it is a statement that you’re gonna debate with me or whatever – not debate but tell me I’m wrong. Whenever I think about going overseas, I think it’s natural for you to think about your own country as being tops or whatever. I first think about if it hails here in America, everybody’s gonna get their car fixed because everybody cares about their stuff. But over there in Austria, those are all old people driving 1975 Peugeots. You know what I mean? That’s just what goes through your mind.

Jordan Fisher: That’s French game. You’re getting the countries mixed up. Austria and Germany, you wouldn’t believe it. You drive down the highway there and it’s Porsche after Audi after BMW after Mercedes. They stick to their own. And Austria, you know, it borders Germany. It’s a lot the same. In fact, it borders a rich area of Germany, so it’s quite a wealthy country. The standard of cars are very, very high.

But you go over to France –

Shane Jacks: I’m sure it’s way higher than here. Whenever you hear guys are going, when it hails in Australia – because I’ve never been overseas to any of these countries, I’m automatically –

Keith Cosentino: It’s [inaudible] [00:21:03] Land Rovers.

Shane Jacks: I’m automatically thinking, “Man, what kind of cars are those? Are these people gonna get their cars fixed?” It’s just the way I think and I automatically think –

Jordan Fisher: Australia’s a lot the same as the States. There’s big engine cars, the 6.2 liter Holdens, a lot like the Chevrolets. But again, Australia is always a quite prosperous place because the prices, with them being an island and they have, I don’t know if it’s import charges or what, but the prices of the vehicles over there are astronomical. And the prices of a lot of things over there are.

I remember when I was in Perth, it was when the tsunami’d hit. It was quite a long time afterwards, but there was still radiation problems with Japan. They have a lot of Japanese cars, a lot of Toyotas, Lexus, things like that. They couldn’t get the parts out. The market in Australia is very strong for PDR, in some ways. It’s very fast to turn it around and say, “If you can’t get these parts, we can fix it. But it’s gonna cost you this much.” I’d say it’s 50/50 with the insurance in Australia, the technician stronghold sort of state. If you come to Europe, it’s different. You go to the States it’s different. It’s more of a fight, whereas in Australia, they sort of accept it. If they need to get something fixed rather than replaced, it could cost them more than the actual replacement value and they’re happy with that.

Shane Jacks: Because it takes so long to get parts.

Jordan Fisher: Because they can’t get the part.

Keith Cosentino: Who do they like better in Australia, the Americans or the English?

Jordan Fisher: Well, they call us Poms. I don’t know. We’re in a shed in Brisbane at the minute. Paul’s over there now; I’m back in the U.K. There’s some American guys working. I don’t know if you know any of them, Matt Como, Hayes brothers, and –

Shane Jacks: Yes, I know Matt.

Jordan Fisher: – Eric Silverado and Walt, he’s working with Eric. They’re fantastic guys. Jeremy Hawkins was out there for a few weeks.

Keith Cosentino: Eric Silverado, that sounds like a made-up, fake American name. I’m Buck Silverado.

Jordan Fisher: He’s cool. I love that guy. He works in Germany. He was in Germany. I met him in Germany a few years back, and then I bumped in – I saw him in Australia and I was like, “Oh, man, this is gonna be cool, you know.” We went out for a drink. He’s a lovely guy.

But yeah, there were probably more Americans over there than there were British guys or European guys at that point, but the thing with Australia is everybody’s on short visas and it’s a long way for everybody from home. There is quite a lot of turnaround of technicians. Some going home that have done six weeks, that have eight weeks, and it’ll change over, someone else. It’s a long way to be away from home.

Keith Cosentino: When you partnered with Paul, after that you guys started growing the business. You’re adding technicians. Were you just adding guys on a contract basis or do you have actual employees?

Jordan Fisher: No. That’s it. It was also contract basis because when we – when it’s 90 percent hail, it’s difficult with employees because you can’t predict the future. You’re relying on natural catastrophes. There’s some years where we don’t need 60 guys. There’s some years where we just need 10 guys.

We built ourselves on quality. It’s one of them things in this business. I was a technician before we set up this company. I still push now and again, now. I haven’t pushed very much for the last four years, but I still can go and push somewhere. The problem is, I think, if you get a certain – if you get an employee that’s so good, especially on hail, what hold have you got on these guys? It’s the same as how Dent Master started. It’s a difficult one. We’re bringing in business development managers at the minute to help us make that transaction to – because I always have it in my head that if someone’s that good and he can clearly see the money he’s bringing in, and if he’s good at sales as well as pushing, of course he’s gonna be better on his own.

People put me in that broker category. I get subcontractors in, but more of the time, subcontracts are happy working for us because we’re based right down the line. We get great percentages. The maximum we’ve ever given as a percentage in the last four years is 15 percent to body shops and dealerships.

Shane Jacks: Wow. That’s awesome.

Jordan Fisher: We work hard on that side. People say I’m a broker, but I’m there managing the deal. I’m there every week. I’m booking cars in. I’m estimating cars. For me, a broker is someone that sits at home and has two phone calls, sends ten guys somewhere, and he’s brokered the deal.

[Crosstalk]

Jordan Fisher: – business management for us.

Shane Jacks: I think that’s the accepted view of a broker, is sitting at home. I think what you are, is an actual broker; is what one should be, anyway.

Jordan Fisher: That’s it. We just look at it as a business deal. It’s business management. We’re managing the deal to make sure the technicians have got a good flow of cars and we keep hold of that deal from the start to finish. It’s sometimes where I can get 30 percent of that, sometimes where I worked for ten percent, but I still do exactly the same job. The technicians and the customers are 50/50 to me. You know how – just as important as each are. I need to make sure the technicians are happy just as much as I need to make sure the customer’s happy and vice versa. As long as that happens, the deal runs smoothly.

Everybody’s at different levels. I could say I’ve got the best team in Europe. I’ve got the best 60 guys there is in Europe. But Chest have got fantastic technicians. So have Dent Wizard as well. Everybody’s at different levels. The thing is, it’s more about the atmosphere inside a shed and how people portray theirselves. That’s why I love the thing of PDR Nation. It’s over ethics and how we come to work. What’s the correct thing to wear in a shop? If you’re working for someone, how do you approach the manager? It’s all them things.

That’s why I love this business. It’s all about people for me.

Keith Cosentino: Have you ever done a deal in the States at 15 percent?

Jordan Fisher: No. Have we ever worked on one? We don’t do deals in the States. We work for subcontractors in the States. We work as subcontractors, should I say. We tend to work for Mark. A lot of people – I don’t know what it is. I don’t know if it’s jealousy or what, but we work for Mark year in, year out at High Tech. I can honestly say he’s fantastic. He pays us week in, week out, exactly what we’re owed. The paperwork’s always got his – he’s got his internal app, now, so it helps technicians calculate the cars, and everything’s there. It’s black and white.

