Exposing the Fundamentals

Trendsetters and borrowed ideas 0:00

Steve Shaw: Here we go again. Dave Rogers, welcome, welcome. What's going on? What's on your mind? What are you seeing out there in the automotive industry? You're in touch. I had a week off in the Florida Keys, so I have no idea what's going on in the world. What do you see out there?

Dave Rogers: I'm starting to think Steve Shaw and Fixed Ops Focus, Dave Rogers, are getting to be trendsetters. That's what's happening. I keep seeing the stuff we're talking about popping up in LinkedIn articles, podcasts, CBT News and all these other places out there. I don't know if it's

dumb luck, people imitating, or maybe everyone's getting back to the basics and fundamentals and starting to talk about blocking and tackling.

Steve Shaw: Well, hey, straight talk, man. Straight talk. I think we might ruffle some feathers every now and then, and we might call some people out on their shit. And maybe there are a few people out there with the title of servant leader who go, "Shit, maybe I should let other people call me a servant leader instead of calling myself that." So yeah, I did notice that as well.

I've never really been into social media very much, but now we're influencers, as they say. I guess that's a title. We should put that on our LinkedIn: influencers. I have a fucking doctorate degree and I don't even call myself a doctor. It's ridiculous. But it is funny how trends happen on social media.

You and I talked about menus not too long ago. You went on your rant about presenting menus. That's our signature class, menus, and now all of a sudden it's popular. I wonder why it's popular. Because we're talking about it.

Dave Rogers: Well, listen, I saw a podcast the other day where a guy was talking about menus. It was a good podcast, and he mandated the fluid service company's menus, which we've been using in our stores for about five years. I don't shove it down everyone's throat. They have to raise their hand, and then we get them in there to do it. I'll mention the name, BG, just to be fair. He mentioned it in the podcast, and

he's not satisfied unless he has 100% menu presentation, which I agree with. We've talked about this as long as we've been talking, and it's part of your training. I don't know.

We all copy each other in this business. That's what we do. I always try to be nice to everyone. I'm not trying to throw anybody under the bus, and I think it's great. But I do see some of these articles and things that come out, and they don't look real genuine. They look more like clickbait, or somebody trying to get exposure. But I like it when I see a guy out there honestly doing his best to get back to basics and

fundamentals and do the stuff we know works in this business. I think it's great.

Steve Shaw: I think the fundamentals are incredibly important. And you said it best. We can pat ourselves on the back and say we're the trendsetters. But when I was getting my doctorate degree, what I learned is that if you're writing a paper and you steal from one person and don't cite it, it's called plagiarism. However,

if you steal from a lot of people, it's called research. So I do a lot of research. You're right. Nobody has their own thing. I'd like to say we've pioneered a few things in the business, from our menu presentation to our multi-point presentation to some things we're doing in the lane. I think we were at the forefront of that. Did we create it? I don't know if we necessarily created it. There's a lot of stealing and a lot of sharing of information.

One of the guys I worked for when I was a young man said, "I've never had an original idea in my life, but I'm awfully good at research." I think that's important. And you're 100% right. I'll come off my high horse, because I just like to ramble on. There are a lot of good people doing a lot of good things out there, and it's important that we take each other's advice and learn from each other. I do the same thing. I learn from people.

As Brandon said on the previous episode, I learn from people, I put it in my pocket, it becomes a tool, and then I share that tool with somebody else. Sometimes we take credit for it, and sometimes we don't.

Remember your roots 5:06

Dave Rogers: I saw an expression the other day that's probably as old as the hills: "There's nothing new except what has been forgotten." I think Marie Antoinette was first credited with that, that's how old it is. It's been around forever. And we all do it. We get little ideas here and there.

I've told you my golden rule: the toes you step on today could be connected to the ass you're kissing tomorrow. So be nice to everyone. You never know. Brandon, our last guest: I'm sure he had a service manager, or somebody, who could possibly be working for him again someday, from when he was a lowly salesman or a lowly service advisor.

I've never forgotten where I came from. I was a valet. I detailed cars. I undercoated cars. So I've always tried to be nice to people. The same thing goes when you steal ideas.

When you see ideas out there, you give them credit. I heard years ago that the first time you steal somebody's idea, you say, "Like Steve Shaw said, blah, blah, blah." The second time you say, "Like I heard somewhere." And the third time you say, "Like I always say."

