Interview with Jeff Ridgway

Meet Jeff Ridgway, master of the Irish exit 0:00

Steve Shaw: Welcome, everybody. Glad to have you guys here. I'm here with Mr. Dave Rogers and Jeff Ridgway. What's on your mind, Dave? See, I always screw that up. Tell us a little about your guest tonight.

Dave Rogers: Yeah, so we have Jeff Ridgway, right out of the desert of Nevada, joining us. Jeff used to be one of my service managers. He worked with us, I don't know, four or five years. He went from Mercedes to Honda and then back to Mercedes a little bit. I figured he lied to me. He told me he was retiring, but I found out recently he didn't really retire. He's been out there working his butt off. So we're going to bring Jeff in and talk about a few things, mobile service being one of the topics. Jeff, how you doing, man?

Jeff Ridgway: I'm doing well, and I would make that more like eight years or so with you. I actually remember when you started. So we spent some time there. I'm doing well. The desert's good.

Dave Rogers: So that would be just over nine. It just turned nine years.

Steve Shaw: Wow, that's amazing. Hey, listen, if anybody ever tells you they're retiring from the car business, automatically, that's a lie, right? Because nobody ever leaves the business.

Jeff Ridgway: No, I did. You know, Steve, I did get sucked in. I believe I was driving through Oklahoma on the way out here and I got a phone call. I actually got a couple of phone calls, so it works out well.

Dave Rogers: Jeff's a unique individual. Jeff tries to do the Irish exit from work. True story, funny story. One of the guys told me that at one of the jobs he had, they knew something was wrong and they were looking for Jeff. They can't find him. They noticed his wall clock was missing, so they figured something's wrong. Then one guy walks outside the dealership, and there's Jeff walking across the street to the train station with his briefcase in one hand and his wall clock in the other, getting on a train. Didn't say goodbye to anybody, just Irish-exited right out of the place.

Steve Shaw: I love it.

Jeff Ridgway: But Dave, in my defense, that was an agreement between me and the new owners. It is a good story, though. That's typical of me.

Dave Rogers: I just think it's a great story, because he tried the same thing with us. "Where's Jeff? Wait, where's his clock? Wait, there he is."

Steve Shaw: I once Irish-exited and never showed up. I got hired at a gig as a kid, and they said, "All right, start Monday," and I didn't show up on Monday because I got a better gig. I was a youngster.

Dave Rogers: That's called ghosting now.

Jeff Ridgway: Yeah, that's called ghosting. That's when I find uniforms in the parking lot, and everybody says, "Where's the new guy?" I go, "I don't think he's coming back. I just found his uniform in the parking lot." I've had that in my career. One-day wonders: they work one day and I wonder where they went.

Why mobile, and the legal worries first 3:18

Dave Rogers: There you go. Jeff, one of the reasons we were talking recently, and Steve, just so you know, when Mercedes started the mobile service vehicles, Jeff jumped all over it. It was in my first store. He raised his hand and wanted to be part of it. They had some training classes and some other stuff, but Jeff jumped in. As a fact point, he's probably one of the few guys who embraced it. It wasn't shoved down his throat. He saw the potential in it. So, Jeff, what did you see in it? How many years ago was this? Five years ago now? Maybe six?

Jeff Ridgway: Actually, Dave, I think it was when we came home from Las Vegas, and that was probably a little longer than that. It was right before COVID. They gave away a couple of vans, if you remember. I've got to tell you, I'm not that regurgitated dinosaur manager, but at the same time, I did have my apprehensions about it.

Dave Rogers: Of course, we all did.

Jeff Ridgway: And I'm going to go with the cons, and it'll surprise you what my cons were. It wasn't really operational as much as it was legal. We lived in the Northeast part of the country, and Pennsylvania is a very unique state. It always has been. It's based on townships and certain rules and regulations. For example, if you work in the city of Philadelphia, they want their city wage tax, they want their business license and all that other stuff. I lived not far from Dave, and in the town I lived in, if you called a plumber to do a toilet in your house, the building inspector told me, they had to register with the township and pay their fee.

So honestly, my end of it, and I didn't really have much support, and probably didn't vocalize it the best way, my biggest thing was: do we make this investment and then face legal challenges? The last thing I want to do is ask my owner, "Can I borrow $150,000 and set this up?" and then he gets half a million dollars in fines. I didn't know that to be the case, but it concerned me.