We’ve worked on a range of deals with him, between ten percent back to the shops and 25, but never ever more than 25. That’s what I’ll tell you. I just ignore these things on Facebook nowadays, the discussions about percentages and things like that because it’s – I mean, Mark had got the bounty out, didn’t he, if someone can prove that he’s offered X amount and prove it. But no one has to –

[Crosstalk]

Shane Jacks: Nobody’s gotten it yet.

Jordan Fisher: – to this day.

Keith Cosentino: So if nobody knows what Jordan’s talking about, there’s a fella named Mark Turkis and he runs a really successful hail company. They go all over the world, but they have a strong presence here in the States. I think they’re out of Illinois, is that right, Shane?

Shane Jacks: Yeah. It’s out of Chicago.

Keith Cosentino: Since they’re so big and they come into town with so many technicians they’re a target for a lot of people and a lot of guys complain that they’re – “How are they getting all these body shops? How are they getting all these dealerships? They’re giving them 50 and 60 percent back, that’s what they’re doing. They’re giving them kickbacks.” He said, “I’ve never paid more than 25 percent and if anybody can prove it, I’ll pay you –” What’d he say, ten grand or something?

Jordan Fisher: Yep. Yep.

Keith Cosentino: And everybody runs their mouth but nobody’s actually come up with any kind of proof. I think it’s just like you say, Jordan. Probably a little bit of envy, a little bit of jealousy. Everybody wants to hate the other guy. Like in the door ding world. Everybody who doesn’t do well blames it on the market or the dealers or the other techs. It’s everybody’s problem but their own.

Jordan Fisher: That’s right. You know what? I look up to people like that. There’s a lot of people I look up to in this business and they’re bigger than what we are, but I wanna be friends with these people. I wanna see how he’s done it. There’s no competition between me and Mark Turkis, so on the tool side, it was in Dent Craft. What they’ve done is incredible. And if I could get anywhere near that as a business owner one day.

But you don’t burn bridges to get there. That’s the problem. That’s what people tend to do nowadays. They tend to get upset about it when they shouldn’t. They should relish it and realize that someone has been successful in this business, so why can’t we do the same.

Keith Cosentino: I agree 100 percent there. Completely.

Shane Jacks: He’s an incredible businessman, Mark is.

Jordan Fisher: He is. And it just shows. We was at the show in Germany a few weeks ago. I didn’t make any arrangements – I didn’t realize – I didn’t know I was gonna be back from Australia at that point, but I came back slightly early. I went to the show, and lo and behold, Mark’s there. I know Jeremy was there promoting his tools and so was Sal at Dent Gear and Dent Craft, but as a attendee, I think Mark was the only guy that made the trip from the States.

And the reason he was there was to look at the new developments that were going on. It was to network for whether he needed technicians in the States or whether he wanted to do something new but that’s the type of businessman he is. He’s hungry. He’s always at these things. He’s got a massive presence at the MTE in Orlando every year. He gets his guys involved in the dental in picks. He’s not just a businessman. He loves this industry.

Keith Cosentino: Yeah, he does. The first time I met him was at MTE a few years ago. Everybody rents a booth to display their tools. He rented a booth just to put a couch in there so people could hang out.

[Crosstalk]

Jordan Fisher: With a couple box full of beer. That’s cool.

Keith Cosentino: He is a cool guy. Mostly hail, now, but you guys have a presence back home doing normal retailer door ding work?

Jordan Fisher: We don’t, at the moment. We’re in discussion – we’ve always concentrated on hail, and then we’ve got the other side of the company with the tools, which is growing very well at the moment. We’ve got a few things ready to launch as well. So that’s growing on its own two feet. We do a bit of detailing because we’ve got – one thing we did invest in. When we was getting all this hail work and made a bit more, we invested in the premises in the U.K. But then, again, over the last year and a half, two years, we’ve been out in Europe doing hail because it has been our bread and butter.

But now, the reason I’m back from Australia is because we are, as I say, restructuring it slightly so I get to spend a bit more time developing these things and the U.K. market is gonna be one of those because we’ve got a good name on the insurance side. We’ve got a great network of technicians, as well. PDR Nation’s help with – because I was on the board, initially, of PDR Nation, I had a lot of like-minded technicians coming to me in the U.K. and asking what it’s about and everything like that. But that just opens up your network of like-minded people.

As I say, anyone that’s interested in that sort of – any certification, any further training, things like that, they’re the type of people you want to be involved with because they’re proactive.

Keith Cosentino: Wait a second now. Am I understanding this right? You have a physical location and you do details but you don’t do any dent removal. Am I understanding that properly?

Jordan Fisher: The problem is, we’ve got a detailer there, Keith, but we haven’t got a dent man there. All of our dent guys are overseas fixing hail.

Keith Cosentino: If only you knew someone who could gather 60 or ten dent guys with a phone call, maybe he could help you.

Jordan Fisher: It’s one of them –

[Crosstalk]

Shane Jacks: The problem is they’re making too much money in Australia pushing hail.

Jordan Fisher: I like to do things step by step. I don’t like to rush into something. As I say, we’ve got this – it’s probably the biggest PDR unit in the U.K. It’s got the tool shop upstairs. And then it’s empty, but it’s beautiful. It’s painted floor; it’s ready to go. But because I haven’t got the time to develop that 100 percent, my mind needs to be into that 100 percent, and it will be. I’m working with a few guys in the U.K. at the minute, someone that’s very, very successful on retail. He thanks you guys for a lot of that. His name’s Tony Hodgson from Dent Speed. And I’ve gotta mention Craig Reed, as well, from Northern Ireland.

These guys, when they heard I was coming back to the U.K., I’ve got a lot on my plate at the minute with the MTE coming up, with the tools, and everything like that. They’ve done nothing but trying to help me. They’re saying, “We’re gonna fly across two days before the show. We’re gonna help you get things packed up and everything like that.”

But Tony, he had a successful business in the U.K. I’ve known Tony for five or six years since I came back from Dubai. We talk on a daily basis, a bit like you two do. We discuss what we’re doing with things. And he’s always very successful on fleet work in the U.K. and retail, and his retail’s kicked off immensely over the last few years. As I say, he thanks you guys for that.

Keith Cosentino: That’s awesome.

Jordan Fisher: He’s restructured how he deals with customers, everything like that, from what he said, from you guys. Again, he’s one of these guys that wants to further himself, no matter – he was sat pretty where he was. But instead of getting bored and just pushing dents for the rest of your life, he wanted to build it bigger. He wanted to lessen his workload but get more money. And that’s what you guys have taught him.

Keith Cosentino: It’s working. The PDR College techniques will work in the States. They’ll work in the U.K. They’ll work anywhere you’re gonna deal with people and cars. It’s basic stuff.

Shane Jacks: Even in Austria where they’re driving Peugeots. A seven-year old Peugeot.