Steve Shaw: That's how change works. That's how you get your boss to do something. It's funny. When I was a very young man, an advisor working down in Southern Illinois, I was writing my thesis for graduation. I grew up in the union world. I was a union technician and I managed union stores. So I went to the guy at the Machinists Union in St. Louis and sat down with him.

I interviewed him because I was writing my thesis about the dealerships. And he gave me a piece of advice that goes with your number one rule. His advice was, "Steve, remember your roots." I never forgot that. He was saying, "Hey, you're on your path. You're going through college. But you were one of us at one time. You were a union technician. You were a union advisor. So remember where you came from,

where you built your foundation." That always stuck with me. It was a great piece of advice that gentleman gave me.

Menus and six-month maintenance 7:37

Dave Rogers: When you look at it, getting back to basics isn't an original idea. Menus again: I had this discussion yesterday with one of my stores, a premium store, a Mercedes store.

I asked if they use service menus, and they didn't answer, so I knew the answer was no. They use the fluid services, they've been presented with this before. Why not? Well, there's

maintenance one and two, A and B, whatever it is. I'm like, no, we should be recommending six-month maintenance intervals. This is a severe driving area. We don't go a year without changing our oil. I did my rant on Cindy's podcast about a year ago now: the road to a million miles,

with maintenance every six months. And I'm starting to see some traction in the business. There are people who never deviated. A lot of the guys in California, a lot of guys down south, to their credit, never deviated. They didn't drink the Kool-Aid, and I give them credit for that. In the Northeast, a lot of guys took the path of least resistance and started following the maintenance minders and the once-a-year maintenance. I challenged the GM at this Mercedes store. I said, "Next time you get a car in with 80,000 miles on it,

I'll pay you to take the valve covers off and take a look inside the engine. I'll pay the bill, two hours, whatever it is. I want to see what's inside." Because I know what it's going to be. It's going to be a sludge bucket. I know it.

Steve Shaw: Yep. The first time I heard your rant, many years ago, you were talking about cars coming through your organization. I remember it was a Land Rover that hadn't had the service done on it. That's a used car. Now your used car manager, unfortunately, has to pay for that engine, and the company has to pay for it. And

a good dealership like yours didn't pass it on. They fixed it, paid for it and moved on with life.

Dave Rogers: We took the guy out of the car, as well.

The same fundamentals since 1955 9:40

Steve Shaw: But those fundamental things... I remember when I was a service manager at a GM store. Yes, it was Saturn, but it was GM. My first job as a manager was running a Saturn store in St. Louis, Missouri.

Our dealer was awesome. He was really great about providing us training. He brought in somebody from GM, and we went through the GM guide. It was almost like an NADA school. But he brought out a General Motors book from 1955 and used it as an example, and we all read it. I probably still have a copy somewhere in my stash.

The fundamentals of running a car dealership are, I would say, exactly the same today as they were in 1955. Today we've polished it up and put AI on top of it, but the fundamentals are exactly the same.

Dave Rogers: And it's unfortunate, because we've gotten away from them in a lot of cases. If I stay on maintenance schedules and menus: it's our job to give the customer the best advice. Nobody lives in a utopia. Cars are bench-tested on a dyno in a controlled environment, and then they say you can go a year without changing the oil. That's not the real world. It's a controlled environment.

We need to have the beliefs and the fortitude to tell customers the right way and to be real with them. The fundamental of automobile service is maintenance. You've got to recommend the maintenance on a car, and that hasn't changed since the first internal combustion engine. I've got to believe they greased the wheels on a horse and buggy. I've got to believe that

had to be greased.

Maintenance booklets and $500 at trade-in 12:02

Steve Shaw: Remember, though, you were talking about the fluid maintenance providers. When I was a kid in my first job as an advisor, remember those little booklets? They were laid out differently, but the customer would have you sign their book. It might have been the owner's manual, but it was really from the fluid providers. They'd give us these books, the advisor would sign them, and if the customer maintained their car, they could hand that in for

$500 toward the trade-in or something like that. It was so important back in those days. I was at a Pontiac GMC store, and my dealer, who's actually still around, believed in it. They would give you 500 bucks extra on your trade if you maintained your vehicle every three months or 3,000 miles until you traded it in. That was important.

