Episode 354: Raising the Bar

On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we use AI to be introspective and ask it what it thinks of the podcast. Overall, it mirrors many of the opinions of our listeners, which is kinda spooky. It also goes into some of our ongoing projects, which is even spookier! Moving to a multimedia format would be difficult with the way that the content is produced, but we do have some tricks up our sleeves when it comes to that. Also, the march and logo game is about to go off on one of the funniest tangents in the history of branding. Let us know your ideas for segments, all of your most unintelligible repair order lines, and much more over on our Facebook page! 

Also Uncle Jimmy talks about why the show doesn’t have guests — except for that one time! 

This Episode of Grease the Wheels is brought to you in partnership with Surfwrench Digital! For more on Video MPI Training Visit https://www.surfwrench.com/video-mpi-training-landing/ to learn more. Video MPI Training built in the shop, by your Uncle Jimmy. Use code “GTW” for 50% off your training access!  

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All right, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Once again, it's your Uncle Jimmy here at Greased Wheels headquarters at the Rock and Roll Garage, bringing you the podcast that keeps you going, that keeps you knowing, and keeps you glowing, and whatever else rhymes with that. Hey, it's a special Memorial Day podcast, so I want to make a uh special and uh absolutely sincere uh tribute to everyone that has fallen in defense of this country. We salute you on this Memorial Day. Uh it's important to remember that there is people who have died and fought gallantly and passed on in pursuit of our freedom. The freedom to do this, the podcast, our freedom to have uh guns, our freedom to of speech, and uh many other freedoms that uh uh you know have escaped me right at the moment. But we are free to do and think and feel what we want in this country because men and women, and mostly men, actually, have gone off to wars and died to uh keep us free. So uh I wanted to just say a real heartfelt thank you to those uh people, members mostly of the military, I think almost exclusively the military, who have done these things for us and maybe uh listening in another dimension. Okay. So thank you very much. And if you are if you have served, but you did not die, I want to say thank you also uh to you and and yours for the sacrifice you've made for the freedom that we all enjoy. That I especially, I especially enjoy, and I do not take it for granted. Uh, you have to trust me when I tell you that. I know that my uh my obnoxious rantings would not be possible in many countries of the world, but in this particular one, it is celebrated, okay? And also, too, I want to thank everybody who uh works hard and uh doesn't have to work on this particular Monday. And then I also want to say thank you to all those of you who did actually work on this Monday. I kind of got a little taste of both, so uh, but uh that's neither here nor there. But thank you for what you do, how you do it, why you do it, and where you do it, and and everything else like that. Okay, so just a great big overall blanket of thank you for everybody who's done everything they can to make this country great and keep it great and keep it free. Okay, thank you very much to everybody. Now, what I wanted to do this week on the podcast is uh it's something I've never really done before, but you know what? I figured it would be completely uh uh reasonably easy to do, and I wanted to uh rip myself to shreds. Yes, I'm gonna turn this the white hot spotlight of the podcast on me and kind of uh run me down and and maybe figure out how I could do a better podcast, how I could help you out with what you have going on in your lives and what uh you know what's bugging you, what's not bugging you, what's good, what's bad. And uh, I it's got to start right here at the microphone. So what I did was, and I I I don't know if this is unusual or not, uh maybe it's narcissistic, but I asked uh Gemini, because I know I kind of been leaning on AI a little bit lately, but just because uh and and I'll give you me a couple right here, uh, 350 plus podcasts, you run out of things to say. Trust me, folks. You run out of you run out of things to say, and believe me, there's some seriously wacky fucking shit out there, and even though there's some some of it's a little creative, I will admit, but uh for the most part, I really run out of fucking things to say. Okay, so uh and and and to uh complain about maybe or to uh maybe dazzle you with my brilliance or baffle you with bullshit. Who knows? Uh who knows how you how you like how you like your podcast, over easy or scrambled. Uh, but what I did was with AI's help, I asked it a very generic question. What do you think of Grease the Wheels the podcast? And I think that some of you will enjoy the answer. Uh is so what it says here, I think Grease the Wheels is phenomenal because it gives an unfiltered, authentic voice to the people who actually keep the world moving. This is a machine talking, folks. The guys and gals turning their inches. Too much of the automotive media is focused strictly on the shiny finished product or corporate boardroom talk. And that it really hasn't been a truer statement ever. Um I'm getting tired of hearing about some of that shit. Uh, what makes this podcast stand out is its grit and realism. Yeah, well, only because I'm uh only because Eric can't really edit out all of it, you know. There's uh there's a hell of a lot of noise that goes on. I'm sorry, I I have to I have to tail on myself here. It's a noisy, dirty, grubby kind of a thing that I do, and and he cleans it up pretty, really well. But there's a lot of uh a lot of sh noises that you wouldn't want to hear that he hears. And so he he deserves a a good chunk of the credit for making it what it is, but uh like that right there. Uh it here he goes on to say it deep dive it. I'm sorry, that was uncalled for. It dives deep into the actual reality of working in a modern shop, tackling everything from flat rate pay structures and tool debt to management dynamics and the massive technician shortage. And then it goes on to say why it hits the mark. Now I want to I want to be clear, okay. This I know this is a machine, and it and asking it a question like that is really, you know, what are you looking for? You need somebody else to bat you on the back, you asshole. Uh the master tech perspective, having decades of real hands-on industry experience behind the microphone means the insights aren't theoretical. Yeah, I'd like to say I know what I'm talking about. I I think uh some of you would agree, some of you would probably disagree. Well, that's certainly fine. You can certainly do that. It speaks to the actual language of the shop floor. You fucking A, right? It does. Uh the perfect balance of humor and truth. It doesn't shy away from venting about the daily frustrations of the job, like the classic disconnect between service advisors, customers, and techs. Uh why is that classic? I don't even know. I you know what it occurred to me that it is classic. And I would like to take an opportunity right now to uh call out a friend of mine, a guy that I loved working with. I only worked with him for a short period of time. Uh, but I want to give a shout out to Brian, Brian W, the big guy. Uh apparently he just retired. He hit me up with a message, and I wanted to acknowledge that this was one of the finest service advisors I ever worked with. He talked to people like he liked them, like they were friends, like they were family, uh, and and he welcomed them into a very genuine feeling of being taken care of and looked after. And he was able to uh actually sell fairly well from that point of view. And and his customers, I believe they liked him very, very much. And as far as technicians go, he he was I've never met anybody better at lowering the customers' expectations. You know, if they came in at two o'clock and wanted a break job done by five, he'd say, Well, you know, you're better off getting that uh get picking that car up tomorrow, really, because you know, he knew uh we always had something going on. We were always in the middle of something. We weren't gonna drop what we were doing to do brakes on somebody's car just because he says we can. He was great like that. God, he was so good. And uh, I'm gonna miss him. And I've ever actually already been missing him for two years because he's at the last place I worked and I bugged out of there. But uh