Steve Shaw: Yeah, we had a food truck at one time over in Jersey, and depending on the county you went into, you had to have a permit or not. It was a big deal. You couldn't even make money with the food truck. So I can see the apprehension about mobile repair.

Jeff Ridgway: There were two examples I had years ago. Everybody told me Ron Jaworski, the old Eagles quarterback, was involved with this. He was on the golf course out in Montgomery County, and they were going to do a brake and rotor thing. They had the advertising signs on 95 and what have you, and it got shut down. And I had a friend who was a wheel guy. He did wheels in the parking lots at the dealerships in Philadelphia, and he was shut down. So it really just depends what they're looking at. These days you don't know what's legal, what's not, and what they're going to enforce. So that was my biggest drawback, believe it or not. The rest of it is just elementary.

Clear lifts the way a restaurant clears tables 6:51

Jeff Ridgway: Whether there were some concerns, yes, but the concerns I had could be answered. I use baseball and football as analogies for our business, but somebody gave me a different outlook many years ago: our business is like the restaurant business. Now, I've never been in the restaurant business. What's the main goal in the restaurant business? Clear tables, move asses. And our job is to clear lifts and put cars on them. It's widgets. It's what we do. Now, how do you expand your restaurant business? Well, you offer takeout. That was the outlook I had on it. What else can I do?

It's kind of like payment plans. I've heard people say, "I don't want to take Apple Pay. I don't want to do this, I don't want to do that." Take any way you can get the money. Don't inconvenience anybody. Take the money.

Steve Shaw: I tell people, make it easy for somebody to give you money.

Keep the cars that don't need to be there off the lot 8:07

Jeff Ridgway: Exactly. So once I got that out of my head: how do I expand my business? You've got me on a landlocked parking lot. I can't go any bigger on bays. We stretched it as far as we could. So what's next? What's next is keeping cars off my parking lot that don't need to be there. Updates, mainly updates. We started with commercial, with our Sprinter operation. If I can go to a place where there are 30 vehicles, and I just have to go there at one o'clock in the morning, that's fine. That's what we'll do. That keeps the fleet manager happy, it keeps my parking lot happy, and I have a little less exposure for my owner. We're not hitting things.

Dave Rogers: Right. Getting stolen.

Jeff Ridgway: Right, all those things people don't look at. Tool trucks: the plumber shows up and the next day you come in and his truck's empty. Same thing with campers. People have these RVs, and they're targets. We didn't exactly work where the Boy Scouts lived down there, so you had to be careful, and that could go for any neighborhood. Those are the challenges I looked at: how do I expand my business, and what's the benefit? I truly didn't look at it as "Let's go out and do oil changes."

I'll tell you, it's the same roadblock with Express, because Express and mobile are tied together. It really depends how you look at it. I don't have to send an A tech out there, or a B tech. I need somebody who can get into the DMS and get on the internet, not watch a movie. Because the biggest problem we have with updates is that everybody in our stores is draining down our ability to get that information into the car. So how can I get those cars off my parking lot, not give them a loaner car, and not tie up my horses, my people who are trying to turn hours? It made sense. Same thing goes with Express. Like I said, hand in hand.

If you can find that person, you're fine. And they're out there. There are people working for Dave right now who are out there doing it on the side, and he doesn't know it. They're uninsured, doing it on the side, and they'd be happy if somebody said, "Hey, look, do you need some extra cash?" Your wife's a nurse who works days or nights. There are people out there you can find to do it, and you don't have to find these geniuses. Maybe get somebody who can program a key, or go to the auctions and do that. Just the stuff that ties you up. Mercedes-Benz, you've got to tow the car in to program a key. Why are we doing that? Charge them 50 bucks.

Steve Shaw: You know, I never thought of that either. That was a great point. You said it doesn't tie up my parking lot, which is awesome, and it doesn't tie up a rental car. So you're thinking about an expense, and I'm certain the rental car expense for Mercedes is pretty significant. Don't shoot me for saying this, but even if you're not profitable, you're at least breaking even, because you didn't have to give away that $50, $100 car, you didn't tie up the parking lot, and you didn't tie up an A tech in your stall. There's a benefit right there. That's a great idea.

