February 24, 2025 • 64 mins
Revolutionize your understanding of business systems with insights from Mets Kramer, a leading innovator in the capital goods industries. We challenge the status quo by questioning if traditional transactional systems are holding us back from true efficiency and innovation. This episode explores how aligning business operations with modern technology and user needs can be a game-changer, drawing parallels to historical shifts like the move from steam to electric engines. Discover why rethinking and not just iterating is crucial for success.
Join us as we tackle the complexities of updating business processes, especially in the context of fluctuating market shares and transactional trends. Through compelling real-world examples, we illustrate the need for flexible, adaptive systems that cater to specific industry demands, such as rental dealers in need of streamlined parts ordering. The episode delves into time management advancements for technicians, aiming to eliminate redundancies and improve workflow, while also addressing cultural barriers that often stifle technological progress.
Finally, we explore how businesses like McDonald's are setting the standard in adaptability by offering multiple customer interaction options. We underscore the importance of fostering a work environment where employees are encouraged to challenge traditional norms and think critically about their roles. From leveraging data for customer satisfaction to planning future collaborations, this episode promises to inspire you to rethink and reimagine your business systems for a competitive edge in today's fast-paced world.
Visit us at LearningWithoutScars.org for more training solutions for Equipment Dealerships - Construction, Mining, Agriculture, Cranes, Trucks and Trailers.
We provide comprehensive online learning programs for employees starting with an individualized skills assessment to a personalized employee development program designed for their skill level.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Aloha and welcome to another podcast from Learning
Without Scars.
Today we're joined by MetzKramer, and I want to have this
be another edition of our CloudsAre Upside Down podcast series,
which is basically looking atthe world with fresh eyes eyes,
(00:33):
Metz has been an innovator, adisruptor in the world of
methods, processes, from thetimes he was at a dealership and
in the last number of years, hestarted a software business
that really gets us into theclouds are upside down.
So with that as our startingpoint, Metz, what year did you
start?
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Visibility- so I started consulting after I left
Libre in 2017.
And it was really during thefirst few years of just
consulting and helping dealersthat everything kept coming back
to information systems and it'slike a go-to area, a comfort
(01:12):
zone.
It's, you know, easy for me,and so I kept having to help
people with data integration orhow systems work, or help them
find a tool to do something, andthat's really where it came
from.
Eventually, a few dealersapproached me and said we don't
like what we have and can youbuild us a whole new system?
(01:34):
And I said, yeah, I thinkthat's possible.
You know, with moderntechnology, it's if you know how
the process is supposed to work, then, yeah, it's reasonable
just to build a whole new dealersystem.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
One of the things that you and I have talked about
is the level of knowledge andunderstanding about business
systems in this industry.
It's not just this industry,it's everywhere.
But in the capital goodsindustries automotive,
construction equipment, cranes,material handling, marine
(02:09):
forestry, mining, all of thatstuff the people that use
systems have never really beentrained on systems.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
No, they were trained by the systems.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
And the people that trained them by the systems.
And the people that trainedthem by the system were systems
people.
Yeah, and those systems people,although I love them to death,
they don't understand theoperation that they're applying
a system to, typically Typically.
Yeah, I'm going to build asystem.
(02:44):
I'm going to get a, an analyst,somebody who knows how to design
systems.
I'm going to get a programmer.
I'm going to put code togetherso that I can run it on a
machine and then I give it tothe person who's going to use it
and show them how they'resupposed to use it, right or
yeah, and it's a bit of a trap.
(03:06):
I think we never ask the personwho's doing the job what they'd
like to see, what, what wouldmake their life easier?
How could they do that jobeasier?
Am I fair in making thatcomment?
Speaker 2 (03:19):
I think so I think you know like a lot of these
things start with people who aretrying to do something or are
currently executing something.
You've called it out a lot oftimes with the paper-to-glass
thing.
If you ask someone, how do Imake the software of what you're
(03:40):
doing with all this paper andstuff, they're going to tell you
what that paper is right.
And I think that's maybe thegenerational shift in these kind
of systems is that a lot of theold ones are really
transactional systems and theywere built to digitize a
transaction and so they kind ofstay structured.
(04:03):
And if you look at some of theold systems, they really are
purely structured around theinformation related to a
transaction.
Instead of bringing people backand saying, like, hey, what are
you trying to do?
It's payable, that's atransaction, that's a process.
They're not asking, hey, whatare you trying to do?
(04:25):
Oh well, people send me thisstuff and I got to make sure
they get paid and I need tofigure out who authorized this
to happen.
And that's what you're tryingto get done, right.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Yeah, yeah, I think you pointed out quite nicely.
I've been saying we've beentransaction driven for a long
time.
Now we need to be data drivenand that transition confuses
people.
But if you go back to sellingand the principles of selling
what does the customer need orwant is kind of, if you want to
(05:01):
be successful at selling, you'vegot to find, find out what
those things are, and thenyou've got to address them.
And I don't think systems peopleright from the get-go.
I mean I'm going back right tothe beginning with machine
language, coding, with having tooverlay programs because we
didn't have enough space to theexpense of data and files.
(05:24):
Like a hundred thousand dollarsfor a disk drive, for goodness
sake, 50 years ago.
Today it's a buck, yeah, and Idon't know that.
So my example has always beenthe steam engine to the electric
engine, and that was the 80s,the 1880s, and that happened
quickly because the tool was somuch better all by itself, yeah,
(05:47):
but the methods that the toolwas applied to didn't change for
a generation, 20 years, becauseit was almost too much for
society to handle yeah, for mostpeople.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
or to rethink it it's easier to iterate than it is to
rethink right?
It really is.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
I think you know my background with swimming and
there's been some remarkablechanges in swimming, and the
first and most obvious one isthe pool and water.
And in the 60s the water priorto the water was cleaned with
(06:35):
either chlorine or fluorine.
After it was cleaned with ozoneRight, the resistance of water
with air bubbles in it is muchless than it is without them.
Right, Meaning the times weremuch faster.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah right, it's kind of obvious.
(06:56):
But then the next one that camealong was gutters.
Do you remember swimming poolsused to have gutters?
Yeah, right on the edge, yep.
And if you look at competitivepools used to have gutters.
Yeah, right on the edge, likeyep.
And if you look at competitivepools, there are no gutters.
With the weather, the waterwould hit the wall and would
come back into the pool.
Yeah, a wave, that was greaterresistance.
(07:17):
Take away the the edge and havethe gutter gone and it's the
top of the pool.
Oh yeah, the water just slipsoff the side of the pool doesn't
come back in.
So, again, time went down, andwhen I was doing it, we shaved
our bodies.
We wanted to be so much thatsounds like fun.
(07:38):
Our body.
You know what the hell is thisall about?
Yeah, and it came back later.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Now look at the bathing suits yeah, yeah,
they've had that one bathingsuit that was like like fisher
shark skin or something and itwas illegal because it was so
much faster.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Precisely it's legal yeah, and the times are so much
faster.
Then we go to things like thehigh jump.
The pole vault used to belanded in a sand pit.
Yeah, I'm not going to jumpseven feet up.
It's going to hurt the headlike hell when I land on the
ground.
But you put a big fluffy pillowthere.
Yeah, ten feet, because itdoesn't hurt.
(08:14):
We've got the same thing withsystems, but I don't think we've
ever really gone up high enoughin the helicopter to say what
in the hell are we trying to dohere?
Until you came along, exap camealong, microsoft came along,
infor came along, a whole bunchof different people who just
continue to do the same thing,and we have unbelievable
(08:40):
screw-ups dealers that implementa new computer system that
don't get financial statementsout, don't get invoices out how
the hell can that happen?
Speaker 2 (08:48):
I have no idea.
I always wanted to get theback-end story on that one, like
at what point does someone nottry and print an invoice?
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Exactly what kind of testing?
Speaker 2 (08:59):
But even that, that's like a really interesting thing
, like even that is sort ofpredicated on this idea that the
only way to do this is to havethis big monstrous go live right
, and that everything is justsort of in stasis and in test
and no one's really doinganything and it's just a bunch
of systems, people, and then oneday we're all going to go live,
(09:21):
we're trained up, we're readyto go and it's this nightmare,
you know, and and people don'tlook at like, is that really the
only way?
Like, isn't there ways that wecan layer in the new platform?
Are there functions that couldbe partially adopted,
implemented in any new platform,before we we actually move,
(09:44):
like the transactionalconnection that we change?
That and that's like.
This is why people are soterrified is because we've been
taught like that's the only way.
We don't, we don't rethink whatis it we're really trying to do
?
And there's multiple thingsyou're trying to do and it's
usually driven by the one thinglike oh, we need to change the
accounting system.
(10:04):
And it drives.
It's driven by all of this datafrom all these operating
components, and I think that'sfor anyone's business.
It's more interesting tosometimes just say, okay, what
is it we're trying to accomplish?
Well, we're trying toaccomplish getting better tools
for our people and betterprocess support.
Better tools for our people,you know, in better process
support, and then eventuallyit'd be nice if that also
(10:27):
generated the financialtransactions that we need.
But people don't look at thebusiness that way.
I think that's why people hatesystems is because they just
they're forced to generatetransactions.
That's the only value is theend product instead of the front
to generate transactions,that's.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
the only value is the end product instead of the
front.
You know, as I get older I'mnot sure that I get wiser, but I
sure have a lot more questions.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
That is wisdom, actually.
I know Asking questions.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
I know, and that's you know, our teaching style is
Socratic.
We don't give answers, we askquestions and hopefully, through
that evolution of questions, wecome to an agreement staircase
where we get the other end ofthat.
Oh, that's okay, I understandthat.
So somebody calls in to theparts department and they want
parts.
And one of the things that I'vealways struggled with is asking
(11:22):
people at the counter or on thephone or technicians when you
call looking for parts, what'sthe first thing you want to know
?
And almost invariably everybodysays have you got it?
Yeah, I said okay.
What's the second thing youwant to know?
How much is it?
(11:42):
Yeah, okay.
So then we look at systems andwe've come a long way from the
abacus.
But the customer calls in, thetechnician calls in and the
first thing that the partsdepartment asks is who the hell
(12:04):
are you?
Yeah, and that's the firstthing that they put into the
computer.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Right, because you've got to start in order.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Yeah, we've got to get this going.
Well, I don't want it, or Iwant to have you got it.
Yeah, well, I've got to gothrough to get I.
I got to see who you are toknow whether I can let you have
it or not.
Where did that come from?
That's baloney.
It's really the same kind ofthing.
Here comes service.
I think that's kind of whereyou started.
Customer calls in.
(12:36):
They got a complaint.
The first thing we got to do isfind out if the complaint is
real or if it's a symptom, andthat's pretty simple too.
How do you do that?
You inspect it, yeah.
And so here comes technology.
And we've got sensors, we'vegot GPS, we have a health check
(12:57):
remotely, we can get alerts onour phone, on our computer all
different manners.
There's a problem with thatmachine.
We still.
Who are you?
Speaker 2 (13:09):
It's the first one.
It's transactional, yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
And over the years and this is where it gets
distressing.
When I started with theCaterpillar deal, you started
with one too, in 69, the partsmarket share for Caterpillar,
and they surveyed every customerin the world face-to-face Every
five years, but you could stillthen.
1965 was the last time they didit.
(13:35):
In 1970, they did 20% and theywent to every five years.
We'll get the full thing.
But talk about importantinformation.
What do you like about doingbusiness with us?
Who do you go to if you don'tbuy from us?
What do you like about doingbusiness with them?
(13:56):
Talk about valuable, valuableinformation.
And now we've got a whole bunchof people.
In 2025, the market share hasgone from 83 to 38.
And I say to people well, thisis really cool, you've got
another 50 years and you canlose another 10%, another half
of your market share.
What are you going to do aboutit?
They don't even know.
That's true, because we don'tmeasure that.
(14:18):
Yeah, not transaction, it'sdata.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Yeah, that's different yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
This whole thing gets complicated.
So you came along with a newsystem, a brand new third, a new
centennial opportunity tocreate a new system from scratch
with all the software tools tomake it happen.
(14:46):
What's the biggest problemyou've had in trying to build
that system?
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Wow, the biggest problem I've had, you know
honestly, is that what we weretalking about is getting people
to break away from the, the ideaof how it should be done and
what it does, you know, um,getting people to leave, to
(15:16):
leave their assumptions of howtransactions should work or how
something should look, um, andand kind of rethink what they're
really doing.
