Chris + Rob's Steps to Success: 'Do These 5 Things Today to Increase Immediate and Future Profits'

Join Chris Daglis and Rob Rainwater as they discuss innovation in the automotive recycling industry. 

In particular they will be passing on actionable steps you can take TODAY to increase immediate and future profits for your own automotive recycling business.

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Transcript

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So welcome everyone to the first of hopefully many webinars the first episode we haven't I haven't done webinars for some time or podcasts for some time. The idea is that we give you some really tangible takeouts, what can I take away from this session that I can use today? To help my business? What can I do myself, you know, doesn't need us to, you know, necessarily have to be in your pocket to try and help you with everything, there's a few things that you can do right now, that will make a difference to your business. So we want to give you some of those key things. And some of them are basic, some of them are things that, you know, we know, right? It's just that sometimes we need that little bit of a reminder, sometimes we need to, you know, okay, here I am behind in my inventory. I've got 30 cars, 40 cars, I've got some customers, I've got over 1000 cows and back, we'll get right. You know, the US floods, for example, we have a customer that bought a whole four or 500 cars out of the floods back in Florida. You know, when was that September last year, October last year was six months ago, put it that way. And, you know, they've stopped the inventory, because they're just too busy. So they've spent all this money on vehicles. But you know, they've got that challenge with inventory, and so forth. So we'll talk a little bit about that. As I said that the idea will be to give you five or so, takeouts, takeaways that you can use in your business. And of course, we all want to deal with it today. And one of the things that I've spoken to rob about and potential other future panels is that we also need to think about tomorrow, right? We can't just be in today and forget about tomorrow, Rob? Correct. Yeah, looking forward and having a plan. Having a plan, making sure that we can deal with the things that we need to deal with. That are short term, will deliver results short term, but that are going to help us in the future. And there's so much change happening. As we know, we talk about that all the time. And I know change is a buzzword, but it's really, really important to do that. So let's jump into this. Rob, we don't want to make this a talk fest. We want to give people some value here. So let's jump straight into the first of the five steps, which is bait a basic one that we all hear about and do every day. But sometimes we don't do it quick enough, right? We don't. We don't Sorry, we don't deliver that. That result that the business needs, which is it needs inventory, right? We buy cars, we focus so much on buying cars, they turn up and so many of us don't end up inventory the cars quick enough. And that's money sitting out there on the in the car park. You want to add some to rob? Yeah, it's just you know, I'm a big believer in building your salvage yard from the back to the front, right. So you know, buying these cars, okay, we've bought the cars, or we've, you know, got the car somehow. And now they're there. And every second that they're not inventory, and we're we're willing and able to sell these parts, there is a problem. Right? So you said the backlog of cars, all these things, you know, depending on where you are in the country, or what you're doing and I'm going to lowball some numbers. And I'll say that, you know, 70% of your sales normally come from the vehicles you've bought, or I should say the vehicles you've inventoried. Chris, in the last 20 days, right? I bought in inventory, two different things. Right. So making sure that what I've inventoried is where 70 And that's a lowball number is where my sales are coming forward. So if every day those cars are sitting there, not inventories, you're costing yourself sales. Yeah. And that's money you've got out right. So you've you've put that money out already. You've paid for those cars, you paid for them before they turned up so that you're probably a week or two behind anyway. So yeah, get get your parts in to start get them. And the other thing there is getting them into inventory into stock is one thing, but making sure that they're they're done in a quality fashion. Your descriptions need to be right, your grading needs to be accurate. Your images need to be right. So there's a number of things that that we need to get right. And there's tourists for that one. Because the traditional sense of what we do and the way we've sold parts in the past has been people call us or now there's chat functions through the Pinnacle's and Powerlink. Probably I'm not sure but where you can check one another salespeople and say I need tag number XYZ. Okay, that's the traditional sense, but we're moving into a different era here. We know we've got a situation and you know, Rob I do a lot of work from an eBay perspective and online. But the reality is that we're not talking to a lot of people anymore. Right? No. Collision Repair is through things like parts trader, for example, etc, or CCC system, don't talk to us they see our part online, they see our price the car grading the see the quality description, that's what we need to get right. So inventorying a vehicle today isn't like what it used to be 10 years ago, and I'm sitting on tipping and ain't going to be anything like we know it today in 10 years. So you need to think through that properly. And I want to make sure that we're clear on right, you know, the parts inventory, right and graded properly, not overly graded, not overly described, either, right? I mean, apart, that's, you know, if you want to use a Hollender, triple zero code, or whatever you want to say Chris Wright is supposed to be the like, in the kind in the quality of what a five year old Doris was to look like, right? We don't need you