September 15, 2025 • 57 mins
Podcast Show Notes:
What happens when a collision repair veteran who started as a tech at 15, built a 4-location MSO with nearly 100 employees, and owned 13 shops with four successful exits, decides to fix the financial challenges body shop owners face? The result is transformational.
In this weeks’ episode, Bill Park shares his remarkable journey through the collision repair industry and how his biggest discoveries weren’t about paint or production—but about money. Along the way, Bill identified a critical gap in financial management that most shop owners face: relying on CPAs who focus on tax filing, not strategic financial management.
Bill introduces his solution: Crunchit Financial Services, a “white glove” approach designed specifically for collision repair businesses. Using a financial blueprint process—similar to blueprinting a repair—he shows how to align management systems with accounting systems, ensure daily reconciliation of transactions, and build an accrual-based accounting structure that delivers accurate, timely insights.
Bill also pulls back the curtain on tax optimization strategies that most shops miss—structuring finances in ways that can save tens or even hundreds of thousands annually. This isn’t about complicated spreadsheets—it’s about creating financial freedom by putting the right systems in place.
5 Key Takeaways:
- Financial strength starts with systems: management and accounting must be aligned.
- Most CPAs miss opportunities because they only focus on filing taxes.
- Daily reconciliation creates accuracy and confidence in your numbers.
- Accrual-based accounting gives shop owners better insights than cash-based methods.
- Tax optimization can unlock huge savings and directly fuel profitability.
If you’re ready to run your shop with confidence, clarity, and the freedom that comes from perfect financials… join us this episode and let this be your roadmap to financial freedom!
GUEST CONTACT
Bill Park - billpark8@me.com
Crunchit Financial Services – https://www.crunchitfs.com/
LinkedIn – https://tinyurl.com/499zeeph
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
At what point did you decide I don't want to do this
anymore.
I need to do somethingdifferent?
You feel something that wasjust brewing inside you that
says, hey, I'm not using mypotential, or I just don't like
this business, or what was itfor you?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Yeah, that's a great question.
I still I love the business.
I still love the business, andwhat I didn't like about for
years and I was, you know,terrible at at this too was the
financial side of it in terms ofall the extra work you got
extra.
And I say that and that's howit felt.
All this extra work I had to doalong with actually running the
(00:35):
shop, so it was late nights onweekends staying up closing
files.
Tax season comes around.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
It was always trying to find stuff and welcome to the
mind wrench podcast with yourhost, rick sellover, where minor
adjustments produce majorimprovements and mindset,
personal growth and success.
(01:02):
This is the place to be everyMonday, where we make small
improvements and take positiveactions in our business and
personal lives that will make amajor impact in our success,
next-level growth and quality oflife.
Hey, what's up everybody?
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Welcome to the MindWrench Podcast.
I'm your host, rick Salo.
Thanks so much for stopping in.
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(01:43):
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(02:03):
If you've been listening to theshow for a while or been on the
receiving end of my daily quoteof the day emails, or maybe
just catch my posts on Facebookor LinkedIn, you know I'm all
about the quotes, right?
If you'd like to startreceiving my quote of the day
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Recently, while attending theAxel Nobel CIEE conference and
(02:27):
trade show in Orange, california, I was fortunate enough to meet
this week's special guest and,after learning of the highly
valuable and unique businessthat he's launched, I really
wanted to share this with all ofyou.
Now, sometimes you just meetsomebody and within five minutes
you go.
This person gets it.
Bill's one of those guys rightthis week.
My special guest has gone fromhumble beginnings as a
technician, starting his ownshop, to MSO growth and even
(02:50):
international shop ownership,and is now providing financial
fitness for the collisionindustry.
Bill Park, a 30-year collisionveteran, has always had a deep
passion for our industry and nowfocuses his time and energy on
providing what he calls a runwayfor perfect financials for
other shops.
So please join me in welcomingan industry veteran with a gold
mind of financial wisdom BillPark, founder of CrunchFit
(03:13):
Financial Services, the MindMerge podcast.
Bill, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Thank you, rick.
Appreciate the kindintroduction.
Yeah, and it's certainly been along journey for sure to get
here, but it's definitely beenenjoyable.
I've really enjoyed being inthe industry, in the body shop
business, you know, from fixingcars myself, you know, to
growing a company and then andnow sort of bringing all that
(03:40):
together into really a businesswhere body shop owners can have
a trusted ear, like they canactually have a conversation
with myself and our team, andall we do is live, breathe and
service body shops.
I think it was.
I didn't realize the gap thatwas missing in the industry, to
(04:01):
be honest, and it's verysignificant.
And everybody I speak withregarding financials, everybody
has a CPA, everybody does booksto some extent.
However, the majority of peoplehave problems and I just don't
think they've really had aresource to help solve those
(04:24):
problems.
So we hope we can be thatresource for them.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Absolutely so before we dive into the meat of this,
maybe give a 30,000-footoverview of your background,
just so people know who they'retalking with and kind of where
you came from.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Sure, yeah, I painted my first car when I was 15 and
it just came about because my mydad said hey, you want to drive
a nice car, I guess you need tomake it nice because he
couldn't afford to buy one forme.
So it was, it was that sort ofpursuit to not drive a junker
around to.
I bought my 1972 Vega for 500bucks and, you know, made it
(05:04):
pretty.
So that's sort of where itstarted and I did that all the
way.
You know, through high school Ipainted cars for people and
they got paid to do it.
And I went to college and I wasgoing to.
I wasn't going to be anorthopedic surgeon, that was
sort of my goal in college.
And then I realized that I wasprobably not equipped well
(05:27):
enough for the bureaucracywithin medicine for me to
practice, kind of how I like todo things and kind of my nature.
So I chose obviously to go adifferent route and I had an
interesting experience when Igraduated the University of
Arizona with my degree.
I couldn't get a job.
(05:47):
It was, it was, you know, itwas kind of disappointing.
And then this opening came aboutwith a dealer body shop there
in Tucson Arizona.
I went and applied.
I'm thinking, man, this isgoing to be an easy shoe in for
me.
And I didn't even get a phonecall.
So I literally told my wifethat you know, obviously you
(06:07):
know, I'm just going to do whatI do best.
I'm sorry, you know you'regoing to have an educated body
man as a husband and I'm justgoing to go take the business
away from these people.
And that was my start of shopownership.
So that was in the early 90sand I rented a little space and
(06:28):
grew my business up and to fourlocations, just under 100 people
, and sold that company in theend of 2009.
Since then, at the end of theday, I've owned 100% or a
partner in 13 shops, with fourdifferent exits along the way.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Wow, oh, that's a lot for a guy that didn't want to
be a shop owner.
He wanted to be orthopedics.
That's quite a jump man.
It's funny because most peoplethat we're going to talk about
today, that you can help,started very similar paths.
Right, they just became atechnician, started doing some
(07:13):
work for somebody and decided topop a sign on a roof and go I'm
a body shop now, right.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Absolutely yeah, I think that's the by and large
the majority of the industryright there.
You know they worked in a shopand I got frustrated with the
owners and said I can dosomething better.
They see something more inthemselves and which I really,
you know, encourage.
You know any technicians outthere, why not?
Speaker 1 (07:46):
You know.
So yeah, that's the majority ofour clients.
Yeah, so you had, you had anupbringing in um in collision
ownership, including msos andeven international.
Uh, you want to shop over inthe uk.
Um, at what point did youdecide I don't want to do this
anymore, I want, I need to dosomething different?
You feel something that wasjust brewing inside you that
says, hey, I'm not using mypotential, or I just I don't
(08:06):
like this business, or what wasit for you?
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Yeah, that's a that's a great question.
I still I love the business.
I still love the business.
And what I didn't like aboutfor years and I was, you know,
terrible at this too is thefinancial side of it in terms of
all the extra work you gotextra, and I say that and that's
(08:30):
how it felt.
All this extra work I had to doalong with actually running the
shop.
So it was late nights onweekends staying up, closing
files.
Tax season comes around.
It was always trying to findstuff and um, until I finally
kind of put my foot down and Isaid, you know, I really need to
kind of build some competencyin that.
(08:50):
And we did that fairly wellearly on.
When we sold our that firstsmall little MSO in 2009,.
We, you know, we were prettyprepared for that.
And then later, as I acquiredother locations and other
businesses, I had this biggerproblem that not only was I in
the collision business, I wasdoing technology, software, real
(09:15):
estate, some angel investingstuff.
So I really had to have more ofa robust accounting system for
my own set of businesses.
So we kind of built a teamaround that and in 2022, we felt
(09:36):
very comfortable with ouraccounting system for our own
businesses, businesses.
And then, when coming out ofcovid, uh, which was extremely
painful for us, we, um, we hadfour, we had five locations in
colorado, four body shops andone pdr center and when covid
hit, we, we, really we went from11 and a half million in
(09:58):
revenue to five and a halfmillion.
It was really painful and thegreat, the saving grace.
Grace was that we had anaccounting team that kept us in
track.
We knew where we sat, we didn'thave much debt, so we were able
to weather that storm.
We ended up closing a couplelocations, negotiating exits out
(10:20):
of leases.
I could spend my time andenergy solving those problems
and not having to worry aboutwhere the dollars and tracking
money and and understanding theconsequences of those things,
because I had this team thatcould help me do that.
So I had a friend of mine thathad a couple of three centers in
(10:40):
Texas and he wanted me to helphim sell, went through that
process with him and hisbusiness, reorganizing things,
getting him ready to be packagedwell, and he was just super
awesome to work with andopen-minded.
And then he kind of opened mymind and said you should be
doing this for others.
And so they're kind of like, oh, that's interesting.
(11:02):
And so we decided officially inOctober of 23 to do that.
And then I said you know whatI'm really enjoying this.
You know, I don't think Ididn't enjoy the shops.
I had had a manager that wasrunning the business for us and
he was doing an excellent job,but I really felt that in order
for me to dedicate my time andenergy to the, to my, our
(11:26):
customers, I really needed to be, not have any other.
I need that to be my main focus, right.
So we had an offer to sell andwe sold our shops and then now
we're, you know, obviouslytransitioned into crunch of
financial services.
So really happy about that move, financial services.
(11:48):
So really happy about that move.
And I really enjoy helping shopowners do what they love doing
and not have to worry abouttheir numbers, because I know
how important that was for mewhen I went through those stages
.
And if I can help another shopowner get there and be that
resource to them where they canpick up the phone and call me
about any question, resource tothem where they can pick up the
phone and call me about anyquestion.
I may not have all.
I'm sure I won't have all theanswers, but I can definitely be
(12:09):
a solid resource for them.
Problem solving, resourcebrainstorming.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
And if I don't know the answer, I probably know
somebody that does.
Well, that's awesome and it'sfunny how the universe can pull
you in the direction you reallyneed to go sometimes, right?