And so I started by creatingreally all the real objects,
right, instead of beingtransactional, create an
(15:42):
ecosystem of all the objectsthat you come across, right, the
people, the companies, theequipment, the you know all
these things, and then sort ofstart connecting them in a
natural way instead of focusingon the transaction, focusing on,
like, what am I trying to do?
And then you know the computerwill take care of the
(16:05):
transactional piece as much aspossible.
And so, like, we try andunderstand from people, I think
one of the one of the ones Ilike the most was working with a
rental dealer and they havedifferent situations depending
on the kind of machine, and youknow who they're getting the
parts for it from and what theystock and what they don't want
(16:27):
to stock, and if the machine'sin the shop or in the field, and
so giving a dealer like that,different ways to execute that
work or to order those parts.
That isn't tied to theassumption of how a parts
transaction should work.
It's like what is the fastestway for a tech to say I need
(16:48):
this stuff and I need it for youknow this machine, and then we
build the system to let themexecute that faster, if it's
possible, right?
So like remember, in the catworld, you know every parts
order had to be a parts documentand it all had to go through
the inventory and all of thatstuff.
(17:10):
But sometimes you don't needthat right, and especially in a
mixed fleet.
Sometimes I just need apurchase order to buy those
parts and I'm just going towrite I'm just going to expense
them anyway against the rentalfleet.
And so how can you then talk topeople and get them to say like
, oh, this is what I'm reallytrying to do?
Is there a way I can skip thisin this case?
Like, yeah, we can make it skipthat step in this situation or
(17:34):
give you the choice to follow amore traditional path as well.
You know, but that takes justlooking at the basics of what
you're trying to do and thenbeing able to create interfaces
that can easily be modified tosupport those.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Take a simple thing like payroll, yeah, and apply
that to a technician yeah, wehave two needs for time with a
technician One is to put it ontoa work order so we can bill it,
and one is to put it into thepayroll system so we can get
paid.
So the way it kind of evolvedis we started with time cards A
(18:18):
hundred years ago.
We filled out a piece of paperand we handed it in at the end
of a week or a day or a month orwhatever the hell it was, and
had a piece of paper and wehanded it in at the end of a
week or a day or a month orwhatever the hell it was, and
had a bunch of people sittingdown at the end of the day.
Well, what did I do today?
Yeah, and we're like lookingout at the people that you're
dealing with.
How many of them have thetechnician enter his time
(18:39):
directly, versus how many ofthem have two people involved
one the technician and onesomebody else to put it onto the
computer?
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yeah, I try and avoid that one.
I mean to have two people touchit is kind of counterproductive
.
Yeah, time is an interestingthing because it's generated in
more ways than the majority ofthe way's.
It's generated by more, in moreways than the majority of the
way that it's generated.
The majority that we're allused to is I'm doing work on
(19:10):
this work order, that's themajority.
And then you get things likeand we did this initially and
now we're expanding that.
Like I have time that doesn'tbelong in a work order, it it's
just time.
Well, in a lot of places youhave to create a fake work order
so that time goes to that workorder because that's the
(19:31):
transactional system.
And so we're trying to breakthat down into the more
object-related thing.
Or they're just at work andthey're not working, or they're
doing an inspection becausethey're a yard guy, or they're
whatever right.
So like the object of time isjust the object time.
(19:51):
It doesn't have to be tied toone thing only and one method
for collecting.
But for the payroll side it'sall the same.
Time is time.
It has to paid.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
What I found interesting is 1971, we put in
ID cards for technicians andwands on the floor to book time.
Then the first thing we had todo was create something that
could be read by a wand thatwould represent what the
(20:27):
technician was working on.
So we created a card that hadthe work on it, the segment on
it, the description on it,standard time on it, et cetera.
So information for thetechnician as well as for us.
But again, still transaction.
So you had to get into the workorder by wanting the card and
(20:52):
then recognize it's you bywanting an ID card, and those
two things then created the job.
Well, that was a little better,because the technician didn't
need to walk to order parts andthe technician didn't need to
think about, at the end of theday, what he was doing.
And then we got a littlesmarter and said well, wait a
(21:12):
second, we only need to have theguy sign on to a job.
Yeah, we need to have them signoff, we can have them sign on
to the next job, and thatautomatically signs them off.
Well, gee, that's a littlesmarter.
Yeah, and and and.
Then we said well, why the helldo we need?
Speaker 2 (21:28):
a wand.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Why can't we give the guy a keyboard and have him
talk to the computer or put hisown time in directly?
And it started evolving.
But if you look out, I bet you50% of the dealers in the
capital goods industries,whether that's automotive or
marine or whatever the hell itis, still have two people
involved in payroll Probably.
(21:50):
Yeah, we don't understandcontinuous improvement.
We again, I don't think we'vetrained employees to be critical
about what they do.
Is that a fair comment?
Speaker 2 (22:02):
yeah, I think like exactly what you described.
There is just an iterativeapproach to different ways to
enter the same thing, but you'regetting only the same thing.
You none of those changes,rethought what you were really
doing.
They're just trying to make iteasier or change what you're
trying to do.
You know and that, and that'slike you see it in places where
(22:27):
people I love that we're on time, because it's so interesting
places where people will sign inon a time clock and sign on a
time clock and that's what runstheir pay, and then they have
service reports or a work ordersystem that collects time that
they spend on work orders, andthen they always have a variance
between the two systems thatthey have to try and sort out.
(22:49):
You know, um and and it it justchanging.
Actually applying technologyalso has to rethink about what
is it you're actually doing ineach one of those steps, and
then you can come up with a wayto actually integrate the two
instead of running variancereports and productivity reports
(23:12):
from two different data sets.
Systems that you interact with,like.
(23:32):
You can go on facebook andfacebook could do a perfect time
analysis for you of what you'dspent your time doing, right,
you're, you're working, you'relooking at pictures of this, and
then you read some news, andthen you went over here and
watched some videos and then youdid stuff, and if you asked
facebook, they tell you this ishow your time broke down, right,
but they embedded it because ofthe technology can track little
(23:54):
things as you're moving around.
They can apply that withouthaving to have you do a separate
time card of what you did onFacebook.
I think that's the realadvantage of modern systems is
that there's a lot morecapability inherently in the
technology that you can thenrethink about.
(24:15):
I want to apply those things.
You heard of something calledHotjar.
It's like this software thatbasically watches users use
something, so we could dointerviews and be like okay, how
does this work for you, howdoes this, you know, what did
you do, what are you trying todo, et cetera.
Or you can go and put somethinglike Hotjar into your system
(24:39):
and it will track what peopleare doing.
You can watch how people usethe system and where they're
getting stuck or when they dosomething repetitive or when
they do workarounds, becausethey won't tell you all that
stuff in an interview.
Yeah, but it's it's onlybecause the technology now
allows you to layer in a lotmore complexity than just the
(25:01):
transactional system itself yeah, yeah, and it the facebook
illustration of how you usedyour time.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
or the cell phone, how you used your phone.
You used it more this monththan last month.
Or Google Maps or whatever ways.
Here's how many miles.
Here's where the trips were,you know.
Here's what you did, all ofthat stuff, and we're nowhere
near that.
That stuff, and we're nowherenear that.
(25:35):
You know parts orders and I'mgoing to pick on the same thing
between service and parts.
50% of the dealers I would betyou money, have the technician
walk from their bay to the partsdepartment to order parts and
stand at the counter waitingtheir turn, if there's somebody
there and then they talk toanother person about the parts
that I need to order for thisrepair and they knew what those
(25:56):
parts were before they went.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Yeah, this is cultural.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Yeah.
And so now I've got two peopleinvolved in that.
Again, the same damn thingalways Getting a quote for a
machine, renting a machine,machines down in a field.
Why don't we just replace themachine?
Boy, that's expensive.
(26:21):
Well, how expensive is it whenthe guy can't use his machine
for three or four or five days?
Yeah, that's expensive.
Now, well, it's the income he'slost by not having his machine
available.
Yeah, yeah, that's expensivenow, well, it's the income he's
lost by not having his machineavailable.
No, we don't think about that.
This whole thing is heading fora train wreck.
That's ominous.
(26:43):
In fact, I think the dealertoday Steve Day and I chatted
about this about a week ago.
The dealer today is at risk.
Their market capture, theirmarket share on parts and labor,
which is where they make themoney, is at the point that it's
(27:03):
marginal.
And what we've seen over thelast 20 years the dealers have
had trouble.
The cost of equipment's gone updramatically, cost of interest
has gone up dramatically, wagesof people are under severe
stress.
So how do they solve a profitproblem?
They get rid of people, andwhen they get rid of people,
(27:28):
customers follow them out thedoor.
So our customer retention goesdown.
Yeah, meaning our market sharegoes down.
And here we go in that everdiminishing circle until you
finally disappear up yourfundamental orifice but I think
that's like because people don'tunderstand what's happening.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
And I think we've all sort of lived through this in
the past and and not to drag onyou know accountants too much,
but you know account accountantshave one way of looking at
things, right.
I I had a guy that worked forme and he was very expensive and
he helped people with um, avery complicated type of machine
(28:06):
and you know, to demo trainsupport, whatever was included,
whatever was required, and noone could understand why we were
spending the kind of money onthis person, because no one
quantified the impact that hewas having.
Right, and he was really good.
He explained it and said look,I'm saved five times my salary
(28:27):
every year on warranty claimsand sales goodwill, because I
make sure that that guy, whenhe's operating that machine,
doesn't tear it apart and comeat you with warranty, which
would be hard to argue isn'tbecause it's only a hundred hour
machine, but it's reallyactually how he's doing it and
so but no, if you don't tie ittogether or you're not willing
(28:50):
to look at what's reallyhappening, and that's why I said
earlier, like before we evengot going like this idea, like
if you were to start a business,a dealership over.
Would you grab a group of peoplethat understood what was what
you were doing every day?
You know, buy a bunch of pizzasand sit around and go, okay,
we're starting a dealership fromscratch.
How do you want to set it up?
What do you want to do?
(29:11):
What do you want to focus on?
How do you want to execute it?
You know where, where is therethings that we do that have real
value and where are the thingsthat are just like how we've
always done them?
And now that's, you know, likewalking into a parts guy, into a
, into a front parts room andhaving to sit in front of his
desk and go through diagrams andfind the parts.
You know and who are you, so Ican open the sales order first
(29:33):
and you know, just sit down andlike rethink, what do you really
want to do?
I want to sell parts.
I don't care how I sell them,that's not the important part.
I want to sell parts and I wantpeople to get the parts they
want the easiest way, so thatthey can fix their stuff,
because Cause that's all theyreally care about, you know.
And then start start from there.
We just had like a young groupof guys who started a new
(29:58):
dealership contact us andstarted with working with me and
they just want like when Ishowed them some of the things
and we talked about some of thethings you could do in a digital
storefront're like we want itall.
Like we want all of thosethings, we want it to go fully.
Like they want doing thingslike escrow integration so that
(30:19):
they can transact without anyconcerns and stuff and all fully
secure.
And no bank, no sending piecesof our pdfs in email that's
insecure, with the wire transferinformation that's been hacked
a thousand times.
So it's just like they'rerethinking what they're doing.
They they sell trucks andequipment, but they're starting
(30:39):
from scratch yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
I I agree with you, but and we're, we're heading to
that place.
If I use the US government as amodel, which is not what I want
to do, but just as anillustration, it's an
interesting time to bring thatone up.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
yeah, isn't it?
Speaker 1 (31:00):
though For two Canadians.
That's right.
I am Canadian, so I can be anequal opportunity abuser and
dump on both governments.
It's very empowering.
The circumstance today in theUnited States is that 27% of our
GDP goes to expenses for thefederal government.
(31:23):
Yeah, and if you take the last20 years out and go back 230
years, the average was 20.
How the hell did we get to 27?
And I think it's the same thingthat you were talking about.
We keep adding, keep adding,keep adding.
I start with a budget of amillion bucks.
Well, I need a million and ahalf next year and it just kind
(31:46):
of happens and there's no cop atthe door that says wait a
second, I don't have any moremoney.
What are you spending moremoney for?
And now and I use this as anillustration, not trying to
present anything either waypolitically here comes Trump and
Elon Musk and the quote unquotethe Department of Government
(32:08):
Efficiency.