Jordan Fisher: You need to track the right market. We’re working with him, now. There’s things happening in the future that we’re gonna be growing together. As I say, we’ve got a fantastic retail location. He’s got another retail location about two hours’ drive away from me. He holds a lot of fleet – of the fleet market in the U.K., something that I’ve never been involved with. It’s nice to – I’m spending a few days with him next week, and it’s nice to see the different, because they are completely different. Different worlds.

The hail world – there’s only eight of us brought all these things together. If it hadn’t been for Facebook, I don’t think half of the dent world would even know hail existed. It would in the States because you see it firsthand. But for English technicians, we very rarely get any hail in the U.K. That’s why, when I got asked to go on my first hailstorm, I didn’t have a clue what it was. What are you talking about, hail? I was a dent man, that was six years in then. I think Facebook and social media and everything’s brought everything together, but at the same time, it’s nice to see it firsthand. I’d love for one – I’ve never worked in a factory. I was talking to in Australia about how lucrative repairing the press defects in factories is. I’ve never seen that. That’s a whole new business.

Shane Jacks: That’s a sore subject.

Jordan Fisher: Is that what you used to do, Shane?

Shane Jacks: Yes and yes. Basically, what you’re saying is that if it wasn’t for Facebook, if it weren’t for Facebook, that none of you European guys or guys in the U.K., anyway, would know much of anything about hail. So instead of Mark Turkis ruining the hail business, Facebook has ruined the hail business. All of you guys overseas coming over here fixing hail – it’s Facebook’s fault.

Jordan Fisher: I’ve said for the last five years that Facebook is gonna be the death of this business because everybody knows everybody else’s – you know. And look at, now. It’s hard not to waste – especially you guys are the same as me, you’ve got families. And if you’re there on a weekend, scrolling through Facebook, and you’re just reading 300 comment posts on a load of utter, just drama, you think, “What am I getting into here?” That’s why it’s diversified a bit, I think it’s Sal’s new group or Drew’s group about the PDR tools, that’s just business talk. But it’s turned into a big old drama, now. You’ve got to sort of separate yourself from it now and again because it can take over your life, Facebook.

You guys know. You know, Shane, more than anyone. You can get into discussions on there and it’s –

Shane Jacks: I honestly enjoy – I don’t get on there near as much as I did before. There’s no time.

Jordan Fisher: I think it’s the same story with a lot of guys now.

Shane Jacks: I will still get into a few discussions with people. Somebody sent me a message the other day and said, “Why are you even discussing this?” I said, “Basically, I like to make people look like idiots when they are.” That’s basically it. Every now and then I still enjoy doing that. But it’s absolutely stupid.

Keith Cosentino: Nobody I know likes to argue more than Shane. He will argue with you.

Shane Jacks: You know what? But I don’t argue with the people –

Keith Cosentino: Especially if he thinks he’s right.

Shane Jacks: Which is all of the time.

Jordan Fisher: This is what I’m saying. My business partner, Paul, who is the same as you, trained at BMW, he’s exactly the same. And for that reason, he keeps himself off Facebook. He’s got a Facebook account, but he’s got very close friends. He’s not members of any groups, and to be honest, thank god, a lot of times, that he doesn’t. I don’t think it’d do our business any favors if he was on there. But he’s quite outspoken, is my Paul.

Keith Cosentino: I wanted to go back to the fact that you don’t have a retail shop there in your detail bay. But I actually think it’s quite a smart strategy that you have. A lot of people would say, “We’re here. We’re in the dent business. We know dent guys. We have a shop. Let’s put somebody in there and we’ll make some money.” But until the plan is completely perfect, you’re not going to execute on it. I think people can learn a lot from that.

When you’re trying to grow your business, it’s very easy to start playing the whack-a-mole game and jumping on new opportunities here and there, and before you know it, you have no idea what you’re doing. You’re doing a little bit of everything, just trying to capture a fistful of dollars each time. But you’re sitting back in the wings and planning the whole thing out with a long strategy, and then when the plan is perfect, then you’re going to execute on it.

Jordan Fisher: That’s right. That’s my biggest thing, and I’ve said this word more in my life then I ever have done over the last few months of this year, but it’s prioritizing things. That’s what I need to do. I need to set priorities because I’ve got the tools, I’ve got the hail. The hail’s something that’s bred in me now. I still wake up every morning and check the GFS maps and the lightning trackers and everything like that. That’s never gonna leave. But I’ve got so many things in the business running around that I just need to get certain things done. We’ve got a tool that’s very ready to launch. I need to get this out of the way and then come straight on the next thing.

We had a deal in France last year. I went across to Paris to have a look at a platform deal. KHS got the deal in the end. But the guy that I went across to see, he was a big trader, a big car trader. He was in his 30s, very smart guy, fantastic sales guy. I said, “I tell you what. Let’s just set up a tent in your yard and let’s bring the cars to you instead.” Now, this guy – we’re doing a lot in business with him, now. But he’s in his 30s. He turns over close to, probably, in dollars $20 million to $30 million a year, just on trading vehicles. He doesn’t even see them. He buys from the likes of Hertz. He sells to garages, and it’s great for us because we’ve got both ends of that. He’s got contacts in the garages in certain areas and he’s got – and we get all the Hertz cars as well.

One thing I learned from him was just his organizational skills were impeccable. He’d call me in for a meeting, just a discussion, and before he’d called me in he’d written two pages of notes that he wants to discuss. It was a different ball game. I do think that PDR and –

Keith Cosentino: He’s a Frenchman?

Jordan Fisher: He’s a Frenchman, yeah. One of the few Frenchman that – the English and the French don’t like each other, can’t stand each other. But he’s one of the few that’s warmed to us English guys and vice versa. I think we’ll do well in business together.

Keith Cosentino: Shane was telling me all the guys in France, they look like mimes. Is that true? They have that striped shirt and the beret?

Jordan Fisher: You do see the guys, guys and girls, riding passed on their bikes full of garlic and baguettes. You do see that.

Shane Jacks: And they are all driving Peugeots. For sure.

Jordan Fisher: Yes. Yeah. My eyes opened a bit in France this year.

Keith Cosentino: 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 Jack hammer blending hammer. Find it at blendinghammerpdr.com. If you wanna learn blending, we’ve got an awesome tutorial to go along with the hammer right there on the site. You’re gonna love it. You’re gonna learn something and you’re gonna get better and make money.

In addition to the hammer, if you are doing any glue pulling you need to have the Blackplague crease tabs. It’s a six-piece crease pulling set. The two largest are absolute monsters. They are gonna pull out collision damage like nothing else you’ve got available, and the smaller sizes are gonna be for the normal, everyday kind of door edges and minor, minor collision dents and a dogleg 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. 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 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 date. Everything’s paperless. The invoice is delivered electronically. You can send duplicates at a moment’s notice. Guys, get off paper. Quit screwing around. Automobiletechnologies.com. ReconPro. Get your business into the 21st century.