Jeff Ridgway: Right. And then you've got to open it up and think outside the box. For example, we all have a dent guy who comes on Tuesdays and a paint guy who comes on Wednesdays. So now you zip-code it. "I'm going to be in this area. I'll stop by CarMax or someplace. What did you buy this weekend? Let me check it out for you." These ISPs put their inventory on the internet. You can literally look up VIN numbers and say, "Hey, you know what? You have 12 cars over there that need software updates. You have 12 cars that have campaigns." So there are ways of doing it.

Then you get into parts wholesale, where I've seen so much success. We have the proprietary parts we sell, but we can't sell them to you. Well, guess what? I can put it on my RO. I can put it in for you, or you put it in and I'll program it. You put it in, you mess it up, guess what? You're buying another one. And at the same time, you've kept those cars off your parking lot, that trash. And these ISPs don't want their customers coming to me. The last thing they want is for their customer to find my business card in their cup holder.

Body shops. That is the number one thing I preach to people. Why are you towing in a car that just got fully repaired and painted, that the customer hasn't even seen yet, so I can hit it at my store?

Dave Rogers: Right. We're going to scratch it working on it. We know damn well.

Jeff Ridgway: Or do something to it. Why don't I just come to you and program it?

Dave Rogers: Because that's what it is. You need to program the new module, the airbags, whatever it is. It doesn't have to come to any dealership.

Jeff Ridgway: Right. And that was my objective: get cars off my parking lot and bring in more retail.

Steve Shaw: Can I ask you a question? You've got my mind spinning, and I would consider myself a very forward-thinking person, but three or four of the things you just said never crossed my mind. I've been in the Ford world, the domestic side, with fleets and so on for most of my career, but I never really thought about the body shops from a mobile perspective. I probably would have thought about zip codes. But it's almost like that guy is his own independent shop, out building a business outside of you that becomes the next profit center.

Dave Rogers: It is.

Cheaper than a bay, and no more short jobs in the shop 14:10

Jeff Ridgway: Steve, you hit it right on the head. Dave, you're doing construction, and you and I have both been there. What do you figure it costs to install a bay if you had to build brick and mortar?

Dave Rogers: Right. 25 grand, 30 grand, easy. Just to fill the bay.

Jeff Ridgway: Right, and that's without the building and everything else that has to go along with it. You can take a used car, park it in a parking lot, hook it up with Starlink, put a computer in it, and there you have it. Then you build the rest from there. If you're doing updates on newer cars, these silly recalls where some of them take five minutes, that's when you make your pitch: "I could come out here and do your first service."

Dave Rogers: Steve, we found when we first started doing this that it helped to get those one-and-a-half-hour jobs into the mobile van. It takes the same amount of time to make an appointment, check in the car, write up the car, do all the paperwork, shift the car around and deliver the car for a one-and-a-half-hour job as for a four-hour or three-and-a-half-hour job. So if you can eliminate those one-and-a-half-hour jobs, the special-order parts, the programming and the recalls, we've proven the shop becomes more productive as a whole. That's one of those things where you can put a pencil to an ROI, because there are always going to be people who come in for regular work under an hour, an hour and a half.

We found that out in the beginning, and the special orders too. How many times are you chasing people to get them back in to get a part put in their car? "Listen, Steve, I know it's not convenient. Let me come to your house and put in this trim piece," or whatever the case may be.

Jeff Ridgway: Dave, I'm telling you, you're dead on. Let's clean the shelf off.

Dave Rogers: And before you do that run, you look at the zip code and go, "All right, where's an ISP? Where's the local CarMax? Let me see if I can bang out some recalls out there." The last piece, I think, when we talked about doing this: in Pennsylvania in particular, the average speed in this state is 30 miles an hour. So if you're going to go 15 miles, it's a 30-minute ride. If you're going to go 30 miles, it's an hour. A customer is going to get serviced where it's convenient for them, and I'll challenge you that 15 miles away, a half hour, is probably not convenient for them.

It's not out of the realm of making money for us to drive that 30 minutes to put the part in the car and maintain the customer and the car. Even if it turned into a shit show and we had to valet the car back, it's still within our range. "I got to your house and I can't fix it. Let me arrange for a loaner. Let me get your car out of here." That was the other thing we talked about: if you're not near where people live or work, they're probably not bringing their car to you.