So you've found now you'redoing something actually you
enjoy and you're good at andyou're getting better at, and it
is a huge hole in this industrythe whole financial fitness
(12:41):
piece of this fitness piece ofthis.
Why and this might be asoftball question, I don't know,
but it's just something Ithought about is and I've
thought about this a lot is youknow, why do you think so many
independent body shops andthere's even some small groups,
right, that are still?
(13:01):
Why are they financiallydysfunctional?
And I don't mean to mean Idon't mean to use the word
dysfunctional, you know,callously, it's just I've worked
with a couple of shops as acoach and it's like, wow, some
of these people don't even knowwhat a P&L is.
They ask their CPA, right.
(13:21):
So I mean, what do you thinkare the main contributors to why
a shop will end up financiallydysfunctional and how can they
prevent that?
Speaker 2 (13:31):
That is the million dollar question, rick, but I'll
give you Glad I asked that earlyyeah, I'll give you what I
believe is contributing to thatto some extent.
I think it's a couple of things.
I think one it is we, uh, ashuman beings, business owners,
(13:56):
entrepreneurs um, we hire acertified public accountants,
right, and that certified publicaccountant comes with
credentials, that comes withsort of an innate.
I trust this person's going todo things for me well and they
feel that that's the best choice, right, that is what you do,
(14:18):
and if they already have that,they're in their best situation.
And I think that's a part of it.
But I think you know where I'mgoing with this, that that
that's.
That's a very small part of it.
And the fact that the cpasactually do a crappy job, right,
sorry for any cpas listeningout there.
If you do a great job, greatfor you, but all your other 95
(14:41):
don't.
They're lazy, I shouldn't saythey're lazy.
The system of being a CPA and atax filer turns into being a
puppy mill, and this is thequestion that I challenge most
people with.
Or shop owners I say just askyour CPA how many tax returns
(15:03):
they file a year.
They're going to give you ananswer.
Whatever that answer is, it'slikely going to be in the
hundreds and maybe the thousands.
Then you can ask them well,where do I fit in?
How do you fit my personalprofile and the detail of my
(15:25):
business into a true taxoptimization strategy?
And that's when the rubber willhit the road and the light bulb
may kick on.
Okay, so I think there's acombination of they believe that
they're being properlyrepresented.
They believe that they're beingproperly represented and
(15:48):
because they believe they'reproperly represented, they
default to what's easy for themevery day, which is to look at
their bank balance, right.
And if their bank balance isokay and they're still buying
the stuff they want to buy,right, then what's the problem?
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Right, right then what's the problem?
Right?
Is it safe to say that cpas,for the most part, really don't
know how different collisionbusiness is?
I mean, there's, there's somany, so many uh, different um,
profit centers within acollision industry or within a
collision shop and I don't know.
(16:24):
I just, I've got a, you, I'vegot a, you know, I've got a tax
guy, cpa, and I've talked aboutcollision before and they're
like, yeah, I don't know howthose guys run those shops.
There's just there's, you know,income coming from different
areas and different ways ofpaying people, and I think it's
confusing to them and I don'tthink that's a solid, you know
yes or no business where, yes, Ican do your CPA work or no, I
(16:47):
can't.
It's like somewhere in the grayarea, right?
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Well, think about the CPA's job.
Primarily, it's to preparetaxes and file tax returns.
That's what they do.
So what does that mean?
That means that their worldthey're going to file a cash
basis tax return.
That's what they're looking for.
That means that their worldthey're going to file a cash
basis tax return.
That's what they're looking for.
That means that everything theydo is going to be in the spirit
(17:15):
of filing a cash basis taxreturn, which is actually what
happens.
But what they should be sayingis no, you have to run your
business on an accrual-basedaccounting system and then we'll
do a cash basis conversion forfiling tax purposes.
And now, with an accrual-basedaccounting system, shop owners
(17:35):
now have actionable financialswhere they can understand cash
flow.
They can understand debt,assets, liabilities.
Their balance sheet is way moreimportant in terms of the
financial health of theirbusiness.
It tells a story and when youdo accrual work and process
(17:56):
adjustments, customer depositadjustments, you do all those
things like the proper accrualsystem does.
Then now you have monthlyfinancials that make sense
relative to your productivityand your cash.
So they just don't they don'thave the expertise in the
industry to even advise somebodyhow to do that and, more
(18:19):
importantly, even how to manageit every day.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Okay.
So From your aspect, and whatwould make sense to me is most
shops don't really need a CPA tohelp them with their day-to-day
financial activities.
They need them at the year endto help them with their tax
returns, right.
Somebody needs probably more ofa financial advisor during the
(18:46):
course of a year, right?
To help them make the rightstrategies, make the right moves
, not screw something up in themiddle of the year that they
can't recover from Some of thethings that you fulfill for them
, right.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Yeah, I mean we're a design specific company.
I mean we've designed oursystem for the body shop
industry.
We don't serve any otherclients.
We've designed our system forthe body shop industry.
We don't serve any otherclients.
That's all we do.
So we certainly can fulfillthat.
But if I'm just giving you know, if I'm just talking in general
terms about what a shop needs,you need a CPA or a tax filer.
(19:22):
It doesn't have to be a CPA, itcould be an EA and oftentimes
an EA is a better solution thana CPA, because EAs that's all
they do is file taxes and ifyou're in a CPA firm, they're
likely to have an EA do itanyways and they're deciding the
return.
So they need a tax filing forsure.
But really in any business whatyou need is really robust
(19:49):
bookkeeping behaviors.
You need daily, weekly, monthlybookkeeping process and then
when you organize your incomeand your expenses and your
capital expenditures in that way, actually tax planning and tax
filing becomes pretty easy.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
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(21:16):
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So let's just say we've.
You know, I've got a customerthat has been using a CPA for
(21:57):
years and yet they've got nofinancial fitness to them and
they decide they want to dosomething different.
Maybe they got some upcomingmoves they want to make.
Maybe they want to buy anothershop, or maybe they want to
expand or just, you know, do anaddition, something as simple as
an addition.
How would Crunchit come in andfill the gap for the lack of
(22:17):
knowledge and where they need tobe, and how does that work for
you?
I mean, what's their first step?
Speaker 2 (22:24):
The first step.
You know I can use a houseanalogy or I can.
I'll just stick with actuallythe fixing a car, because that's
kind of how we design oursystem anyways, okay.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
So what is the typical first step when?
Speaker 2 (22:45):
you're doing a car repair, pull it in and tear it
down and do a blueprint, right,exactly, you need to fully
understand the exact conditionof every damaged part, every
undamaged part, anything, every.
And then you need to understandrepair procedures, oem
specifics, procedures, repairmethods, all that.
(23:06):
You have to compile a repairplan to actually complete the
repairs on that vehicle.
Detail, right, oftentimes 130line items, right, maybe.
So very detailed.
So in order for anybody notjust us in order for anybody to
(23:26):
look at somebody's business andoffer advice, financial advice
or planning advice, they need tohave a 100% accurate set of
financials.
So we offer a comprehensiveassessment which is essentially
a financial blueprint.
So we go in to CCC, we look athow it's configured, we look at
(23:54):
the roles of the staff, we lookat how estimates are written, we
look at parts code tables forthe repair facility, we look at
any insurer parts code tables,we look at part types, we look
at receipt types, we look ateverything.
And then we compile a gapanalysis from OK, how you should
(24:14):
have it configured to optimizeyour financial P&L and balance
sheet.
And then we look at the chartof accounts in QuickBooks and we
say, ok, what do we want tomeasure what's important to you,
say, okay, what do we want tomeasure?
What's important to you Now?
Do those things all?
Are they all synced?
Does your chart of accountsreflect what you want to measure
?
Is your CCC synced in a waythat it's going to connect to
(24:38):
your chart of accounts?
And what are the financialprocedures within your daily
operations of your business?
Like paper flow, we want tounderstand how you handle every
piece of paper in your business.
So when somebody pays adeductible or pays your bill,
how does that work?
When an invoice comes in from aparts vendor, how does that
(25:01):
work?
When an invoice comes in from asublet vendor, how does that
work?
When you return a part, howdoes that work?
So we go through a detailedanalysis of that paper flow and
then we want to make sure thattheir training is in place for
your people to then processthose pieces of paper in a way
that supports the sinking andproper allocation within the
(25:25):
chart, within the chart ofaccounts, within the chart of
accounts.
Once that's done, it's just adaily.
You know what we do on a dailybasis is go in and export the
data.
We do validation andverification of every
transaction to make sure it wasdone right.
And then we create a dailyacceptance report for our
(25:47):
clients and so essentially everysingle day they've got an audit
of all their transactions andit's up to the repair center,
obviously, where the work'sbeing done, to fix those things
Right.
And once you've got that inplace, now to your question in
the beginning is well, okay, Iwant to expand, or I want to buy
(26:08):
a piece of equipment.
Or then you can look in and say, okay, let's talk expand, or I
want to buy a piece of equipment.
Or then you can look in and say, okay, let's talk about that.
What does that look like?
And we can say how doesfinancing, how's financing going
to impact cash flow?
Okay, how is financing going toimpact your capital expense?
And what does that look likefrom a tax perspective?
Is it favorable?
And what do you expect to getin return for that?
(26:30):
I mean, everybody loves nice,shiny equipment.
I've bought I've been guilty ofthis I bought stuff I thought
would be super helpful for mybusiness and it sits in the
freaking corner, you know solike Seen that before I'm like.
you know that I wish somebodywould have had that conversation
(26:52):
with me.
You know how do you not ensurethat when you buy that that it's
not going to sit in the cornerRight?
Solve that problem first, right.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Yep, no, that's good, but you know, I like that.
That's, you know, a financialblueprint.
I like that.
It's a financial blueprintbecause you think through as a
shop person, you think throughcorrectly.
Blueprinting a car is goingthrough all the things that you
need to record All those, allthe measurements, all with the
(27:29):
customer and explain all thethings that are damaged on their
car, how you're going to fixthem, why you need to fix them,
the safety of it and all that.
That's a perfect analysis forwhat you guys are doing.
I think that's fantastic and Ithink most shops are missing the
(27:50):
boat on that as well.
Quite honestly, I've had greatconversations with excellent
owners and operators that theygot things dialed in.
They work with professionalcompanies or they're part of a
little bit bigger MSO that mayhave a little bit of a team that
does that kind of stuff, but alarge percentage of independent
(28:10):
body shops do not and I think Ithink they they go with the.
You know I still got money atthe end of the month.
I think we're okay.
Right, which is a horribleanalysis of of your business is
yeah, we can still write anothercheck yet on the 30th.
That's perfect.
So what you're saying, bill isyeah, we can still write another
(28:32):
check yet on the 30th, that'sperfect.
So what you're saying, bill, iscrunch it.