know, there should be some a little wear, these are recycled auto parts, they are not perfect. They are not new parts. So you can do a disservice over describing as well. That's a valid point. That's as long as you describe it accurately. And part of the challenge, ya know, we don't want to turn this into a 510 minute piece on each on each topic. But I told you it was gonna happen. I sent just for everyone's information I sent Robert, a list of, you know, the five key things that I thought were relevant, we sort of brainstorm that and, and said, Well, there's a starting point, because we probably could have come up with 50 that are really, really important. And even with the five, he said, man, there's enough here for 10 podcasts. And it's true. So anyway. But the reality is that we need to also think of it in the context of what we describe and how we perceive that part. Because it is a perception, we know what you might have three inventory people in your business, all three will see it slightly differently. Okay, so now we've gotten a collision repairer, who's coming at it in a different context as well. And he or she's looking at it and saying, Well, that's not what I say. So we need to get some kind of parity, or some kind of common denominator in the way we talk to our customers, and what is good, what is bad, what is appropriate and what is not. Right. So, you know, consistency. Right? So consistency to me is, right. It's paramount to this is that everything that we're talking about has to be consistent, everything that we're going to run through today. I'm not just doing it for a couple days. I'm not just doing it once in a while. It's consistency through the process. Yeah. And I think that's a really good point, Rob. So one of the things we we've done in the UK with the vehicle recyclers Association over there and eBays, we've set up the independent certification programme. And we involve collision repair as mechanical repair shops, we involve people like insurance companies, multiple insurance companies, were part of the build of that programme, for multiple reasons. And that that was critical consistency of whatever we do was really important. And it's even more difficult. I mean, it's hard enough doing it as your yourself. If you're running your own business, it's even more difficult trying to do it across a group of 100 different recyclers, which is where we're at in the UK things around 100 recycles that have been independently certified now. So you know, in the US, you've got groups like PRP, for example. And others, you've got the big, you know, consolidators, now they're groups in their own right, slightly different to a PRP, where their independence, but it's, it's a challenge to get everyone to do it in a consistently good way over and over again, to deliver that same result to the customer. Right? So if I'm buying from this group, as a customer, I know that whether I buy from Rob or Chris, I'm gonna get the same quality product. I'm gonna get it with the same type of service and so on. So that you're right, that consistency is critical. All right, so sorry, no, no, go ahead. Again, just in the interest of not sort of falling into the trap that we said we shouldn't fall into Rob. Let's let's move on. But we've got a question here from my Simon. Simon. BM. Sorry, Simon. I don't know what the BM stands for. But should a recycler prioritise higher valued vehicles first, buy what's already in stock, or just process them in turn as as they come in. To have you on it My view is, if I'm consistent, and I'm buying a consistent number of vehicles that my factory can produce, and I'm inventory in them, and Chris is 72 hours is about 24 hours longer than I would say. But I know he's being fair to some people. But if I'm doing that consistently, or consistently, I'm never going to run into that problem. I was old at first, I again ran everything like a factory, like a machine, like a watch. It was tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. So if you're doing things in that matter, you'll never have that problem. And when we fall behind, I still stuck with it. Oldest first that has the longest rent. And I looked at every every car sitting there on inventory is a rent an old part on a shelf that sitting there not sold, is increasing the rent. Yeah, and I think the challenge with cherry picking vehicles out there, it's so it's easy to do, because you've got a $10,000 vehicle here versus $1,000. Vehicle, I want to get the$10,000 vehicle in as quickly as I can problem with the cherry picking is that we can often fall into the trap of that$1,000 car never gets done. Right. But there are sales on that there may be a lot of good sales on that. Right. So I think it makes sense to go oldest first and just do them in some kind of a cyclical way. Right? And do it the same way. Oh, right through. Often sometimes, you know, you've got customers that are looking for, you know, the drive train on that $10,000 vehicle, you're going to make, you know, make a $10,000 sales straight up and recover the cost on that. So you want to get that inventory. So there was always a scenario or multiple exceptions to the rule. But I think that that's the right way to go wrong. If all your cars are inventoried, and you're in the process, you're gonna, you're dismantling this are going to be cherry picking what sold, allow the orders to cherry pick, just get it in inventory. Yep. Excellent. All right. So inventory part, vehicle vehicles as quickly as possible, doing it accurately, doing it with good descriptions, doing it with images, good images, etc. Really, really important. And remember, this is something that you can do today. So tomorrow morning, we can make sure that we got a process in place to inventory our vehicles, quickly, whether it's within 72 or 48 hours, whatever that is, get it done quickly. Okay, so let's think about Tip number two, building a network of trading partners within the industry, we're often looking to advertise and find new customers and, you know, whatever out there, we're one of the things that a lot of people ask me, a lot of friends asked me, Rob, you