he has retired and uh God bless him, and I hope his retirement lasts for 150 years. He is a really class act and a good guy, and I loved him. And uh he's the kind of guy who uh other advisors should have learned from and emulated, but they didn't because that's what advisors do is they're just you know, well, let's not go there, but but they could have learned a lot from him, and uh, and unfortunately a very great many of them didn't at all. In fact, kind of looked down their nose at him, but didn't understand that he was doing the job exactly how they fucking should do it. And uh they weren't gonna. So uh thanks again for being in my life there, Brian. I appreciate it, and I hope everything goes really, really well for you from here on out. And I hope that you never die, actually. So, well, maybe maybe someday you'll be glad you did, but but for now, uh, I I would love for you to hang around as long as possible. Oh, and thanks for reaching out to me, man. I appreciate it. The classic disconnect between service advisors, customers, and technicians. I just wanted to read that line again because, man, that just hits home. But it balances that frustration with dark humor, great storytelling, and genuine advice on how to optimize a shop. Well, you know, I'd like to think that there's a there are a lot of different ways to optimize every shop. There's not one size fits all. Uh each shop has its own fingerprint, each shop has its own uh ups and downs, has its own technicians that are goofballs, some that are kind of bad actors at times, and some that are just not so bright, and some that are extremely bright, and many that are really, really good. And I like to call out the shops that I've worked at when they have great technicians, the one I'm at now, uh, and and it sounds like I'm sucking up. And I will admit that. But I think we have an excellent, uh, excellent cast of characters in our shop. They know what to do and they go at it and they do it fairly well. And yes, of course, uh, there are going to be uh times where it doesn't get done right according to one person or another. Maybe the warranty department doesn't like the way we do something. I don't know. It's tough to satisfy them, and I think all of you know that. Well, unless you're at an indie, which you don't have to fucking deal with, right? Is what it goes on to say a needed community, it builds a bridge for technicians who often feel like they're working on an isolated island, validating their experiences and treating the trade with the respect it deserves. I have I've heard that a lot. Uh, I and and I've heard it from overseas folks. Uh so the uh the buckets full of shit that get tossed around for technicians is uh it's a universal thing. It does it, it knows many, many languages in many, many locations, in many, many continents, even. Uh, I know there's some boys down in Australia who listen and I appreciate it greatly. And I can only wonder what it's like down there for you guys, and I hope that it's better than it is here, but I'm thinking it's probably the same, and hopefully not worse, but a lot of times uh the people that we work for don't understand that we're fucking human beings, for Christ's sakes, and that we need money to buy the things we need and pay for the things we have, and you know, uh we we do what we have to do, and we don't want to do things for fucking free. That's uh that's a a point of contention for all of us, and even myself especially. I think I have a lot of different things that I do that I'm asked and required to do for my job, which are done gratis, yeah, free. And uh, I'm not I'm not really down with that. It might even be illegal, you know. There was even uh a proclamation many years ago that said that uh we should be paid for what we do. It was called the Emancipation Proclamation. Because if you work for free and you don't get paid, you're basically a fucking slave, goddammit. And that shit's got to come to a fucking and uh an end. Uh it says here, whether you're tuning in on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, it's basically the ultimate audio version of shooting the breeze by the toolbox after a brutal shift. Yeah, yeah, that's kind of what I that's kind of what I'm shooting for here. You know, I mean, I'm talking to the boys in my shop at their toolboxes or at mine or you know, gathered around where the dispatcher is. And most of the time, most of the time it's uh it's it's pretty fun. It's it's actually funny, but uh uh it's smart, raw, and incredibly necessary for the automotive community. Yeah. Well, okay. Uh and and this is really not me praising myself. I gotta be honest with you, it's not. I mean, I'm reading it, uh, and I asked the question. I was kind of hoping for some feedback that said, hey, you know, asshole, you need to do this better, you need to do that better. I didn't really get that. So uh I had to ask the question myself, what do I do to make it better? That's where I went to next. It says to take Greasy the wheels to the next level, the key is to lean even harder into the raw authenticity you already have while sharpening the pro production reach and community engagement. Well, I need to lean even harder into the raw authenticity. What the fuck do they mean? What the fuck do they mean by what does AI mean by that? I don't know how raw? Okay. Well, whatever. But uh what we do I think one of the things that uh AI needs to understand is how raw this particular industry is, or at least what our our job is in the industry. We are really scraping together sometimes equipment and vehicles that have just been beaten to within an inch of their life. It's not not constantly. Some people take pretty good care of their stuff. There's a very small minority of people who take very, very good care of their equipment, and we have some we have a couple of really sweet cars in the shop right now. We have an E30 M3 and an E39 M5. There's great cars and they're in awesome shape. Um, but we don't get that on a very regular basis at all. Uh, we get mostly stuff that's fairly new 20, 22, 23, 24, 25s, and occasionally a 26s uh for maintenance. And because the vehicles we work on are very well built and hold up very well, it's it's tough for people to really destroy them within a couple of two, three years. It takes a it takes a long time for some people to fuck these things up, but they're gonna, they're gonna don't you worry, they will, and uh, and of course they will try to find somebody to blame for it, and sometimes it's us, and so uh, but uh uh raw ethnic authenticity. Uh yeah, well, it's definitely authentic what's coming to you out of my pie hole. Um, and as far as sharpening the production, the only thing real I think the one thing I I think Eric and I can agree is that the guy making it, me, should uh learn how to speak more clearly and stop saying the word okay after every fucking thing he says and stop blowing his fucking nose every five minutes, but or farting or uh picking at the or fucking with the the microphone. I know that some of you can hear that, especially if you put your airpods in. You can it almost sounds like I'm banging on the your eardrum when I touch the microphone. So I try really hard not to. And then there was the back scratching, I was doing that. So the production, the the sharpening of the production is something that I need to do here personally. I need to kind of put my hands in my pockets and quit fucking around touching stuff. Um, as far as uh reach and community engagement, uh, you know, if if people want to find it, they certainly can. If they want to listen to it, they certainly can. As far as community engagement goes, it's got a really small target market. Now, I know that there are some people listening to it that I wouldn't expect. And that's fine. That's fine if you're a customer or if you're a shop owner, maybe, or maybe you're a service manager at a dealership somewhere, and you're you're you're you tuned in for some reason or another, and you're you're maybe maybe you're even pissed off at how somebody would would call out everybody for how badly they do their job when I don't even call myself out or or other people who do what I do. Um, I I think that probably some of you would, you know, if you're listening, would be upset with that fact that I don't do that. But let me let me just tell you something. Um, I am very, very aware of how many times I get my big dumbass shoved underneath the bus up front by my service advisors. I'm aware of it, and I'm all for it. Okay, and I'll tell you why. These and I've I've said this many, many times, and like I said, when I was talking