Jordan Fisher: People don’t like me talking about this when I talk about this over a dinner with a group of our dent guys. But the scary thing is, in Europe and especially in France with the Peugeots, the Renaults, what else have we got, Citroens, we’ve got the plastic panels at the front. There’s a lot of front wings, now, with plastic panels. One thing I noticed this year, more than any other year, was the panoramic roofs. Roofs are 60 percent to 80 percent glass now, in France in particular. That was a scary thing that we’re seeing over there.

The problem is, as well, and you’ll know this, Shane, if you do more hail than Keith, is when you get – when there’s a panoramic roof and you get that last third or quarter that’s steel, it’s triple-skinned.

Shane Jacks: Yes. It’s all glue bowl, for the most part.

Jordan Fisher: And R&I guys hate pulling the headliner down because it’s so much work for that little part of the roof as well. It’s just – yeah. France is getting a lot like that. Luckily, Germany and other parts of Europe and the States and Australia – I was in Australia for six weeks. I didn’t see one panoramic roof, so that’s good. That’s scary, that, that sort of issue.

Keith Cosentino: I think, luckily, those roofs are so expensive to make that they’re never gonna take over. It’s so much cheaper to make a simple steel roof than to add all these hinges and brackets and everything for glass.

Jordan Fisher: Then when the platform gets hit, though, Keith, hit with hail and the bill goes down, they look at it two ways.

Keith Cosentino: That’s true. If the hail’s big enough, I guess it breaks all the glass. But if it’s that big, you’re not fixing the rest of the roof, either.

Shane Jacks: It’s gotta be big to break that glass.

Jordan Fisher: I’ve never seen any of that glass broken.

Shane Jacks: Yeah, not that glass. That stuff – that’s gonna have to be bowling balls falling.

Jordan Fisher: That storm in Tennessee, in Knoxville, that we were working at.

Shane Jacks: That was nasty.

Jordan Fisher: That was four years ago. There were holes in windscreens on that. When you try and putting a hole in a windscreen with a hammer, you’ve got to put some force behind it. God, these hailstones must have been…

Shane Jacks: The same was in Charlotte a few years ago. They had the – Charlotte, North Carolina. But I’ve got a funny side story to that Knoxville damage. A gentleman brought a brand new Subaru, of all cars, that had damage on it from Knoxville a few years back. He brings the car to me, “How much?” I’m like, “You see this side over here that has very little damage? This is all I can fix.” So I pointed him to a body shop and he was all depressed. But when he came in, he was really happy. He said, “I got a good deal on it.” They knocked; I believe he said, three or four grand off of this car. The right side panels that I was gonna repair; honestly, I shouldn’t have been repairing the fender and the cell panel on those. It was just the doors and the quarter that I could have honestly repaired and made it look good. And so he goes to a body shop.

A few weeks later I get a call from one of my body shops and they said, “Hey, we’ve got a hail car down here. We need you to look at.” You know where this story’s going. At the time, I didn’t, of course. They didn’t tell me what kind of car it was. I pull up and I see the car sitting there, and I grin. When I walk in the body shop, he’s hoping to get a PDR estimate from a different guy than me, and the guy’s gonna tell him, “Oh, yeah. I can fix that for a thousand dollars.” When I walk into the body shop, the guy sees me and he drops his head, and he goes, “Well, F.”

The body shop owner looks over at me – it’s a really big body shop – looks over at me and he says, “So you two know each other?” And the guy lifts his head and he goes, “He’s already given me an – he’s already told me he couldn’t fix it.” And the guy goes, “Dude, if he can’t fix it, there ain’t nobody around here that’s gonna fix that thing.”

Jordan Fisher: That was it in Knoxville. We were doing a lot of that, and we were, literally, fixing three panels of a car. But we were lucky that we were in a great body shop where they was keeping up with it. That’s the worst thing is, when you’re somewhere and if they can’t keep up with that and they’ve got [inaudible] [00:52:45] roofs and all that sort of side of things. We was four guys in one body shop who moves – occasionally there’d be a car that was full of PDR, but majority of it was just one side and the rest of it was conventional.

Shane Jacks: That’s a kicking body shop that can keep up with four guys replacing.

Jordan Fisher: They kept up with us for three months, yeah.

Shane Jacks: That’s amazing.

Keith Cosentino: Jordan, a lot of guys here, a lot of guys listening who’ve never chased hail. They don’t know anything about it. You’ve got a lot of experience with it. What would you say a successful hail tech could produce in places other than the States? A lot of guys don’t travel into other countries. Of course, we know it varies terribly. But what would you say would be the worst month a guy could have doing hail that would still be considered successful and the best month?

Jordan Fisher: You’ve got to be fast, now. The main thing to concentrate on is your speed. Whether the storms are getting worse, whether the market is, obviously, it’s like anything’s, getting harder the more people go into it, but – our technicians – how long is a piece of string? It depends on the time of year. Our technicians during main season would want to be making in the region of, in U.S. dollars, minimum, up to $10,000 a week.

But I find myself constantly arguing both sides of that story because I’ve got customers and insurance companies that are looking at these figures and thinking, “That’s a lot of money.” But I can justify that because when you’re out and away – okay, you get the occasional storm that’s close to home and you can go back every two weeks and see the kids. But, like Australia, now, by the time you get out there, you get the flights out there. You’ve got to get your tools across there. You always spend more on accommodation than you should do at the start because you never know exactly where you’re gonna be and if they’re gonna move your shop or anything like that. It’s an expensive thing to do.

You’ve got to be very confident that you’re gonna make money because –

[Crosstalk]

Keith Cosentino: You’re definitely gonna spend money.

Jordan Fisher: You’re gonna spend money for the first month, if it’s a new storm. It’s gonna be four to six weeks before you’re gonna get your first pay packet in. It’s very rare that you only roll in weekly pay packet from day one. It’s usually rolls weekly or fortnightly after a certain point. So you’ve got to be able to afford to look after yourself.

I sound all doom and gloom, now, and I don’t wanna be like this. It’s a great industry, and more and more things are coming into it, like the PDR Nation, the networking. Things like this blacklist and things like that; it’s all reference that people need. The worst thing is to go into something blind. It’s better to tag along with someone and understand your value.

The best scenario, I would say, to get into the hail business is to be able to have skills in two things. You could help in R&I as well as PDR if it came to that, and work on a small team that [inaudible] [00:56:36] out to be good guys. If you can trust – there’s a lot of trust involved. R&I’s a very sought after thing nowadays, more so than PDR in some storms, especially when it gets busy. We found it very difficult to get constant R&I guys because R&I’s the biggest, more than body men, the biggest converter of technicians to PDR technician in the world.

After one year of R&I, everyone wants to be a technician. You get the best R&I guys, and then you try to call them next year and they say, “Actually, I’ve bought a set of tools. I’ve done a bit of training. I would like to come across and push for you this year.” “Actually, I’d rather you didn’t. I’d rather you stayed with R&I.” And you can earn more money doing that, as well, you know, if you’re the best.