know, how? How could you? How do you start a recycling, automotive recycling business? Where do you start? Where do you find your customers. And I think it's one of the nicest businesses to be in the context of a customer, you know, if you're on, and these days, you know, any of the yard management systems in the US, not so much in in the UK and in Australia, or New Zealand. But we've got Pinnacle that you can see one another's parts on in the US, everyone can see everyone's path doesn't matter what system whether it's Powerlink, car park, or pinnacle, doesn't matter what system is you can see each other's paths, and you're integrating. And some of the work that I'm doing with a number of the customers that work with me at APS, we're looking at some of the numbers and usually in their top 30 customers, at least 20 or other recyclers in the US, right. So the beauty here is that we've got our trading partners that we can work with from day one, and they don't care if you've been there for a million years, or two years or two weeks. If you've got the right part on the right day at the right price, they need it and they're going to want to buy it from you. So we've got that, that environment where within the industry, we think what you could call your competitive landscape, which really I don't like that topic because we're not the competitor, or the resources or the competitor. But you've got customers there straightaway. So they're trading partners that you can work with. Rob? Yeah, um, I, you know, you know, before I became I like the word you know, I like the word coach, Chris, better than consultant but I was lucky enough to be at the first facility that I was at for 2324 years, something like that. The second facility that I went to, and the third before I kind of semi retired to coach. Um, the last two were very small mom and pop yards, not a lot of customers, not a lot of things and I was very successful in a short amount of time helping along with the team had, you know, I was one piece, but helping build them up very quickly. One way, it wasn't flyers, it wasn't coupons. It wasn't a road salesman, Chris. We allow the factory to work at the maximum capacity that it could I bought a lot of cars, we inventory them really fast. And we took them apart and got them online or got them on eBay or got them wherever you are. If you build it, they will come. And I'm a firm believer to steal from the movie Field of Dreams. All you need to do is produce the widgets. Now, the better widgets you buy, the better you buy the cars the right, but those are different things. But if you build it, they will come. To me. It's that simple. I agree 100%. But I want to take this a step further. Because the point, tip number two says build a network of trading partners. And I think the really important thing he adds Stewart Stewart, he's got a question that we'll come to it in a second, Stuart. But the really important thing there is that we need to invest in more than just the vehicles that we are dismantling. It's not just our inventory. It's our relationships with other recyclers. In this case, that's what we're talking about as the customer. It's our relationships with other recyclers that we need to build that will help us integrate, right, so we are human. Right? Humans deal with other people that they like other people that they know, and they understand how they work. We work on relationships. And I know, Rob, you talk a lot about relationships. But that network, that networking, right, we've got UAG coming up in a couple of months. And I know that, you know there's a myriad of other conferences that you have smaller conferences, state conferences in the US, especially, that are so important. Go to those conferences, because you will build a network of trading partners there that you haven't before. So if you're not doing it, do it. Absolutely. So sorry, Rob, go, oh, no, I was just going to back it up. It's just that these are the things that you have got to immerse yourself in this industry and friends. I mean, this is how you and I met. Right. This is this is the connection. It's it's auto recyclers, it's vendors, it's remanufacturing companies, it's all different levels of people that are allowing you to sell your parts or say yes to your customers more, or make sure that you're on the up front of the technology. Right. And all these things, there's so much happening, you've got to stay at the forefront of that. But it starts with being around and with your peers. Yeah, I agree. Totally. I agree. Totally. So Stuart, and he's asked the question, isn't an industry standard to give trading partners or higher automatic discount over the wholesale customer? Rob, I'm pretty sure you're gonna love answering that one. You love giving up? No, I do. But there are some discounting networks in the US. There's a different percentage. There's different things. You know, the US is spread out a little bit more than the UK. Right. So I you know, you and I were lucky enough for you, I was lucky enough to have you let you know, Mike and I be involved a little bit with some of the UK stuff that you did. Right. And you're talking about a smaller area. But if I've built a relationship and trust with the customer over here, and he likes me and he likes my service. Why shouldn't I be able to buy the part from the salvage yard? That's, you know, 30 kilometres away. At least you do. You're getting a piece of the action now. Right? Let me disguise my guy already. Right. Let you know that relationship buildings, there are discounts. Okay. Yes, maybe to a reason. But I will say that if it was Stewart that asked the question. All of the discounts in the US have caps. So if it's 510 15 20%, Stewart, there is a cap. There are some minimums, there's commodity or core splits. There's other things involved in that. If I can build a good trading network with someone, sure, but as long as I'm buying from you as much as you're buying from me, and we're sharing the discount between each other, we want to get a balance of trade. Right? If we look at it as two nations, we want to find some kind of balance in trade. But I think