And I learned menus as a seventeen-year-old kid at a Pontiac store. That's what drives me insane: how could we still be talking about menus in a store? Forty years later, forty-plus. It was probably 1987 when I graduated from St. Louis Community College and went into the store as a technician. We had all the booklets as technicians, and we knew what was

in the service. I worked at AMC Jeep Renault, and we knew what these cars needed, because we followed the maintenance guide that the fluid maintenance provider at the time gave us. Menus just stuck with me my whole life. I think we have some wording and phrases and ways of presenting it, but having a menu in your store is a fundamental part of running a car dealership.

Dave Rogers: I think so. I had the same discussion at the same Mercedes store. Okay, the book says one year for maintenance. I said to the GM, let's say it's six months, the customer brings the car in, you're doing an oil change and a tire rotation, and let's say it's not an AMG with staggered tires. What's it going to cost, 300 bucks? I don't know, is it $300? They all nodded yes. So there's $300,

and then they come in at one year and pay for that. And then at 18 months, 24 months, 30 months and 36 months, and by then their lease is probably over. I said the guy paid for three extra services beyond what's listed in the book. That's 900 bucks. And I said the same thing you said. This guy's been at GM for a while: "Remember the days of the coupon book, when if you did all the stamped scheduled maintenance, you'd get an extra $500 for the trade?"

I said, "George, would you give the guy $1,000 more for the trade? Would you give him $1,500 more for the trade that had the extra three oil changes?" He said yes. I said, "Then why don't we do it?" And he's just like...

They don't have an answer. We've gotten away from it because it's easy to listen to the book. We talked in one of the episodes about work and being lazy. They've gotten lazy with the maintenance minder that nobody believes in. Again, it goes back to the fundamentals. This is what we should all be doing. I don't care what the book says. It's not good for the customer. It's not good for the car. And if you're a dealer principal listening, it's not good for your reinsurance plan.

Think about it. You neglect the car for four years, and it comes back in on trade with a sludged-up engine. When that timing chain jumps at 80,000 miles, guess whose extended warranty is paying for it? Yours. It's coming out of your pocket. Anybody paying attention to their reinsurance plan knows they're paying out a lot more in claims, because people are keeping their cars longer.

Your claims and your claim percentages and your losses are probably creeping up to 60, 65, 67, 70%. It's coming out of your pocket. Why? Because we've been telling people to neglect their cars for the last fifteen years.

Stores that skip the multi-point 16:15

Steve Shaw: It's amazing. We could spend the whole time talking about menus and why they matter. I was at a store not too long ago that did not do multi-point inspections. Craig was telling me the whole thing, and I'm thinking, how could anybody in their right mind in 2026 not be performing a multi-point inspection, a health check, as Brandon called it?

We talked about the health report, the health check. How could you not be doing that in this day? It's a fundamental that started in 1997. It was a new thing in 1997. How could a car dealership not be doing something so fundamental to our industry?

Dave Rogers: Right. Before that it was a 27-point check. I agree 100%. But when you listen to the mainstream and some of the fodder out there, it's almost like if you say something enough, everyone will believe it. If you tell people they don't need to change the oil... Land Rover in particular

has some cars where they're telling you twenty-one months for the oil change. Now, a lot of people have told me they're backing down from that,

which is great. They should be backing down, because it's ridiculous. I have general managers and people in my group recommending six months or 7,500 miles. That's a hell of a lot better than twenty-one months, and a hell of a lot better than 15,000 miles. We need more of that out there. Whether it's a 27-point check, a multi-point inspection or the normal maintenance schedule, I don't care if you just do an oil change every six months, honestly.

How oil change intervals got stretched 18:09

Steve Shaw: And you've brought this up before. Back in the day it was three months, 3,000 miles. I was a manager, and we were a three-month, 3,000-mile dealership forever. Then all of a sudden it went to every six months, two times a year instead of four. We held on for a long, long time doing it the old way. And I love this man to death, and I'm not going to say his name,

but I remember those conversations. Ford would bring us in, and we'd listen to the consultants say, "Look, we're going to move it from 3,500 to 5,000, and that way you won't clog up your service drive, and you can have fewer people. You'll just charge a little more." MSX was one of the proponents of that, or it was a different company rolling it out. I won't say the name. They would talk about how

"we still want to see the customers, and you're still going to make more money, but you won't have those people clogging your drive." I was at a Ford store in 1996, 1997, and we weren't even doing oil changes. As an industry, we didn't do oil changes. We didn't do tires. We sent all that stuff down the road, and that's why we lost all that business. We sent all these people away and said,

"We don't want you." I'm off on a little bit of a different rant, but we went from 3,500 to 5,000 to whatever it is now. It's ridiculous.