Shane Jacks: I swear I was about to say that. I know some R&I guys that I’ve seen that are making, when they get on these big deals, some of these wholesale deals that aren’t worth a crap –

Jordan Fisher: Platform, as well. If you’re on the same car or the same manufacturer of car, you kill in on R&I.

Shane Jacks: These guys, at some of the wholesale deals I’ve been at, you had to be a screaming fast dent guy to make 1500 to two grand a day. You had to be murdering it. And then the rest of the guys that are there with you, they’re making 600, 800 bucks a day because they’re half as fast or a third as fast as you are. But there’s one or two R&I guys taking the headliners down and putting them back up for 20 or 30 guys, and they end up, I swear, where I’ve seen the R&I guys have ended up making more. It’s very rare, but I’ve seen where an R&I guy was making more than some of the people at the deal because the dent guys were slow and they had so few R&I guys to take the headliners down and up.

And a lot of times, they’ll work cash deals, too, you know, 100 for check and 80 for cash or whatever. They’re walking away with fistfuls of cash and the dent guys are walking away with 600 bucks in a day and wondering why they’re not doing R&I.

Jordan Fisher: That’s it. It’s difficult to get into. It is difficult. You need – networking’s key. But networking’s a lot easier than it used to be. Everyone’s doing it now. Everyone thinks they’re friends with each other on Facebook, even though they’ve never met, in a lot of cases. It’s these big, big networks. At the same time, every year, Keith and Shane, you know it’s the same thing. Everybody’s busy. Everybody’s busy every year. It’s only now that it’s [inaudible] [00:59:18] off season that you think “If it’s a slow season or a bad season, I might need ten guys or something like this.” It’s never been a slow season for us. We’ve not stopped working.

Keith Cosentino: With all those hail techs that you’re contracting with, when you send them – you send 20 guys to a storm in some other country, do you start paying them immediately or after a fortnight? I got to use the word fortnight.

Shane Jacks: I swear I was gonna tell you fortnightly is in my vocabulary, now. You gotta add the L-Y. That’s what I’m gonna tell – you get paid fortnightly. Keith, I hate you for being able to bring that up before me.

Jordan Fisher: It depends on the deal, Keith. At the end of the day – if we’re working for insurance, generally, the insurers that we work for are very, very good. They understand that cash flow’s a major part of what we’re doing. The first thing I say to people is, “I’ve got to keep the technicians happy as much as I need to keep the customer, whether it’s the car owner, the body shop, the dealership. The technicians need to be looked after on my side.” As soon as there’s delays on payment, the technicians are gonna pack their bags and go. And you’re gonna be invoiced for it, so they’re not packing bags and going and saying, “Forget about paying me.” They’re going and still want their money back. You’ve lost a great technician.

It differs from country to county.

Keith Cosentino: So they’re not always gonna get a check every two weeks. You don’t have a giant –

Jordan Fisher: No. We’ve looked into factoring invoicing and things like that. It depends on how big the deal is because, generally, if we are talking six to ten technicians working with us on a deal, it’s very close knit friends now. It’s the same guys, and they’ve – if we’re working together on a deal, everything’s – it’s not like, as I say, the whole thing with the broker and the tech and I’m sitting at home counting my money while the technicians are working for it. We’re all there on the deal. We’re all – sometimes you get slow payers. Sometimes you get body shops that are slow payers, but I’ve not had to look at the invoice factoring side of it with the bank because as long as we know we’re getting paid, and as long as the technicians know that I’m gonna pay them – but these are small deals that I’m talking about.

If it’s a big deal, like we had in the U.K., yeah, it’s weekly. It’s gotta be weekly. If you’re talking 30, 40 technicians in one shed, one of them guys complaining about not being paid one week is gonna kill the full deal.

[Crosstalk]

Jordan Fisher: Yeah, go on, Shane.

Shane Jacks: Something you mentioned earlier that I wanted to bring up. You said the information that’s out there and R&I guys are wanting to get into the PDR side of things after a year. Right before that you were talking about information and the information being out there.

I had a hail broker, it’s actually the company that first gave me my first shot doing hail back in ’06, I believe it was, after I had left the plant. He sent me a message. He said, “What is it that techs want?” I said, “Honestly, the number one thing that I think hail techs want is just to not be lied to. Just put it out there from the beginning. Lay everything out there because it gets really tiring, you know. It gets tiring when you go to a spot and it’s not anything like what they say.”

I said, “Heck, take pictures of the damage and create your own group or whatever, and tell guys this is what it is. This is what the pay is. This is how busy this body shop typically is when this happens. Dahdahdahdahdah. Here are the hotels you can stay at. Give them all the information they can possibly handle and make yourself look professional. Make yourself look like you’re not trying to lie about the situation because it’s gonna come back to bite you if the –”

Now, this guys’ great. He’s just small. He’s just not a huge broker. He doesn’t have 60 guys running at a time, like the big boys, or hundreds, like the big boys do. I just told him, “Guys just want the truth. That’s it.” And as much information as possible.

Jordan Fisher: To be honest, Shane, nowadays I would be more concerned about going to a dealer if someone said how great it was.

Shane Jacks: That’s what I’m saying. Guys want – even if you say, “These things are freaking beat, but we got the shop at 20 percent,” which is great here in the States. I applaud you for your 15 percent where you’re getting it everywhere else. “We got the shop at 20 percent and it looks like this shop’s gonna be here forever, but you know what. Your shoulders are gonna hurt every fricking day. And you may have to work 14 hours a day to make the money you want, but it is what it is, and I’ve got you locked in here.” It gets really tiring, like you said. When somebody says it’s a great deal, run.

Jordan Fisher: For me, a great deal is just a happy shed. A happy shed or a happy body shop, and you’re right. If the technicians know what they’re in for, then at least they’ve got the option, they might say “It doesn’t sound like it’s for me.” That’s great because we can get somebody else in, but they know what they’re coming to. You’re right. There’s no excuses for having a moan. The worst thing is – there’s shop floor talk, there’s management, there’s shop floor – we try and bridge that together. I try to be in the tent or the shed as much as I can, estimating cars, dealing with customers.

If something’s not quite right in the shed, that’s the thing that can kill a deal. You’ve got to have a good atmosphere. And that only comes with being truthful and working hard. Everybody has to work hard. It’s a difficult business. It’s a difficult game. It’s not as easy – it probably was easy one day. Occasionally, you do get the nice deals. It’s usually the start of every storm. You’ll get a small, 200-car dealership or something that’s got nice damage. But you flash through it in a few weeks. Then you’re back in the heavy game, anyway. It is what it is. It’s not as easy as what I think it used to be, from the stories that I’ve heard.

Keith Cosentino: Right. It’s not.