it also comes down to rob you know, often again, the numbers that are looked at with it A lot of recyclers, you mentioned before, you know, 70% of your sales, maybe more, maybe a little bit less whatever happened in the first 120 days. The reality is, I can guarantee you that a decent automotive recycler is hitting at least 50% of their sales in the first 60 to 90 days. Okay, so for buying at a 50% cost of goods, we've recovered our money within the first 50 or so days, if we're buying at a 50% cost of goods, and then we look at it and say, Okay, what's left after 120 days, usually, what's left is the slower move, obviously, right. So what's left on our shelf 80% of our inventory that we choose to I'll say hoard, or whatever you want to call it, 80% of our inventory is usually slower moving stock, you know, we're looking at it from a pinnacle sort of selling recommendation deal, it's usually sell it, and this can type stock, right. So we also don't want steel sitting on the shelf, you know, if I had the opportunity to move that at a discounted rate, often I'm going to do that. And if that means that I sell it to you, because you've got a relationship with the collision repair around the corner, or on the other side of the country, that just happens to like buying from me because you've got a relationship with him or her, then so be it, I want to move my stock, and I want to get that cash back into another vehicle. Right terms. And to just add, I don't want to snowball this, but there are some trading groups that are out there. That may be on the consolidator side a little bit, but they do not trade or discount until after 90 days. That makes sense, just get to it, there's a million different ways to do it. But let's be honest, most of your warehouses are full with crap, or they're filled with returns 100%, right. Especially, you know, for some of the UK guys that are Pinnacle that are on here, if it's Hollander, it's called there, whatever. But, um, you know, making sure these tools are in there for you to look at and look at, you know, what, how quickly you're moving your parts, right, that there's really probably only about 20 part types making up about 80% of your revenue. Right? The all that data is in your system, right? Learn how to use those those reports in there. And be a part of that. Sorry, for the Hollander Pinnacle confusion thing. No, no, that's okay. That's okay, we get confused plenty. So I've, we've got a couple of people from the UK and New Zealand on this call. And I, I'm picking on them, especially because they do not entertain very much at all. Right in both of those countries. I see those names. And I know some of those. I've talked to some of these we have. But they don't need to trade very much at all right. And we never used them to trade here in Australia until probably the early 2000, mid 2000s When a few of us started coming over to the U RG conferences and ARA and sort of started seeing everyone talking to each other about tips and tricks that they've got or sharing ideas and talking about trading with one another thing with one another, why would you buy from your competitor? And it really dawned upon us that we've got so many sales sitting out there in on another's businesses, because we say no 4050 60% of the time from our own inventory. So why don't we need to trade and find that product? So especially I know this is second nature to the Americans on this call or the North Americans on this call whether you're from Canada, all Americans, not all not all. Not all many, many that I've met successful. The successful ones have learned the lesson a long time ago. Yeah. Yeah. So but for for other countries, it's still a little bit of a How would I put it a new type of idea right to to actually buy from another recycler and on sell their part because the thinking is, I bet I'm gonna take on the problem and, you know, I'm feeding them etcetera, etcetera. So anyways, number one is start networking. Number two is start buying and selling one another's parts. And then number three is worry about how much it is for because if you're not selling it, you've got no problem to actually deal with, right? You're not selling it at all. So let's sell it first and then deal with the problem of how much for at a later date. And the key word there selling the part. So they don't care. I don't care who I sell it to as long as I sell it and they pay me such as you're such a salesman. I thought you You're gonna throw American AbbVie again, no, no, no, I wouldn't do that vote wouldn't do that. Okay, let's move on. Tip number three, invest in your most important your people are critical to you. We all know that more today than ever. The one thing that comes up every single time, if I had a penny $1 a pound, for every time I heard this from people, when I'm speaking to them is, I can't find people to have find good people. Right? My inventory is behind because I can't find people to do my inventory properly. I can't get parts onto eBay, because I can't find someone to put my parts onto eBay. I can't process the right amount of cars, because I haven't got dismantles. They don't turn up. And there's one New Zealander on this call that I've had this discussion with plenty of times overnight, Brett. So there's nothing better than me. But the key here is that it doesn't matter who it is. I can name every single name on that list of people on this call. And we've all had the same discussion. Okay. So invest in your people. Invest in your people, give them the training they need, you know, and often. So many people say here, but I'm going to train them, then they're going to leave. And I usually turn around so Yeah, but what if you don't train them and they stay? What's going to happen then then you've got someone that's untrained, that's delivering substandard results sitting on your books being totally inefficient. Right now, whether that's from dismantling to sales to management, train your people rough. How many people quit the job or quit the manager? When someone quits and leaves, you need to look in the mirror and ask yourself, Why am I understand maybe someone left? They