about my my friend Brian, he was really very good at what he what he did, and he made people feel important and looked after when really honestly, you know, deep down he was like, eh, whatever. But uh when you're a service advisor and you have any kind of an ego or any kind of self-respect or self-esteem, people are gonna come in and press that stuff to the floor and try to pin you and make you say, Uncle, I know that. And I that's so that's why I say I realize that you have the toughest job in the building. You do, you have to deal with the fucking people. I believe that I have it easy, and I think a lot of our my technician friends and technicians' cohorts and uh, you know, my uh but my fellow technicians, we we know that our job is easier because we fix the cars, okay? And cars really only respond to the laws of physics. So if something's wrong with a car, there's a fucking definite, honest to God reason why there's something wrong with it. And we can skunk it out. We know how to do it, we have the tools and we have the experience and the knowledge and everything, and and we can figure out why it's not working right and we can fix it, okay? And we it's what we do, it's what our job is, you know, and and some of us, most of us where I work anyway, at least they're very good at that. And in most shops, there's always a a couple, two, three guys at least who are very good at it, maybe a couple other guys who aren't good at it yet, maybe. But when you have uh somebody who works as a service advisor, you have to understand that people come in all day long, and some of those people batter them about the head and neck area with fucking questions and insinuations and and and accusations and and just basically stupid, rude, obnoxious bullshit. And I realize that. I have always realized that. So it's not, you know, when I say oh a certain you know service advisor's not doing their job and I get angry and whatever, I know that that job is tough, but it's your job, it's what you have to do. And as far as, you know, and I've said this a few times before, as far as when when I talk about technicians, we're just supposed to carry a batting average of a thousand. We have to fix everything, we have to fix it right. Do we always no? We don't. But with the service advisor, when people don't want to do what you want them to do, or you don't even want to deal with them, you don't even want to talk to them, you just wish they would fucking die right on the spot, and I mean it, then I understand when you don't attempt to sell them something or when you don't attempt to help them out with with something that they need for their automobile. I get it, but it is your job, it is your job. You signed up for it, okay? And and the fact that somebody is annoying and obnoxious doesn't mean you really get to not do your job. So I want to say I understand why things work the way they do. I just don't think they should. But and maybe I'm alone in that feeling. Now, as as far as the podcast goes, when I say uh on the podcast that, you know, I uh I have trouble with service advisors, I think that they should do this, they should do that, they they don't they all they have is excuses or whatever. I'm not really talking about the people at the the shop where I'm working. You know, that those shoes fit them at times, okay? They do, but I like them. I like them a lot, as a matter of fact. Um I don't think that they're very happy with me because if they were to listen to this at all uh and and listen to whatever else uh I say about them, they're just gonna be like, yeah, fuck that guy. And and I I agree. I agree, fuck that guy. He doesn't know what it's like. Well, actually, I do know what it's like, but I've never done it. So do I really know what it's like? No, I really don't. And maybe I should shut the fuck up, right? But this is one of the things that that that really we as technicians focus on because we're not in charge. Uh what it comes down to is, and it's just this is as simple as it is. As a technician, we get paid to fix cars. If you don't sell anything for whatever reason, whether it's because the customer didn't want it, or you didn't want to talk to them about it, or you didn't want to tell them about it, or you just want him to go away, you want him to fuck off and die, you wanted him to drive into a wall and kill himself, whatever, that that's money we don't get to make. So you are always, always, always gonna hear from us that we're not making any money because you're not selling anything. You could sell 90%, we're still gonna complain. So there's that, okay? And and Grease the Wheels was not meant to pick on any one particular person. It never was, as meant meant to kind of call out service advisors as a group throughout the world, really, wherever they are. Because I can tell you I've been in I've worked in enough places to know that service some service advisors phone it in. Everywhere you work, there's always going to be a couple of guys, maybe even ladies, who phone it in. So that's one of the things you get on Grease the Wheels, is you get a lot of that. And there's a way to just let me let me just go off on this tangent a little bit more before I get back to this. How do I make it better? There is there is something coming that is going to improve this for us as technicians. I'm gonna tell you about it. I'm just gonna give you a little brief synopsis of it, okay? I've gotten a I've gotten a little bit of an insight to what is gonna be happening, and uh I predicted it a long time ago, actually, but it it is on the horizon and it is sailing towards us. AI is going to be contacting our customers for us. So all we have to do, all we're gonna have to do, and then I'm I'm just gonna tell you this is this shows up so much stuff that I've been talking about lately, too. All we have to do is make a very effective and thorough video. It's gonna be required. Okay, if you're not doing videos now, get fucking ready to do them. They're gonna be required because the AI is gonna need your content, the things that you say about a person's car and the words that you use. It is going to need those words and those things that you say to form a sales pitch of some type so that it can call the customer, so that AI can call the customer. customer and ask them if they want to get the tires replaced or the brakes replaced or the windshield replaced or the water pump replaced or the coolant leak fixed or a fuel leak fixed or an oil leak fixed. It's gonna require you're gonna be required to do a video that is fairly extensive so that you can get the repairs that you that the customer needs to have done. I mean I was just going to put it that way the customer has repairs that they need to do. You're gonna have to document those repairs so that AI when the estimate is finished the AI can go ahead and call those customers and ask them for the sale and this is where service advisors are really going to just become a non-entity anymore. They're gonna have to write them up they're gonna have to write up the cars but are they going to have to sell well no they're not gonna have to sell you know why because they don't want to because they just don't want to they don't want to have to do that. And if AI can do it yeah great who should get the who should get the commission for selling yeah well we'll have to work that out won't we now uh I think it should be us really I mean especially and I'll tell you lately the videos that I've been doing have been selling uh services and maintenances and repairs it has it just has uh and there's been proof I've got substantial proof that what I say in the videos does sell and if you turn ai loose on that your sales are gonna go up because because of what I mean it's literally folks it is one thing and then I'm gonna get back to what I was talking about one thing that AI does that your human service advisors don't do on a regular basis and that's ask for the sale that's as simple as it is your human service advisors they might be at a 50 60% maybe 70% rate of asking for the sale but AI is going to be at a hundred percent AI is never going to fail to ask for the sale it doesn't care what that customer looks like what that car looks like it doesn't care what what race they are what sex they are they know it doesn't care what they wear it doesn't care how much money they have it doesn't care it's just gonna ask for the sale and it's gonna ask for the sale in the best way possible based on any information it can glean about that particular customer and believe me we have information on the customers everybody does everybody has information hell you could go