Once they go in, they do ignitea blueprint diagnosis and come
up with solutions.
Obviously, you have thoseconversations with the owners
going hey, what did you want todo?
What did you want to accomplish?
Do you have a list of goals?
And if they don't, they justwant to keep rolling but be more
profitable.
Do you guys continue to keepthem as a customer that's on a
(28:55):
monthly program, or is itsomething that's quarterly?
Or do you have custom fits forwhatever the situation is?
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Yeah, I mean, we have an all-a-cart system and we're
happy to do whatever a customerneeds at whatever level they
want.
If they just want their bookscleaned up and they want to,
they just want to cleaned up andthen they're going to take it
and do the daily bookkeeping.
Fine, we can.
We can certainly do that.
If they want us to be a part ofdoing day to day books for them
(29:26):
, we absolutely can do fullservice bookkeeping as well.
Doing day-to-day books for them, we absolutely can do full
service bookkeeping as well.
Now, we don't offer any sort ofdeeper profit and loss
discussions, operationaldiscussions, unless they're a
full service bookkeeping client,because we have to know the
numbers are real in order toactually talk about them.
(29:48):
And when we know that we'veaudited all those transactions
and we know that everything's inthe right bucket, it's pretty
easy then to actually have anoperational discussion.
And so, yeah, we do offer thatas well and we offer that to all
of our clients.
They look, we're happy to.
It's interesting, most of ourclients don't do monthly calls
(30:09):
with us.
No, no, no, they don't.
You know and you know we offerit and we say look, you want to
go over the numbers?
No, cause we send them acomplete report pack every month
.
So we send them gross profitanalysis.
It's pretty detailed and mostof them are pretty savvy People
are, so they get it.
(30:29):
And then I'll get a couple ofcalls once in a while about
ideas.
But most of our clients becausethe numbers are clean, it's
kind of right in front of themand so we don't really get into
deeper discussions, at least atthis point.
We certainly offer that and wetell them up front, but most of
(30:51):
our clients don't actually spendthe time to do that with us
okay, and you guys are reallyyou.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
You've been in business for just over a year,
right?
Is that correct?
Uh?
October october will be twoyears.
Oh, october, okay, I wasthinking 24.
So and how do you feel aboutthe growth?
How's that been?
Are you being well-received bythe collision industry for your
(31:16):
background, knowledge and whatyou're providing for the shops
Are they like?
Oh my God, I didn't know Icould hire somebody that has
that much background in thisbusiness and can help me.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Yeah, I do.
I do every single discoverycall.
So that's my role in thebusiness is.
I talk to every one of ourpotential prospect clients.
So, yes, they are oftensurprised about the experience
and they're relieved actuallysurprised about the experience
(31:52):
and they're relieved actually.
You know that they can actuallynot have to go through lengths
to explain their business andand so that's super helpful
around that and we have.
We haven't really done any realmarketing so under and we're
growing quite, quite well.
We've got a little bit of abacklog right now.
(32:13):
I feel like we've got work inprogress.
Our pipeline now is pushinginto probably mid-September to
onboard clients.
It's a process.
We're in no rush.
We tell clients, look, itstarts with a we're in.
We're in no rush when we tell.
We tell clients, look, itstarts with the discovery call.
Let's, let's have a chat, let'sfigure out where you want to go
(32:35):
.
Maybe we're a good fit, maybewe're not, and I'm going to be
completely transparent with themabout that and I'm telling them
it's a tough road.
You have to change yourbehavior because if you, if you,
had perfect financials, wewouldn't't be talking.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Yeah, so, and this didn't happen overnight.
So you've had you've hadimperfect financials for I'm
going to say years, right.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Yes.
So that means you have to dothings different, you know.
And then what does that looklike?
And and here's how we cansupport you to do that but it
there's some pain associatedwith it.
Right there, there just is.
And then there's the assessmentprocess, and we charge for that
because we spend a significantamount of time.
It's $950 to go through thatprocess and that usually takes
two weeks between actually doingthe assessment, scheduling, a
(33:21):
follow-up call and then fromthere we provide a statement of
work.
So great, you want us to do X,y, z.
Here's a statement of work andhere's an onboarding path.
And so we take that seriouslybecause we want it to be
successful for our clients.
So we want to.
Onboard is a huge part for us,and we do training before we
(33:41):
even start.
Okay, here's the path we needto implement one, two, three.
Here's the training that weneed.
We need to get your team onthis training and then let's get
all that done, configurationdone, and then our start date's
going to be on, whatever thatdate is.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
So it's a process, yeah, and I tell you what, bill,
that's an extremely fair price.
I mean, one little tip your 950is already back and you've
probably doubled your investmenton one little flaw that may be
in your system that is alreadyback, and you've probably
doubled your investment on onelittle flaw that may be in your
system that is discoveredbecause of a little bit of
(34:16):
digging in, right?
So, yeah, I can see why youhave a bit of a backlog already,
but, quite honestly, if you'vegot financial issues and, like I
said, if you've had them foryears, if you had to wait a
month, two months or whatever totalk with somebody that can
help you, you've already waiteda long time.
Another month or two is notgoing to make or break you,
(34:39):
right?
I just want everybody tounderstand this is a
conversation I'm having withBill from Crunch it and this is
not intended to be a salesconversation.
This is an education, not asales pitch.
Okay, so I've got no allianceto Bill or anybody else in
(35:02):
financial services, but I've meta character that seems to
really know this business, thatjust started a business that's
actually helping shop owners,which, if you guys know me,
that's what I'm about is helpingshops get better, right.
So sharing education, sharingconcepts, sharing different ways
of doing things to me is what Ifeel I should be doing.
(35:23):
So you know I had to have Billon the show.
This.
Just it makes way too muchsense.
I've seen so many shops sufferon the financial side because,
quite honestly, you know, a lotof us in this business didn't go
to college.
A lot of us just got out ofhigh school, went to someplace
to work, started our own littleshop and, by God, it grew and
(35:45):
got to be a pretty good sizeshop.
We made money for, you know, 10, 20, got to be a pretty good
size shop.
We made money for, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40 years.
But we never learned thefinancial or really the business
side of this business.
And now that's becoming more andmore of an issue because this
business has become a moreprofessional business.
It needs to be run like aprofessional business.
(36:05):
We could be losing tens ofthousands of dollars or more
every single week just by thingswe are not doing because we
didn't know we're not supposedto do that, right.
So, bill, can you share acouple of those, because you
went through all this stuffright?
This is how you learn.
Can you share some of thosemistakes that you made, that now
(36:25):
you've seen how to avoid those?
You thought, oh God, I wish Iwould have known that 20 years
ago.
All right, is there a couple ofones you can share?
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Yeah, I think I forgot.
You know a hundred of them atleast.
But I just want to saysomething about what you
mentioned earlier about sales.
This isn't a pitchy crunchything and I totally agree with
that.
We never, really we never as acompany, want to sell our
customers anything.
(36:54):
It's all really about and I'mhappy and we give our.
We give anybody goes throughthe assessment with us or even
just a discovery call with me.
I'll tell you exactly how to doit.
I mean I have no problem justsharing it.
I've done a ton of white papersand articles.
I share on our LinkedIn all thestrategies to do these things.
If a shop owner is committed todo it themselves, great, I'm
(37:20):
happy to be a resource for them.
And it's really about justgetting people on.
That journey is my passionright now, because I know how
helpful it was for me and it isfor me today.
I mean, I have a great teamthat supports me and the things
I want to do, so I can be onthis call with you, rick, and I
don't have to worry about thedollars and cents coming in and
(37:44):
or if I want to go travel or doa presentation with the Axo
Group or any of those things,right, right, oh, it is a way to
create freedom in your businesslife when you have your
financial system in place.
So get back to your questionabout mistakes.
Probably one of the fortunatethings that I learned early on
(38:08):
was I had mentors that were verydirect with me, so I was able,
at an early age, to have peoplecare about me in the business I
was doing, tell me some reallyimportant things, and I listened
and I did, and I still didn'tlisten well enough.
(38:28):
Like I talked earlier aboutclosing the month end at the
last day of the month, literallya stack of folders on my desk.
And then another shop owner Imet early on came over to my
shop and he was looking aroundand we started talking about
numbers.
He said, hey, you know what'syour, your profit margin look
like what's this?
And then I told him I couldanswer those reasonably well.
And he says, hey, what's yourprofit margin?
(38:49):
Look like what's this?
And then I told him I couldanswer those reasonably well.
And he says you still suck.
That was his comment to me andI'm like, really Well, how do I
suck?
Well, you're not payingattention to this, this and this
.
Oh, okay, jim Stengel, that'sgreat.
So I've had those earlyinteractions that helped me
along the way, but still it'slike you always kind of put it
(39:12):
off at the end and that wasprobably the things that I.
It took me a long time torealize that even if I know it
and even though if I can fix itat the month end, I'm still not
doing my company and myselfjustice, still not doing my
company and my self-justice.
So it was really learning howto bring in those daily, weekly,
(39:32):
monthly behaviors into mybusiness.
So that was probably my biggestlearning curve was developing
that and understanding the valueof that.
And then financial mistakes too.
Like I never really askedenough people early on when I
was growing how much risk Icould take on without worrying
(39:54):
if I'm going to go out ofbusiness.
Explain what you mean by that,bill.
I went from a super profitable5,000 square foot shop doing
$280, 000 a month.
Now you can run the numbers.
Now this was back in in theearly 2000s.
Okay, to buy in four acres andbuilding a 27 000 square foot
(40:18):
shop and yeah, and which wasgood, it worked out.
But man, it was.
It was tough, a little tight,was it?
It was a.
It was a little tight and thethe money that I was making, um,
I wasn't making anymore.
Yeah, uh, so it was.
(40:39):
It was a really quick educationand I really wish I would have
had.
I wish I would have had theforesight to pull some more
mature business people in mylife at that time and challenge
my assumptions and my drive.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Yeah, it helps to get input from other people when
you're making those kinds ofdecisions.
I know it's um, I think a lotof shops it's more gut driven or
maybe ego driven.
It's like, hey, you know, we'redoing pretty good, I think we
can build another shop andthat's as far as the research
goes right.
(41:18):
It's like, uh, you know, I'mgoing to get somebody to come in
and do a drawing for me.
We'll start on it in a coupleof months and and I've seen it
happen I've seen shops failbecause of doing that.
I've seen shops pull it out oftheir ass at the last minute and
managed to make it fly.
That's, that's great.
I mean, you know this world wasbuilt on some of that stuff,
right?
But collision shop, obviouslyit's um, I think it's.
(41:42):
It's great that at least you candraw in other resources.
I think it's easier now than itever has been due to, you know,
just things like the Internet,like Facebook and LinkedIn and
things like that.
I see some of the stuff thatyou put out there.
So there's a lot of informationout there available and there's
more coaches and consultantsand things like that in this
business than there was 20, 30years ago too.