Jeff Ridgway: They're not. And our hook on the front end is, "Hey, buy the car from me, we'll pick it up." Wait, he's 65 miles away? It doesn't matter. I worked for a group where we had two clients in New York City, and I was in Pennsylvania. I remember having to go up there to do an A service. I actually stopped off in Manhattan, had the A service done there and farmed it out to them. It was more cost-effective.

Dave Rogers: It's cheaper to stop at another dealer and have the work done. I love it.

Steve Shaw: I ran a Ferrari store for years, and we picked up and delivered every Ferrari. Ferraris were being towed in on the regular. What if you could go out to that guy's house in Beverly Hills and take care of it? What a great idea.

Jeff Ridgway: Look at Genesis. You forgot about that.

Dave Rogers: One of my other reservations was the guy doing an oil change in someone's driveway, on someone's pavers. But with the sucker machine, you don't have to worry about that. You suck the oil out. You don't have to drain it. That was my biggest concern when we started.

Jeff Ridgway: And you can put a containment mat down. Knock on wood, I've never had that issue with my guys. I've had more issues where we messed something up and the car got to the person's driveway. But it's like anything else: you have to inspect what you expect. You have to take a hard look at what you're doing, and somebody's got to monitor it.

A champion who books the work 18:41

Jeff Ridgway: The appointments are huge. I brought up the old regurgitated dinosaur thing. You have that problem with advisors who say, "You're stealing my work," and even the shop, but there are counters to that. And if anybody with any intelligence sees this, they'll probably steal my idea, but I always felt that with the onslaught of AI, when someone calls to make an appointment, it would be nice if it flashed on the screen. A lot of these places are using an offsite BDC at $12, $15 an hour, people who have no idea what the car business is. If it would just flash up on the screen, "This car qualifies for Express. This car qualifies for mobile," at least they'd ask the question. Right now, the only way to really make sure it's happening is looking at your appointments and converting them.

When I started mobile, my goal was to get it off the ground. I had a service advisor who just wasn't what we needed on the front end. She had everything we needed, but not on the front end. So I put her on answering the phones, but she was the mobile person. She was picking up the phone before anybody else got to it and saying, "Hey, you know what? I'm going to be in your zip code next Tuesday. How would you like me to come out?"

Dave Rogers: And she's still doing it. She's still working there. She's the champion of it. She sits in that little mini BDC and picks off calls when they come in. If the customer wants to come in for something she knows she can do: "Hey, just so you know, Steve, I'm going to be in your area next Tuesday. What if I come to your house and put that in?" She runs the appointments now, and they go through her. You have to have a champion. You have to have somebody who wants to do it.

The same 24 lifts, near a million in gross 20:38

Steve Shaw: Can you quantify something you said that was really powerful? I would never have thought about this either: the productivity improvement, or proficiency if we want to get technical. Could you quantify it, like, we were at X productivity, but we got rid of so much crap that our technicians' flag hours went up?

Dave Rogers: Well, we've seen the store grow and grow and grow. It's still got the same 24 lifts. It's still got the same guys. And a store that was cranking out $500,000, $600,000 has come near a million dollars in gross on occasion. It's not doing that by accident.

Jeff Ridgway: And Steve, when I started at that store, $300,000 was a really good number, and we doubled that within the first year. One of the things I did was go to the boss and ask, "Can I make an investment down the street in one of your buildings?" Because one of my biggest holdups was that they were doing used cars and PDIs in my shop. We couldn't do more work because we couldn't fit the cars on the parking lot. We were ready to do it, we had the team to do it, but we had no place to put the cars. So let's get rid of this inventory on our lot. Just by doing that, we raised our grosses.

Dave Rogers: But then putting mobile service in made a big improvement. Now we have two trucks down there. One does the basic mobile oil changes and stuff, and the second truck has the tire machine, mounting and balancing, both machines in there. So you can do tires on the road too, which is cool. It's a dually.

Jeff Ridgway: What a terrific thing. Look, you have two choices. I can yank your car up on a flatbed and have it for a day and a half, or, I know you have wheel and tire warranty, you can give me $35, or 50, whatever you'd like to charge, and we'll come out right now, mount and balance the tire, and you'll be on your way within the next couple of hours. It just makes sense.