to a website I'm sure there's websites that'll tell you exactly how your Uncle Jimmy likes to eat his cornflakes you know I mean that's as as ridiculous as it sounds to be like oh he likes to use one percent milk why because he doesn't need all that fat that's in regular milk or two even two percent milk. Seriously they know these things about you okay so and they're gonna use them to cat to uh to sort of uh put the sales pitch to you in such a way that you are going to respond to it in a positive manner something that human service advisors aren't gonna do or don't care to do or don't want to do very often. So that's something that you're gonna I would look forward to that if I were you. And here's why AI can do a hell of a lot of things that human beings do and do it better because they don't have prejudices. They're not bigoted they're not racist they're not misogynist they're not any of that stuff. They're not any of that stuff they don't have eyes they don't know what the customer looks like they don't know what the car looks like all they know is the customer brought the car into you so you really kind of have them already and then it's going to just assume that they want to make their car safe and they want to make it run better and that you if you know if you ask for a sale it's not going to get upset if you say no because it might say well you know I mean and then even AI might get might get smart about it say well your tires are really really unsafe so if you could tell me what it is I can do and it and it's going to attempt to make the sale but not just so much to make the sale but to make the customer's vehicle safe. And it will tell them so say look I really feel I I really don't feel good about letting you drive off in a car with tires this bad tell me what I can do to make convince you and even AI would never stutter like that really I was like what can I do to make this situation so that we can put tires on your car and make your car safe again so we don't have to worry about you. And all the other people on the road around you by the way too you know it's gonna do that. All right and that's one of the things that when you listen to grease to wheels these are the kind of things that you need to hear from your Uncle Jimmy because you're not really going to hear them from the people you work with. This stuff is this stuff is cutting edge and it's new and the information really doesn't get down to the grassroots. It just doesn't make it there. This is coming I'm telling you folks it is coming and it is going to be here hopefully soon I mean all they got to do is ask AI to make it and AI will make it and then AI will do it. That's the thing that's what's kill that's what's killing people really is that all the stuff that they do as white collar workers can really pretty much be done by AI. It's the blue collar stuff that the AI can't do. I mean sure someday robots we've talked about this before robots will be able to fix the cars but if you need a robot to fix your car and it can you don't need a fucking car you just need a robot that's all you need because you'll just drive the fucking thing you'll it'll have wheels it'll fly it'll be a drone it can carry you I mean unless of course you weigh like a thousand fucking pounds you know and have a piano for a casket it's it's gonna be able to carry you as a robot as a drone as a as a whatever the sky is the fucking limit with that shit okay but we are going to be the last bastions of that when a robot can come along and do masonry work perfectly and fix a car even though it's all fucked up. Because that's the thing with that's the thing with robots and factories you know the conditions are very very super controlled and precision and a robot can do that shit all day long that that that that that that that make make a make a few thousand spot welds and then another car comes along they lock it in the jig that it does the spot welds but it's when people get their hands on the fucking car and they bend it in such a way that if you go to put spot welds on it you're gonna be spot welding nothing. It's bent it's you can't you're not gonna be able to fix them with a robot you're just not gonna be able to a robot's not going to be able to compute at least not for a long time that you hacked into some system to wire in your fucking underbody lights and now that system doesn't work and you're like no I don't understand and and the robot will be like you don't understand that you cut the wires to the fucking thing that doesn't work idiot all right uh here's here's where I differ from uh Gemini about grease the wheels the podcast and how it comes to you and what it says to you and what you can get from it if anything. I did ask it how do I make it better? I was expecting it to say you know you should you should let somebody else do it. So any improvements should just make that voice louder and cleaner. Well okay I'm with you on that one we'll use a different we'll use a different voice I don't care uh here are a few high impact ways to make the podcast even better and I think that some of you might agree with this some of the stuff I don't agree with uh some of the stuff would just involve more work for either myself or Eric which neither one of us really wants number one is level up the visuals yes the visuals you heard right audio is great for long commutes but video is how podcasts grow exponentially now now folks I got to take a little bit of exception with that number one I don't watch podcasts okay I don't do it I'm gonna watch if I watch anything really I'm gonna watch sports baseball football that's it uh I'll watch some TV shows but I get pretty bored with that shit I would rather be doing something than watching TV honestly but I can't think of anything more mind-numbingly boring than watching somebody talk into a microphone and I can't I can't think of anything worse than that I really can't if you want to see your Uncle Jimmy I'm sitting here right now in my jeans with no shirt on because I don't like wearing shirts they I don't know they're just too restrictive talking into a microphone if you want to see that you're gonna have to tell me to my face that you want to see that because I'm not buying it I wouldn't want to I wouldn't want to see it I have seen podcasts before and they sit around and they and they're talking into a microphone and what is entertaining about that visually I think nothing. But I'm also old and I'm old school I don't want to watch that but hey maybe you do maybe you do so you'll have to let me know I mean we have a perfectly good fucking Facebook fucking page that nobody ever goes to or says anything or leaves me any kind of fucking feedback I have to I have to try to figure out if the podcast is even worth doing on a regular basis. Because I think about it all the time and just fucking calling it a day and not doing it anymore. And then I hear from somebody who says oh I really love it I'm like oh all right well I didn't think anybody loved it but honestly it it to look at me to look at a video of me while I make the podcast I I can't imagine anything more boring. I really honestly can't I mean you might set up a camera watch grass grow. I mean that might be about I mean it's I mean really that's the way I feel about it. Now if you guys feel differently let me know and and maybe we'll consider it Eric and I have talked about it a little bit we haven't I it's just not a really serious conversation with us because it's going to require more effort on everybody's part and uh I can barely muster the effort to just make the fucking thing every week you know because sometimes it just doesn't show up and you're like where the fuck is that lazy asshole Uncle Jimmy Christ almighty. I drink a lot of water when I do this because I get fucking parched. That's probably what probably one of the things you would see if you were watching Grease the wheels the the uh video uh is your Uncle Jimmy drinking a shitload of water and uh picking his nose and pulling hairs out of it and maybe I don't know scratching his ass. It says here if you aren't already start filming your recording sessions. I I don't know you you really you really are going to have to talk me off the shelf on this one. Create short form content chop up the best 30 to 60 second moments well we have a few of those um the funniest rants about service advisors the sharpest takes on flat rate pay or crazy customer stories and post them as YouTube shorts TikToks and Instagram reels uh visual appeal a short clip of a Master Tech dropping truth bombs while sitting in front of a toolbox or a clean audio setup