Dave Rogers: Well, a history lesson: the book always said 7,500 miles or six months for the first oil change, and a lot of books said you didn't have to change the filter at 7,500 miles. Everyone in the business knew you were using 10W-30 regular conventional oil, so we split it in half.

Four times a year, every 3,750 miles, we'd see the customer and change the oil, and every other visit we'd do the tire rotation. That's what we used to do. The same rules apply now. If the manufacturer says 15,000 miles, cut it in half. If it says 10, cut it in half, because their books are not designed for longevity. There's a manufacturer, not in my portfolio,

and I probably couldn't mention the name, that around 2003 to 2005 went from 10W-30 and 7,500-mile maintenance to 0W-20 semi-synthetic, and changed the maintenance interval to 5,000 miles. Like you said, tire rotation at 5,000 miles, oil change at 5,000 miles, probably

to lighten the load. We were always doing oil changes at my dealerships. Anyway, they sold us on the 0W-20 semi-synthetic: you can get 5,000 miles. Okay, fine. Now we see the customer twice a year instead of four times. It is what it is. We got an extra tire rotation out of it. Fast forward to 2010.

The same manufacturer decides they're going to start paying for maintenance under their two-year, 24,000-mile plan. And guess what? Same oil, same cars, and now they change the interval to every 10,000 miles,

because they're paying for it. Did the cars all of a sudden get better? Did the oil get better? No. It was money. Now, instead of the customer having the oil changed five times before 25,000 miles, they're getting it done twice, and these cars are now at 80,000, 90,000 miles having engine problems. Sometimes you have to pull back the curtain to see what they're talking about. They didn't change the maintenance intervals to make the car last longer. They changed them to save money.

Once the car is out of warranty, do they really care about your engine? They don't. I almost think it's cheaper for them to issue a recall and put an engine in a car. I guess somebody did the math somewhere and said,

"We can always cut the time down to four hours and lock the parts price at a thousand bucks so the dealership can't mark it up much. That's cheaper than losing a couple of sales because the cost per mile driven is too high." I don't understand the math.

Steve Shaw: I remember in the Ford days they would have a campaign, way back, and they would send us the motor. If we had an engine problem, they'd send the motor, and we were allowed to add a $100 handling charge. We couldn't charge for the motor on the warranty claim. We got a hundred bucks handling, and that was it. And then you're right, they cut the time from six, eight, ten hours down to four to put a motor in a

Concorde or a Taurus or whatever it was. I remember that. That was when the technicians went from making a living to revolting, because they couldn't make money on warranty. That was the late '90s. Absolute insanity.

Dave Rogers: Yeah, the handling charges of 100, 200, 300. Somebody did the math along the way. I was running a Chrysler store with the LHS and the Concordes.

They had evaporator problems, and the warranty time on it was something like seven hours. Some crazy number. The parts were probably 200 bucks in the '90s, and every one of these evaporators would leak. I had a guy who could do two a day. He was a beast. He'd slip into the car, nobody would see him, and he'd bang out two a day. Then they issue a recall, it becomes a 3.5-hour job, and the part now costs seventy-five bucks.

I guess it was cheaper to do that than to actually fix the problem, because they had problems for years. But I'll go back to maintenance. People are keeping cars longer. People were leasing cars going into COVID, and their leases were expiring in 2020, 2021, 2022, when there was a reduced supply of cars.

There were no programs, no incentives, no leasing. So they started buying the cars they'd basically neglected for three years, because nobody told them the truth. They figured, "I'm just renting the vehicle. Who knows what's going to happen?" Nobody ever thinks they'll buy their own lease. But guess what? A bunch of people bought their own leases, and at 40,000 miles their engines blew up and they were mad at the world.

"I haven't seen you in four years."

Steve Shaw: Not my fault.

Dave Rogers: Right. Fundamentals, basics. I think we as a business owe it to our customers to do a menu and go over good, better, best and severe driving schedules. Very simple stuff. To steal Damon's term, which I know you've adopted now: frictionless. Let's not beat them up or make it a brutal thing. Just say, "Mr. Shaw, this is what we highly recommend for your vehicle. This is the way we'd maintain it if it was our car." And that goes for everything in the business.

Go back to the basics. Check all the fluids for the customer. Make sure the belts are good. Make sure the tires are pumped up, and put the tire pressure back in the car. How about a good old-fashioned service on the car?