got another? They're going on to better themselves? Right? God bless them. Right? That's great. Perfect. No problem. She can't. But are they quitting the job? Or are they quitting the manager? The manager of the organisation as well, right? The organisation? The management, correct? Yeah. Is there enough support there? Yeah, we buy new trucks, we buy cars, we buy fancy loaders and fancy fork trucks, fancy equipment. We buy all this fancy stuff for our place. But we don't invest in it. We don't invest in our people. Yeah. And I think that's why we have those people. That's so important, especially again, as well, I've got a 20 nearly 2322 and 20 year old, right. And the current workforce is so much different to I know, Rob, you're a bit of a bit older than me, you're a baby boomer, I think or something like that. I'm sure so. But anyways, we won't go there a minute. But I know that we talk about this a lot, but the current workforce so that the young people that are looking to come into work today want to see some kind of progression opportunities within the organisation they work with, they don't want to sit there dismantling cars or their lives, you know, that what they probably don't want to start dismantling cars, you know, let alone doing all their lives, right, not not downgrading the fact that it's a really important job. But that's the reality, they don't want to get their hands dirty, they don't want so they want to see an organisation that will work for organisation that one looks professional acts professional is professional, and gives them an opportunity to grow professionally. Okay. And the best way to do that is to give your people try now Rob, I know you guys do a lot of you do a lot of sales, training and so forth. And I know you and Mike do a lot of the the user groups and so forth. But let's talk about some results. Right? And how that helps the individual, your employee and how that helps the organisation. Maybe give us some tangible sort of results if you like, um, you know, there's a immense amount of levels of some of the coaching that I do right where I had do a lot of individual sales training group sales training but on the the management the sales manager, the general manager and Operations Manager or ownership I honestly, I think the number one thing that I've been the most successful with was coming in and we it goes right back to where we started, Chris was Who are we? What do we want to be and what's the plan to get there? And for all of you, I'm looking at some of the people the Anthony's and the Dons that are on here. Rob is out here. I know some of the people that are on here. We find ourselves Criss going to work every day. Just putting out fires and trying to get through the end of the day without a plan to succeed. And you know that plan that consistency that finding the time is the most important thing you can do. And I think that's what most of the coaching I do is because I make a Don, stop, you know, I swap mine with Don tonight. Matter of fact, after our call, I make her stop. And she calls a timeout and murder her middle of day. And we focus about what we're going to talk about what have we done the past week and moving forward? I truly feel Chris it's it's the plan. And not only the plan, it's the philosophies that we come up with Chris, you and I've talked about pricing philosophies, buying philosophies, dismantling philosophies, picture philosophy, video philosophy, eBay philosophies, I need to know what do I stand for? And I'll be honest with you, there's a lot of years I spent, I didn't know either. But you know what I did, I went to every Ara, I went to every U RG, and that's surrounded by a bunch of people that were a lot smarter than me. That's why I'm on this with you, Chris. Right as I wanted to be around people that were smarter than me and ask a whole bunch of really dumb questions. Because I wanted all the answers. So you know, you mentioned they're stopping and thinking, and again, we're busy. We're busy doing what we do. Automotive recyclers are busy putting out fires, busy answering questions from their sales team or from the pickers or whatever the case is. We're busy doing stuff every day, the day to day, I've got to get this done. And yeah, they're important that you need to do their urgent, right? We often find it really difficult to just stop and think, stop and think about what, what do we need to do here, we treat the symptom, not the cause, right? We put the bandaid over the artery that's leaking, or whatever the case is, as opposed to stop beating KFC or McDonald's because that's blocking the artery, right. So we keep on eating McDonald's and KFC. And we've got the same problem two years time. So we need to stop, you know, start stopping, we need to stop and take a deep breath every now and then. And jump on a call with Rob. I've got one of the recyclers that I deal with in the US that we just jump on a call every now and then we'll spend an hour on the call, he'll throw some ideas at me. I will we'll talk. Now, we don't charge for that we don't do any other. It's just we talk we have a good time with one another. I like talking to people about some ideas that I may have. Some of them are irrelevant. Some of them are totally wrong. He knows his business better than anyone. But the idea generation is critical. The workshopping is critical, you know, I have some people would talk to sometimes with regard to some of the eBay stuff. And they it's ironic, because they're telling me why eBay is not succeeding for them. They're actually telling me why. But they haven't got time to stop and have the proper discussion. Because I can you hold on a second, I just got to pick up this phone. They're stopping the noise, right? They're going to stop that noise in the background. And not only do they pick up the phone, they do a really bad job at it. Because they're not focused. So we need to focus. I think on more strategic thinking, I just wrote an article a couple of weeks ago, I'm thinking more strategically and investing strategically. Your people are critical to you. We all know that. It's the old adage, people are your