Jordan Fisher: We’ve got a good team. Again, what you said, Shane, that’s exactly the reason we come work for Mark every year. We know what we’re coming to. He’s never told me, not once, not one year, has he said, “Jordan, this is gonna be brilliant. You’re gonna make a fortune.” I trust that he’s not gonna put me in somewhere that’s – he understands that we’ve traveled for it, so he’s gonna look after us in that sense. But I don’t ask him. He doesn’t tell me. As long as he’s got work for us, we go.

Keith Cosentino: Tell us a little bit about your tool company. When did you start the tool company?

Jordan Fisher: The tool company sort of happened naturally, that’s to say, with the development of the tool cart. That when through 10 prototypes because, as I say, we built it for ourselves thinking that it’s gonna save us time on the job. Then, obviously, from that, people saw it and wanted it so we put it into manufacture. Mike Flerdo did a website for us and that was selling the carts, but something – whether that thought that the PDR wasn’t – there’s different routes to go down, different avenues. There’s a lifeline in PDR; there always will be. It’s not gonna last another 50 years because cars are just gonna be manufactured differently and they’re probably hovering and what our kids are driving around in will be completely different to what we has, as they are now if you look 30 years back.

I was just looking at different avenues to go down to make the company – to give it a bit more value. We work hard doing what we’re doing on hail, but we’re reliant on natural events. When it comes to 10 years down the line, what’s the company gonna be worth? It’s gonna be worth what – we work with subcontractors. There’s no guarantees they’re gonna come to a storm. There’s no guarantees that there is gonna be storms. So I just wanted to put a bit of bricks and mortar into it. That was the route I went at that point because we’d got the cart and that introduced us to people at manufacturers like Dent Craft and everyone like that.

I did a bit of a tour around the States. I went to see – I came across to California, saw Dent Gear, All True, and B&D. Then went up the central parts of the States, saw Furness and – I didn’t actually go and see A1. I’d like to at some point. And Oklahoma, to Dent Craft. And everyone one was looking at it and says, “Yeah. You can distribute for us in Europe.” We saw a market there that – I don’t know if you’ve been on our website, but it’s quite an easy website to navigate around. It looks good.

Keith Cosentino: Tdntools.co.uk?

Jordan Fisher: No. It’s .com. I think .co.uk as well, but the main one’s .com. What we thought as well, it needed – we wanted to stock the tools. We wanted everything on our side. We sold Dent Craft. Now we sell Ultra Dent gear, Furness, and then, obviously, we like to sell your hammer, Shane. We sell your tabs, Keith. We sell James’s light. Anything that’s new in the market we love to get our hands on and offer it. That’s what we are; we’re a service for the technicians, now. We guarantee that everything will be out the same day, next day delivery in the U.K., two days delivery anywhere in Europe. That’s what we’ve been building on the last year, is the service side of things and understanding stock levels and dealing with events like the MTE and thing like that.

Then on the background – what that’s allowed us to do is have a platform to sell on. So if we ever develop another product, it’s just bang, it’s on the shelf, it’s ready to sell. We’ve got a few products coming out. We’ve got a hail bar coming out. We’ve got a hood stand ready to go soon. The most immediate thing is that we’ve got a route cart coming out.

Keith Cosentino: Is that different than the hail cart?

Jordan Fisher: Different to the hail cart. It’s more floor-based. Basically, it’s the same sort of material – it’s not as heavy duty because it’s not got to be thrown on planes and couriers and things like that. It’s about a third of the weight. But it rolls smooth. You get to a job. Two compartments flip open. You’ve got one compartment with all your accessories in, with two trays. Underneath there’s a big void. It’s got built in 12-volt adapter, to put in your lights and your glue gun. It’s got a USB charger on there, as well. We’re working with a company. We can’t ship these, so the guys in the States that buy their tool carts will have to get them locally.

There’s a lot of lithium batteries, now, that are encased. If you get a 10-amp power battery, it’ll last a week on your glue gun. It’s the size of your fist now and weighs nothing. We’ve got a compartment for that in it. And then we’ve got on the top compartment is your hanging bars. It’s got barn doors, so you open it up, you’ve got all your wire tools and everything like that. It’s gonna be brilliant.

Shane Jacks: It sounds awesome.

Jordan Fisher: We’re just testing it now on the road, and it –

Shane Jacks: You need to test one over here.

Jordan Fisher: I’ll send you guys one at cost, for sure. We’ve got about two weeks, two solid weeks before the MTE in the U.K. I’ve got to set up the stand and everything like that.

Keith Cosentino: Are you gonna have them on display there at the MTE?

Jordan Fisher: We’re gonna have one on display, just to get a bit of feedback. I’ve got one out with a technician next week. He’s gonna start using it. Then when it comes to manufacturing, obviously, it’s you guys now as much as anybody else. When you start ordering quantities, we’re gonna have a bit of a lag of about three or four weeks before we start getting the materials in for the final product, but I’ve gotta show some – people have been waiting for it. I’ve gotta show where we are with it at the MTE.

Keith Cosentino: Will you have any images up for the guys here in the States who aren’t gonna come to the MTE show?

Jordan Fisher: Yeah. There’ll be images from the MTE. There’ll be a few teasers going out over the next few weeks. And as I say, one of the guys that’s using it on his route, he’s quite big on his social media site, so he’ll be adding photos. You’ll see him on PDR Tools and things like that on the groups, there. It’s just got to go through its tests at the moment, same as the hail cart did.

Keith Cosentino: So if guys wanna see it and they’re not on social media, they can head over to tdntools.com. After the MTE you’re gonna have it up?

Jordan Fisher: Yeah. It’ll be available to peer at on the site. As long as I’ve got an accurate date – as soon as I’ve got that accurate date of when the first job lot’s going out because the last thing I want to do is delay people that have been waiting for it. We’ll get some pictures across. We’ll probably – we’ll be sending a few out to the States. I’ll send you guys one. I’ll send Mike Slater one to have a look at, as we do with new products.

Anybody that’s – it’s more people coming to me and saying, “Look. We need something for the route.” The hail we built for ourselves, but the route cart, I’ve had to think a bit more outside the box because I’m not on that route every day. I’ve had to take a lot of feedback from a lot of guys. It’s took a bit longer than what it should have done, to swap things around and see how they need to – it’s more about the posture. You can think of any cart in the world and it’s always hip height, but when you think of a route technician, the majority of panels they do are the sides. They’re on the floor a lot. We’ve just had to change the way it works, so the accessories are down on the floor. But they’re in trays and they’ve got rubber feet on, so if you are glue pulling a rail, you can lift the tray out and put it on the roof and it’s got everything there.

Keith Cosentino: I’d like to see it before it’s in.