The problem, like I said in the beginning, is this element that thinks we're just supposed to be out there doing oil changes. You're never going to make money on it doing oil changes. You just won't. Just like Express. The good thing about Express is we can train people while we're doing it. But those hour-and-a-half known outcomes, two-hour known outcomes, that's where you want to be. And if you have Sprinter or any kind of commercial Ford or anything like that, and you're not going out on the road to do this, someone's going to eat your lunch.

Steve Shaw: That's absolutely amazing. I push my people pretty hard, my consulting clients and so on, and I only have a couple who do mobile service. I know they're resistant because "it's just an oil change." Hearing what you have to say, and hopefully the people listening hear the same thing: it's not just an oil change. There's a convenience factor, which people love. If somebody volunteered to come to my house and change the oil in my Wagoneer and take care of the electrical problem or the small little things, what a great situation.

Jeff Ridgway: And with the luxury brands, she's at the beauty parlor and you're doing an update on her car. That's the conversation inside: "I'm so special. They come to me. They come out to the parking lot while I get my hair done. They're going to do an update, they're going to put a part on for me."

Steve Shaw: Are they talking about the good-looking guy working on the car, or the convenience?

Jeff Ridgway: Even the business owners. Look, it's a prestigious thing. People don't have to have a Mercedes-Benz. They want one, and they like the prestige of it. Lexus and BMW, all of them. Just like when we do pickup and delivery. I've had to personally go out and do pickup and delivery in my career, and let me tell you, they parade you around the office.

Steve Shaw: I know you like that too.

Jeff Ridgway: No, actually, I'm pretty humble about it. I want to get in and get out. But they want all their associates to know, "I'm successful, and I have a guy. Look, there's my guy." So that's my take on all that.

Manager buy-in, leadership and the 70/30 rule 25:33

Steve Shaw: So when I hear this: you volunteered, you went out and built your business because you had the right attitude. That's what you wanted to do. We talk about this all the time, Dave and I on the podcast and in training. If the manager hasn't bought into it and doesn't see the benefits, then you've got a truck sitting over there that never, ever gets used.

Jeff Ridgway: How about this? No names, but I was recently at a store that had a mobile installation two months ago, and that truck is sitting there. The company spent the money on what they needed to do, and it was a "had to do it to keep my boss happy. I'm going to go through the motions."

Steve Shaw: Yeah. And then every day he talks about, "I've got this dead expense over here and it's never working," because he doesn't want it to work, or she doesn't want it to work.

Jeff Ridgway: Right. It's not going to be successful. Same thing with Express: "You're not going to certify me for Express?" But wait, it's a 28-day wait to get an oil change at your store. That's what's out there. And that's why I really enjoy what I do, because I get to see the fruits of it.

There are a lot of inexperienced people out there, and that's why one of the things I said was communication. And there are overly experienced people. One of the biggest issues I find in our business is that people don't get the opportunity they had at the last dealer group I worked for, where you have enough rope to hang yourself. Look, run the business. If we have to get involved, we're going to help. We're going to have your back. But if we have to get involved every day, I'm not going to do it for you. What happens instead is they start loading these managers up with work because they think they're not doing anything. And the most unsuccessful service departments I've been in are where the service manager looks at it as another thing they're going to make him do.

You walk into a service department and see the service manager taking appointments, writing tickets, writing internal tickets, doing this. The hardest customer in the place is the internals, and we don't want to pay anybody to do internals. So what do we do? We give it to the manager. Dave, I'm sure you've seen this in your career. And next thing you know, he's working for the sales department. They bring in an off-brand, and you've got to get it to the body shop and to the other shop, and then, "How come the window tint isn't done?" Meanwhile, you're trying to run a business and develop it, and you have these people on top of you going, "He's not working. Give him this to do. I want you to do all the warranty while you're doing that."

Steve Shaw: Now, I would agree with you, Jeff, that in a lot of cases that happens: "He's not doing anything, so we'll give him more work." But more often than not, I think that guy volunteers for those projects. Just like you said: "I'm going to fix the garage door today. I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that." I call it Costanza syndrome. George Costanza, who's always busy, always frustrated, working for the Yankees, and he's really not doing anything. There are a lot of people out there, and forgive me if you're watching, I'm talking about other people, who are doing busy work so they don't have to do other things. It makes them look good. And this is a way I could actually show, wow, if I put my head to it, I could build a business outside of my business that would enhance everything, enhance my check and so on.