(42:04):
So there is more resources, butyou have to actively look for
those people.
You have to contact them, youhave to ask for their help.
You can't just hope to God thatthey stop by your place one day
and knock on your door and gohey, you know, can I interest
you in what I do here?
Can I help you out it?
Just, it doesn't work that way.
So I'm glad you're doing whatyou're doing, bill.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
I really am.
Thank you.
And kind of tagging back toyour earlier question about why
do I think shops struggle withhaving perfect financials?
And I think another piece ofthat is they view it as an
expense and professional supportoutsourcing.
(42:49):
Let's just call it outsourcing.
Whether you're outsourcing taxfulfillment, whether you're
outsourcing ADAS services ormechanical work, whatever
Outsourcing is outsourcing right.
So I think business mindsetwhen you look at successful
companies, they outsource theiroutsourcing plan is robust.
(43:12):
In other words, they're focusedon the things they do best.
They outsource the things theydon't do best and they're
willing to pay for that, and Ithink that's another part of
being a small business owner.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
It's tough for people to swallow right, but you have
to be willing to pay for thatsupport and I think that's the
struggle for shop owners yeah,there's something I learned, um,
probably about four or fiveyears ago, and I was listening
to something from tony robbins,you know, and, uh, one of the
other people that he, you knowhe teaches some some things with
(43:46):
it, and he had a great saying.
He says you don't eat, youdon't always have to know the
how when you're trying to figuresomething out.
It's more important that youfind the who and that's the
person that you can hire to fixthat one thing that you're not
sure about or you don't know howto do that.
(44:06):
I mean, we all like to thinkthat we're great at whatever we
try to do, right.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
Just, you know, try doing a home improvement once
and you'll find out how manythings that you're not really
great at.
But you know, this business isnot that different.
Sometimes it makes a lot moresense to find someone like
yourself, someone that's reallygood with ADAS, that may have
systems out there that theybuilt for other people and
(44:33):
they've already got success.
So you just want to hire themin and rather than try to do it
yourself financial or justcoaching.
You know there's a lot of shopsout there that could use
coaching and there's several ofus out there now that do that
and it's extremely beneficial.
You know, you put your egoaside for a minute and you go
hey, if this person knows how toget me from point A to point B
(44:54):
better than I do, faster than Ido, cheaper than I do, I think I
should probably listen to thatperson and if I got to pay him,
I'll pay him.
You know, pay for speed man,pay for speed.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Yeah, no, absolutely, I mean we.
I man pay for speed.
Yeah, no, absolutely, I mean we, I do it.
I mean if I do it.
I shifted that mindset, you know, quite a few years ago, where,
literally, if I can't thinkabout the solution like, like,
if it doesn't come off the topof my head and and I don't have
a clear path to it, I'm findingsomebody that does, because I
(45:25):
know what it takes for me tosolve the problem.
If I don't know, it's going tobe a lot of work and I'm going
to make mistakes.
I don't want to make mistakesanymore.
I mean, so I have a tax, youknow, a tax advisor, you know,
and we have a tax mitigationmeeting often, you know, and so
(45:48):
I paid for that service.
It doesn't sound free, and yethe also does my taxes.
So it's like you have to getinto where, okay, if I spend
$15,000 a year on tax advisory,it seems like a lot of money,
but oh crap, you know what Isaved $187,000 last year.
Oh, that's a no-brainer, right,you know?
(46:13):
And and you ask and I thinkthis is another component of
that it's like not all cpas taxadvisors, you know are cut from
the same cloth, right, just likethere's this idea of a
fiduciary, and I think you'reaware of what that means.
Yep, there's only like 2.5% offinancial advisors are actual
(46:36):
true fiduciaries, right?
So if you really want a personthat knows their stuff, you then
hire a fiduciary, and those arethe other things.
I think Tony Robbins actuallytalks about that pretty greatly
in one of his books.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
Yeah, I read his book , his money book, huge, thick
book.
It took me forever, but yeah,that was one of the key things,
was not every financial investoror financial advisor is a
fiduciary Right?
Massive difference in whatthat's for you right.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
So that's the difference.
Yeah, and there's just a lot ofcrap online too.
That's just not accurate.
I just did a recent articleit'll come out this week on
linkedin about the salt rule.
Are you familiar with the saltTrule?
Speaker 1 (47:24):
No.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
So essentially it's if you pay income tax, if you're
in a state that pays income tax, well, you take whatever you
paid in income tax and then youcan get a credit against your
federal tax.
So we'll use, let's's say,$200,000 income.
(47:47):
So if you pay $10,000 in statetax but your income's 200,000,
well you can deduct the 10,000and lower your taxable income on
the federal level to 190,because you never got the money.
It went to the state taxes, andthat also includes property
taxes, vehicle registrationtaxes, any of those
(48:07):
state-related taxes.
You can actually use those tooffset and lower your federal
tax return dollars.
Really, oh, yeah, all right,there's 36 states and then
there's a PTET rule and forget,I don't know all the acronyms, I
just know what they do.
So this PTET rule and this is abeautiful thing for body shop
(48:29):
owners If you're a body shopowner and you can do the same
thing and you can pay your statetax through your business and
you can take a businessdeduction for that that then
goes down into your credit foryour federal offset.
So you do two things you loweryour income from your business
(48:52):
because you pay taxes, which isa legitimate deduction, and
secondly, lower your adjustedgross on the credit side for
your personal return, for yourfederal taxes.
So there's huge benefits outthere.
(49:19):
But how many CPAs are diggingdeep into that level of service
for those individual tax filers?
When you, uh, have a personalvehicle loan, you can write off
up to ten thousand dollars ofinterest expense on the top line
.
So everybody's got a standarddeduction.
Um, let's say in I think Idon't know what single filing
(49:42):
married's like 30 000 orsomething like that.
Yes, or you go itemized andmost people don't have enough
itemized.
They'll just take the standarddeduction.
Yeah, but with this interestyou can actually take it as top
of line.
So you're actually getting$40,000.
No kidding, yes, now, buthere's conditions, right?
You're going to hear a bunch ofcrap out there.
They're going to say thingslike this, but they don't tell
(50:05):
you the full details, right?
So you have to have that loanhas to originate in past
12-31-2024.
The vehicle has to be assembledin the United States.
Speaker 1 (50:16):
There's yeah little, yeah, little things.
You have to little boxes youhave to check, right, that's
yeah, might be difficult.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
Yes.
So you know, the reason I bringthose things up is that's what
we do for our clients, is we andI want to do for the industry
is bring a deeper level ofawareness for tax optimization
and financial health in theindustry.
Speaker 1 (50:46):
That's excellent, because once again I see another
need.
After we had our conversationin California, I started
thinking about that.
It's like I think there's a lotof shop owners that just they
don't know how to protectthemselves tax-wise.
They really don't.
Personally, myself, I don'tknow how to protect myself from
paying too much tax.
Everybody thinks that they paytoo much tax and want to pay
less but they don't know how toprotect myself from paying too
(51:07):
much tax.
Everybody thinks that they paytoo much tax and want to pay
less, but they don't know how toreally go about protecting
themselves.
So that's something you kind ofspecialize in too right.
Speaker 2 (51:20):
Yeah, and that's the other thing is our business is
we want to deliver white gloveservice.
That's it.
I'm fully that's what we'reabout.
We're we're not interested inin having a thousand customers,
we're not interested in evenhaving probably a hundred, maybe
(51:42):
not even that, maybe it justdepends if we can keep our white
glove service, maybe.
But it's really about whiteglove service for me and
maintaining that and getting toa size to where we can continue
to do that at somewhat of scale,because you know, I am a
businessman and I, like you knowgrowing a company and
(52:04):
delivering service to a lot ofpeople.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
Right.
So quality over quantity, butif you do it right and you get
your systems in place, then it'sscalable, Just like a good MSO,
right?
Yes, correct, Excellent.
Listen before we go here,because I know we're running
(52:28):
down the clock here.
I just spent a greatconversation.
I really appreciate you sharingeverything you're sharing today
.
If you had to give a couple ofkey takeaways for those
listening today or that mighthear this a month or two months
or six months from now becausepodcasts live forever in the
internet right?
What would be your top two tothree takeaways?
(52:52):
If you don't do anything else,do these couple things and
you'll get some relief fromdoing the same old thing and
getting the same old results.
Speaker 2 (53:03):
Yeah, I think.
Thanks for one for giving methe time to be here today.
Sure, I really appreciate thethings that we've been chatting
about, and if I had to sort ofhit this with a simple stick and
give somebody straight up, thisis going to be the biggest bang
for your buck.
Get your CCC configured tomatch your chart of accounts and
(53:27):
then every single day,reconcile every one of your
transactions.
If you can do that and ensurethat things are moving into your
financial system and thenyou've got a system to validate
every day you're going to haveyourself perfect financials.
It'll just happen if you havethat daily discipline to do that
(53:48):
.
And then the other thing Iwould suggest is you find a
fiduciary and come up, look atyour life wealth strategy.
Make sure your corporateentities are structured right,
make sure that you don't havewaste.
I see a lot of people say, well,I need an LLC for this, I need
(54:11):
an LLC for that, and so on, andit's like no, you don't.
And then tax optimization itshould be.
I mean, it's the second largestexpense in our life.
It's actually the first to behonest If you really look at all
the taxes.
It's actually the first to behonest if you really look at all
the taxes, it's actually thefirst.
So those are the, those are thethings I'd say that you
(54:33):
absolutely spend time doing, andthen you'll notice a
significant difference in yourfinancial health excellent.
Speaker 1 (54:40):
Those are great tips.
So, uh, thank you so much foruh, for joining me the MindRange
podcast.
I'm going to leave.
I've got all your contactinformation, bill, for you If
there's anything else you wantto share.
I know you said that there's acomprehensive diagnosis or
analysis.
It's about $950.
(55:01):
You're always good for a phonecall, for a discovery call.
So if you're a shop out thereand you're resonating with any
of this going God, I couldprobably use a little help.
And you know, or I just havethis one thing I can't figure
out my financial side.
I would reach out to Bill, havea conversation with him.
It could be a good move and younever know what it might lead
(55:22):
to.
So any final thoughts, anyparting thoughts from you, bill?
Speaker 2 (55:27):
Thank you.
Thank you, Rick, and I hope youknow we shed some light on some
folks out there and maybe weinspired somebody to take some
action.
And if you go to our website atwwwcrunchitfscom.
Wwwcrunchitfscom.
And schedule a discovery call,that goes directly to my
calendar, so that's probably theeasiest way to get ahold of me.
(55:49):
Book it on my calendar and I'mopen to chat about anything.
Excellent.
Will you be at SEVA this year,Bill?
Yeah, I'm actually doing an RDEpresentation on what I call the
Body Shop Business Trifecta.