most important asset. So invest in your people, they're really, really important. And without them, you can't run your business. Okay. Alrighty, well, I've gone the wrong way, Rob, that's no good. Let's go that way. Tip number four, understand your numbers and embrace the support that's out there to help you get better at what you do. So many, so many people in this industry have got an amazing amount of data available to them. Through the management systems, probably too much to be honest. And therefore it becomes really difficult for them to work out what they should be looking at. What they are looking at what it means. Now, what does this mean? Is it good? Is it not so good? What is a good number? Right? What is a good breakeven days? What is a good cost of goods? Well, how do I work out my cost of goods? There's a whole heap of different things that I know that you guys at ptc work with, your user groups aren't. But those are critical things that you need to understand. And, you know, the other thing is this, the quality of data, again, the North Americans do use their systems a lot better than most other countries. And there's a lot of data there that they can use and get a better result out of. But and we need to think about it. Yeah, I mean, and they I mean they export the Data, Chris and I, you know, into all other things in Excel and access and all these other programmes and stuff. But I'm going to tell you I, because I was one of them, Chris. I was afraid of the data because I didn't understand it. And I was afraid to raise my hand and say, I don't understand it. When I was in profit team meetings not doing when I was in the very first one, they kept talking about cogs in the meeting all day long. And then not until my way home that I say, I have no idea what cogs means. I didn't ask during the meeting I should have, because I could have participated in the meeting. But I didn't know that it meant Cost of Goods. Then I said, well explain to me how, what is it? You know, that's why I said go places go where raise your hand and say, I don't understand. You know how many guys Chris I've worked with or started to work with and never had a p&l Never use QuickBooks never had any kind of p&l never looked at any day, never looked and never looked at any data to make any decision that what you're doing. And I'm here to say, with Chris or with whomever you have to make all your decisions based on the data. Yeah, all of them. Including you know, it, keeping employees, what employees? What's the return on there, all those things are based on the data. Because at the end of the day, Chris, there's too many people that I see running these facilities, and the plan isn't about making money. What's the plan? They don't have one, they come to work and just do it over and over and over. They just do it to do it. And they have enough money to pay their bills and buy some more cars and maybe get some turkeys on Thanksgiving. There's something I don't understand that. And, Chris, you know, this, this industry has some of the hardest working people. But they're they're, you know, they're I had a great week was I worked 80 hours. I'm like, I want to hey, I worked 30 hours, and I was way more profitable than you because I work a lot smarter. Yeah, just because you were at the facility for those hours doesn't mean that you you worked really hard. Yeah. Well, the reality is that a lot of automotive recyclers traditionally have have been lucky enough to be in an amazing industry that that you can make good money, right. But it's getting tougher and tougher out there. I mean, it's way tougher. And I can tell you from the numbers that I look at, again, I'll regionalize it a little bit, that North American market is tight. I mean, that the you know, look at the profitability per vehicle in the US. It's half of what the profitability is in other parts of the world. So there's, but what they've done, Chris, is they learned how to maximise the factory. So the margin shorter, they just do a higher volume. Yeah, right. But but there's, you know, you're you're a little smarter than me. But the private equity people are that are coming into North American buying these yards aren't coming in, because they're losers. Right? The private equity companies aren't coming in to buy losers. So 100% Correct. So look, where do you start with this one, understand your numbers, what should you be looking for? How can you use that information to make better decisions, whether they're buying decisions, whether the people decisions, whether they're process decisions? Right? You know, and some of this data isn't necessarily just sitting in your yard management, some of it could be, let me go and have a look at how I'm doing by dismantling. Right. And by you know, some of your PTC peer groups rob you, you will have different organisations that will say, Well, how many vehicles do you process per week? Well, how many are you processing per week? That sharing of ideas is critical? Because if I'm doing five a week per person, you're doing 10 a week per person. Oh, I know what you're doing. Right? Is a different type of vehicle. We're doing the same car. Okay, we're doing the same type of car. How many parts? Have you taken off him? Same amount of parts? Well, I got I've got another issue. One of the things that we did you know, back when I was in the business, is we did a time and motion study on our automotive on our dismantle. And we said, you're one of the most important parts of this business. You're our manufacturing company. You manufacture parts that we can then sell. So we need to understand why you're doing X amount of vehicles work. I think it was like four or five cars a week. It wasn't that many and what it could go to. And literally we found that 60% of his time was being wasted. Right. It was being wasted by other people around him asking him To do something, go and check this or go and get that from your do this. So what do I do? I put my tool down, I come back. So our manufacturing facility, which is our dismantling out of our business was only 40%. Productive at best. And once we said, okay, no one talks to