Steve Shaw: It used to be lube, oil and filter.

Dave Rogers: People don't know that's what LOF stands for. They have no idea. You used to take the grease fittings and...

Steve Shaw: I don't think most people know what RO stands for.

Dave Rogers: You're right. Absolutely. Maybe we should do a podcast on acronyms and what they mean.

$348 million and still losing: the walkaround 26:07

Steve Shaw: I wrote that down too. We're getting late in this episode, but you know how much I'm into baseball, more the strategy. People are talking about standards right now. The Mets spent how many millions of dollars? What's their payroll, $348 million? And they've lost 12 games in a row. They spent all the money,

and they lost. It just goes to show you what happens when you get away from what I'll call the fundamentals. These multi-multi-millionaires should be in second place behind the Dodgers, who spent just a little more than them. I think they got away from the fundamentals of the game, and that's what we do a lot of times as an industry. We get away from the fundamentals, whether it's the oil change, the menu or the multi-point. Brandon brought up walking around a car.

He said, "I hope you're not sponsored by UVeye," which made me laugh, because he's got three of them. He's got three people at a small store, as advisors, where they use the UVeye. They should be walking around the car. I think I've told you this: we have a class on it, but I don't teach it until the very end, because so many people will not hold their people accountable for doing a walkaround.

So what's the point of spending time teaching it if you're not going to hold your people accountable? That's a fundamental process. It's the same as saying welcome to your guest. There's a fundamental, there's a standard, there's a way of doing business. If we're not going to do it, you can spend $348 million, have the second-best set of players in the world, and still lose. Or go back to the basics.

Dave Rogers: Well, again, it takes a good manager. You've got the leader in charge of the business, but you've got to have the manager executing the plan, building the process and making sure people focus on the fundamentals. It comes back to everything we've been talking about. You can't just skip the steps. Things don't just happen. Maybe you're lucky enough to be in a Toyota or Lexus store where people beat the doors down to come in. You don't have to be special. Maybe you don't have to do anything. You've just got cars

coming in the door, although I don't think they have the same supply nowadays. They're limited by production. If you're fortunate like that, and you live in Los Angeles with a bazillion cars coming in the door, maybe you can skip some of these steps. But for most of us, our RO counts are down.

Retention, loyalty and raving fans 28:52

Dave Rogers: I hear the other big buzzword out there: retention. All of a sudden, whoa, people woke up and retention is important. It's always been important. You've always wanted to keep your customers coming back. Now you tell me how you get retention from a customer with one visit every twelve or fourteen months. That's not retention.

How do you even call that retention? You're forcing the guy to come in. It's like saying your doctor is retaining you as a customer because you go in once a year for a physical. No.

I don't understand the mentality. If a customer comes back to you two or three times a year for all their maintenance, and every time there's something wrong with the car, that's retention. But now it's a buzzword. Where's that been for ten years? I just laugh at some of this stuff.

Steve Shaw: I used to talk about loyalty versus longevity from an employee's perspective. Are you loyal to the company, or have you just been there twenty years? And with customers: are you loyal to the dealership and coming back for all your services, or are you just showing up whenever you need a warranty repair? It's absolutely crazy out there.

Dave Rogers: I've always told my owners

that tenure does not equal loyalty. Just because someone's been here twenty-five years doesn't mean they're loyal to you. Maybe they couldn't find a job somewhere else. Maybe they live close by. There's definitely a difference with length of service, and with customers coming back too. Are they coming back because you're the best guy in town, or because you're close by? You go to the one Jeep dealer. Who knows why? Probably because it's convenient.

Steve Shaw: It's just close by.

Dave Rogers: You know you're going to get your brains bashed in, you know you're going to get aggravated, you know you're not going to get good service, and you still go back.

That's not loyalty. The fact that the manufacturer can count you as a loyal customer because you stop in once a year to get your radio fixed is not loyalty. I've been in dealerships where people were loyal. It was like being in Cheers. Customers would walk in: "Hey, Norm!" Everyone knew everyone's name. That's the kind of environment you want to build.

Steve Shaw: Well, I'll show my age again. At Saturn, we didn't call it CSI. It was CSE, customer enthusiasm. Saturn would say, "Listen, if they come in a five and they leave a five, you fail. If they come in a five and don't leave a seven, eight, nine or ten..." We wanted people to be excited. That's where I learned about it, from the Saturn experience. As Ken Blanchard would say, we wanted raving fans.