Jeff Ridgway: Right. I guess there are people out there with that mentality, but I also take that back to training. We're not training them to delegate. We're not communicating with them to say, "Look, this is what we expect." I used to say to my previous employer, "I'm going to give you the bag of money every month." The man came in every Monday to meet with everybody. My job was to bring the bag of money. Dave's job was to stop me from spending too much out of that bag. Sometimes I had to do some internal accounting work to make sure I wasn't getting robbed, and it wasn't about me getting robbed, it was about my organization getting robbed.

It's a relationship, like any other. If I can make you solid as an owner, then I'm okay. But we sometimes work with people who create this pay plan game, and they don't care who's signing the check. You have to build that into your team. And I tell guys, look, we have people in our workforce who get down in the dirt. They have issues, personal, maybe professional, whatever it could be. And one of the rules I've always lived by, maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong, is that a relationship isn't 50/50. Never has been, never will be. A relationship is 50/50 in the long run. But today, Dave might need me 70% of the time. Dave might be down. Dave might have a number to make. Whatever it is Dave needs today, he can't give it 50 or 60 or 80%. So I give it 70 and he gives it 30. Tomorrow I'm going to be in the same position. I might get beat over the head by a customer, or my brain is numb and he's asking for stuff, and I might need him.

One thing I always liked about working with Dave is that he knew when those days were there, the days when I was down on myself because I might not have met a goal. He had a saying I always liked: "Don't be like Gilligan on the island. Don't panic when you get into the quicksand. Just relax. Don't do stupid."

Dave Rogers: Right. Stop moving. I used to say it from the old shows: when you get in quicksand and start moving, you sink. Just freeze. Stop moving.

Jeff Ridgway: Right. And what happens is we have a lot of people in our industry who were never trained to be leaders. They were the best technician or the best salesperson or the best service advisor, and we ripped the Band-Aid off. We didn't teach them how to be leaders. We didn't teach them how to have relationships with their customers, the corporation, the employees.

Steve Shaw: I would say a lot of times people are fighting for themselves, fighting for their jobs, fighting for their lives. And you're right. As a trainer, I can obviously relate to that. I think everything falls back on training. Did we give somebody the tools they need to do their job and be successful? You could look at every single store and ask, does that person have the tools he needs to do his job?

Jeff Ridgway: I worked for a fellow once, and I said, "Are we going to train this guy?" He was going to be a service advisor. "Should we sit down with him and spend a little bit of time with him?" He said, "No, just rip the Band-Aid off." Guess what? He's not even in business anymore.

Steve Shaw: I know people who say, "We're not going to train you until you make it 30 days, because if you don't make it 30 days, I'm not going to invest in you."

Jeff Ridgway: Yeah. But Steve, you and Dave go into these stores. Nobody even looks up at you when you walk in. Nobody says good morning. I go into a gas station out here and they say welcome. I go into a store out here, same thing. But we go into a car dealership and everybody's got their head down, afraid they're either going to get beat up or whatever.

Steve Shaw: They're going to get asked to do something.

Jeff Ridgway: Yeah. I think training is just that, and that's why I enjoy what I do. I enjoy the fruits of it. I've got the great opportunity of going all over the country doing this. I wish it was a little busier for me, but we'll see what happens. I wish I was going to see you guys next week at NADA, but I can't. I tried to figure out a way to sneak in.

Dave Rogers: What do you mean, sneak in? You needed a ticket?

Jeff Ridgway: Well, yeah, I can't get a ticket. I'd love to go.

Steve Shaw: You've got to do what a lot of people do, where they buy two tickets and three guys share. They trade their badges.

Dave Rogers: That's not as easy to do as you think at NADA, just so you know. I had to sneak somebody in one year, and it was a bit of a challenge. We put a couple of big guys next to us and kind of just walked through. We could have registered you under ours and gotten you a cheaper ticket anyway.

Jeff Ridgway: Remember back when we were younger, when you'd pass your driver's license over your shoulder to the next person trying to get into the club?

Steve Shaw: They are pretty strict about it. I would never do that. It's usually me or one of my trainers going. But I've seen big companies buy 25 passes and hand them out, so I get why they're strict. But I also get that it's expensive.