Okay.
Speaker 1 (56:09):
Is that with SCRS?
Speaker 2 (56:11):
Yeah, oh, fantastic.
I think it's on the 5th at 12o'clock, I think it is.
Speaker 1 (56:17):
Okay, excellent, all right.
For anybody going to SEMA, makesure you put that on your to-do
list, that way you can see Bill.
And then, in between all theother million things there is to
do at SEMA, it's good.
I'll tell you what.
Scrs has had fantasticeducation series the last
several years and to me that'salways an exciting part of going
(56:39):
.
Speaker 2 (56:40):
I agree, totally agree.
Thank you for your time.
I appreciate you and I lookforward to hearing the podcast.
Speaker 1 (56:47):
Well, that's all I had for you today.
Thanks again for tuning in.
I really appreciate yoursupport and I hope you have a
great week.
I can always be reached atwwwrickselovercom, where you can
find all my social media linkspodcast episodes, blog posts and
much more Outro Music.
At what point did you decide I don't want to do this
anymore.
I need to do somethingdifferent?
You feel something that wasjust brewing inside you that
says, hey, I'm not using mypotential, or I just don't like
this business, or what was itfor you?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Yeah, that's a great question.
I still I love the business.
I still love the business, andwhat I didn't like about for
years and I was, you know,terrible at at this too was the
financial side of it in terms ofall the extra work you got
extra.
And I say that and that's howit felt.
All this extra work I had to doalong with actually running the
(00:35):
shop, so it was late nights onweekends staying up closing
files.
Tax season comes around.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
It was always trying to find stuff and welcome to the
mind wrench podcast with yourhost, rick sellover, where minor
adjustments produce majorimprovements and mindset,
personal growth and success.
(01:02):
This is the place to be everyMonday, where we make small
improvements and take positiveactions in our business and
personal lives that will make amajor impact in our success,
next-level growth and quality oflife.
Hey, what's up everybody?
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Welcome to the MindWrench Podcast.
I'm your host, rick Salo.
Thanks so much for stopping in.
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(02:03):
If you've been listening to theshow for a while or been on the
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Recently, while attending theAxel Nobel CIEE conference and
(02:27):
trade show in Orange, california, I was fortunate enough to meet
this week's special guest and,after learning of the highly
valuable and unique businessthat he's launched, I really
wanted to share this with all ofyou.
Now, sometimes you just meetsomebody and within five minutes
you go.
This person gets it.
Bill's one of those guys rightthis week.
My special guest has gone fromhumble beginnings as a
technician, starting his ownshop, to MSO growth and even
(02:50):
international shop ownership,and is now providing financial
fitness for the collisionindustry.
Bill Park, a 30-year collisionveteran, has always had a deep
passion for our industry and nowfocuses his time and energy on
providing what he calls a runwayfor perfect financials for
other shops.
So please join me in welcomingan industry veteran with a gold
mind of financial wisdom BillPark, founder of CrunchFit
(03:13):
Financial Services, the MindMerge podcast.
Bill, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Thank you, rick.
Appreciate the kindintroduction.
Yeah, and it's certainly been along journey for sure to get
here, but it's definitely beenenjoyable.
I've really enjoyed being inthe industry, in the body shop
business, you know, from fixingcars myself, you know, to
growing a company and then andnow sort of bringing all that
(03:40):
together into really a businesswhere body shop owners can have
a trusted ear, like they canactually have a conversation
with myself and our team, andall we do is live, breathe and
service body shops.
I think it was.
I didn't realize the gap thatwas missing in the industry, to
(04:01):
be honest, and it's verysignificant.
And everybody I speak withregarding financials, everybody
has a CPA, everybody does booksto some extent.
However, the majority of peoplehave problems and I just don't
think they've really had aresource to help solve those
(04:24):
problems.
So we hope we can be thatresource for them.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Absolutely so before we dive into the meat of this,
maybe give a 30,000-footoverview of your background,
just so people know who they'retalking with and kind of where
you came from.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Sure, yeah, I painted my first car when I was 15 and
it just came about because my mydad said hey, you want to drive
a nice car, I guess you need tomake it nice because he
couldn't afford to buy one forme.
So it was, it was that sort ofpursuit to not drive a junker
around to.
I bought my 1972 Vega for 500bucks and, you know, made it
(05:04):
pretty.
So that's sort of where itstarted and I did that all the
way.
You know, through high school Ipainted cars for people and
they got paid to do it.
And I went to college and I wasgoing to.
I wasn't going to be anorthopedic surgeon, that was
sort of my goal in college.
And then I realized that I wasprobably not equipped well
(05:27):
enough for the bureaucracywithin medicine for me to
practice, kind of how I like todo things and kind of my nature.
So I chose obviously to go adifferent route and I had an
interesting experience when Igraduated the University of
Arizona with my degree.
I couldn't get a job.
(05:47):
It was, it was, you know, itwas kind of disappointing.
And then this opening came aboutwith a dealer body shop there
in Tucson Arizona.
I went and applied.
I'm thinking, man, this isgoing to be an easy shoe in for
me.
And I didn't even get a phonecall.
So I literally told my wifethat you know, obviously you
(06:07):
know, I'm just going to do whatI do best.
I'm sorry, you know you'regoing to have an educated body
man as a husband and I'm justgoing to go take the business
away from these people.
And that was my start of shopownership.
So that was in the early 90sand I rented a little space and
(06:28):
grew my business up and to fourlocations, just under 100 people
, and sold that company in theend of 2009.
Since then, at the end of theday, I've owned 100% or a
partner in 13 shops, with fourdifferent exits along the way.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Wow, oh, that's a lot for a guy that didn't want to
be a shop owner.
He wanted to be orthopedics.
That's quite a jump man.
It's funny because most peoplethat we're going to talk about
today, that you can help,started very similar paths.
Right, they just became atechnician, started doing some
(07:13):
work for somebody and decided topop a sign on a roof and go I'm
a body shop now, right.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Absolutely yeah, I think that's the by and large
the majority of the industryright there.
You know they worked in a shopand I got frustrated with the
owners and said I can dosomething better.
They see something more inthemselves and which I really,
you know, encourage.
You know any technicians outthere, why not?
Speaker 1 (07:46):
You know.
So yeah, that's the majority ofour clients.
Yeah, so you had, you had anupbringing in um in collision
ownership, including msos andeven international.
Uh, you want to shop over inthe uk.
Um, at what point did youdecide I don't want to do this
anymore, I want, I need to dosomething different?
You feel something that wasjust brewing inside you that
says, hey, I'm not using mypotential, or I just I don't
(08:06):
like this business, or what wasit for you?
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Yeah, that's a that's a great question.
I still I love the business.
I still love the business.
And what I didn't like aboutfor years and I was, you know,
terrible at this too is thefinancial side of it in terms of
all the extra work you gotextra, and I say that and that's
(08:30):
how it felt.
All this extra work I had to doalong with actually running the
shop.
So it was late nights onweekends staying up, closing
files.
Tax season comes around.
It was always trying to findstuff and um, until I finally
kind of put my foot down and Isaid, you know, I really need to
kind of build some competencyin that.
(08:50):
And we did that fairly wellearly on.
When we sold our that firstsmall little MSO in 2009,.
We, you know, we were prettyprepared for that.
And then later, as I acquiredother locations and other
businesses, I had this biggerproblem that not only was I in
the collision business, I wasdoing technology, software, real
(09:15):
estate, some angel investingstuff.
So I really had to have more ofa robust accounting system for
my own set of businesses.
So we kind of built a teamaround that and in 2022, we felt
(09:36):
very comfortable with ouraccounting system for our own
businesses, businesses.
And then, when coming out ofcovid, uh, which was extremely
painful for us, we, um, we hadfour, we had five locations in
colorado, four body shops andone pdr center and when covid
hit, we, we, really we went from11 and a half million in
(09:58):
revenue to five and a halfmillion.
It was really painful and thegreat, the saving grace.
Grace was that we had anaccounting team that kept us in
track.
We knew where we sat, we didn'thave much debt, so we were able
to weather that storm.
We ended up closing a couplelocations, negotiating exits out
(10:20):
of leases.
I could spend my time andenergy solving those problems
and not having to worry aboutwhere the dollars and tracking
money and and understanding theconsequences of those things,
because I had this team thatcould help me do that.
So I had a friend of mine thathad a couple of three centers in
(10:40):
Texas and he wanted me to helphim sell, went through that
process with him and hisbusiness, reorganizing things,
getting him ready to be packagedwell, and he was just super
awesome to work with andopen-minded.
And then he kind of opened mymind and said you should be
doing this for others.
And so they're kind of like, oh, that's interesting.
(11:02):
And so we decided officially inOctober of 23 to do that.
And then I said you know whatI'm really enjoying this.
You know, I don't think Ididn't enjoy the shops.
I had had a manager that wasrunning the business for us and
he was doing an excellent job,but I really felt that in order
for me to dedicate my time andenergy to the, to my, our
(11:26):
customers, I really needed to be, not have any other.
I need that to be my main focus, right.
So we had an offer to sell andwe sold our shops and then now
we're, you know, obviouslytransitioned into crunch of
financial services.
So really happy about that move, financial services.
(11:48):
So really happy about that move.
And I really enjoy helping shopowners do what they love doing
and not have to worry abouttheir numbers, because I know
how important that was for mewhen I went through those stages
.
And if I can help another shopowner get there and be that
resource to them where they canpick up the phone and call me
about any question, resource tothem where they can pick up the
phone and call me about anyquestion.
I may not have all.
I'm sure I won't have all theanswers, but I can definitely be
(12:09):
a solid resource for them.
Problem solving, resourcebrainstorming.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
And if I don't know the answer, I probably know
somebody that does.
Well, that's awesome and it'sfunny how the universe can pull
you in the direction you reallyneed to go sometimes, right?
So you've found now you'redoing something actually you
enjoy and you're good at andyou're getting better at, and it
is a huge hole in this industrythe whole financial fitness
(12:41):
piece of this fitness piece ofthis.
Why and this might be asoftball question, I don't know,
but it's just something Ithought about is and I've
thought about this a lot is youknow, why do you think so many
independent body shops andthere's even some small groups,
right, that are still?
(13:01):
Why are they financiallydysfunctional?
And I don't mean to mean Idon't mean to use the word
dysfunctional, you know,callously, it's just I've worked
with a couple of shops as acoach and it's like, wow, some
of these people don't even knowwhat a P&L is.
They ask their CPA, right.
(13:21):
So I mean, what do you thinkare the main contributors to why
a shop will end up financiallydysfunctional and how can they
prevent that?
Speaker 2 (13:31):
That is the million dollar question, rick, but I'll
give you Glad I asked that earlyyeah, I'll give you what I
believe is contributing to thatto some extent.
I think it's a couple of things.