Yeah, and look at the chaosthat that's created in the last
three to five days.
Oh my God.
Usaid oh my God.
You're allowing people towithdraw and you're going to pay
them eight months salary andbenefits.
What's going on here?
We can't, whoa, slow down, stop.
(32:28):
That's why you live in Hawaii.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
So the tsunami won't reach you.
What's going on here?
We can't whoa slow down, stop.
That's why you live in Hawaii,so the tsunami won't reach you.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
That's right, that friend of mine before I got here
.
He says you're going to love ithere, Ron.
You're 2,500 miles away fromall the BS.
It's really true.
So we, we, we come around again.
I think it.
I think this generation thatwe're at now, 2025, where we're
(32:55):
at now, is our education system,I think, has failed.
We're not generating out of ourschool system, whether it's
grade school, technical school,university or wherever we're not
creating work ready people thatcan sustain our society.
They don't have the skills, andone of our contributors, Ed
(33:17):
Gordon, who's got a pretty sharpguy, a couple of PhDs, one in
history, one in economics saysby 2030, 50% of the American
workforce, which happens to bearound 75 million people, will
not have the skills to beemployable.
Isn't?
Speaker 2 (33:34):
that fascinating when you think that the huge focus
of most educational institutionshas been task-focused and
real-world job-focused.
It's a pretty ironic statementthat you're making that people
are less prepared.
They make fun of, likeclassical education of just you
know, basic knowledge andthinking and all those things
(33:58):
and focus on job specific tasktraining and we're less prepared
you opened up a magic wordcalled thinking.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
I don't think we have people going through school
that are thinking as much asthey're being brainwashed.
You know, think about how welearn addition and any any
mathematics.
It's the number series.
One plus one is two.
You know Well what about.
One plus one is 11?
You know you put that in frontof a young person, they get
(34:31):
confused.
No one plus one is two.
Well, there's no two anywherethere, but there's two ones.
Why isn't it 11?
Now they're stuck because theydon't think and I don't know.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
So, you're going to advocate for classical education
.
I really would.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
I'd like to go back to what education was in the
1800s, you know, until thepresident of Harvard in the 30s
decided he wanted to make moremoney.
The model that we had inAmerica was the classic
education out of England, oxford, and reading, writing,
arithmetic, kind of thing.
Yeah.
And he said in the 30s this isa fact you can verify we can
(35:13):
make a hell of a lot more moneyif we start adding some classes.
Yeah, it didn't matter whetherthat was going to be
contributing to societal gain.
It's going to be good for you.
You're going to learn a lot.
So we have studies like women'sstudies.
I'm not going to pick on that.
But okay, tell me how thatcontributes to betterment of
(35:37):
society.
It makes you better as a person.
You're smarter and betterrounded.
But what does that do forsociety?
And then you know, here comesthe magic bullet.
How did we get to?
My grandson wanted to be anuclear engineer, so we applied
to Purdue, which is where he gotin.
And he comes back at me whenhe's 17 years old, says 350,000,
(36:01):
bobby, I can't do that.
Even with all my scholarships,it's still 170 grand.
I can't do that either.
How the hell do you get to aplace that education costs that
much?
That's a whole other topic, ron, is it ever?
But it's all related to thesame damn thing we don't think
about what we're doing.
(36:21):
We don't have people that arethinkers.
Continuous improvement, edward,denning and Juran back in the
1980s.
It was really exciting.
Then it dissipated.
We don't have any staying power.
So we came to Six Sigma oh,that didn't work.
Then we went to 5S oh, thatdidn't work.
We re-labeled it, charged more.
What's it?
Speaker 2 (36:42):
called now Because I'm out of the loop.
Anything.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Oh, I forgot.
We have casual dress days now.
Oh, we can work from home.
Now this all becomesinteresting.
On the counter is an example inparts.
Or technical advice.
Why don't I have a bunch ofpeople on the phone?
Customer wants some help withtechnical advice.
(37:09):
Should we give it or not?
Speaker 2 (37:11):
that's an interesting one.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
I always think yes and then here comes the right to
repair.
Should you share your technicalinformation, your engineering
information, with me or not?
Speaker 2 (37:24):
that's another interesting one isn't it but I
it, that's like.
I like that one because it's the, the defensive approach to your
business, or the being thepreferred choice approach, right
, so you can either try anddefend your business by making
you know it hard for yourcustomer to leave, or creating a
(37:46):
dependency out of in anunavailability of information,
like they're all ways to defendby, by preventing right, instead
of being the, the business orvendor of choice.
By choice, because like well, Icalled this guy and he helped
me with this.
I really don't have time to doit, but I know they know how to
(38:07):
do it because they explained itto me last time.
I'm going to send it to them todo it right.
Like I don't, I've neverunderstood, um, why people try
and keep things captive.
I it first started like when Iwas in the thing with um, like
maintenance contracts, capturingthe business with maintenance
contracts.
(38:28):
You know all these, yeah, allof these strategies like even
the early, prevent your customerfrom leaving instead of
(38:50):
incentivizing or working withyour customer in such a way that
they don't want to leave, nomatter what.
Like if you jack up the price,they'll be like that's fine,
like everything else is so good,but instead they're like you
jack up the price and you makeit hard to do business on some
things.
And if someone says, like, canI have information, how to do
this repair myself?
My tech is up in Sudbury andyou can't get someone there, and
(39:12):
you say, no, we can't do that,and like, well, now you're just
a jerk and you know you'reexpensive.
You know software companies doit with data.
Can I get my data into thisthing?
Because I've got this idea.
I'd like to try.
No, do you like to try?
No, like the data, the data hasto stay in, or you don't have
access, or you have to pay moreto get the data out that way.
And like how is that?
(39:34):
Like, that's that's a defensivestrategy for retaining people
instead of being like yeah, wecan do that, see, like.
And that customer says, oh, Ilove working with these guys
because I can do things I wantto try and do and they support
me in doing that and that's whyI would never leave them,
(39:57):
because that makes my life, myability to morph my business and
adjust to my customers' needsso much easier.
I never understood the defenseof things like contracts on
software.
If it doesn't work, it doesn'twork.
You know, in in maintenancecontracts at dealerships.
When you go a 10-year contracton a 980 and and five years in,
people are like this just isn'tworking for us to have your text
do everything and stuff thereisn't.
(40:19):
I don't think there's a dealthat says, well tough, you're
stuck for 10 years.
Like okay, well, let's look atwhere we stand, right, like
you're we're up with this,allowing this, and like we're
like five grand apart on justwalking away from it, okay,
we'll pay five grand and okay,great.
And then next monday theyprobably still call anyway hey,
can you send a tech to fix thatmachine?
That's no longer under contract, but we'll still have you fix
(40:39):
it.
Like I don't understanddefensive strategies in in
business because they justreally just piss your customers
off.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
I don't like defensive strategies, period,
and I think part of that Iattribute to the fact that I
grew up in a competitiveswimming world and I learned
very quickly that it's not mecompeting with other people,
it's me competing with myself.
Good point If I can be the bestthat I can be and it's not good
(41:09):
enough, so be it.
But if, by being the best I canbe, I become the winner,
fantastic.
And I used to say to peoplethere's eight people in a race,
you get up on the block and youfinish last, but you beat your
best time, you won, you won.
It just didn't happen today theway you want to.
(41:32):
So we get this whole thingagain.
We're defensive, I want toprotect that, but our actions
decry that.
I have technicians and that guythat goes out and did all of
that magic that reduced thewarranty costs and he was
(41:54):
expensive.
And the company is saying, well, gee, you're costing me money.
When are we going to get to thepoint that we look at Amazon in
the 1990s, in the 1990s, andhere we are, let's say, 30 years
later.
Just to put a funny on, itmight be 32, might be 28,
(42:15):
doesn't matter, and they're thelargest retailer in the world.
Yeah, and what did they do?
They made it easy for thecustomer, yep, and they did it
with systems.
Oh my Lord, imagine that.
And they did it with systems.
Oh my lord, imagine that.
And that's those guys sittingin the kitchen that you're
talking about.
You got six or eight or tenguys and we open a couple of
(42:38):
beers and and start well, howwould we like to do this if we
were starting from scratch?
Yeah, we don't have very manypeople that have that kind of
knowledge.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
I don't think that's true.
I just don't.
I think that's the problem.
It's, like you know, we don'ttake our people out to really
think about it.
We do corporate retreats andthat, but I've been in a whole
lot of them and none of themactually sit down and make you
rethink the business properly,and none of them actually sit
down and make you rethink thebusiness properly.
(43:13):
But I think the problem is wenever sit down and rethink what
it is we're trying to do right,like why do you keep having to
increase your budget in adepartment because the one thing
you won't touch is the core wayof doing things, because you
think that's untouchable,instead of saying like, well,
this is a, you know, maybe thisisn't the right way to do it
anymore, considering all theother options we have for how to
(43:35):
do it.
You know, you know, mcdonald'swas kind of an interesting one
that way.
I mean I hate those boardswhere you go now and you order
your own food.
I still like going up to theperson and ask, but I mean they
didn't get stuck on the idea.
Like no, the only way to ordera hamburger is to walk up to the
counter and ask the teenagerbehind the counter for the
(43:57):
hamburger.
You know, and, and you canstill and this is interesting to
do you can still do it.
You can still go up to thecounter and order it.
You can go to the board andorder it, you and order it.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
You can do your app and order it and you can go to
the drive-thru and order it.
Four ways you can order fromMcDonald's and each one fits
someone, and how they want todeal with McDonald's and the
trick is that keyboard.
I'm going to call it a kiosk,just to use a different term.
If I only had.
It's a walk-in situation.
I'm walking in, I'm not drivingin, I'm walking into a
McDonald's and I want something.
And I've got two channelopportunities One's with a
(44:37):
person, one's without a person.
Yeah, I wonder, if you did anexperiment for a week, what the
customer would choose the kioskor the person?
Speaker 2 (44:53):
It depends on the customer would choose the kiosk
or the person.
It's.
It depends on the customer.
Look at, look at the grocerystore with your self-checkout
and your cat and someone whochecks you out.
You know, some people liketalking to someone or not having
to do it.
Some people like being able togo through the kiosk and if the
lineups to go through a personare wrong, you'll go and check
out yourself because today youjust want to get out of there
and you'll do the thing youdon't like to do.
It's just, it's options, right.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
I'm with you, so let's go to that.
The line for the person is long.
Yeah, the line for the kiosk islong.
What is the solution toshortening the line People?
Speaker 2 (45:30):
And your resource right.
Yeah, only at that point, Iguess, yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
Add another person or add another kiosk, which is the
most cost-effective way to dothat.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
But I think that's what grocery stores are finding
to some degree in this thing isthat there's a mix and there are
times when they should add oneof those and there times when
they should add those and one ismore flexible than others.
Right you?
You can't on on saturdaymorning at 10 realizing that
everyone's coming in forgroceries, add a bunch of
self-checkout systems.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
they take a long time to install right, and so they
just add a bunch of people soand again, I'm, I'm with you,
but but I don't think we arelooking critically at how we
operate a dealership and I thinkthat's going to lead to the
demise of the dealership.
I think we're already seeing itin Canada.
(46:21):
Now there's two Caterpillardealers.
When I started, there were 10.
When you started, there were 10.
When I started, you know, therewere 10 provinces and two
territories NorthwestTerritories and the Yukon.
How many are there today?
More.
And the United States has 50states, until such time as
(46:45):
Trudeau becomes the governor ofthe 51st state.
Who would have thought you know?
I mean, we get all of thisstuff, but nobody.
I'm in Moscow, matt.
When were you in?
Speaker 2 (46:57):
Moscow.
Huh, when were you in Moscow?
Speaker 1 (47:00):
Oh, I've been in Moscow often.
I trained there for hadtraining classes for eight years
, nine years up there, and I dida lot of consulting work there.
So I'm with a dealership.
I'm talking to one of theleaders who's got an MBA, he's
married and has three children.
He's 45-ish years old and Iasked him you know, if you could
(47:24):
wave a wand, what would youchange here that would make your
life easier and be better forthe company?
His response floored me.
He said don't do that to me,Just tell me what you want me to
do.
I was floored, Didn't want tothink, and so I came back.
(47:47):
And this is 25 or more yearsago and I came back.
I started doing the same thinghere with different managers.