Jeff Ridgway: It is. I thought about pushing a cart with some food on it through, or a mop and bucket. Remember, I live out here. We have friends who can make that happen. But hey, maybe we can catch up when you're out here, Dave, for dinner or something. It's a cool town.

Jeff's advice: stop making excuses 36:07

Steve Shaw: So Jeff, what are your words of wisdom? What would you tell somebody who's considering mobile service, or passed on it, or is being forced to do it? You made a compelling argument to me, and I would have done it anyway, but what would you say to somebody in that "I'm thinking about it" phase?

Jeff Ridgway: God, I know what I want to say. The Northeast Philly is coming out of me, Dave.

Steve Shaw: It's YouTube. You can pretty much say whatever you want.

Jeff Ridgway: Okay: get your head out of your ass and make some money. Make a living for yourself, for the people you work for and for the people who work with you. Take a hard look. This isn't the 1980s and 1990s. They're not coming to you, unless you're the only game in town, and few people have that luxury anymore. That's what I would say. Get your head out of your ass and stop saying "poor me" and every excuse in the book. Just go out there.

Steve Shaw: Absolutely. That's what this whole podcast is about. This is no BS. We're just here telling you how it is. This is the truth. If you want fluff, go somewhere else.

Jeff Ridgway: Yeah. Get some education on how to delegate. Don't create more work for yourself.

Steve Shaw: But it's really about finding the right people to do it for you. You've got to find the right tech, the right advisor, somebody like Christie, I think you said. You've got to find somebody who wants it. Because if you don't, you're just going to have a truck sitting out there.

Jeff Ridgway: Well, you have to sell it to them, like any other thing. "Look, this is what we're going to do. Would you like to take a really cool ride?" That's the best way, anytime I've ever gone into a store: "We're going to take a cool ride. I don't know where it's going to end." And when we're doing the racing, I have two philosophies for the driver. I don't care what's going on with the car: send it. Just send it. Push your foot on that gas until you see the checkered flag or Jesus Christ. That's all we've got. Don't look behind you. Don't look next to you. Look at the flags.

Steve Shaw: Full throttle. Well, from a leadership perspective, there's a certain word I'm not allowed to say, but I would just say, "I'm going to take you for a ride. I might not be able to tell you where we're going, but I promise you it's going to be a hell of a lot better than where you are right now."

Jeff Ridgway: Yep. Put your seatbelt on. We're going to enjoy this. Trust me. Look, we're all in this together. There's another topic I'd love to discuss: we're all in this together. When I bring up communication, I don't mean going out and saying, "Hi, how are you?" and all that. That's all good stuff. I'm talking about what the company needs, what you need and what the employee needs. I go into stores that have retention problems, and they suck, and they don't know it. The employees don't know they're not making retention, because nobody's told them. That's what I mean by communication.

If everybody marches toward the same goal: "Look, Mr. Franks needs to make a million dollars this month for the next phase, not to buy a new boat, but for our future. This is what they're looking to do." Then you've got to go out there and tell your people, "This is our goal. And you know what? If we make this million bucks, they're probably going to put a couple of G's in your pocket while you're doing it." And we don't do that.

Steve Shaw: And if he wants a boat or an airplane, that's okay too. It's not my business.

Jeff Ridgway: Good for him. Hey, if you work really hard, he can get another boat. But not the hand-slammers, the guys who slam their hand on the desk: "You'll do it and you'll like it." Then everybody behind the wall is doing the opposite just to get you out of there or make you look bad. Listen, I'm very long-winded, Steve, I apologize.

Dave Rogers: That's leadership. That's a future podcast we've been talking about.

Steve Shaw: No, we love it. I'm usually the long-winded guy.

Dave Rogers: Listen, I think we just set a record at 40 minutes, so that's good.

Steve Shaw: We went long, but the good thing is, Jeff, when you guys are talking, there's far more expertise and credibility than I would have sitting here all by myself. You guys are the experts in the field. You're doing it. And you are one of the pioneers in mobile service, Jeff. You're giving people a roadmap for how to fill in those gaps and how to actually make money. We're normally here for 20 minutes, but I'll sit somewhere for an extra 20 minutes if I'm going to get something out of the podcast or the message. That's what it's all about. What am I going to get for spending an extra 20 minutes of my life with you guys? Here's a roadmap, bro. Here are some things you can do so your mobile service can actually be successful.