I think one it is we, uh, ashuman beings, business owners,
(13:56):
entrepreneurs um, we hire acertified public accountants,
right, and that certified publicaccountant comes with
credentials, that comes withsort of an innate.
I trust this person's going todo things for me well and they
feel that that's the best choice, right, that is what you do,
(14:18):
and if they already have that,they're in their best situation.
And I think that's a part of it.
But I think you know where I'mgoing with this, that that
that's.
That's a very small part of it.
And the fact that the cpasactually do a crappy job, right,
sorry for any cpas listeningout there.
If you do a great job, greatfor you, but all your other 95
(14:41):
don't.
They're lazy, I shouldn't saythey're lazy.
The system of being a CPA and atax filer turns into being a
puppy mill, and this is thequestion that I challenge most
people with.
Or shop owners I say just askyour CPA how many tax returns
(15:03):
they file a year.
They're going to give you ananswer.
Whatever that answer is, it'slikely going to be in the
hundreds and maybe the thousands.
Then you can ask them well,where do I fit in?
How do you fit my personalprofile and the detail of my
(15:25):
business into a true taxoptimization strategy?
And that's when the rubber willhit the road and the light bulb
may kick on.
Okay, so I think there's acombination of they believe that
they're being properlyrepresented.
They believe that they're beingproperly represented and
(15:48):
because they believe they'reproperly represented, they
default to what's easy for themevery day, which is to look at
their bank balance, right.
And if their bank balance isokay and they're still buying
the stuff they want to buy,right, then what's the problem?
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Right, right then what's the problem?
Right?
Is it safe to say that cpas,for the most part, really don't
know how different collisionbusiness is?
I mean, there's, there's somany, so many uh, different um,
profit centers within acollision industry or within a
collision shop and I don't know.
(16:24):
I just, I've got a, you, I'vegot a, you know, I've got a tax
guy, cpa, and I've talked aboutcollision before and they're
like, yeah, I don't know howthose guys run those shops.
There's just there's, you know,income coming from different
areas and different ways ofpaying people, and I think it's
confusing to them and I don'tthink that's a solid, you know
yes or no business where, yes, Ican do your CPA work or no, I
(16:47):
can't.
It's like somewhere in the grayarea, right?
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Well, think about the CPA's job.
Primarily, it's to preparetaxes and file tax returns.
That's what they do.
So what does that mean?
That means that their worldthey're going to file a cash
basis tax return.
That's what they're looking for.
That means that their worldthey're going to file a cash
basis tax return.
That's what they're looking for.
That means that everything theydo is going to be in the spirit
(17:15):
of filing a cash basis taxreturn, which is actually what
happens.
But what they should be sayingis no, you have to run your
business on an accrual-basedaccounting system and then we'll
do a cash basis conversion forfiling tax purposes.
And now, with an accrual-basedaccounting system, shop owners
(17:35):
now have actionable financialswhere they can understand cash
flow.
They can understand debt,assets, liabilities.
Their balance sheet is way moreimportant in terms of the
financial health of theirbusiness.
It tells a story and when youdo accrual work and process
(17:56):
adjustments, customer depositadjustments, you do all those
things like the proper accrualsystem does.
Then now you have monthlyfinancials that make sense
relative to your productivityand your cash.
So they just don't they don'thave the expertise in the
industry to even advise somebodyhow to do that and, more
(18:19):
importantly, even how to manageit every day.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Okay.
So From your aspect, and whatwould make sense to me is most
shops don't really need a CPA tohelp them with their day-to-day
financial activities.
They need them at the year endto help them with their tax
returns, right.
Somebody needs probably more ofa financial advisor during the
(18:46):
course of a year, right?
To help them make the rightstrategies, make the right moves
, not screw something up in themiddle of the year that they
can't recover from Some of thethings that you fulfill for them
, right.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Yeah, I mean we're a design specific company.
I mean we've designed oursystem for the body shop
industry.
We don't serve any otherclients.
We've designed our system forthe body shop industry.
We don't serve any otherclients.
That's all we do.
So we certainly can fulfillthat.
But if I'm just giving you know, if I'm just talking in general
terms about what a shop needs,you need a CPA or a tax filer.
(19:22):
It doesn't have to be a CPA, itcould be an EA and oftentimes
an EA is a better solution thana CPA, because EAs that's all
they do is file taxes and ifyou're in a CPA firm, they're
likely to have an EA do itanyways and they're deciding the
return.
So they need a tax filing forsure.
But really in any business whatyou need is really robust
(19:49):
bookkeeping behaviors.
You need daily, weekly, monthlybookkeeping process and then
when you organize your incomeand your expenses and your
capital expenditures in that way, actually tax planning and tax
filing becomes pretty easy.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
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(21:16):
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the road year after year.
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So let's just say we've.
You know, I've got a customerthat has been using a CPA for
(21:57):
years and yet they've got nofinancial fitness to them and
they decide they want to dosomething different.
Maybe they got some upcomingmoves they want to make.
Maybe they want to buy anothershop, or maybe they want to
expand or just, you know, do anaddition, something as simple as
an addition.
How would Crunchit come in andfill the gap for the lack of
(22:17):
knowledge and where they need tobe, and how does that work for
you?
I mean, what's their first step?
Speaker 2 (22:24):
The first step.
You know I can use a houseanalogy or I can.
I'll just stick with actuallythe fixing a car, because that's
kind of how we design oursystem anyways, okay.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
So what is the typical first step when?
Speaker 2 (22:45):
you're doing a car repair, pull it in and tear it
down and do a blueprint, right,exactly, you need to fully
understand the exact conditionof every damaged part, every
undamaged part, anything, every.
And then you need to understandrepair procedures, oem
specifics, procedures, repairmethods, all that.
(23:06):
You have to compile a repairplan to actually complete the
repairs on that vehicle.
Detail, right, oftentimes 130line items, right, maybe.
So very detailed.
So in order for anybody notjust us in order for anybody to
(23:26):
look at somebody's business andoffer advice, financial advice
or planning advice, they need tohave a 100% accurate set of
financials.
So we offer a comprehensiveassessment which is essentially
a financial blueprint.
So we go in to CCC, we look athow it's configured, we look at
(23:54):
the roles of the staff, we lookat how estimates are written, we
look at parts code tables forthe repair facility, we look at
any insurer parts code tables,we look at part types, we look
at receipt types, we look ateverything.
And then we compile a gapanalysis from OK, how you should
(24:14):
have it configured to optimizeyour financial P&L and balance
sheet.
And then we look at the chartof accounts in QuickBooks and we
say, ok, what do we want tomeasure what's important to you,
say, okay, what do we want tomeasure?
What's important to you Now?
Do those things all?
Are they all synced?
Does your chart of accountsreflect what you want to measure
?
Is your CCC synced in a waythat it's going to connect to
(24:38):
your chart of accounts?
And what are the financialprocedures within your daily
operations of your business?
Like paper flow, we want tounderstand how you handle every
piece of paper in your business.
So when somebody pays adeductible or pays your bill,
how does that work?
When an invoice comes in from aparts vendor, how does that
(25:01):
work?
When an invoice comes in from asublet vendor, how does that
work?
When you return a part, howdoes that work?
So we go through a detailedanalysis of that paper flow and
then we want to make sure thattheir training is in place for
your people to then processthose pieces of paper in a way
that supports the sinking andproper allocation within the
(25:25):
chart, within the chart ofaccounts, within the chart of
accounts.
Once that's done, it's just adaily.
You know what we do on a dailybasis is go in and export the
data.
We do validation andverification of every
transaction to make sure it wasdone right.
And then we create a dailyacceptance report for our
(25:47):
clients and so essentially everysingle day they've got an audit
of all their transactions andit's up to the repair center,
obviously, where the work'sbeing done, to fix those things
Right.
And once you've got that inplace, now to your question in
the beginning is well, okay, Iwant to expand, or I want to buy
(26:08):
a piece of equipment.
Or then you can look in and say, okay, let's talk expand, or I
want to buy a piece of equipment.
Or then you can look in and say, okay, let's talk about that.
What does that look like?
And we can say how doesfinancing, how's financing going
to impact cash flow?
Okay, how is financing going toimpact your capital expense?
And what does that look likefrom a tax perspective?
Is it favorable?
And what do you expect to getin return for that?
(26:30):
I mean, everybody loves nice,shiny equipment.
I've bought I've been guilty ofthis I bought stuff I thought
would be super helpful for mybusiness and it sits in the
freaking corner, you know solike Seen that before I'm like.
you know that I wish somebodywould have had that conversation
(26:52):
with me.
You know how do you not ensurethat when you buy that that it's
not going to sit in the cornerRight?
Solve that problem first, right.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Yep, no, that's good, but you know, I like that.
That's, you know, a financialblueprint.
I like that.
It's a financial blueprintbecause you think through as a
shop person, you think throughcorrectly.
Blueprinting a car is goingthrough all the things that you
need to record All those, allthe measurements, all with the
(27:29):
customer and explain all thethings that are damaged on their
car, how you're going to fixthem, why you need to fix them,
the safety of it and all that.
That's a perfect analysis forwhat you guys are doing.
I think that's fantastic and Ithink most shops are missing the
(27:50):
boat on that as well.
Quite honestly, I've had greatconversations with excellent
owners and operators that theygot things dialed in.
They work with professionalcompanies or they're part of a
little bit bigger MSO that mayhave a little bit of a team that
does that kind of stuff, but alarge percentage of independent
(28:10):
body shops do not and I think Ithink they they go with the.
You know I still got money atthe end of the month.
I think we're okay.
Right, which is a horribleanalysis of of your business is
yeah, we can still write anothercheck yet on the 30th.
That's perfect.
So what you're saying, bill isyeah, we can still write another
(28:32):
check yet on the 30th, that'sperfect.
So what you're saying, bill, iscrunch it.
Once they go in, they do ignitea blueprint diagnosis and come
up with solutions.
Obviously, you have thoseconversations with the owners
going hey, what did you want todo?
What did you want to accomplish?
Do you have a list of goals?
And if they don't, they justwant to keep rolling but be more
profitable.
Do you guys continue to keepthem as a customer that's on a
(28:55):
monthly program, or is itsomething that's quarterly?
Or do you have custom fits forwhatever the situation is?
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Yeah, I mean, we have an all-a-cart system and we're
happy to do whatever a customerneeds at whatever level they
want.
If they just want their bookscleaned up and they want to,
they just want to cleaned up andthen they're going to take it
and do the daily bookkeeping.
Fine, we can.
We can certainly do that.
If they want us to be a part ofdoing day to day books for them
(29:26):
, we absolutely can do fullservice bookkeeping as well.
Doing day-to-day books for them, we absolutely can do full
service bookkeeping as well.