If you had a wand, what wouldbe the first thing you'd change
to make your life easier here atwork?
That would also be a benefit tothe company.
And I get a whole bunch ofglossed over eyeballs.
Yeah, Hadn't really thoughtabout that.
(48:08):
What the hell is the purpose ofa leader?
But to help the employee bebetter at what they do, to help
satisfy the customer with moreof their needs, to help make
more money for their employer,to provide a safe environment
and they're not looking at howthey do the work.
What is this crap?
Speaker 2 (48:32):
That's like it.
It it takes training, it, youknow.
That's why I say go on saturday.
You buy pizza and sit aroundand talk.
It takes training to get peopleto think and look at that.
If you look at leanmanufacturing environments, you
know they have repetitive weeklymeetings to talk about how the
process works.
It becomes part of the cultureto look at what's not working or
what could work better and tryand implement that on a regular
basis.
We don't do that at dealerships.
(48:52):
Yeah, there's no, it's justkeep transacting, keep
transacting, keep transacting.
And it's interesting.
You made me think like, um, thethe death of the dealership, and
we've seen all of thisconsolidation over the last
years and I've always thoughtlike a big driver of that is the
(49:14):
, the capital requirements of adealership.
Like a lot of people can'tstomach the capital requirements
of a big dealership.
They're hard to sell because ofthe capital requirements and
the amount of assets they haveon the balance sheet.
But to some of you made methink like do you think that the
reason there's it we have thiscapital problem is because the
(49:35):
dealership keeps trying tooperate in a model, like an old
model that requires all thisinventory and stock and and all
this capital, you know all thebricks and mortar.
And all this capital, all thebricks and mortar and stuff, is
it the old model that's drivingthe capital requirements and
killing dealers?
Speaker 1 (49:54):
I would say yes, but I think that's an excuse.
If the industry made enoughmoney as a return on assets, the
cost of the asset wouldn'tmatter a damn.
(50:14):
I'm going to make 350% returnon assets.
Or I'm a rental company.
I'm Sunbelt, I get 50% returnon assets, totally macro baby.
Oh, I only do $4 billion a year.
You get $2 billion net taxablepre-tax income.
Holy crap, baby, doesn't matterhow much the machine is.
(50:38):
I'm getting to the holy jeez.
You can't do that other thanwith illegal drugs.
I don't think that's theproblem.
I think the problem is people.
Example why do I need to have ajourney mechanic do a 250-hour
(50:58):
or a 500-hour preventativemaintenance service?
Why do I have a guy who's got20 years experience every
training school that I've eversent anybody to that I pay 45
bucks an hour to?
why, do I want to have him doingmaintenance?
Well, in fact I don't.
(51:20):
And my assistants tell themarket I'm not interested in
doing maintenance.
Because the market can go outand hire somebody at half the
price of the journeyman and dothe maintenance, because they
redefine maintenance as changingfilters and fluids.
That's not what maintenance is.
How do we let them get awaywith that?
Because the cost per operatinghour should be the driver for
(51:43):
the customer.
You can reduce the cost peroperating hour should be the
driver for the customer.
You can reduce the cost peroperating hour by doing
maintenance properly.
Period.
It's been proven everywhere andwe're stuck.
So all of that.
I believe that there will beparts dealers who will sell
(52:04):
parts to machine owners thatthey purchased from the guy who
made the part, who sold it tothe equipment assembler, the OEM
, and they just took out a levelof the supply chain.
Speaker 2 (52:21):
Well, I think that's yeah inevitable and it's been
happening.
Speaker 1 (52:26):
Yeah, and that's why Amazon has become so successful.
Yeah, so if the parts businessis going to go away because I
can start up a company, you andI can start up a company and
we'll create it.
We'll call it a Kappaconstruction area parts
(52:48):
availability instead of NAPA.
We'll carry 3,000 to 5,000 partnumbers all the fast movers and
we'll buy them directly fromthe people that sell it to the
OEMs and we'll sell it for halfthe price that the OEM does.
Yeah, Is there anything that'sstanding in the way from that
happening in your view?
Speaker 2 (53:09):
I don't think so.
I mean, once you have theinformation, like it's being
tested.
There's people out there likeGearflow and some other
companies that are heading thatway, but I think, in my opinion,
it's a symptom of the fact thatthere's a demand to do it that
way, rather than the traditionalpeople who already own the
(53:32):
relationships and own the supplylines, creating methods for
executing what the customerwants.
They're pushing themselvespeople away into these new
channels of doing things the waymodern people want to do it,
and I think they're missing thedata that says that they're not
(53:53):
collecting the data for thepeople that aren't there.
Right, it's like the classicproblem of a dealership owner
that says, well, I talked to allmy customers and they all like
having my guy come by withdonuts, like, yeah, but you only
talk to the people who likegetting donuts and everyone else
has left your business.
So, yeah, it's a confirmationbias problem.
(54:13):
And if you, if you say that, oh, I, you know all my customers
like coming into the partsdepartment and sitting with the
parts guy, yeah, those are theones that are coming and doing
that, but then they don'trepresent the majority of the
potential customers.
And if you don't collect thatinformation you know, like, then
you just don't know.
(54:35):
It's one of the reasons thatAmazon tries so hard to track
what you looked at, remind youwhat you looked at and what you
thought you were going to buyand hope to buy is because it
tells them exactly.
You know.
If they only looked at theirsales, they would say, oh, we
only have this, this is all wesell.
But they look at all this otherdata that says, oh, but all
(54:55):
these people are interested inthis stuff.
Like, why aren't they buyingthat?
And they'll figure it out andthey'll get you to start buying
it when they fix that problem.
But if they don't collect theinformation on what else you're
looking at, then they don't evenknow.
Speaker 1 (55:09):
I'm in a small apartment where I live.
It's around 1800 square feet,two bedroom, two bathroom
nothing fantastic, but I've gotfour Alexa devices, do you, and
wherever I go, I getnotifications, and it's all
(55:30):
related to exactly what you justthe other day you looked at
such and such.
We have something in yourshopping cart you're looking for
that has a special price.
Here's what it is and how muchyou're saving.
Would you like me to add it toyour order now?
Yeah, and and.
Again, it's relating back tomaking things easy and simple
for customers to conduct theirbusiness.
(55:51):
I need soap, I need a pill, asubscription renewed All of
these things are predictable.
Yeah, my $500 service.
It's predictable.
My engine is overheating.
I'm told that through adiagnostic, through a sensor,
and I call the dealer and I callthe customer back and say Mr
(56:13):
Customer, your engine isoverheating.
We would like you to shut itdown so that you can stop
problems.
Or gee, you really bought thatpart for that hydraulic repair
from George.
Speaker 2 (56:28):
Where do you get the part?
Speaker 1 (56:31):
Are you putting that $30,000 pump at risk because you
saved three bucks on a partnumber?
We don't have those discussionsanymore and I think part of it
is because we're defensive.
We're protecting what we've got.
Part of it is we're stuck in amodel that doesn't work anymore.
Part of it is we blame highcost, but the reality is
(56:57):
low-skilled workers.
All of that stuff is notsounding good.
It doesn't sound good.
I really believe that's comingnow.
There are wonderfulopportunities for people that
satisfy customer needs.
Just like you say, I'll spendmore money with those guys
because they satisfy all myneeds.
(57:19):
Whenever I have something Iwant to get done, they do it.
Yeah, and that's what worthsomething to me.
Speaker 2 (57:25):
Yeah, that that's what worth something to me.
Yeah, that's, in the end andthis is the funny thing I always
find Like I love the people Iwork with in the IEDA right, and
a lot of them ex-sales guysfrom big dealers who start their
own dealerships and usedequipment rentals whatever from
(57:47):
big dealers who start their owndealerships and used equipment
rentals whatever and, like, thereason they did it is because
they realized that they couldsatisfy their customers better
on their own and so they got inthe business and they made a
successful business out of it.
So, pretty much, if you lookback at everyone's business,
there was something that theywere focused on doing better
(58:07):
that got them in the business,and the problem is we forget
about what it is that we weredoing that put us in the
business right, like and andthat's got to shift.
Speaker 1 (58:19):
You got to have that rethought so let me take that
one as an illustration.
I got tired of my customersbeing mad at me because my
company would not do what Iwanted the company to do.
Speaker 2 (58:34):
As a result of that.
Speaker 1 (58:35):
I left the company.
I'm going to start doing itmyself so that I can satisfy the
customer the way that I want tosatisfy the customer, and
everything works, yeah, andthat's what happened to
independent mechanics as well.
It's every single place.
So I think I want to stop there.
That's enough provocation for alot of people to consider, to
(58:57):
think of.
How would you wrap up thisdiscussion, what would you say
would be the message you want topass to people that you want
them to consider?
Speaker 2 (59:10):
I, I think, just going off of the air, like I
think people need to look at thething they're not looking at.
I think we have so muchconfirmation bias of what we're
doing and that's the way to doit that and we've stopped
looking in all the other areasof where we're not getting
business from this person orthat person, or not seeing
information about this or thatthat you know.
(59:30):
Like, like part sales is thesame thing.
You know.
If you don't write down what aguy called for and you didn't
have, you don't know that youshould have had it.
If you only look at the thingsyou sold, you'll only stock the
things you sold and not thethings that the guy called for
that he wanted.
Like, start start figuring outways to collect information
about the things you sold.
You'll only stock the thingsyou sold and not the things that
the guy called for that hewanted.
Like, start start figuring outways to collect information
about the things that you don'tsee.
(59:51):
And and the biggest one in alldealerships is the money that
trickles through our fingers by,the hundreds of thousands of
dollars for not tracking certaindecision-making like why do you
send that mechanic to do a 250hour service?
How much did it cost you tosend an unexperienced guy to go
diagnose it three times beforehe figured it out?
Why do you not track that?
You know?
(01:00:11):
Why are you not?
We don't, I don't.
I think we don't have as big ashortage of mechanics as we have
because we're not looking atthe data of how we're using them
and applying them properly toto you know, cut average repair
time in half.
If you applied people properly,it'd probably take half as many
people to do the same amount ofwork.
But I hear a guy goes out, doesa job in two hours, another guy
(01:00:34):
goes and does it eight hoursSame thing.
It's not a mechanic shortage,it's a planning information
shortage.
Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
I agree with you 100% and you know an example of that
is Alex Kraft and his company,heave, and we did a podcast
recently and I said, well, how'sit going?
He said not bad, we just did areview of 2024.
I said, oh, anythinginteresting?
He said, yeah, a customer makesa request, needs repair or
(01:01:09):
maintenance on his machine.
Our average response is oneminute.
So from the customer request tosomebody responding to that
request, it's one minute.
I said, wow, you do that forevery single customer, yes,
every single transaction, yes.
I said, okay, what else?
(01:01:30):
He said well, within fiveminutes, the customer has made a
decision about who he wants tohave do the job and the job is
underway.
I said, well, why aren't theybuying it from the dealer?
Well the dealer didn't give thema timeframe.
That was good enough.
What was the timeframe?
Oh, three, three, four days Ifit's field, in a couple of weeks
(01:01:50):
if it's shop.
I said, okay, well, how longare these jobs?
He said, well, the average jobwe did in 2024 was five hours,
yeah, and the dealer is sayingto the customer we want you to
wait three hours for a repairthat they can do in five hours,
or three days for a repair infive hours?
And the answer that came backfrom Alex is seems so.
(01:02:12):
I said terrific.
How many mechanics have you gotsigned up?
He said, well, we've been at itfor about a year now.
I think we've got six, 700technicians that are involved
from zero.
Yeah, so data defensiveness,model bias, all of this other
(01:02:33):
stuff, it's not.
It's not good.
We got to get the the, thedealers, to look at the clouds
are upside down and look at itdifferently, look at it with
fresh eyes, or?
Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
their life is limited .
Here's a great idea for any bigdealer listening what why
aren't you white labeling alex'splatform to run service?
Yep, be like, because alex hasthat business and he had to
build it from scratch.
He had to build the software,the tools, the billing, he had
to find the mechanics and he hadto find the customers and, like
(01:03:06):
most big dealers have all ofthose advantages over him.
They just didn't figure out howto deliver service in a modern
way like he has.
So call Alex up and ask aboutwhite labeling his product in
your territory.
Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
Yeah, it's not meant to be a commercial for Alex, but
it turns out that way, sothat's it.