Jordan Fisher: It’s gonna be nice. We’re all excited about it. Tools is a good side. It’s a nice circle we’ve got in our business because we’ve got the tools. We’ve got the hail. We’ve got a few other things coming out. We’re gonna utilize the facilities which I spoke to you about last week, Keith, and we will be doing advanced training at some point with special guests. More bespoke training courses. I get phone calls on a daily basis. I don’t know if it’s our reputation they’ve heard all over or whether it’s the tools or what, but we get phone calls a lot asking. These are technicians that have been trained that want to further themselves or want to be introduced into the likes of hail.

I was always against training. From when I was involved with PDR Nation, I hated the fact that people were training people because I thought it’s just saturating the market. And if I’m in training to help the market by involved in PDR Nation, it’s a conflict of interest and it was all like that. But now that I’ve seen what you guys have done, and what John and Mike have done, it’s not about – it’s about – your slogan is it’s about getting better.

I’ve spoke to a few technicians this week that are out on the road. They’re in that market every day. I said, “What would you prefer? Would you prefer somebody that’s had that one-week training course somewhere in a training mill that comes out and comes in to your customers and offers a panel for $20, or would you prefer someone that’s out of training but that’s been trained in different aspects of PDR, not just pushing a dent but sales, and that’s listened to the likes of your podcasts, that comes out and they’re selling a bit higher?”

I said to the guy that I was speaking to, I said, “If you’re confident in your dealership yourself, you’re not gonna be worried about these guys coming in. You know you can beat them on quality or speed or anything like that, and your relationship with these guys, but the last thing you want is people coming in offering silly prices because it doesn’t matter how good a friend you are with the dealership manager, he’s gonna turn around to you and say, ‘How comes we’re paying you four times what people are offering us now?’” The more education and the further training, I think, it’s a good thing for the industry.

Keith Cosentino: I do, too. I look at it as a technician, too. People say, “I don’t want anybody to be trained.” Well, great. You don’t want anybody to be trained. That’s fine. But people are going to be trained, no matter whether you want to or not.

Jordan Fisher: And everybody was training themselves. You’ve got to remember that. We was all trained at some point.

Keith Cosentino: If you’re going to be trained, who would you rather have train them? A guy like Jordan or a guy like Shane or some factory setup in Chicken Lips where you pay 500 bucks and you go for four days and you go back home with a set of pop [inaudible] [01:18:59] tools? What would you rather have in your market?

Shane Jacks: I had a gentleman approach me. He sent me a personal message, “How much do you charge to train?” I gave him a price. Well, it was actually – he sent me the personal message after I said this online on social media. He said something – I said, “I’m not cheap.” And then my very next point was “but I’m a great value.” Cheap and value are two completely different things in a –

Jordan Fisher: Absolutely.

Shane Jacks: Some of us bring value instead of just – there’s a lot more value in us than there is in those training mills. Way more. Even if we’re ten times higher.

Jordan Fisher: We’re trying to concentrate, as well, on getting government-backed, national vocational awards to be associated with PDR, as well. We’ve got something called the Sitting Guilds in the U.K., who certify – and it’s a government thing. It’s a NVQ level 8, like diplomas that you get in the States. It’s a craftsman level that’s government backed. They certify panel beaters, painters, everything like that. Anyone that goes through a college that’s motor-based college or like BMW will be certified by a Sitting Guild. And that’s recognized.

We’re trying to get them to start recognizing PDR. What we’re trying to do is put – a lot like the physical aspects of what you guys are doing in the States with PDR College and Dent Trainer. We’re trying to bring all that sort of advanced training and bespoke information to our physical premises, and have different levels that we’re gonna get people involved at from these national-accredited awards places. Get them to help us with the curriculum and what they expect after a certain amount of time. It’s not just a money-making thing. It’s about getting people trained correctly and educated in the way that they need to be.

We’re working on cars now that have got a lot of electrical and safety features that really shouldn’t be messed around with unless you’ve been given the right tuition. Airbags and pressure sensors and things like that.

[Crosstalk]

Keith Cosentino: R&I clips that are not supposed to come off.

Jordan Fisher: That’s right. On the A pillars. People always rip them clips off, but they’re there for a reason, that they don’t smash you in the face when the airbag comes off. It is things like that. It’s like when I took my PDR Nation test. Everyone was saying, “It’s on online test. It’s on corrosion protection.” There was a lot of stuff I didn’t know about the layers of paint and the lacquer and the UV protection and all that sort of stuff. I didn’t have a clue. It was just one of them things that if you use a 2,000 grit sandpaper, you’re more than likely gonna go through. It was actually education to that that as a ten-year technician, I took onboard. There’d be stuff that 20-year technicians just don’t know about. I think it’s a continuous education. That’s what it needs.

Like a college basing. I think I would say it’s a bit more of that involvement, a bit more continuous education. We’re looking at doing seminars, whether it’s from guest speakers like someone like yourself, Keith, that come across talking about glue pulling, or Shane about blending, or even industry leaders in insurance, what their take on PDR is. Or health and safety. Who would need all this?

Keith Cosentino: That’s exciting. It’s exciting to hear about maybe getting an actual accreditation through the government. That’d be really cool.

Jordan Fisher: I think we need to. We’ve all got to agree that when we look at visas and everything like that, it’s like going to Australia. We have to pretend to be panel beaters to get into Australia.

Keith Cosentino: I’ve heard some guys can’t even get into Canada with the skills they possess.

Jordan Fisher: Yeah. Our skills are specialized. Is that…?

Shane Jacks: I got the nod, yeah.

Jordan Fisher: That’s an American Canadian joke. We don’t get that over here.

Keith Cosentino: Shane went to a storm in Canada and they said he couldn’t come in because his skills weren’t specialized enough.

Jordan Fisher: There we go. But if you was a panel beater, Shane, you coulda got straight in, more than likely. It needs that recognition. It needs that recognition. It needs educating, whether it’s the customer; technicians need education, further education. This is what we’re not trying to be in the U.K. We’re not trying to be that company that say, “We’ll teach you.” It’s almost brokering in the education world. We’re saying we can get people in, and we’ve got the audience with you guys, to teach you in so many different things. As I say, it’s like guest appearances. Who better to teach about blending than Shane?
Keith Cosentino: That’d be great. We’d be interested in doing that. That’d be a lot of fun.

Shane Jacks: For sure. Yes.

Jordan Fisher: I think we’ve got a long road ahead of us. We’ve got next year’s MTE. I’ll speak to Kevin at this year’s MTE and see – obviously, this MTE over here is growing year on year. I know you guys have had a few successful seminars over that side this year, which, unfortunately, I couldn’t get to because of Australia. I think we need to get more American guys across to the U.K. for the MTE. If we can build your audience for you guys, then we’ll set up a room and we’ll get some seminars put in place.

Keith Cosentino: It’d be a lot of fun.

Shane Jacks: Yes, sir. Sounds great.

Jordan Fisher: You can have your fish and chips.

Keith Cosentino: For certain. So, Jordan, if guys wanna get a hold of you and talk about your tools or, maybe, see if they could be a good fit to work for you, how can they get a hold of you?