Now, we don't offer any sort ofdeeper profit and loss
discussions, operationaldiscussions, unless they're a
full service bookkeeping client,because we have to know the
numbers are real in order toactually talk about them.
(29:48):
And when we know that we'veaudited all those transactions
and we know that everything's inthe right bucket, it's pretty
easy then to actually have anoperational discussion.
And so, yeah, we do offer thatas well and we offer that to all
of our clients.
They look, we're happy to.
It's interesting, most of ourclients don't do monthly calls
(30:09):
with us.
No, no, no, they don't.
You know and you know we offerit and we say look, you want to
go over the numbers?
No, cause we send them acomplete report pack every month
.
So we send them gross profitanalysis.
It's pretty detailed and mostof them are pretty savvy People
are, so they get it.
(30:29):
And then I'll get a couple ofcalls once in a while about
ideas.
But most of our clients becausethe numbers are clean, it's
kind of right in front of themand so we don't really get into
deeper discussions, at least atthis point.
We certainly offer that and wetell them up front, but most of
(30:51):
our clients don't actually spendthe time to do that with us
okay, and you guys are reallyyou.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
You've been in business for just over a year,
right?
Is that correct?
Uh?
October october will be twoyears.
Oh, october, okay, I wasthinking 24.
So and how do you feel aboutthe growth?
How's that been?
Are you being well-received bythe collision industry for your
(31:16):
background, knowledge and whatyou're providing for the shops
Are they like?
Oh my God, I didn't know Icould hire somebody that has
that much background in thisbusiness and can help me.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Yeah, I do.
I do every single discoverycall.
So that's my role in thebusiness is.
I talk to every one of ourpotential prospect clients.
So, yes, they are oftensurprised about the experience
and they're relieved actuallysurprised about the experience
(31:52):
and they're relieved actually.
You know that they can actuallynot have to go through lengths
to explain their business andand so that's super helpful
around that and we have.
We haven't really done any realmarketing so under and we're
growing quite, quite well.
We've got a little bit of abacklog right now.
(32:13):
I feel like we've got work inprogress.
Our pipeline now is pushinginto probably mid-September to
onboard clients.
It's a process.
We're in no rush.
We tell clients, look, itstarts with a we're in.
We're in no rush when we tell.
We tell clients, look, itstarts with the discovery call.
Let's, let's have a chat, let'sfigure out where you want to go
(32:35):
.
Maybe we're a good fit, maybewe're not, and I'm going to be
completely transparent with themabout that and I'm telling them
it's a tough road.
You have to change yourbehavior because if you, if you,
had perfect financials, wewouldn't't be talking.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Yeah, so, and this didn't happen overnight.
So you've had you've hadimperfect financials for I'm
going to say years, right.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Yes.
So that means you have to dothings different, you know.
And then what does that looklike?
And and here's how we cansupport you to do that but it
there's some pain associatedwith it.
Right there, there just is.
And then there's the assessmentprocess, and we charge for that
because we spend a significantamount of time.
It's $950 to go through thatprocess and that usually takes
two weeks between actually doingthe assessment, scheduling, a
(33:21):
follow-up call and then fromthere we provide a statement of
work.
So great, you want us to do X,y, z.
Here's a statement of work andhere's an onboarding path.
And so we take that seriouslybecause we want it to be
successful for our clients.
So we want to.
Onboard is a huge part for us,and we do training before we
(33:41):
even start.
Okay, here's the path we needto implement one, two, three.
Here's the training that weneed.
We need to get your team onthis training and then let's get
all that done, configurationdone, and then our start date's
going to be on, whatever thatdate is.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
So it's a process, yeah, and I tell you what, bill,
that's an extremely fair price.
I mean, one little tip your 950is already back and you've
probably doubled your investmenton one little flaw that may be
in your system that is alreadyback, and you've probably
doubled your investment on onelittle flaw that may be in your
system that is discoveredbecause of a little bit of
(34:16):
digging in, right?
So, yeah, I can see why youhave a bit of a backlog already,
but, quite honestly, if you'vegot financial issues and, like I
said, if you've had them foryears, if you had to wait a
month, two months or whatever totalk with somebody that can
help you, you've already waiteda long time.
Another month or two is notgoing to make or break you,
(34:39):
right?
I just want everybody tounderstand this is a
conversation I'm having withBill from Crunch it and this is
not intended to be a salesconversation.
This is an education, not asales pitch.
Okay, so I've got no allianceto Bill or anybody else in
(35:02):
financial services, but I've meta character that seems to
really know this business, thatjust started a business that's
actually helping shop owners,which, if you guys know me,
that's what I'm about is helpingshops get better, right.
So sharing education, sharingconcepts, sharing different ways
of doing things to me is what Ifeel I should be doing.
(35:23):
So you know I had to have Billon the show.
This.
Just it makes way too muchsense.
I've seen so many shops sufferon the financial side because,
quite honestly, you know, a lotof us in this business didn't go
to college.
A lot of us just got out ofhigh school, went to someplace
to work, started our own littleshop and, by God, it grew and
(35:45):
got to be a pretty good sizeshop.
We made money for, you know, 10, 20, got to be a pretty good
size shop.
We made money for, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40 years.
But we never learned thefinancial or really the business
side of this business.
And now that's becoming more andmore of an issue because this
business has become a moreprofessional business.
It needs to be run like aprofessional business.
(36:05):
We could be losing tens ofthousands of dollars or more
every single week just by thingswe are not doing because we
didn't know we're not supposedto do that, right.
So, bill, can you share acouple of those, because you
went through all this stuffright?
This is how you learn.
Can you share some of thosemistakes that you made, that now
(36:25):
you've seen how to avoid those?
You thought, oh God, I wish Iwould have known that 20 years
ago.
All right, is there a couple ofones you can share?
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Yeah, I think I forgot.
You know a hundred of them atleast.
But I just want to saysomething about what you
mentioned earlier about sales.
This isn't a pitchy crunchything and I totally agree with
that.
We never, really we never as acompany, want to sell our
customers anything.
(36:54):
It's all really about and I'mhappy and we give our.
We give anybody goes throughthe assessment with us or even
just a discovery call with me.
I'll tell you exactly how to doit.
I mean I have no problem justsharing it.
I've done a ton of white papersand articles.
I share on our LinkedIn all thestrategies to do these things.
If a shop owner is committed todo it themselves, great, I'm
(37:20):
happy to be a resource for them.
And it's really about justgetting people on.
That journey is my passionright now, because I know how
helpful it was for me and it isfor me today.
I mean, I have a great teamthat supports me and the things
I want to do, so I can be onthis call with you, rick, and I
don't have to worry about thedollars and cents coming in and
(37:44):
or if I want to go travel or doa presentation with the Axo
Group or any of those things,right, right, oh, it is a way to
create freedom in your businesslife when you have your
financial system in place.
So get back to your questionabout mistakes.
Probably one of the fortunatethings that I learned early on
(38:08):
was I had mentors that were verydirect with me, so I was able,
at an early age, to have peoplecare about me in the business I
was doing, tell me some reallyimportant things, and I listened
and I did, and I still didn'tlisten well enough.
(38:28):
Like I talked earlier aboutclosing the month end at the
last day of the month, literallya stack of folders on my desk.
And then another shop owner Imet early on came over to my
shop and he was looking aroundand we started talking about
numbers.
He said, hey, you know what'syour, your profit margin look
like what's this?
And then I told him I couldanswer those reasonably well.
And he says, hey, what's yourprofit margin?
(38:49):
Look like what's this?
And then I told him I couldanswer those reasonably well.
And he says you still suck.
That was his comment to me andI'm like, really Well, how do I
suck?
Well, you're not payingattention to this, this and this
.
Oh, okay, jim Stengel, that'sgreat.
So I've had those earlyinteractions that helped me
along the way, but still it'slike you always kind of put it
(39:12):
off at the end and that wasprobably the things that I.
It took me a long time torealize that even if I know it
and even though if I can fix itat the month end, I'm still not
doing my company and myselfjustice, still not doing my
company and my self-justice.
So it was really learning howto bring in those daily, weekly,
(39:32):
monthly behaviors into mybusiness.
So that was probably my biggestlearning curve was developing
that and understanding the valueof that.
And then financial mistakes too.
Like I never really askedenough people early on when I
was growing how much risk Icould take on without worrying
(39:54):
if I'm going to go out ofbusiness.
Explain what you mean by that,bill.
I went from a super profitable5,000 square foot shop doing
$280, 000 a month.
Now you can run the numbers.
Now this was back in in theearly 2000s.
Okay, to buy in four acres andbuilding a 27 000 square foot
(40:18):
shop and yeah, and which wasgood, it worked out.
But man, it was.
It was tough, a little tight,was it?
It was a.
It was a little tight and thethe money that I was making, um,
I wasn't making anymore.
Yeah, uh, so it was.
(40:39):
It was a really quick educationand I really wish I would have
had.
I wish I would have had theforesight to pull some more
mature business people in mylife at that time and challenge
my assumptions and my drive.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Yeah, it helps to get input from other people when
you're making those kinds ofdecisions.
I know it's um, I think a lotof shops it's more gut driven or
maybe ego driven.
It's like, hey, you know, we'redoing pretty good, I think we
can build another shop andthat's as far as the research
goes right.
(41:18):
It's like, uh, you know, I'mgoing to get somebody to come in
and do a drawing for me.
We'll start on it in a coupleof months and and I've seen it
happen I've seen shops failbecause of doing that.
I've seen shops pull it out oftheir ass at the last minute and
managed to make it fly.
That's, that's great.
I mean, you know this world wasbuilt on some of that stuff,
right?
But collision shop, obviouslyit's um, I think it's.
(41:42):
It's great that at least you candraw in other resources.
I think it's easier now than itever has been due to, you know,
just things like the Internet,like Facebook and LinkedIn and
things like that.
I see some of the stuff thatyou put out there.
So there's a lot of informationout there available and there's
more coaches and consultantsand things like that in this
business than there was 20, 30years ago too.
(42:04):
So there is more resources, butyou have to actively look for
those people.
You have to contact them, youhave to ask for their help.
You can't just hope to God thatthey stop by your place one day
and knock on your door and gohey, you know, can I interest
you in what I do here?
Can I help you out it?
Just, it doesn't work that way.
So I'm glad you're doing whatyou're doing, bill.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
I really am.
Thank you.
And kind of tagging back toyour earlier question about why
do I think shops struggle withhaving perfect financials?
And I think another piece ofthat is they view it as an
expense and professional supportoutsourcing.
(42:49):
Let's just call it outsourcing.
Whether you're outsourcing taxfulfillment, whether you're
outsourcing ADAS services ormechanical work, whatever
Outsourcing is outsourcing right.
So I think business mindsetwhen you look at successful
companies, they outsource theiroutsourcing plan is robust.
(43:12):
In other words, they're focusedon the things they do best.