I want to do this again in acouple of four months, a couple
of four months, a couple of fourmonths on this particular
subject.
I want to do something elsewith you on your software, so
that we can start getting peopleto be more aware of that.
Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
I think we should do one live in about April Okay.
Speaker 1 (01:03:45):
I'll come to Hawaii.
There you go, I'll get aspecial room just for you.
Awesome, I'll put padding onthe walls.
Speaker 2 (01:03:55):
Yeah, but I know I can order pizza from any room in
your house with Alexa, that'sright.
Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
That's right.
That's right.
So, Alex, thanks very much foryour time and thanks to
everybody who's been listeningto this the Clouds Are Upside
Down podcast.
I look forward to seeing youagain in the very new future.
Mahalo.
Aloha and welcome to another podcast from Learning
Without Scars.
Today we're joined by MetzKramer, and I want to have this
be another edition of our CloudsAre Upside Down podcast series,
which is basically looking atthe world with fresh eyes eyes,
(00:33):
Metz has been an innovator, adisruptor in the world of
methods, processes, from thetimes he was at a dealership and
in the last number of years, hestarted a software business
that really gets us into theclouds are upside down.
So with that as our startingpoint, Metz, what year did you
start?
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Visibility- so I started consulting after I left
Libre in 2017.
And it was really during thefirst few years of just
consulting and helping dealersthat everything kept coming back
to information systems and it'slike a go-to area, a comfort
(01:12):
zone.
It's, you know, easy for me,and so I kept having to help
people with data integration orhow systems work, or help them
find a tool to do something, andthat's really where it came
from.
Eventually, a few dealersapproached me and said we don't
like what we have and can youbuild us a whole new system?
(01:34):
And I said, yeah, I thinkthat's possible.
You know, with moderntechnology, it's if you know how
the process is supposed to work, then, yeah, it's reasonable
just to build a whole new dealersystem.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
One of the things that you and I have talked about
is the level of knowledge andunderstanding about business
systems in this industry.
It's not just this industry,it's everywhere.
But in the capital goodsindustries automotive,
construction equipment, cranes,material handling, marine
(02:09):
forestry, mining, all of thatstuff the people that use
systems have never really beentrained on systems.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
No, they were trained by the systems.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
And the people that trained them by the systems.
And the people that trainedthem by the system were systems
people.
Yeah, and those systems people,although I love them to death,
they don't understand theoperation that they're applying
a system to, typically Typically.
Yeah, I'm going to build asystem.
(02:44):
I'm going to get a, an analyst,somebody who knows how to design
systems.
I'm going to get a programmer.
I'm going to put code togetherso that I can run it on a
machine and then I give it tothe person who's going to use it
and show them how they'resupposed to use it, right or
yeah, and it's a bit of a trap.
(03:06):
I think we never ask the personwho's doing the job what they'd
like to see, what, what wouldmake their life easier?
How could they do that jobeasier?
Am I fair in making thatcomment?
Speaker 2 (03:19):
I think so I think you know like a lot of these
things start with people who aretrying to do something or are
currently executing something.
You've called it out a lot oftimes with the paper-to-glass
thing.
If you ask someone, how do Imake the software of what you're
(03:40):
doing with all this paper andstuff, they're going to tell you
what that paper is right.
And I think that's maybe thegenerational shift in these kind
of systems is that a lot of theold ones are really
transactional systems and theywere built to digitize a
transaction and so they kind ofstay structured.
(04:03):
And if you look at some of theold systems, they really are
purely structured around theinformation related to a
transaction.
Instead of bringing people backand saying, like, hey, what are
you trying to do?
It's payable, that's atransaction, that's a process.
They're not asking, hey, whatare you trying to do?
(04:25):
Oh well, people send me thisstuff and I got to make sure
they get paid and I need tofigure out who authorized this
to happen.
And that's what you're tryingto get done, right.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Yeah, yeah, I think you pointed out quite nicely.
I've been saying we've beentransaction driven for a long
time.
Now we need to be data drivenand that transition confuses
people.
But if you go back to sellingand the principles of selling
what does the customer need orwant is kind of, if you want to
(05:01):
be successful at selling, you'vegot to find, find out what
those things are, and thenyou've got to address them.
And I don't think systems peopleright from the get-go.
I mean I'm going back right tothe beginning with machine
language, coding, with having tooverlay programs because we
didn't have enough space to theexpense of data and files.
(05:24):
Like a hundred thousand dollarsfor a disk drive, for goodness
sake, 50 years ago.
Today it's a buck, yeah, and Idon't know that.
So my example has always beenthe steam engine to the electric
engine, and that was the 80s,the 1880s, and that happened
quickly because the tool was somuch better all by itself, yeah,
(05:47):
but the methods that the toolwas applied to didn't change for
a generation, 20 years, becauseit was almost too much for
society to handle yeah, for mostpeople.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
or to rethink it it's easier to iterate than it is to
rethink right?
It really is.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
I think you know my background with swimming and
there's been some remarkablechanges in swimming, and the
first and most obvious one isthe pool and water.
And in the 60s the water priorto the water was cleaned with
(06:35):
either chlorine or fluorine.
After it was cleaned with ozoneRight, the resistance of water
with air bubbles in it is muchless than it is without them.
Right, Meaning the times weremuch faster.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah right, it's kind of obvious.
(06:56):
But then the next one that camealong was gutters.
Do you remember swimming poolsused to have gutters?
Yeah, right on the edge, yep.
And if you look at competitivepools used to have gutters.
Yeah, right on the edge, likeyep.
And if you look at competitivepools, there are no gutters.
With the weather, the waterwould hit the wall and would
come back into the pool.
Yeah, a wave, that was greaterresistance.
(07:17):
Take away the the edge and havethe gutter gone and it's the
top of the pool.
Oh yeah, the water just slipsoff the side of the pool doesn't
come back in.
So, again, time went down, andwhen I was doing it, we shaved
our bodies.
We wanted to be so much thatsounds like fun.
(07:38):
Our body.
You know what the hell is thisall about?
Yeah, and it came back later.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Now look at the bathing suits yeah, yeah,
they've had that one bathingsuit that was like like fisher
shark skin or something and itwas illegal because it was so
much faster.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Precisely it's legal yeah, and the times are so much
faster.
Then we go to things like thehigh jump.
The pole vault used to belanded in a sand pit.
Yeah, I'm not going to jumpseven feet up.
It's going to hurt the headlike hell when I land on the
ground.
But you put a big fluffy pillowthere.
Yeah, ten feet, because itdoesn't hurt.
(08:14):
We've got the same thing withsystems, but I don't think we've
ever really gone up high enoughin the helicopter to say what
in the hell are we trying to dohere?
Until you came along, exap camealong, microsoft came along,
infor came along, a whole bunchof different people who just
continue to do the same thing,and we have unbelievable
(08:40):
screw-ups dealers that implementa new computer system that
don't get financial statementsout, don't get invoices out how
the hell can that happen?
Speaker 2 (08:48):
I have no idea.
I always wanted to get theback-end story on that one, like
at what point does someone nottry and print an invoice?
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Exactly what kind of testing?
Speaker 2 (08:59):
But even that, that's like a really interesting thing
, like even that is sort ofpredicated on this idea that the
only way to do this is to havethis big monstrous go live right
, and that everything is justsort of in stasis and in test
and no one's really doinganything and it's just a bunch
of systems, people, and then oneday we're all going to go live,
(09:21):
we're trained up, we're readyto go and it's this nightmare,
you know, and and people don'tlook at like, is that really the
only way?
Like, isn't there ways that wecan layer in the new platform?
Are there functions that couldbe partially adopted,
implemented in any new platform,before we we actually move,
(09:44):
like the transactionalconnection that we change?
That and that's like.
This is why people are soterrified is because we've been
taught like that's the only way.
We don't, we don't rethink whatis it we're really trying to do
?
And there's multiple thingsyou're trying to do and it's
usually driven by the one thinglike oh, we need to change the
accounting system.
(10:04):
And it drives.
It's driven by all of this datafrom all these operating
components, and I think that'sfor anyone's business.
It's more interesting tosometimes just say, okay, what
is it we're trying to accomplish?
Well, we're trying toaccomplish getting better tools
for our people and betterprocess support.
Better tools for our people,you know, in better process
support, and then eventuallyit'd be nice if that also
(10:27):
generated the financialtransactions that we need.
But people don't look at thebusiness that way.
I think that's why people hatesystems is because they just
they're forced to generatetransactions.
That's the only value is theend product instead of the front
to generate transactions,that's.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
the only value is the end product instead of the
front.
You know, as I get older I'mnot sure that I get wiser, but I
sure have a lot more questions.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
That is wisdom, actually.
I know Asking questions.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
I know, and that's you know, our teaching style is
Socratic.
We don't give answers, we askquestions and hopefully, through
that evolution of questions, wecome to an agreement staircase
where we get the other end ofthat.
Oh, that's okay, I understandthat.
So somebody calls in to theparts department and they want
parts.
And one of the things that I'vealways struggled with is asking
(11:22):
people at the counter or on thephone or technicians when you
call looking for parts, what'sthe first thing you want to know
?
And almost invariably everybodysays have you got it?
Yeah, I said okay.
What's the second thing youwant to know?
How much is it?
(11:42):
Yeah, okay.
So then we look at systems andwe've come a long way from the
abacus.
But the customer calls in, thetechnician calls in and the
first thing that the partsdepartment asks is who the hell
(12:04):
are you?
Yeah, and that's the firstthing that they put into the
computer.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Right, because you've got to start in order.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Yeah, we've got to get this going.
Well, I don't want it, or Iwant to have you got it.
Yeah, well, I've got to gothrough to get I.
I got to see who you are toknow whether I can let you have
it or not.
Where did that come from?
That's baloney.
It's really the same kind ofthing.
Here comes service.
I think that's kind of whereyou started.
Customer calls in.
(12:36):
They got a complaint.
The first thing we got to do isfind out if the complaint is
real or if it's a symptom, andthat's pretty simple too.
How do you do that?
You inspect it, yeah.
And so here comes technology.
And we've got sensors, we'vegot GPS, we have a health check
(12:57):
remotely, we can get alerts onour phone, on our computer all
different manners.
There's a problem with thatmachine.
We still.
Who are you?
Speaker 2 (13:09):
It's the first one.
It's transactional, yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
And over the years and this is where it gets
distressing.
When I started with theCaterpillar deal, you started
with one too, in 69, the partsmarket share for Caterpillar,
and they surveyed every customerin the world face-to-face Every
five years, but you could stillthen.
1965 was the last time they didit.
(13:35):
In 1970, they did 20% and theywent to every five years.
We'll get the full thing.
But talk about importantinformation.
What do you like about doingbusiness with us?
Who do you go to if you don'tbuy from us?
What do you like about doingbusiness with them?
(13:56):
Talk about valuable, valuableinformation.
And now we've got a whole bunchof people.
In 2025, the market share hasgone from 83 to 38.
And I say to people well, thisis really cool, you've got
another 50 years and you canlose another 10%, another half
of your market share.
What are you going to do aboutit?
They don't even know.
That's true, because we don'tmeasure that.
(14:18):
Yeah, not transaction, it'sdata.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Yeah, that's different yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
This whole thing gets complicated.
So you came along with a newsystem, a brand new third, a new
centennial opportunity tocreate a new system from scratch
with all the software tools tomake it happen.
(14:46):
What's the biggest problemyou've had in trying to build
that system?
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Wow, the biggest problem I've had, you know
honestly, is that what we weretalking about is getting people
to break away from the, the ideaof how it should be done and
what it does, you know, um,getting people to leave, to
(15:16):
leave their assumptions of howtransactions should work or how
something should look, um, andand kind of rethink what they're
really doing.
And so I started by creatingreally all the real objects,
right, instead of beingtransactional, create an
(15:42):
ecosystem of all the objectsthat you come across, right, the
people, the companies, theequipment, the you know all
these things, and then sort ofstart connecting them in a
natural way instead of focusingon the transaction, focusing on,
like, what am I trying to do?
And then you know the computerwill take care of the
(16:05):
transactional piece as much aspossible.
And so, like, we try andunderstand from people, I think
one of the one of the ones Ilike the most was working with a
rental dealer and they havedifferent situations depending
on the kind of machine, and youknow who they're getting the
parts for it from and what theystock and what they don't want
(16:27):
to stock, and if the machine'sin the shop or in the field, and
so giving a dealer like that,different ways to execute that
work or to order those parts.