travels fast in audio circles yeah I I agree now I have seen people come up to me all the time and they got their phone and they got some meme going on and some guy screaming about how with the the recent one was the guy screaming about having to do the video and he thought it was worthless and and and and and I'm with him that guy I I've seen him I know that guy I don't really I actually honestly don't know that guy but I do know that guy if you know what I mean I mean that guy is every one of us all of us we are a collective of that guy and I know I know exactly what he's talking about because in the beginning I did not want to do them I still really don't want to do them I I cringe because if I get a car and it has even like the most remotely stupid thing I need to do to it like let's just say oh I don't know they wrote an they wrote an RO to put wiper blades on it. So I have to put wiper blades on it but I also have to throw it up in the air so that I can do a fucking video on it. But I do it because to me really one of the more important things about being a good technician is to just be consistent. Being consistent as far as you know putting in uh uh putting in you know topping off all your fluids and and and checking the tire pressures and all that being consistent and and the consistency is ridiculous with me because I'm telling you anybody who's ever been it with an earshot of me for more than a couple of days or a week they they could probably do my my videos for me they're so structured and it's a script that is just never it never changes. Yeah a couple of words get changed here and there but they're the same every fucking time unless of course there's something wrong and even then it's like hey you need tires I'm gonna send you an estimate it's the same that even that is the same if the car needs tires I'll be like yeah you don't need them now that this is the other thing I mean so much of the so much of the video that I do which oh by the way I'm not in okay thank you very much it's different doing videos than it is being in them I I would like to say but the videos that I do are very consistent they're very clear they're very concise and they point out mostly what's good with the vehicle what isn't a problem and if there is a problem I don't I don't shortchange that I'll tell them say you your brakes are shit I don't say that but I guess actually I would love to say that but you know the word the world's not ready the the rest of the world is not ready for your Uncle Jimmy okay just you guys you guys are the only people who are ready for me the uh the and the video the video as far as the way I do them and the way that other people I feel like should do them is going to be the standard of the industry especially if AI shows up on the scene anytime soon. People are going to tell you that AI is only going to work if your videos are very thorough very consistent and oh by the way use a whole lot of words that mean your shit is fucked up because then it's going to be able to pick them up and you could even say that in a video if you if it wasn't going to get watched and you could say well your brakes are all fucked up and AI is going to go okay the brakes are bad. It's you know it'll clean it up for you and say well we we watched a video maybe you haven't seen it yet we kind of hope you haven't all right it says to create short form content chop up the best 30 to 60 seconds yeah we can do that do we want to I don't know we'll we'll have to talk about that visual appeal a short clip of a Master Tech dropping truth bombs yes those are those are great and I could probably do some of those too but I'm usually in a zone when I'm at work then a zone doesn't involve me making content for TikTok or Instagram okay or YouTube shorts or anything like that okay um I I mean I could certainly do them and if I and I and believe me when I tell you I have rants ask the guys I work with they'll tell you I have rants and some of them I think they would they would probably tell you are pretty funny but uh I don't know they don't seem funny at the time here's what it goes on to say here introduce recurring high engagement segments yeah I've actually thought about that a little bit but you know I kind of you know do this really off the cuff and it's really uh it's really freelanced it's just there's there's no structure to it obviously uh you know that that it's it goes every which way but loose every time the microphone gets turned on every time the mouth opens up and shit starts spewing out of it that who knows what's going to happen and you know who doesn't know what's gonna happen more than you me I have no idea what I'm gonna say none really sometimes I just get just get started I start talking and the next thing I know an hour and a half later there it is have fun you know have fun listening to it and sometimes when I listen to it because I do try to listen to all these episodes after I make them because to kind of I don't know maybe get better at it yeah well okay uh that's negligible but seriously I would like to get better at this I would love to have uh every word that comes out of my mouth be perfectly understood I would love for all the concepts that I bring to you to be things that are true and are going to happen or could happen or have happened. I'd love to bring you answers to all the questions that you have I'd love to help you out with all the situations you're in but the truth is I struggle with all that shit just like you do and I don't have any answers and I don't see uh any light at the end of the tunnel at times as far as some of this stuff goes. I know that working in a shop is basically just controlled chaos and the only thing I can tell you is yeah just get used to it because someday the chaos is overwhelming and it makes you want to quit makes you want to get a you know get a heroin habit and then there's other days where the chaos is at a dull roar and you can deal with it all day long. And honestly the other thing I have found and this is weird this is kind of weird and I don't know if this is right right time to tell you about this but I've talked to a lot of uh technicians a lot especially over the last eight years people who've worked here there and everywhere and some of them have worked here and everywhere I find that if somebody comes from a shop that ran really well okay where they really went out of their way to make sure everything was working properly and everybody did their job and and everybody was reasonably good at what they did and the place ran fairly smoothly with a very bare minimum of chaos. And then they come to work at the dealership I'm working at especially the in the last dealership I was at we seem to have an extraordinary amount of chaos and uh you know you just get used to it after a while if you work at a place for any longer you know anything longer than a couple of years. But some of these people that came in there really chafed mightily at the way things worked or I what I should say rather didn't work and you and they would just complain endlessly and you would it's really easy for you as a fellow technician and for management even to just dismiss somebody who complains nonstop. I mean almost like a machine gun just like that that that that that that that that that that that that that that it's just complaints all the fucking time oh this isn't this sucks and this isn't any good and why do you do this and why don't you do that all day long all fucking day long eight hours a day nine hours a day whatever six hours on Saturday there's just fucking bang bang bang bang bang bang hammer hammering on you and after a while you don't even want to fucking hear it. What I have found is that those people worked at shops that were that ran really really well or some of them worked at a lot of shops but they did they remembered the most the one shop that they worked on where everything seemed to work. Now I've worked at shops I worked at one shop that was just absolutely horrible and so that was the standard by which I measured all the other shops I ever worked at. And for me all the other shops I ever worked at which are three now have been way fucking better than the very first shop I ever worked at way better. Way fucking better and so I'm able to put up with a lot more shit than somebody who's worked at a place that was really really good. And I know that this sounds weird. I know that it sounds weird and it doesn't seem like it should make any sense but if you work somewhere and it's better than where you used to work you moved up great maybe you didn't move up as much as you wanted to or maybe