Jordan Fisher: I’ve got 20 different email addresses at the moment. They’re all getting condensed at the moment, but Jordan@tdntools.com is the easiest one to say and remember. You can get us through the website at tdntool.com. We’ve got our corporate website which is tdnautomotive.com. As I say, that’s more corporate-based. That gives information about who we are and our different divisions that we deal with. Contact me any time. I’m based more in the U.K., now. I’ll be traveling a lot less. U.K. guys that listen, they’ll see a lot more of us. Whether they’re happy about that or not, we’ll see, but they’re gonna hear a lot more about TDN in their future.

Keith Cosentino: And speaking of the MTE, I’m shipping out your Blackplague tabs and your depth gauges, so they’ll be there with you at the show. European guys, if you wanna see the Blackplague tabs or the depth gauge, Jordan’s gonna have them in his booth.

Jordan Fisher: In our stand, yep. Fantastic. We’ll have Shane’s hammers there, as well.

Keith Cosentino: Shane, you’ve got a tool review for us today?

Shane Jacks: Actually, I do, Keith. We are going to go to Ultra Dent tools today. There’s something that – I used to use these – they had a different form of what I’m gonna talk about today, Keith, several years back. One of the biggest problems with most of the light stand today is the swivel on the head. It’s just terrible. In most cases it’s pretty bad. Ultra has this thing figured out, though. I just ordered a couple of these this week. They’ll be here late next week, and again, they’ve changed the design a little bit, but it works pretty much just as good as the old design does. There are three parts that you need to convert your light over to this swivel.

Now, let me explain it first for these three parts. You can get away with two parts and save yourself, I think, it’s $50, and your light will be about 30 percent better than it is now, the swivel that you have on a typical light stand now. If you buy this other $50 part, it’s going to be 3,000 percent better because it’ll be a double swivel ball. A lot of guys know what I’m talking about. It’s really hard to explain over the radio, over a podcast, so I’m just gonna give you the part numbers.

Keith Cosentino: We’ll have a link on pdrcollege.com with this episode.

Shane Jacks: Correct. What it is, there are three parts. One is ball\stud2. This part is a stud with a ball on it. It goes into your light. That’s the first ball. Then that goes into another ball swivel joint. It has a piece that connects onto the ball that’s coming out of your light and then it has another ball on the end of it. That’s A4B90, and then that connects into the collar. That ball goes into the collar, which slides onto your light stand, your light tube. That’s A1BC. You need these three parts. I’m not gonna try to explain it because you won’t understand it, anyway. You need A1BC, A4B90, and ball\stud2. Those three things will cost you 100 bucks total, and make your light, like I said, 2,000 percent better than it is now.

I used to use this exclusively. Then they went away from the old design. Then they come back and they’ve tweaked it a little bit, and it’s better now. I’m going with this from here on out.

Keith Cosentino: This fits just about every light fixture?

Shane Jacks: Well, you may have to modify the threads on the ball and stud, the first – the ball\stud2. The threads may not fit in. You may have to modify your light just a bit. But it will be well worth it. I can’t tell you it’s gonna fit on every light. I don’t even know if it’s gonna fit on the lights that I have. But it’s gonna be so worth it to me that I’m going to – I may have to pull the light apart and modify the connection on the light a little bit to make it adapt.

Keith Cosentino: Because at the end of the day, all you need to do is, basically, get a bolt into your light.

Shane Jacks: Yeah. It’s getting a bolt into your light. It’s a threaded stud. That’s it.

Keith Cosentino: What’s so great about it? What does it enable you to do?

Shane Jacks: The adjustability.

Jordan Fisher: Is it like an extension? Does it give you that extra length away from the boom?

Shane Jacks: No. That’s actually the good thing about it. It’s not that far away. You know how you have the fat head light has that super long stud on it? That thing is – I love his lights. That long threaded rod is horrendous. And you have to actually move the light and move the head on the end of the light; you have to move the collar around. This, since it has two balls on it, you guys, if you’ve never seen it before, you can’t envision it. You can literally – you can put that stand anywhere you want it, okay? The tube? And you can put that light in any position, 360, almost all the way around your tube. It’s ridiculous, the adjustability that you have. But you have to have both – you have to have two balls for it to be effective.

Jordan Fisher: I think I’ve seen it. Is it like a clamp with the two balls and then that gives you –

Shane Jacks: Yes. You can spin it, turn it. It’s literally almost – it’s 360 one way and then it will almost curl all the way – it’ll go – it’s really hard to explain. What I do is I put it on the very end of the tube and leave it there all the time. You never have to move anything else.

Jordan Fisher: That’s true. We have a problem when – generally, when you’re looking at your light, you don’t see where the bracket is behind it. So you’re trying to pull your light around, but the bracket’s facing the other way. This should eliminate that. I don’t think people realize how much damage they’re doing when they’re twisting – they’re holding on, especially with the Ultra lights, when they’re trying to twist the fixture and it’s –

Shane Jacks: The whole thing is bowing, yeah.

Jordan Fisher: It’s bowing, and you snap the acrylic. So, yeah. I can see the benefit of that. That sounds good. Let’s get some in the shop.

Shane Jacks: As soon as mine come up, Keith, we’ll have a link on there – as soon as mine come up. As soon mine come in and I get it connected on the end of one of my current lights, I’ll send some – we’ll throw some pictures up on the site of it, also. And maybe a little video on the PDR College Facebook page, and just show the adjustability of that thing.

Keith Cosentino: Great. That sounds cool. All right. Just as an update for the depth gauges, I’m staring at a big, giant stack of cases here. They are done. Cases are here. Those suckers are getting ready to go out.

Shane Jacks: I know one guy that’s waiting on one.

Keith Cosentino: Yep. You know two.

Jordan Fisher: I am, as well. That makes three of us.

Keith Cosentino: That email is gonna go out if you haven’t gotten it already because this show is gonna be live on Monday. We’re recording a little bit before that. If you haven’t gotten the email yet, it’s coming in the next day or less. Keep your eyes open for that. And then it’ll be on the website a couple days after that, once everyone has got a chance to get theirs who’s been waiting.

Shane Jacks: Excellent.

Keith Cosentino: Jordan, thank you for spending some time with us.

Jordan Fisher: No. Thank you both.

Keith Cosentino: It was a lot of fun.

Jordan Fisher: It was a pleasure to speak to you guys. As I say, I missed you at the MTE this year, being in Australia, but I’m sure I’ll see you guys soon.

Shane Jacks: Yes, sir.

Jordan Fisher: You’re doing a fantastic job over there and it’s a pleasure to be on this show.
Keith Cosentino: Thank you.

Shane Jacks: Good having you. Good having you, Jordan.

Jordan Fisher: All right, guys.

Keith Cosentino: Until next time.

Shane Jacks: Get better.

Jordan Fisher: Yep. Fantastic.

[End of Audio]

Duration: 94 minutes