If you bought a Saturn back in the day, people made fun of you. There was a TV show at one time that made fun of people who bought Saturns, like it was a crazy cult. But people who had a Saturn loved their car. They wouldn't go anywhere else. That was true loyalty, and Saturn's thing was customer enthusiasm. That's what they measured: did you love it, were you excited?

Are you a promoter? All that stuff came from Saturn. That's what they measured, the excitement of the customer, not any other BS number. People make fun of me for loving the Saturn stores, but that was a true measure. And I know we're getting a little long, but with some brands, like Mazda and Subaru, you cannot ask for CSI. You can't say to a customer, "Hey, would you give me a good score?"

So I come in for an oil change expecting to pay 50 bucks, let's say in the old days, and I expect it to take an hour. You give me an oil change for 50 bucks. Okay, great, thank you. I came in a five and I left a five. I'm not excited. I don't love you. I'm not going to promote you. At best, we're giving the customer what they expected when they came in.

I got a $50 oil change that took an hour, give or take. "Hey, cool, see you next time." That ain't loyalty. You're 100% right. That's not enthusiasm. That's not excitement. Why would I give you a good CSI? It's a C at best.

Dave Rogers: Listen, Subaru is the closest to what Saturn used to be, and those customers are loyal. It's amazing. They walk in with their folder under their arm when it's time to trade in a car or when they come in for service. They brag about how many head gaskets they've had put on the car. But they're loyal to the dealership and loyal to the car, even though they've had repairs and had to pay for things. It's amazing.

That's true loyalty. They come back twice a year for their oil change, even when it's snowing outside. During COVID,

with all these people staying home, you'd go into the Subaru store and there were like forty old people in there with their masks on, getting their oil changed. I went into other stores and didn't find a soul. But these Subaru people were in there. They were the ones I expected least, but they were fanatics, just like the Saturn customer you talk about. That's loyalty. That's a fundamental we should be

doing with every single customer: turning them into raving fans and making them loyal customers. That's what we should be doing every day.

Steve Shaw: We did this class at your place, and I do it all the time, our value-based class. We still have one on our university. I'll ask, "Why did I buy a Subaru? Why did I buy a Jeep? Why did I buy X?" I bought a Subaru because it's love, man. It's the branding and what Subaru puts out there. I bought my Jeep because it's adventure, it's an experience. Or I bought my hybrid because I'm a tree hugger, whatever. Our customers have

that inside of them. That's their ego, who they are, their image. And I think that's a forgotten part of the industry. If you've got my Jeep, and I'm an adventure seeker always looking for the next adventure, and it's sitting in your store, I can't go on an adventure. It's broken my heart. Then you bring it down from the brand to the dealer to the department. If you as a dealer don't

empathize with me and say, "Look, I'm sorry you can't go on your adventure," or "I can appreciate that," if you can't empathize with me and make me feel like you actually give a shit, like a Subaru store would, then why would I come to your particular dealership? There are a thousand stores. So I think it's important that, as a dealer, we recognize why the customer bought that brand. I bought your brand for some reason, and when it gets down to us in service, we've forgotten that.

It's just a car. Maybe I'm an advisor who worked at Honda last week, worked at GM once, and worked over here. It's just a transaction. It's very transactional to us, but it's not transactional to the consumer. If we want to bring that loyalty back, what do we have to look at?

Dave Rogers: It's true. Absolutely right on.

Steve Shaw: Fundamentals. Why did I buy the car? We're way over, bro. You want to wrap us up and give us a GM tip of the day?

Dave Rogers: As the GM, you're the guy who sets the leadership of the store. You set the culture. You set the vision. You've got to be thinking for your people. Don't take anything for granted. Sales in general is enthusiastic when they sell the car. You've got to bring that enthusiasm to the back, to service and to parts. And I think it starts with something as simple as setting their first appointment, setting their next appointment and doing a menu,

a good menu presentation, just like you do in finance, and walking these customers down the path where they know you care about them. Then you build loyalty. You build customers who come back, and it's not just a retention number. It's actual raving fans, like you said. That's what I think we should be doing. Tip of the day.

Steve Shaw: Tip of the day: create raving fans. Go back to the '80s. Go back to the '90s.

Dave Rogers: Back to the basics. That's it.

Steve Shaw: Awesome. Well, it was good to talk to you. I'm glad we got our rants out for the week. I'll see you next week. Have a good weekend.

Dave Rogers: All right, brother. I'll talk to you.