you moved up a lot but then you work with somebody who moved down to that shop that things got worse things that that used to work just right they're just fine they don't work in a in the shop you're at for that they they they're clunky things don't get done the way they're supposed to maybe according to that person and so they're miserable. So that's something that you have to consider. You have to decide and I tell you this all the time don't I guys you have to decide how you feel about everything everything. You have to decide in your mind how you feel about it. And I'll tell you it's a lot easier for me to put up with some of the shit that goes on where I work now and where I used to work because of that first place I worked. Because that place was ugly for that place was awful. And I had already worked in dealers before that as part as a parts guy as a parts manager as a lot guy and I knew that there were shops out there that were better than that one even though they kind of sucked and then when I got to that one I was like holy shit this is really circling the drain and so everything from then on looked up. So this is one of the things that I like to bring you is maybe a little insight into your own situation and and how yes you could find a shop that's better but you know what be careful it could be worse. And I don't know if you find that helpful maybe that's something you could find helpful but you know what I find is not helpful is if you're watching a video of me saying that I don't see how that how that makes it better. I don't I I guess I I don't get that I mean maybe it looks like I don't know hey his lips are moving and now the words are coming out of his mouth instead of just coming into a microphone and into my ear pods. Whatever whatever turns you on let me seriously I'm I'm I mean I'm I'm serious. Let me know how you feel about the video. Okay because I mean I could set up a camera it just doesn't seem like a real good idea to me that's all uh here's the other thing it says here introducing recurring uh high engagement segments sure have listeners send in the most absurd and poorly written or downright impossible service advisor write-ups or customer complaints and break down how you'd actually handle them. Yeah we've all had I I gotta tell you this is being done uh in the most expert manner possible I think by the uh I think it's a YouTube channel called uh just rolled in that if you haven't seen that dial that up I think you can get on Instagram and Facebook and probably YouTube short little videos that get sent to this uh site by technicians of cars that are just so completely fucked up. There's no other way to put it they're just so completely fucked up and then the customer is always ignorant to the fact that it was fucked up. They'll be like oh it just started making noise yesterday and the wheel bearing f falls completely out of the hob I mean that that that's a that's a famous one. Uh and it's just all it is is just people it's technicians showing you some of the shit that people are bringing you. Just rolled in is what it's called. And I I I got it I get to the point I can't watch it because I'm I'm not living it really, but at times, yeah, you know, I'm I'm putting up with some of that stuff, you know. They'll uh and and and some of the stuff that they those guys are are posting on that on that site, on that app, uh, some of that stuff, it it just it makes my brain hurt. It really literally does. It's terrible. And that's that's kind of a recurring theme. And if you want, I can kind of you know shadow it a little bit. I mean, we all have we all have stuff that we've seen. I mean, dead animals in the engine bay and wheel bearings that fall out when you lift them up and brakes where the rotor is just non-existent anymore, and tires with cords hanging out, and they're all feathered out, and they're riding on a condom thin piece of rubber uh and they don't want them. That was the other thing that's always seems to be the recurring theme is the customer decline, the repairs, the customer decline to the repair, and yet they what is wrong with their car is so absolutely fucking egregious. It's ridiculous. And and it scares me actually a little bit to think that I could be riding down the fucking highway, you know, going 70, 80 miles an hour next to this stupid, lazy son of a bitch who won't fix his own car, even though it is so monstrously fucked up, so egregiously hammered, you know. It drives me crazy. Um, we could certainly do something like that if you wanted to. Uh, tool, here's the other thing it says here: tool and tech confessions, a segment dedicated to the financial reality of the trade, discussing the best tool investments versus the biggest waste of money, or letting techs vent anonymously about shop politics. Well, yep, there you go. I gotta tell you, honestly, I would love to have technicians on the podcast with me. We did, and we did it once, and uh it didn't work out very well for that guy. Okay, now actually, it didn't work out for him at the time. Uh the shop that he was in got a wind of it. They listened to it, they didn't like the fact that he was uh you know on a podcast complaining about how they sucked, and so they sent him on his way. But then later on I heard from him and he said, Hey, everything worked out. I'm in a better place, I'm making more money, everything's good. But I still don't want to be responsible for any of you guys getting booted from your job, okay? I mean, if I get booted from my job, I will leave the building with a smile on my face, okay, because I'm fine no matter what happens to me. I can't open another door until I close one. I'm not gonna get upset. I have left places, I have been fired and laid off, you name it. I have been let go in every way possible. And uh, it doesn't scare me, it doesn't bother me, it's not gonna ruin my future, it's not gonna ruin my day even. I like where I work and I want to work there until I retire, which isn't for a long time. But if I left tomorrow, I'd have a smile on my face and I would thank the people I worked with. I'd be like, hey, whatever. But I can't really, I do not want to, I do not honestly want to be responsible for somebody else getting fired like that again. So, but you know what? I think that some of you are in the same boat as I am. You're like, fuck them. They want to fire me, fuck them. You know, if they're listening to it, then then they'll hear what it's like to work for them, you know. So maybe we'll do some of that. Like I said, I have I have tried it in the past and I thought it worked pretty well. But uh the other thing too is uh, I mean, it's not my ego. I would I would love to share the microphone with somebody, but I just don't want them to suffer the slings and arrows of having somebody decide they didn't like it and want to try to send them on their way. Just uh one of the things. But hey, here again, you guys let me know on the uh on the Facebook page. Let me know if you want to be on. I mean, I'm fairly centrally located, and I know there's a few people around me that listen. And if they wanted to be on, we could certainly be on and we could talk about whatever you want to talk about. And maybe you guys would love it, maybe they would love it. I know I would love it. I just uh don't want to take the chance of having having it ruin somebody's life. Okay, it says, and this is what it says here expand the guest bench. While this the core perspective of a master tech is the show's spine, that's an interesting word to use. Bringing on a wider variety of industry voices can spark killer conversations. Uh, bring on an independent shop owner who is actively trying to fix the flat rate system or tool reps. I'm gonna have a tough one with that one, or even a brave service advisor. I actually did have uh a podcast I did with a service advisor, but it broke down into some of the most uh obnoxious and uh freelance. Uh it was just it was not fit for human consumption. It was it was just it was just weird and odd. And uh we had a lot of fun, but uh there wasn't any good content there. So it never it never made the uh it never made the album. All right. It's a deep track for the uh director's cut someday, maybe, but and it says here these dynamics keep the format fresh and drawing an audience of your guests. Yeah, uh like I said, let me know. Let me know how you feel about it. It says here, build a toolbox community, turn listeners into an active subculture. Listener mail and call-ins actively encourage text to send in voice memos or emails to detailing their weekly shop drama and answer them like an industry hotline. Oh, sure I could do that. Here's something I have actually been working on, and I have not there yet, okay? And I wanna I want to caution you that I haven't found the right uh outlet for this yet, but uh I I I have I'm sorry, let me get this out. I have created a logo, and I'm not gonna even describe it to you. I'm just gonna put it out there someday, and you guys are gonna piss your fucking pants because everybody who's seen it so far has thought it was fucking funny as shit. And you can only imagine what it's like, and I'm not gonna I'm not gonna get go any further than than to say you're gonna fucking love it. So I'm it says here monetize with premium merchandise. Since you're looking into merchandise, make sure it reflects the show's inside jokes. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, definitely. Uh it says high quality pocket tees or hats to say something only a tech would understand and helps it become a badge of honor in the shop. Yeah, I have it coming. It's coming. I I haven't got it all straightened out yet. I'm gonna try to work on it. I'm gonna be on vacation next week and uh I will work on it. Then I won't, I will, I will remember to bring my microphone so I can be there for you if you need me uh making a podcast for next week. But uh for for I'm gonna I'm gonna be working on the uh the uh the merchandise. And it's and I'm gonna what I want to do is, and I Eric will probably go crazy for not saying this, but I'd like to make it so that it, you know, I don't want to make a lot of money on this. I would like for it to be somewhat reasonable so you guys can get your hands on it and enjoy it. I know I'm gonna enjoy it. Uh, I think what's gonna happen is there's gonna be a small logo on the front, and then there's gonna be sayings on the back, things that maybe I've said on the podcast and other things that that could go on the back. And uh I think you'll enjoy some of those. And you know what? Here's here again, I want to lay down the gauntlet for you and let you know that we have a Facebook page called Grease the Wheels. If you've got something you think you'd like to see on a t-shirt, on the what I'm gonna do is probably put some sayings on the back or something like that. And I haven't I've got a small list of things that should go on the back of a t-shirt that lets the world know that you're a fucking wrench twisting bastard, which may be one of the things that goes on the back of a shirt, by the way. Uh, but let me know what you think should go on there and uh hit me up with that, and we'll give you some credit for it, and maybe we'll send you a shirt or two and then uh let everybody else get their hands on it if they want. What I'm thinking is maybe some hoodies, some t-shirts, and maybe some hats. Who knows? We'll see what happens. Uh like I said, I would like for it to be reasonably priced for you. I know that you guys work really hard for your money, so uh, there's that. Okay. Uh moving on here, it says number five, Titan, a technical production. A show that feels gritty shouldn't sound gritty. Let me tell you something. There ain't nothing in your life that's ever gonna sound grittier than this, okay? If you don't like it, well, I don't know what to tell you. Maybe get a Q-tip and clean the grid out of your ears. Ensure your audio is crisp, level, and free of background hiss. Well, I'm pretty sure there's a lot of background noises here. I got air conditioning going all the time, and and uh usually I'm scratching some part of some part of my body. Use clean intro and outro music. We haven't used music in a long time because, well, you have to pay for that, you know. And uh we didn't really want to do that. So uh as far as music goes, uh you're just gonna have to add your own. All right. Uh and then it says here, and then this is this is what AI does. It asks you a question at the end, and it says, what area of the show are you looking to focus on changing or growing first? Well, what I wrote is based, uh what I wrote is just all of it. I I need to kind of, I don't know, I really don't have a format. Uh we usually find a subject, we uh head right into it, and then we talk about it until I'm done talking, which is usually like an hour and a half later, anyway. Uh it says here, if you want to tackle all of it, you're looking at a full-scale media playbook to execute this without burning out while still turning wrenches full time. The secret is content multiplication, doing the work once and cutting it up into 10 different pieces. Okay, so we'll probably try that. Uh, that's of course something that Eric would probably have to do. And we don't like kids busier than a one-legged man in an ass kicking contest. So uh we'll see how that goes. Uh phase one, the studio setup and capture. Yeah, I can't do video or clean audio without the right workflow. Flow. Flow, I learned to talk one of these days. It wants me to add little parts of episodes, little little little segments into the episode on a regular basis. I think that that would probably be a good idea. It's a little tough, but uh uh merchandise integration is talking about here. Where to start tonight? Uh it's talking about video again. Video is a tough one. This is what I wrote. Video is a tough one because I'm not very photogenic. That is, and this is what AI said. And AI, remember, is a machine. You can't really take a picture of AI. You could throw an avatar on it and make it look like something, but it's not what it looks like. This is one of the most common reasons podcasters hesitate to jump into video because they're ugly. But here's the good news you do not need to look like a TV anchor to make killer video content. It's gonna take a little bit more than that to make me agree with that. Um, I would love, honestly, and I want to talk to you know, if we're gonna talk about video, one of the things I would like to do is uh is have a video channel where people send me suggestions on how to make their life easier as a technician. I'm talking about maybe you know uh tips and hints about certain things that go on with cars that you could do, and I would like to showcase them in their proper, you know, in their proper form and show you some of the tricks of the trade that make it a lot easier to work on the cars. I'm thinking myself personally that you boys who work on the Audis, if you're out there listening, have a lot of little tricks that you have up your sleeve to make working on those cars easier. Because I I've never worked on anything like an Audi in my life. I mean, it it feels like to me, it feels like working on T34 tanks or something. It just doesn't a lot of the stuff they do, a lot of the stuff that the Audis do, it doesn't make any sense to me. I mean, I I saw one the other day, this has been a while since I've worked on them, but I saw one where there was a space between the torque converter and the transmissions where the half shaft went through the case of the transmission. I've never seen anything like that before. I understand how they built the car and and the engineering of it, it just didn't seem like it was right. That's all. So if you guys and what this is what and I've actually done this for the because I'm a BMW guy, right? So I put together a list of little things that you can do to make it easier to work on a BMW, just just tips and tricks, and I'm constantly adding to the list every day, and I want to go out and make a video of these these tricks, of these things that we do that make our lives easier. And maybe if you're gonna work on your own shit at home, or if you're gonna work on your friend's car and it's not the kind of car that you normally work on, then you could actually access some of these videos, and then from there they would they would help you uh get the job done. And some of them are universal, some of them are absolutely universal between, you know, I'll give you an example of one, um, and I want to do a video on this. A lot of times, if you have to put what they call a banjo fitting, it's a hollow fitting on a line, perhaps a power steering line or even a fuel line of some kind, and you have to put copper washers on it, right? So you put a copper washer on your banjo fitting, then you put it through the uh the hose as you're trying to bolt it to, let's let's call it a power steering hose, you know, and you're trying to bolt it to the rack, and you have to have a uh copper washer on the other side of that banjo fitting also. But every time you get it to the point where you're just trying to get it onto the rack, that copper washer slides off, and then you have to start over again, and after about 10 or 12 