That isn't tied to theassumption of how a parts
transaction should work.
It's like what is the fastestway for a tech to say I need
(16:48):
this stuff and I need it for youknow this machine, and then we
build the system to let themexecute that faster, if it's
possible, right?
So like remember, in the catworld, you know every parts
order had to be a parts documentand it all had to go through
the inventory and all of thatstuff.
(17:10):
But sometimes you don't needthat right, and especially in a
mixed fleet.
Sometimes I just need apurchase order to buy those
parts and I'm just going towrite I'm just going to expense
them anyway against the rentalfleet.
And so how can you then talk topeople and get them to say like
, oh, this is what I'm reallytrying to do?
Is there a way I can skip thisin this case?
Like, yeah, we can make it skipthat step in this situation or
(17:34):
give you the choice to follow amore traditional path as well.
You know, but that takes justlooking at the basics of what
you're trying to do and thenbeing able to create interfaces
that can easily be modified tosupport those.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Take a simple thing like payroll, yeah, and apply
that to a technician yeah, wehave two needs for time with a
technician One is to put it ontoa work order so we can bill it,
and one is to put it into thepayroll system so we can get
paid.
So the way it kind of evolvedis we started with time cards A
(18:18):
hundred years ago.
We filled out a piece of paperand we handed it in at the end
of a week or a day or a month orwhatever the hell it was, and
had a piece of paper and wehanded it in at the end of a
week or a day or a month orwhatever the hell it was, and
had a bunch of people sittingdown at the end of the day.
Well, what did I do today?
Yeah, and we're like lookingout at the people that you're
dealing with.
How many of them have thetechnician enter his time
(18:39):
directly, versus how many ofthem have two people involved
one the technician and onesomebody else to put it onto the
computer?
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yeah, I try and avoid that one.
I mean to have two people touchit is kind of counterproductive
.
Yeah, time is an interestingthing because it's generated in
more ways than the majority ofthe way's.
It's generated by more, in moreways than the majority of the
way that it's generated.
The majority that we're allused to is I'm doing work on
(19:10):
this work order, that's themajority.
And then you get things likeand we did this initially and
now we're expanding that.
Like I have time that doesn'tbelong in a work order, it it's
just time.
Well, in a lot of places youhave to create a fake work order
so that time goes to that workorder because that's the
(19:31):
transactional system.
And so we're trying to breakthat down into the more
object-related thing.
Or they're just at work andthey're not working, or they're
doing an inspection becausethey're a yard guy, or they're
whatever right.
So like the object of time isjust the object time.
(19:51):
It doesn't have to be tied toone thing only and one method
for collecting.
But for the payroll side it'sall the same.
Time is time.
It has to paid.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
What I found interesting is 1971, we put in
ID cards for technicians andwands on the floor to book time.
Then the first thing we had todo was create something that
could be read by a wand thatwould represent what the
(20:27):
technician was working on.
So we created a card that hadthe work on it, the segment on
it, the description on it,standard time on it, et cetera.
So information for thetechnician as well as for us.
But again, still transaction.
So you had to get into the workorder by wanting the card and
(20:52):
then recognize it's you bywanting an ID card, and those
two things then created the job.
Well, that was a little better,because the technician didn't
need to walk to order parts andthe technician didn't need to
think about, at the end of theday, what he was doing.
And then we got a littlesmarter and said well, wait a
(21:12):
second, we only need to have theguy sign on to a job.
Yeah, we need to have them signoff, we can have them sign on
to the next job, and thatautomatically signs them off.
Well, gee, that's a littlesmarter.
Yeah, and and and.
Then we said well, why the helldo we need?
Speaker 2 (21:28):
a wand.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Why can't we give the guy a keyboard and have him
talk to the computer or put hisown time in directly?
And it started evolving.
But if you look out, I bet you50% of the dealers in the
capital goods industries,whether that's automotive or
marine or whatever the hell itis, still have two people
involved in payroll Probably.
(21:50):
Yeah, we don't understandcontinuous improvement.
We again, I don't think we'vetrained employees to be critical
about what they do.
Is that a fair comment?
Speaker 2 (22:02):
yeah, I think like exactly what you described.
There is just an iterativeapproach to different ways to
enter the same thing, but you'regetting only the same thing.
You none of those changes,rethought what you were really
doing.
They're just trying to make iteasier or change what you're
trying to do.
You know and that, and that'slike you see it in places where
(22:27):
people I love that we're on time, because it's so interesting
places where people will sign inon a time clock and sign on a
time clock and that's what runstheir pay, and then they have
service reports or a work ordersystem that collects time that
they spend on work orders, andthen they always have a variance
between the two systems thatthey have to try and sort out.
(22:49):
You know, um and and it it justchanging.
Actually applying technologyalso has to rethink about what
is it you're actually doing ineach one of those steps, and
then you can come up with a wayto actually integrate the two
instead of running variancereports and productivity reports
(23:12):
from two different data sets.
Systems that you interact with,like.
(23:32):
You can go on facebook andfacebook could do a perfect time
analysis for you of what you'dspent your time doing, right,
you're, you're working, you'relooking at pictures of this, and
then you read some news, andthen you went over here and
watched some videos and then youdid stuff, and if you asked
facebook, they tell you this ishow your time broke down, right,
but they embedded it because ofthe technology can track little
(23:54):
things as you're moving around.
They can apply that withouthaving to have you do a separate
time card of what you did onFacebook.
I think that's the realadvantage of modern systems is
that there's a lot morecapability inherently in the
technology that you can thenrethink about.
(24:15):
I want to apply those things.
You heard of something calledHotjar.
It's like this software thatbasically watches users use
something, so we could dointerviews and be like okay, how
does this work for you, howdoes this, you know, what did
you do, what are you trying todo, et cetera.
Or you can go and put somethinglike Hotjar into your system
(24:39):
and it will track what peopleare doing.
You can watch how people usethe system and where they're
getting stuck or when they dosomething repetitive or when
they do workarounds, becausethey won't tell you all that
stuff in an interview.
Yeah, but it's it's onlybecause the technology now
allows you to layer in a lotmore complexity than just the
(25:01):
transactional system itself yeah, yeah, and it the facebook
illustration of how you usedyour time.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
or the cell phone, how you used your phone.
You used it more this monththan last month.
Or Google Maps or whatever ways.
Here's how many miles.
Here's where the trips were,you know.
Here's what you did, all ofthat stuff, and we're nowhere
near that.
That stuff, and we're nowherenear that.
(25:35):
You know parts orders and I'mgoing to pick on the same thing
between service and parts.
50% of the dealers I would betyou money, have the technician
walk from their bay to the partsdepartment to order parts and
stand at the counter waitingtheir turn, if there's somebody
there and then they talk toanother person about the parts
that I need to order for thisrepair and they knew what those
(25:56):
parts were before they went.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Yeah, this is cultural.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Yeah.
And so now I've got two peopleinvolved in that.
Again, the same damn thingalways Getting a quote for a
machine, renting a machine,machines down in a field.
Why don't we just replace themachine?
Boy, that's expensive.
(26:21):
Well, how expensive is it whenthe guy can't use his machine
for three or four or five days?
Yeah, that's expensive.
Now, well, it's the income he'slost by not having his machine
available.
Yeah, yeah, that's expensivenow, well, it's the income he's
lost by not having his machineavailable.
No, we don't think about that.
This whole thing is heading fora train wreck.
That's ominous.
(26:43):
In fact, I think the dealertoday Steve Day and I chatted
about this about a week ago.
The dealer today is at risk.
Their market capture, theirmarket share on parts and labor,
which is where they make themoney, is at the point that it's
(27:03):
marginal.
And what we've seen over thelast 20 years the dealers have
had trouble.
The cost of equipment's gone updramatically, cost of interest
has gone up dramatically, wagesof people are under severe
stress.
So how do they solve a profitproblem?
They get rid of people, andwhen they get rid of people,
(27:28):
customers follow them out thedoor.
So our customer retention goesdown.
Yeah, meaning our market sharegoes down.
And here we go in that everdiminishing circle until you
finally disappear up yourfundamental orifice but I think
that's like because people don'tunderstand what's happening.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
And I think we've all sort of lived through this in
the past and and not to drag onyou know accountants too much,
but you know account accountantshave one way of looking at
things, right.
I I had a guy that worked forme and he was very expensive and
he helped people with um, avery complicated type of machine
(28:06):
and you know, to demo trainsupport, whatever was included,
whatever was required, and noone could understand why we were
spending the kind of money onthis person, because no one
quantified the impact that hewas having.
Right, and he was really good.
He explained it and said look,I'm saved five times my salary
(28:27):
every year on warranty claimsand sales goodwill, because I
make sure that that guy, whenhe's operating that machine,
doesn't tear it apart and comeat you with warranty, which
would be hard to argue isn'tbecause it's only a hundred hour
machine, but it's reallyactually how he's doing it and
so but no, if you don't tie ittogether or you're not willing
(28:50):
to look at what's reallyhappening, and that's why I said
earlier, like before we evengot going like this idea, like
if you were to start a business,a dealership over.
Would you grab a group of peoplethat understood what was what
you were doing every day?
You know, buy a bunch of pizzasand sit around and go, okay,
we're starting a dealership fromscratch.
How do you want to set it up?
What do you want to do?
(29:11):
What do you want to focus on?
How do you want to execute it?
You know where, where is therethings that we do that have real
value and where are the thingsthat are just like how we've
always done them?
And now that's, you know, likewalking into a parts guy, into a
, into a front parts room andhaving to sit in front of his
desk and go through diagrams andfind the parts.
You know and who are you, so Ican open the sales order first
(29:33):
and you know, just sit down andlike rethink, what do you really
want to do?
I want to sell parts.
I don't care how I sell them,that's not the important part.
I want to sell parts and I wantpeople to get the parts they
want the easiest way, so thatthey can fix their stuff,
because Cause that's all theyreally care about, you know.
And then start start from there.
We just had like a young groupof guys who started a new
(29:58):
dealership contact us andstarted with working with me and
they just want like when Ishowed them some of the things
and we talked about some of thethings you could do in a digital
storefront're like we want itall.
Like we want all of thosethings, we want it to go fully.
Like they want doing thingslike escrow integration so that
(30:19):
they can transact without anyconcerns and stuff and all fully
secure.
And no bank, no sending piecesof our pdfs in email that's
insecure, with the wire transferinformation that's been hacked
a thousand times.
So it's just like they'rerethinking what they're doing.
They they sell trucks andequipment, but they're starting
(30:39):
from scratch yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
I I agree with you, but and we're, we're heading to
that place.
If I use the US government as amodel, which is not what I want
to do, but just as anillustration, it's an
interesting time to bring thatone up.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
yeah, isn't it?
Speaker 1 (31:00):
though For two Canadians.
That's right.
I am Canadian, so I can be anequal opportunity abuser and
dump on both governments.
It's very empowering.
The circumstance today in theUnited States is that 27% of our
GDP goes to expenses for thefederal government.
(31:23):
Yeah, and if you take the last20 years out and go back 230
years, the average was 20.
How the hell did we get to 27?
And I think it's the same thingthat you were talking about.
We keep adding, keep adding,keep adding.
I start with a budget of amillion bucks.
Well, I need a million and ahalf next year and it just kind
(31:46):
of happens and there's no cop atthe door that says wait a
second, I don't have any moremoney.
What are you spending moremoney for?
And now and I use this as anillustration, not trying to
present anything either waypolitically here comes Trump and
Elon Musk and the quote unquotethe Department of Government
(32:08):
Efficiency.
Yeah, and look at the chaosthat that's created in the last
three to five days.
Oh my God.
Usaid oh my God.
You're allowing people towithdraw and you're going to pay
them eight months salary andbenefits.
What's going on here?
We can't, whoa, slow down, stop.
(32:28):
That's why you live in Hawaii.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
So the tsunami won't reach you.
What's going on here?
We can't whoa slow down, stop.
That's why you live in Hawaii,so the tsunami won't reach you.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
That's right, that friend of mine before I got here
.
He says you're going to love ithere, Ron.
You're 2,500 miles away fromall the BS.
It's really true.
So we, we, we come around again.
I think it.
I think this generation thatwe're at now, 2025, where we're
(32:55):
at now, is our education system,I think, has failed.