They outsource the things theydon't do best and they're
willing to pay for that, and Ithink that's another part of
being a small business owner.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
It's tough for people to swallow right, but you have
to be willing to pay for thatsupport and I think that's the
struggle for shop owners yeah,there's something I learned, um,
probably about four or fiveyears ago, and I was listening
to something from tony robbins,you know, and, uh, one of the
other people that he, you knowhe teaches some some things with
(43:46):
it, and he had a great saying.
He says you don't eat, youdon't always have to know the
how when you're trying to figuresomething out.
It's more important that youfind the who and that's the
person that you can hire to fixthat one thing that you're not
sure about or you don't know howto do that.
(44:06):
I mean, we all like to thinkthat we're great at whatever we
try to do, right.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
Just, you know, try doing a home improvement once
and you'll find out how manythings that you're not really
great at.
But you know, this business isnot that different.
Sometimes it makes a lot moresense to find someone like
yourself, someone that's reallygood with ADAS, that may have
systems out there that theybuilt for other people and
(44:33):
they've already got success.
So you just want to hire themin and rather than try to do it
yourself financial or justcoaching.
You know there's a lot of shopsout there that could use
coaching and there's several ofus out there now that do that
and it's extremely beneficial.
You know, you put your egoaside for a minute and you go
hey, if this person knows how toget me from point A to point B
(44:54):
better than I do, faster than Ido, cheaper than I do, I think I
should probably listen to thatperson and if I got to pay him,
I'll pay him.
You know, pay for speed man,pay for speed.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Yeah, no, absolutely, I mean we.
I man pay for speed.
Yeah, no, absolutely, I mean we, I do it.
I mean if I do it.
I shifted that mindset, you know, quite a few years ago, where,
literally, if I can't thinkabout the solution like, like,
if it doesn't come off the topof my head and and I don't have
a clear path to it, I'm findingsomebody that does, because I
(45:25):
know what it takes for me tosolve the problem.
If I don't know, it's going tobe a lot of work and I'm going
to make mistakes.
I don't want to make mistakesanymore.
I mean, so I have a tax, youknow, a tax advisor, you know,
and we have a tax mitigationmeeting often, you know, and so
(45:48):
I paid for that service.
It doesn't sound free, and yethe also does my taxes.
So it's like you have to getinto where, okay, if I spend
$15,000 a year on tax advisory,it seems like a lot of money,
but oh crap, you know what Isaved $187,000 last year.
Oh, that's a no-brainer, right,you know?
(46:13):
And and you ask and I thinkthis is another component of
that it's like not all cpas taxadvisors, you know are cut from
the same cloth, right, just likethere's this idea of a
fiduciary, and I think you'reaware of what that means.
Yep, there's only like 2.5% offinancial advisors are actual
(46:36):
true fiduciaries, right?
So if you really want a personthat knows their stuff, you then
hire a fiduciary, and those arethe other things.
I think Tony Robbins actuallytalks about that pretty greatly
in one of his books.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
Yeah, I read his book , his money book, huge, thick
book.
It took me forever, but yeah,that was one of the key things,
was not every financial investoror financial advisor is a
fiduciary Right?
Massive difference in whatthat's for you right.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
So that's the difference.
Yeah, and there's just a lot ofcrap online too.
That's just not accurate.
I just did a recent articleit'll come out this week on
linkedin about the salt rule.
Are you familiar with the saltTrule?
Speaker 1 (47:24):
No.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
So essentially it's if you pay income tax, if you're
in a state that pays income tax, well, you take whatever you
paid in income tax and then youcan get a credit against your
federal tax.
So we'll use, let's's say,$200,000 income.
(47:47):
So if you pay $10,000 in statetax but your income's 200,000,
well you can deduct the 10,000and lower your taxable income on
the federal level to 190,because you never got the money.
It went to the state taxes, andthat also includes property
taxes, vehicle registrationtaxes, any of those
(48:07):
state-related taxes.
You can actually use those tooffset and lower your federal
tax return dollars.
Really, oh, yeah, all right,there's 36 states and then
there's a PTET rule and forget,I don't know all the acronyms, I
just know what they do.
So this PTET rule and this is abeautiful thing for body shop
(48:29):
owners If you're a body shopowner and you can do the same
thing and you can pay your statetax through your business and
you can take a businessdeduction for that that then
goes down into your credit foryour federal offset.
So you do two things you loweryour income from your business
(48:52):
because you pay taxes, which isa legitimate deduction, and
secondly, lower your adjustedgross on the credit side for
your personal return, for yourfederal taxes.
So there's huge benefits outthere.
(49:19):
But how many CPAs are diggingdeep into that level of service
for those individual tax filers?
When you, uh, have a personalvehicle loan, you can write off
up to ten thousand dollars ofinterest expense on the top line
.
So everybody's got a standarddeduction.
Um, let's say in I think Idon't know what single filing
(49:42):
married's like 30 000 orsomething like that.
Yes, or you go itemized andmost people don't have enough
itemized.
They'll just take the standarddeduction.
Yeah, but with this interestyou can actually take it as top
of line.
So you're actually getting$40,000.
No kidding, yes, now, buthere's conditions, right?
You're going to hear a bunch ofcrap out there.
They're going to say thingslike this, but they don't tell
(50:05):
you the full details, right?
So you have to have that loanhas to originate in past
12-31-2024.
The vehicle has to be assembledin the United States.
Speaker 1 (50:16):
There's yeah little, yeah, little things.
You have to little boxes youhave to check, right, that's
yeah, might be difficult.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
Yes.
So you know, the reason I bringthose things up is that's what
we do for our clients, is we andI want to do for the industry
is bring a deeper level ofawareness for tax optimization
and financial health in theindustry.
Speaker 1 (50:46):
That's excellent, because once again I see another
need.
After we had our conversationin California, I started
thinking about that.
It's like I think there's a lotof shop owners that just they
don't know how to protectthemselves tax-wise.
They really don't.
Personally, myself, I don'tknow how to protect myself from
paying too much tax.
Everybody thinks that they paytoo much tax and want to pay
less but they don't know how toprotect myself from paying too
(51:07):
much tax.
Everybody thinks that they paytoo much tax and want to pay
less, but they don't know how toreally go about protecting
themselves.
So that's something you kind ofspecialize in too right.
Speaker 2 (51:20):
Yeah, and that's the other thing is our business is
we want to deliver white gloveservice.
That's it.
I'm fully that's what we'reabout.
We're we're not interested inin having a thousand customers,
we're not interested in evenhaving probably a hundred, maybe
(51:42):
not even that, maybe it justdepends if we can keep our white
glove service, maybe.
But it's really about whiteglove service for me and
maintaining that and getting toa size to where we can continue
to do that at somewhat of scale,because you know, I am a
businessman and I, like you knowgrowing a company and
(52:04):
delivering service to a lot ofpeople.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
Right.
So quality over quantity, butif you do it right and you get
your systems in place, then it'sscalable, Just like a good MSO,
right?
Yes, correct, Excellent.
Listen before we go here,because I know we're running
(52:28):
down the clock here.
I just spent a greatconversation.
I really appreciate you sharingeverything you're sharing today
.
If you had to give a couple ofkey takeaways for those
listening today or that mighthear this a month or two months
or six months from now becausepodcasts live forever in the
internet right?
What would be your top two tothree takeaways?
(52:52):
If you don't do anything else,do these couple things and
you'll get some relief fromdoing the same old thing and
getting the same old results.
Speaker 2 (53:03):
Yeah, I think.
Thanks for one for giving methe time to be here today.
Sure, I really appreciate thethings that we've been chatting
about, and if I had to sort ofhit this with a simple stick and
give somebody straight up, thisis going to be the biggest bang
for your buck.
Get your CCC configured tomatch your chart of accounts and
(53:27):
then every single day,reconcile every one of your
transactions.
If you can do that and ensurethat things are moving into your
financial system and thenyou've got a system to validate
every day you're going to haveyourself perfect financials.
It'll just happen if you havethat daily discipline to do that
(53:48):
.
And then the other thing Iwould suggest is you find a
fiduciary and come up, look atyour life wealth strategy.
Make sure your corporateentities are structured right,
make sure that you don't havewaste.
I see a lot of people say, well,I need an LLC for this, I need
(54:11):
an LLC for that, and so on, andit's like no, you don't.
And then tax optimization itshould be.
I mean, it's the second largestexpense in our life.
It's actually the first to behonest If you really look at all
the taxes.
It's actually the first to behonest if you really look at all
the taxes, it's actually thefirst.
So those are the, those are thethings I'd say that you
(54:33):
absolutely spend time doing, andthen you'll notice a
significant difference in yourfinancial health excellent.
Speaker 1 (54:40):
Those are great tips.
So, uh, thank you so much foruh, for joining me the MindRange
podcast.
I'm going to leave.
I've got all your contactinformation, bill, for you If
there's anything else you wantto share.
I know you said that there's acomprehensive diagnosis or
analysis.
It's about $950.
(55:01):
You're always good for a phonecall, for a discovery call.
So if you're a shop out thereand you're resonating with any
of this going God, I couldprobably use a little help.
And you know, or I just havethis one thing I can't figure
out my financial side.
I would reach out to Bill, havea conversation with him.
It could be a good move and younever know what it might lead
(55:22):
to.
So any final thoughts, anyparting thoughts from you, bill?
Speaker 2 (55:27):
Thank you.
Thank you, Rick, and I hope youknow we shed some light on some
folks out there and maybe weinspired somebody to take some
action.
And if you go to our website atwwwcrunchitfscom.
Wwwcrunchitfscom.
And schedule a discovery call,that goes directly to my
calendar, so that's probably theeasiest way to get ahold of me.
(55:49):
Book it on my calendar and I'mopen to chat about anything.
Excellent.
Will you be at SEVA this year,Bill?
Yeah, I'm actually doing an RDEpresentation on what I call the
Body Shop Business Trifecta.
Okay.
Speaker 1 (56:09):
Is that with SCRS?
Speaker 2 (56:11):
Yeah, oh, fantastic.
I think it's on the 5th at 12o'clock, I think it is.
Speaker 1 (56:17):
Okay, excellent, all right.
For anybody going to SEMA, makesure you put that on your to-do
list, that way you can see Bill.
And then, in between all theother million things there is to
do at SEMA, it's good.
I'll tell you what.
Scrs has had fantasticeducation series the last
several years and to me that'salways an exciting part of going
(56:39):
.
Speaker 2 (56:40):
I agree, totally agree.
Thank you for your time.
I appreciate you and I lookforward to hearing the podcast.
Speaker 1 (56:47):
Well, that's all I had for you today.
Thanks again for tuning in.
I really appreciate yoursupport and I hope you have a
great week.
I can always be reached atwwwrickselovercom, where you can
find all my social media linkspodcast episodes, blog posts and
much more Outro Music.
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