times, you're ready to fucking just shoot this car with a fucking 12 gauge and call it done. What you want to do in that particular case is take the banjo fitting, put the copper washer on it, put it through the hose, put the copper washer on it, and then take a paper clip and cut it in half and fold it around the threads of the banjo fitting so that it will hold the copper washer on, get it down on the rack, screw it in a couple of couple of threads, and as soon as you've got it, so that you've got a couple of threads into the rack, then pull that paper clip. Believe me, don't forget to pull, don't forget to pull that fucking. I did one time, I did this trick one time, and I thought that I had gotten the paper clip out of there, and I tightened it down, and then I realized it was still in there because it's it showed up while I was tightening. I'm like, oh, so I went and I pulled it out, and I had already tightened it. I pulled, I pulled it out, and I tightened it back up, and then it leaked. And then when I pulled it apart to find out why it leaked, it leaked because the fucking the fucking paper clip had put two marks in the uh in the copper washer so the fluid could leak out of it. I had to get another, I had to get another copper washer. This time, when I put it on, I would made sure that before I tightened it up, I pulled the goddamn paper clip out. I didn't lose track of it this time. So, but that's a tip from your Uncle Jimmy. Maybe that'll help you if you're trying, because we have that on a lot of things, okay? We have it on our coolant lines for our turbos, we have it on oil lines for our turbos. We have it, we used to have it on uh hydraulic power steering lines, we now have electric power steering. I think a lot of you do. It seems to work a lot better than hydraulic uh power steering, but you know, you'll get it one of those uh relics in every once in a while that still has power steering lines and hydraulic power steering, and that could help you out in that situation as well. Okay, just take a paper clip, even a big one or a littler one, and just cut it off and use it to hold that thing on just all you have to do is bend it a little bit. You don't even have to really bend the shit out of it, just put it over it and bend it down so it doesn't fly off, put it back, put it together, get a couple of threads in, it's out it comes. Those are the kind of videos that I want to make, okay, because I think that that particular tip could help a lot of you. I mean, I know that I've been doing it for a long time, and I I showed another guy who was having trouble with that uh that tip maybe 15 years ago, and he probably doesn't acknowledge to anybody that I showed him how to do that. That's fine, that's not what it's about, but he probably has had to do it since then at least once or twice. So there it is. Okay, but I would like to make a video of those things so that guys can go, oh shit, here's where that would work really well for this, you know. There's and there's a believe me, there's a lot of them out there. I've been trying to keep a track of them and and I I do them sometimes and I go, oh shit, I better write that down because I can't remember, you know, when I when I need to do that. There's a lot of different things, you know. And like I said, I think that some of you have some really ingenious shit you do. Maybe it involves taking a a wrench and heating it up and making it into a I don't know, fucking S into an S shape or something. Uh, maybe you have ideas for how to get fluid out of stuff, or maybe, you know, maybe you have a lot of different ideas. And I think that that those videos would be far better than a video of your Uncle Jimmy talking into a microphone. So, but uh, and I can't promise you that I'm gonna do that. I've been thinking about it for a long time and I haven't done it yet. So let me get uh let me get down to the end here because I would like to put an end to this podcast here. Uh here's one of the questions that it asked me towards the end of this. I asked it about seven or eight things here. It says here the audience tunes into a show like yours for the grit, the honesty, and the expertise. Well, maybe not so much the expertise, not a modeling portfolio. Okay, that's it's it's kind of still trying to make the argument that there should be a video. Which of those styles feels like something you'd be comfortable trying out for a quick clip? In other words, it's like, hey, why don't you just try it once? And I'm like, definitely grit. Okay, because so I think that a grit a lot of times is what gets us through. I mean, you just have and as far as grit goes, grit is uh it's this is it even went on to explain it in psychology, grit is defined as perseverance and passion for long-term goals, and I think that describes every auto mechanic in the world. You have to persevere a lot of different situations, and if you don't have passion for it, it it's not gonna work for you. Every other job in the world is gonna seem easier, even if it pays less. Uh, you might might long for that type of a job. Um, passion for this particular job, I think it's waning. I don't think that there's a lot of it out there anymore because there's so many, at least as far as I'm concerned, at least as far as I'm concerned, uh, I didn't have uh the uh I didn't have a phone like we have now, I didn't have a computer like we have now, I didn't have you know 900 TV stations, I didn't have video games like we have now. For me, my source of entertainment and my source of freedom at the same time was the automobile. And so there is uh an extraordinary amount of passion there for the automobile. And I think that a lot of that is lost today because kids have passion for so many different things that aren't the automobile. And in fact, a lot of kids these days, I've been hearing from people, they don't even want to learn how to drive, they just see the car, the automobile as something that's destroying the environment. And you know what? They're not entirely wrong. So uh having passion for cars is something that is it may dwindle to nothing after we're all gone, after all of us old folks are gone. So uh grit, perseverance and passion, yeah, it's definitely something that uh that uh a lot of automotive technicians have. It's just perseverance of effort, the grit to work through challenges, finish what you start and bounce back after a brutal setback. Yeah. Consistency of interest, the passion to stay obsessed with the same ultimate goal over a long period. That's a tough one for me, too. I gotta I gotta be honest with you. There's a lot of times where I get to the point where I just want to phone in what's next, and I have to stop and say, listen, this is what you do, and you have to, I just I call it rededicating myself, and I have to do it about once or twice a year because it just wears you out after a while, and you're just like, I don't give a fuck. And then your brain has to say, well, you know what? Actually, you do give a fuck, and you're gonna have to give a fuck, and you're gonna have to rededicate yourself to doing this job right and proper, god damn it. That's it, okay? Because it is worth doing. It is, you know, and this is something that nobody ever says to you, this is a job that is worth doing because so many people cannot do it. That's one of the things that that you really need to know is that people give you shit because they don't know what you have to do, they don't know what's involved, they don't have any idea how a fucking car works for Christ's sakes. You're the one who does, and people always hate what they don't know, always, and that's part of the reason why sometimes we get a lot of shit from people, why people think we're trying to rip them off because they don't know that we're not, they really just honestly don't know that we're not. So, uh in contrast, in conclusion here, I'm gonna try to bring you a little better version of Priest of Wheels. We'll see how that works out. I don't look for any immediate results, okay? But we are gonna try to do a couple different things. I say we, probably me, maybe Eric will join. I don't join in, I don't know. He has to do a lot of the work, so he's already maxed out, I think. But uh we're gonna see what we can do better, and maybe we're gonna see if we can have you on, and maybe we'll bring you a video or two, and you get to see how old and ugly your uncle your uncle Jimmy is. And maybe you're like, holy fuck, that guy really is a piece of shit. Uh all right, that's enough. Uh, I'm gonna sign off, and you know how Uncle Jimmy does it every week. It's the same fucking shit. See ya.