We're not generating out of ourschool system, whether it's
grade school, technical school,university or wherever we're not
creating work ready people thatcan sustain our society.
They don't have the skills, andone of our contributors, Ed
(33:17):
Gordon, who's got a pretty sharpguy, a couple of PhDs, one in
history, one in economics saysby 2030, 50% of the American
workforce, which happens to bearound 75 million people, will
not have the skills to beemployable.
Isn't?
Speaker 2 (33:34):
that fascinating when you think that the huge focus
of most educational institutionshas been task-focused and
real-world job-focused.
It's a pretty ironic statementthat you're making that people
are less prepared.
They make fun of, likeclassical education of just you
know, basic knowledge andthinking and all those things
(33:58):
and focus on job specific tasktraining and we're less prepared
you opened up a magic wordcalled thinking.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
I don't think we have people going through school
that are thinking as much asthey're being brainwashed.
You know, think about how welearn addition and any any
mathematics.
It's the number series.
One plus one is two.
You know Well what about.
One plus one is 11?
You know you put that in frontof a young person, they get
(34:31):
confused.
No one plus one is two.
Well, there's no two anywherethere, but there's two ones.
Why isn't it 11?
Now they're stuck because theydon't think and I don't know.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
So, you're going to advocate for classical education
.
I really would.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
I'd like to go back to what education was in the
1800s, you know, until thepresident of Harvard in the 30s
decided he wanted to make moremoney.
The model that we had inAmerica was the classic
education out of England, oxford, and reading, writing,
arithmetic, kind of thing.
Yeah.
And he said in the 30s this isa fact you can verify we can
(35:13):
make a hell of a lot more moneyif we start adding some classes.
Yeah, it didn't matter whetherthat was going to be
contributing to societal gain.
It's going to be good for you.
You're going to learn a lot.
So we have studies like women'sstudies.
I'm not going to pick on that.
But okay, tell me how thatcontributes to betterment of
(35:37):
society.
It makes you better as a person.
You're smarter and betterrounded.
But what does that do forsociety?
And then you know, here comesthe magic bullet.
How did we get to?
My grandson wanted to be anuclear engineer, so we applied
to Purdue, which is where he gotin.
And he comes back at me whenhe's 17 years old, says 350,000,
(36:01):
bobby, I can't do that.
Even with all my scholarships,it's still 170 grand.
I can't do that either.
How the hell do you get to aplace that education costs that
much?
That's a whole other topic, ron, is it ever?
But it's all related to thesame damn thing we don't think
about what we're doing.
(36:21):
We don't have people that arethinkers.
Continuous improvement, edward,denning and Juran back in the
1980s.
It was really exciting.
Then it dissipated.
We don't have any staying power.
So we came to Six Sigma oh,that didn't work.
Then we went to 5S oh, thatdidn't work.
We re-labeled it, charged more.
What's it?
Speaker 2 (36:42):
called now Because I'm out of the loop.
Anything.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Oh, I forgot.
We have casual dress days now.
Oh, we can work from home.
Now this all becomesinteresting.
On the counter is an example inparts.
Or technical advice.
Why don't I have a bunch ofpeople on the phone?
Customer wants some help withtechnical advice.
(37:09):
Should we give it or not?
Speaker 2 (37:11):
that's an interesting one.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
I always think yes and then here comes the right to
repair.
Should you share your technicalinformation, your engineering
information, with me or not?
Speaker 2 (37:24):
that's another interesting one isn't it but I
it, that's like.
I like that one because it's the, the defensive approach to your
business, or the being thepreferred choice approach, right
, so you can either try anddefend your business by making
you know it hard for yourcustomer to leave, or creating a
(37:46):
dependency out of in anunavailability of information,
like they're all ways to defendby, by preventing right, instead
of being the, the business orvendor of choice.
By choice, because like well, Icalled this guy and he helped
me with this.
I really don't have time to doit, but I know they know how to
(38:07):
do it because they explained itto me last time.
I'm going to send it to them todo it right.
Like I don't, I've neverunderstood, um, why people try
and keep things captive.
I it first started like when Iwas in the thing with um, like
maintenance contracts, capturingthe business with maintenance
contracts.
(38:28):
You know all these, yeah, allof these strategies like even
the early, prevent your customerfrom leaving instead of
(38:50):
incentivizing or working withyour customer in such a way that
they don't want to leave, nomatter what.
Like if you jack up the price,they'll be like that's fine,
like everything else is so good,but instead they're like you
jack up the price and you makeit hard to do business on some
things.
And if someone says, like, canI have information, how to do
this repair myself?
My tech is up in Sudbury andyou can't get someone there, and
(39:12):
you say, no, we can't do that,and like, well, now you're just
a jerk and you know you'reexpensive.
You know software companies doit with data.
Can I get my data into thisthing?
Because I've got this idea.
I'd like to try.
No, do you like to try?
No, like the data, the data hasto stay in, or you don't have
access, or you have to pay moreto get the data out that way.
And like how is that?
(39:34):
Like, that's that's a defensivestrategy for retaining people
instead of being like yeah, wecan do that, see, like.
And that customer says, oh, Ilove working with these guys
because I can do things I wantto try and do and they support
me in doing that and that's whyI would never leave them,
(39:57):
because that makes my life, myability to morph my business and
adjust to my customers' needsso much easier.
I never understood the defenseof things like contracts on
software.
If it doesn't work, it doesn'twork.
You know, in in maintenancecontracts at dealerships.
When you go a 10-year contracton a 980 and and five years in,
people are like this just isn'tworking for us to have your text
do everything and stuff thereisn't.
(40:19):
I don't think there's a dealthat says, well tough, you're
stuck for 10 years.
Like okay, well, let's look atwhere we stand, right, like
you're we're up with this,allowing this, and like we're
like five grand apart on justwalking away from it, okay,
we'll pay five grand and okay,great.
And then next monday theyprobably still call anyway hey,
can you send a tech to fix thatmachine?
That's no longer under contract, but we'll still have you fix
(40:39):
it.
Like I don't understanddefensive strategies in in
business because they justreally just piss your customers
off.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
I don't like defensive strategies, period,
and I think part of that Iattribute to the fact that I
grew up in a competitiveswimming world and I learned
very quickly that it's not mecompeting with other people,
it's me competing with myself.
Good point If I can be the bestthat I can be and it's not good
(41:09):
enough, so be it.
But if, by being the best I canbe, I become the winner,
fantastic.
And I used to say to peoplethere's eight people in a race,
you get up on the block and youfinish last, but you beat your
best time, you won, you won.
It just didn't happen today theway you want to.
(41:32):
So we get this whole thingagain.
We're defensive, I want toprotect that, but our actions
decry that.
I have technicians and that guythat goes out and did all of
that magic that reduced thewarranty costs and he was
(41:54):
expensive.
And the company is saying, well, gee, you're costing me money.
When are we going to get to thepoint that we look at Amazon in
the 1990s, in the 1990s, andhere we are, let's say, 30 years
later.
Just to put a funny on, itmight be 32, might be 28,
(42:15):
doesn't matter, and they're thelargest retailer in the world.
Yeah, and what did they do?
They made it easy for thecustomer, yep, and they did it
with systems.
Oh my Lord, imagine that.
And they did it with systems.
Oh my lord, imagine that.
And that's those guys sittingin the kitchen that you're
talking about.
You got six or eight or tenguys and we open a couple of
(42:38):
beers and and start well, howwould we like to do this if we
were starting from scratch?
Yeah, we don't have very manypeople that have that kind of
knowledge.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
I don't think that's true.
I just don't.
I think that's the problem.
It's, like you know, we don'ttake our people out to really
think about it.
We do corporate retreats andthat, but I've been in a whole
lot of them and none of themactually sit down and make you
rethink the business properly,and none of them actually sit
down and make you rethink thebusiness properly.
(43:13):
But I think the problem is wenever sit down and rethink what
it is we're trying to do right,like why do you keep having to
increase your budget in adepartment because the one thing
you won't touch is the core wayof doing things, because you
think that's untouchable,instead of saying like, well,
this is a, you know, maybe thisisn't the right way to do it
anymore, considering all theother options we have for how to
(43:35):
do it.
You know, you know, mcdonald'swas kind of an interesting one
that way.
I mean I hate those boardswhere you go now and you order
your own food.
I still like going up to theperson and ask, but I mean they
didn't get stuck on the idea.
Like no, the only way to ordera hamburger is to walk up to the
counter and ask the teenagerbehind the counter for the
(43:57):
hamburger.
You know, and, and you canstill and this is interesting to
do you can still do it.
You can still go up to thecounter and order it.
You can go to the board andorder it, you and order it.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
You can do your app and order it and you can go to
the drive-thru and order it.
Four ways you can order fromMcDonald's and each one fits
someone, and how they want todeal with McDonald's and the
trick is that keyboard.
I'm going to call it a kiosk,just to use a different term.
If I only had.
It's a walk-in situation.
I'm walking in, I'm not drivingin, I'm walking into a
McDonald's and I want something.
And I've got two channelopportunities One's with a
(44:37):
person, one's without a person.
Yeah, I wonder, if you did anexperiment for a week, what the
customer would choose the kioskor the person?
Speaker 2 (44:53):
It depends on the customer would choose the kiosk
or the person.
It's.
It depends on the customer.
Look at, look at the grocerystore with your self-checkout
and your cat and someone whochecks you out.
You know, some people liketalking to someone or not having
to do it.
Some people like being able togo through the kiosk and if the
lineups to go through a personare wrong, you'll go and check
out yourself because today youjust want to get out of there
and you'll do the thing youdon't like to do.
It's just, it's options, right.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
I'm with you, so let's go to that.
The line for the person is long.
Yeah, the line for the kiosk islong.
What is the solution toshortening the line People?
Speaker 2 (45:30):
And your resource right.
Yeah, only at that point, Iguess, yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
Add another person or add another kiosk, which is the
most cost-effective way to dothat.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
But I think that's what grocery stores are finding
to some degree in this thing isthat there's a mix and there are
times when they should add oneof those and there times when
they should add those and one ismore flexible than others.
Right you?
You can't on on saturdaymorning at 10 realizing that
everyone's coming in forgroceries, add a bunch of
self-checkout systems.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
they take a long time to install right, and so they
just add a bunch of people soand again, I'm, I'm with you,
but but I don't think we arelooking critically at how we
operate a dealership and I thinkthat's going to lead to the
demise of the dealership.
I think we're already seeing itin Canada.
(46:21):
Now there's two Caterpillardealers.
When I started, there were 10.
When you started, there were 10.
When I started, you know, therewere 10 provinces and two
territories NorthwestTerritories and the Yukon.
How many are there today?
More.
And the United States has 50states, until such time as
(46:45):
Trudeau becomes the governor ofthe 51st state.
Who would have thought you know?
I mean, we get all of thisstuff, but nobody.
I'm in Moscow, matt.
When were you in?
Speaker 2 (46:57):
Moscow.
Huh, when were you in Moscow?
Speaker 1 (47:00):
Oh, I've been in Moscow often.
I trained there for hadtraining classes for eight years
, nine years up there, and I dida lot of consulting work there.
So I'm with a dealership.
I'm talking to one of theleaders who's got an MBA, he's
married and has three children.
He's 45-ish years old and Iasked him you know, if you could
(47:24):
wave a wand, what would youchange here that would make your
life easier and be better forthe company?
His response floored me.
He said don't do that to me,Just tell me what you want me to
do.
I was floored, Didn't want tothink, and so I came back.
(47:47):
And this is 25 or more yearsago and I came back.
I started doing the same thinghere with different managers.
If you had a wand, what wouldbe the first thing you'd change
to make your life easier here atwork?
That would also be a benefit tothe company.
And I get a whole bunch ofglossed over eyeballs.
Yeah, Hadn't really thoughtabout that.
(48:08):
What the hell is the purpose ofa leader?
But to help the employee bebetter at what they do, to help
satisfy the customer with moreof their needs, to help make
more money for their employer,to provide a safe environment
and they're not looking at howthey do the work.
What is this crap?
Speaker 2 (48:32):
That's like it.
It it takes training, it, youknow.
That's why I say go on saturday.
You buy pizza and sit aroundand talk.
It takes training to get peopleto think and look at that.
If you look at leanmanufacturing environments, you
know they have repetitive weeklymeetings to talk about how the
process works.