you, you've got a full time job. And it's a really important one, he started turning out 1230. In one week, he did 15 cars, right within a month of us making these changes. And he was so happy. Why? Because people take pride in what they do. And they feel good when they get a good result. Obviously, they want to make more money as well. But understanding that number, understanding what it was and why it was where it was, and what we needed to do to fix that helped us deal with that issue of production. Right. So we need to be critical. The now Stuart ad is sent a comment, return on employees is a good question need to talk about this? After this meeting, Rob? So Rob, expect a call from Stuart. But yeah, I agree, return on our people is really important. We don't look at it very often. It's not something that we think about. I always had a you know, you know, I have simple analogies Chris, right. If I had a sales office that had four seats, and I have a dismantling building with four lifts, I looked at them just like barber chairs, right? I need to get a guy in there that can do the most haircuts if I'm getting $2 A haircut. But for his rent, I need a guy that can do the most haircuts. So stewarded simply looking at those abilities. And what is the rent for the seat? Yeah. And I don't want salesmen doing anything but selling parts. I don't want indoor dismantlers doing anything. But dismantling cars. I can get a whole bunch of other do at all guys around them. But if you've got the skills to sell, or indoor dismantle, that's what you need to be doing all day. And you as the owner, manager, company, whatever it is, need to provide them with the environment to do that within and the tools to deal with. So many times people say yeah, here's my dismantle. She's my dismantling, and okay, that's broken, that's broken. How are they supposed to do their job and then you're on their back about why they're not using it. Right? The live guys do an oil changes on your delivery trucks during Jiffy Lube or wherever, quick lube, some lube, some kind of lube, but not that guy. lube it somehow. All right, excellent. Thanks, George. Great question or comment? Okay, let's get into tip number five, reinvest wisely, so that you can don't miss the boat. Now, I'm being a little bit. And this can probably lead into our next session, Rob. But we've been talking about a whole heap of things that we can do today. And they're critical, right? All of the things I've spoken about are really, really important. We probably could have spoken about another 3040 or 50 of those things, okay, that are relevant. But we can't, we haven't got time where we're at that era. Everyone's busy, as we said, but we reinvest and what we usually call reinvest in this industry is buying another salvage vehicle, right, because we've been taught by the cap, strip it down, and you'll sell the parts Rob, build it and they will come Field of Dreams. It's true. It's true, we've got the part it's the right part at the right price at the right time it's going to sell. But I think we need to get smarter with our reinvestment reinvestment in this industry now needs to think needs to be more about what's happening. Not only today, but what's happening tomorrow, where do we need to be so that we're relevant in five years time, in 10 years time. There is just and I know everyone talks about change and it's it's the buzzer, and or whatever. But there's just so much happening out there. You know, my work with eBay, the stuff that I do with some other organisations, insurance companies, etc. There is so much happening out there, if we don't reinvent ourselves within our within our own organisation, our own industry, we're going to miss out on the we're not going to be part of the part of the game. We're going to be selling the little widgets that, you know, we happen to pick up the drinks here and there. So we need to start reinvesting wisely. And that, in my view is about strategic thinking, stopping spending time chatting to advisors to people that you work with going to these conferences, workshopping ideas, doing your PTC group sessions, whatever it is, stop. Take a breath and think about what you need to do for your future. Rob If you wrote Chris, we don't have a crystal ball you don't. But you have a bunch of data that you can look at that can give you insight to make a better prediction of what the future may hold. And again, another one of the guy Oh, the kids, I call them kids. They're 30 in my class, in their in their 30s. But now they call them Rob's dumb dad analogies. But I say to my boys, right, Chris, you said you have two children, 20 and 22. My wife and I have a blended family of eight. And they go from 22 to 32. And when the boys were a little younger, there was we have three we had, we have three that are 22. Now, but when the three were 16, right, and some of the others were mixed in, I'd say, Guys, the friends and the girls are outside the house, they're not going to come through the Xbox or the PlayStation, right? Hey, recyclers, hey, Stuart, get out of the house. Right, Brett, get out of the house, go somewhere, and meet people and see it and feel it and smell it and touch it and ask these questions and stay ahead of the technology that way? It's not going to come to you. You have to go find it. Yeah, I agree. And there's so much good stuff. I again, I was talking to one of the New Zealanders a couple of weeks ago about the UAG conference. So we've been locked down for the last damn four years with COVID We haven't had and I said, You know what, in the last four years, there is so much that's changed. There are so many other tools available that you didn't have four years ago. You know, one example is Jaycees, you know, they've been MedPro. That's amazing. It really is amazing. I can guarantee no one from the UK or I shouldn't say that, because I've been to Ara a couple times. But not many Australian UK New Zealand recyclers would know what that is. And not as thoroughly that it can help them in their region. But to understand what's coming through is really, really important. And to understand the effort the likes of