Jeff Ridgway: Yeah. And it's cheaper than a building.

Steve Shaw: Cheaper than a building. I do have a question, though. Did you have to get permits in Pennsylvania, or was that okay?

Jeff Ridgway: Look, I just didn't put any writing on the van.

Dave Rogers: Yeah, we've lettered them since and nothing's happened. There have been no issues. A lot of the stuff in Philly is fleets, the Amazon trucks, different stuff, and we've run into some obstacles in Philly with unions and with some of the fleet companies. So we've actually had some outside places that want fleet work bring the vehicles over to one of our lots where a store is, and then we do the mobile work there. As long as it's not our property, there are issues here and there, but it's been really no problems at all.

Steve Shaw: So it wasn't detrimental. It was things you could work through.

Dave Rogers: But it was a good thing to look at and a good learning experience, because he's right. These city wage taxes were really designed for sports teams. When the visiting team comes to play their games, the city taxes everybody at that wage. That's how basketball, football and baseball players pay taxes based on the city where the game is. So these cities realized they get an extra 4% from all these athletes on the game check. It's Moneyball. They figured it out. So you never know what they're going to do: "Okay, you fixed five cars in the city. This is the revenue on the jobs. We want an extra 4%," or you have to pay the employee's city wage tax. You do run into that. You have to learn a little bit.

Jeff Ridgway: And then you have L&I, and the business license if you're going to operate within that town or city. When I started it, I didn't want to fail. I didn't want my boss to think he made a bad investment. So I said, I'll just do it. Publicly I'll never get into it, but privately I'll tell you the secrets to all of that.

Steve Shaw: Okay, so we're going to have to start a members-only channel so we can get the deep secrets.

Dave Rogers: Private chat.

Jeff Ridgway: It's not illegal, but we're walking a fine line, if the wind blows.

Steve Shaw: I said members-only, Jeff, not OnlyFans.

Dave Rogers: Okay, calm down there, Jeff.

Jeff Ridgway: Dave, you just brought up something else if you want to make your mark with mobile. If the shop was overly busy, there were two things I'd done with my van to make it more efficient, or more forward-looking. One was, if the shop was backed up, we were doing updates in the parking lot with the van. It never sat idle. The other was, we had it connected to one of your other stores up in Westchester for the computers. And if you recall, our computer system went down, or the electricity went down, something went down in my store, and we couldn't sell cars. Well, guess what? We could tie into another computer system in our mobile unit. My F&I guy was sitting in the mobile unit doing deals.

Dave Rogers: With the laptop, we connected to CDK at the other store and he could pencil up deals. It worked well.

Jeff Ridgway: Right. For stores with multiple locations, I found that was one of the smartest things, and our IT people came up with it.

Steve Shaw: Here's the deal, Jeff, you just came up with the next million-dollar idea. A mobile sales van: they drop the car off, and they're doing F&I in the back of the van.

Jeff Ridgway: I think we're a little late for that. Aren't they doing that online now?

Steve Shaw: Take the guy right to the house, do the paperwork in the van, and drive away. There you go. Jeff, it's great having you here. It's good to see you again.

Jeff Ridgway: Good stuff. Hopefully I run into you guys next week. It would be nice to see you if I can. You guys stay well.

Steve Shaw: Dave, wrap us up. Give us a GM tip of the day. What would you say to everybody?

Dave Rogers: Listen, I think Jeff covered it all. The GM tip of the day would be: listen to what Jeff said and get your head out of your ass. But you can't jam this down someone's throat. You've got to sell it to your service manager and the people involved. Look for that friendly face, like the guy who comes to service your pool or the guy who comes to service the heater in your house. That's the kind of guy you want in that van. Use your people skills as a GM to put the right ass in the right seat, because that's really what you've got to do. But you've got to sell it to your service manager. He's got to be on board, otherwise it's never going to work. Like Jeff said, the van will sit idle. It'll never be used.

Jeff Ridgway: Exactly.

Steve Shaw: Awesome. Great stuff, guys. Jeff, hang out for a second. Dave, I'll probably see you at the convention.

Dave Rogers: Yep, as you will.