It becomes part of the cultureto look at what's not working or
what could work better and tryand implement that on a regular
basis.
We don't do that at dealerships.
(48:52):
Yeah, there's no, it's justkeep transacting, keep
transacting, keep transacting.
And it's interesting.
You made me think like, um, thethe death of the dealership, and
we've seen all of thisconsolidation over the last
years and I've always thoughtlike a big driver of that is the
(49:14):
, the capital requirements of adealership.
Like a lot of people can'tstomach the capital requirements
of a big dealership.
They're hard to sell because ofthe capital requirements and
the amount of assets they haveon the balance sheet.
But to some of you made methink like do you think that the
reason there's it we have thiscapital problem is because the
(49:35):
dealership keeps trying tooperate in a model, like an old
model that requires all thisinventory and stock and and all
this capital, you know all thebricks and mortar.
And all this capital, all thebricks and mortar and stuff, is
it the old model that's drivingthe capital requirements and
killing dealers?
Speaker 1 (49:54):
I would say yes, but I think that's an excuse.
If the industry made enoughmoney as a return on assets, the
cost of the asset wouldn'tmatter a damn.
(50:14):
I'm going to make 350% returnon assets.
Or I'm a rental company.
I'm Sunbelt, I get 50% returnon assets, totally macro baby.
Oh, I only do $4 billion a year.
You get $2 billion net taxablepre-tax income.
Holy crap, baby, doesn't matterhow much the machine is.
(50:38):
I'm getting to the holy jeez.
You can't do that other thanwith illegal drugs.
I don't think that's theproblem.
I think the problem is people.
Example why do I need to have ajourney mechanic do a 250-hour
(50:58):
or a 500-hour preventativemaintenance service?
Why do I have a guy who's got20 years experience every
training school that I've eversent anybody to that I pay 45
bucks an hour to?
why, do I want to have him doingmaintenance?
Well, in fact I don't.
(51:20):
And my assistants tell themarket I'm not interested in
doing maintenance.
Because the market can go outand hire somebody at half the
price of the journeyman and dothe maintenance, because they
redefine maintenance as changingfilters and fluids.
That's not what maintenance is.
How do we let them get awaywith that?
Because the cost per operatinghour should be the driver for
(51:43):
the customer.
You can reduce the cost peroperating hour should be the
driver for the customer.
You can reduce the cost peroperating hour by doing
maintenance properly.
Period.
It's been proven everywhere andwe're stuck.
So all of that.
I believe that there will beparts dealers who will sell
(52:04):
parts to machine owners thatthey purchased from the guy who
made the part, who sold it tothe equipment assembler, the OEM
, and they just took out a levelof the supply chain.
Speaker 2 (52:21):
Well, I think that's yeah inevitable and it's been
happening.
Speaker 1 (52:26):
Yeah, and that's why Amazon has become so successful.
Yeah, so if the parts businessis going to go away because I
can start up a company, you andI can start up a company and
we'll create it.
We'll call it a Kappaconstruction area parts
(52:48):
availability instead of NAPA.
We'll carry 3,000 to 5,000 partnumbers all the fast movers and
we'll buy them directly fromthe people that sell it to the
OEMs and we'll sell it for halfthe price that the OEM does.
Yeah, Is there anything that'sstanding in the way from that
happening in your view?
Speaker 2 (53:09):
I don't think so.
I mean, once you have theinformation, like it's being
tested.
There's people out there likeGearflow and some other
companies that are heading thatway, but I think, in my opinion,
it's a symptom of the fact thatthere's a demand to do it that
way, rather than the traditionalpeople who already own the
(53:32):
relationships and own the supplylines, creating methods for
executing what the customerwants.
They're pushing themselvespeople away into these new
channels of doing things the waymodern people want to do it,
and I think they're missing thedata that says that they're not
(53:53):
collecting the data for thepeople that aren't there.
Right, it's like the classicproblem of a dealership owner
that says, well, I talked to allmy customers and they all like
having my guy come by withdonuts, like, yeah, but you only
talk to the people who likegetting donuts and everyone else
has left your business.
So, yeah, it's a confirmationbias problem.
(54:13):
And if you, if you say that, oh, I, you know all my customers
like coming into the partsdepartment and sitting with the
parts guy, yeah, those are theones that are coming and doing
that, but then they don'trepresent the majority of the
potential customers.
And if you don't collect thatinformation you know, like, then
you just don't know.
(54:35):
It's one of the reasons thatAmazon tries so hard to track
what you looked at, remind youwhat you looked at and what you
thought you were going to buyand hope to buy is because it
tells them exactly.
You know.
If they only looked at theirsales, they would say, oh, we
only have this, this is all wesell.
But they look at all this otherdata that says, oh, but all
(54:55):
these people are interested inthis stuff.
Like, why aren't they buyingthat?
And they'll figure it out andthey'll get you to start buying
it when they fix that problem.
But if they don't collect theinformation on what else you're
looking at, then they don't evenknow.
Speaker 1 (55:09):
I'm in a small apartment where I live.
It's around 1800 square feet,two bedroom, two bathroom
nothing fantastic, but I've gotfour Alexa devices, do you, and
wherever I go, I getnotifications, and it's all
(55:30):
related to exactly what you justthe other day you looked at
such and such.
We have something in yourshopping cart you're looking for
that has a special price.
Here's what it is and how muchyou're saving.
Would you like me to add it toyour order now?
Yeah, and and.
Again, it's relating back tomaking things easy and simple
for customers to conduct theirbusiness.
(55:51):
I need soap, I need a pill, asubscription renewed All of
these things are predictable.
Yeah, my $500 service.
It's predictable.
My engine is overheating.
I'm told that through adiagnostic, through a sensor,
and I call the dealer and I callthe customer back and say Mr
(56:13):
Customer, your engine isoverheating.
We would like you to shut itdown so that you can stop
problems.
Or gee, you really bought thatpart for that hydraulic repair
from George.
Speaker 2 (56:28):
Where do you get the part?
Speaker 1 (56:31):
Are you putting that $30,000 pump at risk because you
saved three bucks on a partnumber?
We don't have those discussionsanymore and I think part of it
is because we're defensive.
We're protecting what we've got.
Part of it is we're stuck in amodel that doesn't work anymore.
Part of it is we blame highcost, but the reality is
(56:57):
low-skilled workers.
All of that stuff is notsounding good.
It doesn't sound good.
I really believe that's comingnow.
There are wonderfulopportunities for people that
satisfy customer needs.
Just like you say, I'll spendmore money with those guys
because they satisfy all myneeds.
(57:19):
Whenever I have something Iwant to get done, they do it.
Yeah, and that's what worthsomething to me.
Speaker 2 (57:25):
Yeah, that that's what worth something to me.
Yeah, that's, in the end andthis is the funny thing I always
find Like I love the people Iwork with in the IEDA right, and
a lot of them ex-sales guysfrom big dealers who start their
own dealerships and usedequipment rentals whatever from
(57:47):
big dealers who start their owndealerships and used equipment
rentals whatever and, like, thereason they did it is because
they realized that they couldsatisfy their customers better
on their own and so they got inthe business and they made a
successful business out of it.
So, pretty much, if you lookback at everyone's business,
there was something that theywere focused on doing better
(58:07):
that got them in the business,and the problem is we forget
about what it is that we weredoing that put us in the
business right, like and andthat's got to shift.
Speaker 1 (58:19):
You got to have that rethought so let me take that
one as an illustration.
I got tired of my customersbeing mad at me because my
company would not do what Iwanted the company to do.
Speaker 2 (58:34):
As a result of that.
Speaker 1 (58:35):
I left the company.
I'm going to start doing itmyself so that I can satisfy the
customer the way that I want tosatisfy the customer, and
everything works, yeah, andthat's what happened to
independent mechanics as well.
It's every single place.
So I think I want to stop there.
That's enough provocation for alot of people to consider, to
(58:57):
think of.
How would you wrap up thisdiscussion, what would you say
would be the message you want topass to people that you want
them to consider?
Speaker 2 (59:10):
I, I think, just going off of the air, like I
think people need to look at thething they're not looking at.
I think we have so muchconfirmation bias of what we're
doing and that's the way to doit that and we've stopped
looking in all the other areasof where we're not getting
business from this person orthat person, or not seeing
information about this or thatthat you know.
(59:30):
Like, like part sales is thesame thing.
You know.
If you don't write down what aguy called for and you didn't
have, you don't know that youshould have had it.
If you only look at the thingsyou sold, you'll only stock the
things you sold and not thethings that the guy called for
that he wanted.
Like, start start figuring outways to collect information
about the things you sold.
You'll only stock the thingsyou sold and not the things that
the guy called for that hewanted.
Like, start start figuring outways to collect information
about the things that you don'tsee.
(59:51):
And and the biggest one in alldealerships is the money that
trickles through our fingers by,the hundreds of thousands of
dollars for not tracking certaindecision-making like why do you
send that mechanic to do a 250hour service?
How much did it cost you tosend an unexperienced guy to go
diagnose it three times beforehe figured it out?
Why do you not track that?
You know?
(01:00:11):
Why are you not?
We don't, I don't.
I think we don't have as big ashortage of mechanics as we have
because we're not looking atthe data of how we're using them
and applying them properly toto you know, cut average repair
time in half.
If you applied people properly,it'd probably take half as many
people to do the same amount ofwork.
But I hear a guy goes out, doesa job in two hours, another guy
(01:00:34):
goes and does it eight hoursSame thing.
It's not a mechanic shortage,it's a planning information
shortage.
Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
I agree with you 100% and you know an example of that
is Alex Kraft and his company,heave, and we did a podcast
recently and I said, well, how'sit going?
He said not bad, we just did areview of 2024.
I said, oh, anythinginteresting?
He said, yeah, a customer makesa request, needs repair or
(01:01:09):
maintenance on his machine.
Our average response is oneminute.
So from the customer request tosomebody responding to that
request, it's one minute.
I said, wow, you do that forevery single customer, yes,
every single transaction, yes.
I said, okay, what else?
(01:01:30):
He said well, within fiveminutes, the customer has made a
decision about who he wants tohave do the job and the job is
underway.
I said, well, why aren't theybuying it from the dealer?
Well the dealer didn't give thema timeframe.
That was good enough.
What was the timeframe?
Oh, three, three, four days Ifit's field, in a couple of weeks
(01:01:50):
if it's shop.
I said, okay, well, how longare these jobs?
He said, well, the average jobwe did in 2024 was five hours,
yeah, and the dealer is sayingto the customer we want you to
wait three hours for a repairthat they can do in five hours,
or three days for a repair infive hours?
And the answer that came backfrom Alex is seems so.
(01:02:12):
I said terrific.
How many mechanics have you gotsigned up?
He said, well, we've been at itfor about a year now.
I think we've got six, 700technicians that are involved
from zero.
Yeah, so data defensiveness,model bias, all of this other
(01:02:33):
stuff, it's not.
It's not good.
We got to get the the, thedealers, to look at the clouds
are upside down and look at itdifferently, look at it with
fresh eyes, or?
Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
their life is limited .
Here's a great idea for any bigdealer listening what why
aren't you white labeling alex'splatform to run service?
Yep, be like, because alex hasthat business and he had to
build it from scratch.
He had to build the software,the tools, the billing, he had
to find the mechanics and he hadto find the customers and, like
(01:03:06):
most big dealers have all ofthose advantages over him.
They just didn't figure out howto deliver service in a modern
way like he has.
So call Alex up and ask aboutwhite labeling his product in
your territory.
Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
Yeah, it's not meant to be a commercial for Alex, but
it turns out that way, sothat's it.
I want to do this again in acouple of four months, a couple
of four months, a couple of fourmonths on this particular
subject.
I want to do something elsewith you on your software, so
that we can start getting peopleto be more aware of that.
Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
I think we should do one live in about April Okay.
Speaker 1 (01:03:45):
I'll come to Hawaii.
There you go, I'll get aspecial room just for you.
Awesome, I'll put padding onthe walls.
Speaker 2 (01:03:55):
Yeah, but I know I can order pizza from any room in
your house with Alexa, that'sright.
Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
That's right.
That's right.
So, Alex, thanks very much foryour time and thanks to
everybody who's been listeningto this the Clouds Are Upside
Down podcast.
I look forward to seeing youagain in the very new future.
Mahalo.
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