and again, I'll mention them the likes of eBay. You know, eBay Motors is putting such a big investment into the future. Right, we are a critical, we need to look at that. Right? Where they're going to build a new Walmart over in Australia, we've got, you know, the big hardware stores called Bunnings. Right? People, investors property, investors look at what Bunnings is doing in five years, six years time, where they've bought lots of land and planning on opening a new Bunnings. Because they're this huge warehouses of hardware. Because they know that that's where they need to invest. Where where is, where are the eBays, investing the money, they're investing the money in the automotive recycling industry, right now, there have been for the last two years, three years, four years in the UK, since I started working with them. In the US, you're seeing it now for the past 12 or 18 months, significant investment. Right, we need to be there. If you're not selling stuff, online, eBay, wherever else it is, you need to think about what you need to do to be in that game. Right. And it's not good enough to say it's too hard. It's not good enough to say our year, but those customers that don't know what they want, and they ordered the wrong thing and whatever. And then you look at the listing, and it's it's not clear as to what you've got, there aren't any part numbers on it, you haven't invested in it. Right? We need to invest in the future, not only in buying another salvage vehicle, and the biggest part of that investment is investing time. Take time out, go outside the house, take a deep breath, go to the conferences, spend time there, you might think it's time away from your business, but it's the most important time in your business that you're going to get. So please, reinvest wisely, and take action now for your future. Chris are either one of your kids that are 20 or 22 going into a brick and mortar Park store to buy a park for their car? No, they are not. Right? No, they are not. They're picking up their cell phone. And they're looking on here. Or they're bringing it to a garage and saying, hey, send the bill to my dad. Right? That's what they're doing. They're not going to a brick and mortar store. These kids don't know how to work on their cars anymore. And I shouldn't say I don't say that insulting. I've never worked on a car. I've worked for cars forever. I've never changed oil in a car. I know where the oil goes. I never check it, but I know where it goes. Right. So again, times are changing. Employees are changing. All these things are changing. You've got to be a step ahead. So Rob, I'll give you a real story and then we'll finish up my wife's mother 100 CRV sat nav system. Something's wrong with the sat nav system takes it to Honda honda says, yep, seven and a half $1,000 for a new sat nav system. Okay, so Chris is in this past game. Chris gets the call Chris. We got this problem. I said, Give me a pan number lower. So they coin What does Chris do? Chris knows a number of different recyclers in the Australian market that he can pick up the phone and ring. Chris goes online. Chris searches does this uses the Google machine searches what's out there types in on the CRV and apart number bank pops up. There was one that was available. There was more than one available but one popped up with a part number on Ebay. I looked at it and saw the capital who's the seller was good seller. I bought it I actually didn't even ring them. I bought it on eBay. I wanted to tell you. I bought it on eBay. I could have run 5060 100 recyclers to check for that part. To get a better kids. Were doing it now as well. Rob, I'm in Florida, you brought it up at the beginning. So I went through in Florida now. I'm not ordering any food takeout pizza, all that McDonald's, good fucking Kentucky Fried Chicken you're talking about? If I can order the pizza on my phone and pay for it to have it delivered? I'm not buying from you. If I can't see a good digital menu on my phone, I'm not coming to your restaurant. Review. Right? I'm not going. Everything I've done there. And we're old. I'm older than you. I'm not doing it unless it's right here. Yep. So let's learn from that. Let's think about that. That's where the customer is. That's where they're gonna be in the future. They ain't gonna get into this. So yes, Don, they are good topics. And we do need to think about a lot of this. So glad you got some value out of it. We appreciate you taking the time to be on this call, we'll send out a recording of this. I sort of put that photo of Rob, thanks to the marketing team for putting this together for us. I'm laughing because we're an hour long. And we said we wanted to keep it to 30 minutes. So that's terrible. Sorry, guys. Hopefully you got value out of it, though, right. And there's so much more that we can. Again, our goal with this is to share information share tangible takeouts, things that you can take away with you today. And do there's a number of things I think that we did there that you can straightaway take away and put in place. Look out for the podcast, you can stream the podcast, really anywhere, we'll probably be available in the next 24 hours, you'll get a copy of it, like our PTC YouTube page, our auto partner solutions, YouTube page, Facebook, all of that stuff, you know where we're at, and look out for a few more of these. We've got some other really exciting guests that we want to have on. So thanks for attending. And yeah, have a great afternoon if you're in the US and anywhere else in the world. Good morning to you. Rob, closing, just two things. One, I want everyone to know that it was Chris's marketing department that put a picture of him from 10 years ago on here and one for me to make him look so much younger than me in the picture and to I will get on these calls to talk about this industry at any time. I love talking about it a passionate about it. I'm happy to do this with Chris, and I just enjoy it. And I hope that somebody took the tip and they're gonna go back today and use it and do it. Excellent. Thanks, Rob. Thanks, everyone. Appreciate your time. Talk soon. Take care. Cheers.