Episode #191- "Keeping it Kleen"- Collision Vision interview w/Rick Selover

Episode Notes: 

Ever stop & wonder how much paint contamination is actually costing your shop? 

Would it surprise you if that dirt in your booth was costing you thousands? 

Discover the hidden costs of paint contamination and how to avoid it!

Check out this Collision Vision Podcast, where Cole Strandberg interviewed me about my latest presentation, as we unpack the hidden financial impacts lurking in your paint department. 

Get ready to revolutionize your paint booth efficiency and profitability with practical insights from our conversation. We stress the importance of standard operating procedures and maintaining a clean environment akin to a surgeon’s sterile setting.

Listen in and learn how adopting these preventive measures not only safeguards technician safety but also boosts productivity and reduces costly redos. Join us as we encourage shop owners and technicians alike to level-up their game, along with their profitability, to new heights.
 
 Thinking about upgrading your paint department, or adding a paint booth? You’ll discover why prioritizing quality over cost is crucial for long-term success. Join us as we explore strategic considerations such as future growth planning and the benefits of collaborating with paint companies and experts. These insights are invaluable for making informed decisions that support your shop’s efficiency and throughput! 

Looking for more information on this subject?

Check out my 3-part series “Keeping it Kleen” 📢 

1️⃣ https://tinyurl.com/3kuh993h

2️⃣ https://tinyurl.com/mtje667m

 3️⃣ https://tinyurl.com/2fs5bmcf

Be sure to check out Cole Strandberg’s Podcast:

Chapters

• 0:00 The Cost of Contamination Study
• 11:06 Preventing Costly Paint Booth Downtime
• 22:26 Improving Paint Booth Efficiency and Safety
• 28:57 Selecting the Right Paint Booth
• 39:11 Maximizing Shop Efficiency and Profit

Transcript

Rick: 0:00

Anybody that knows me knows that my go-to is finding information, finding things I can share with others that may possibly help them. I did build a presentation. I've had it out there a few times. It's going to be out there a lot in the next year. On the cost of contamination Because, coming from the background that I've got, I've dealt with thousands of painters and booths over my career. I've seen a lot of issues with dirt fish eyes contamination.

Rick: 0:24

And after 40-some years we are still battling. I put a little something together that's going to explain it, show you what I call the root sources of contamination, where it comes from, how to prevent it, and I dive really deep into the costs of contamination because I don't think most shops really realize how much it does cost them.

Rick: 0:54

Welcome to the MindWrench podcast with your host, rick Sellover, where minor adjustments produce major improvements in mindset, personal growth and success. This is the place to be every Monday, where we make small improvements and take positive actions in our business and personal lives that will make a major impact in our success, next-level growth and quality of life.

Rick: 1:18

Hey, what's up everybody. Welcome to the MindWrench Podcast. I'm your host, rick Silover. Thanks so much for stopping in. If you're a returning listener and haven't done so already, please take a minute and click the follow or subscribe button and then rate and review the show. When you rate and review the show, the algorithms for Apple, spotify, google Podcasts, iheartradio, amazon Music and all the other platforms will see that it's valuable and show it to more people that have never seen it before, and hopefully it can help them too. I would really, really really appreciate your help, sharing this word with your friends and family as well, and if you're a brand new listener, welcome. I hope you find something of value here that helps you in your personal or professional life as well. Please make sure to click the subscribe or follow button so you never miss another episode.

Rick: 2:02

Recently, I had the honor and privilege of being a return guest on the Collision Vision podcast with my good friend and fellow podcast host, cole Strandberg. Last I saw Cole was at SEMA this past November. As we caught up, I shared that I was working on a presentation that focused on my deep dive into the causes and real costs of paint re-dos due to contamination and the critical role preventive maintenance plays in reducing those significant costs, naturally with Cole's family business being rooted in equipment distribution. This was extremely interesting for him to explore and he asked me to share on his podcast, which aired during the Christmas break. So without further ado, let's jump into that interview.

Cole: 2:43

Rick Selliver, welcome back to the Collision Vision. You're a regular at this point, Thanks.

Rick: 2:48

Cole, I appreciate it and yeah, I think we've been together a couple times on video here, so good to see you again.

Cole: 2:56

Likewise always a pleasure. And now we get to talk about something today that I always sort of itch to talk about, given my past life and my background. But you've made a pretty big move within the collision industry and kind of the related ecosystem here Now with Garmat, and you've been giving a presentation about what I would say is the cost of contamination. Explain what you're talking about when you talk about that is the cost of contamination.

Rick: 3:26

Explain what you're talking about when you talk about that Sure thing. Yeah, you're right. I've made a pretty large transformation in my work history here. So I've been in the business over 40 some years. I was a technician so I painted in a lot of booths and a lot of open floors and I worked in distribution selling paint materials and managed that business for about 35 years. So now I've made a transition now to the equipment side of things.

Rick: 3:54

So I'm national account manager for Garmin and it's been really eye-opening, it's been enjoyable, it's been fun. I like what I'm doing and, yeah, I built a little presentation. I get to share some information. Anybody that knows me knows that's kind of my go-to is finding information, finding things I can share with others that may possibly help them. So anything I can do to further the cause for this great industry that I've made a living in for a heck of a long time I'm in.

Rick: 4:27

I did build a presentation. I've had it out there a few times. It's going to be out there a lot in the next year. On the cost of contamination Because, coming from the background that I've got, I've dealt with hundreds, thousands of painters and booths over my career and seen a lot of issues with dirt fish eyes contamination and after 40 some years we are still battling, battling dirt contamination, fish eyes. So I put a little something together that's going to explain it, show you the what I call the root sources of contamination, where it comes from, how to prevent it, and I dive really deep into the costs of contamination because I don't think most shops really realize how much it does cost them.

Cole: 5:11

I don't want to dive fully into the full presentation and steal any thunder, but I do want to touch on it because I did have the opportunity in our pre-show call to get a little bit of a sneak peek. I think it's incredibly valuable and something that I find interesting and this is a very niche comment but most of the time paint guys say it's the booth and booth guys say it's the paint guy's fault. So to get both hats in here and be able to view this from as fair a perspective as possible, I think it's fantastic. Start off, though, again not to get too into the weeds here, but what are some of the main sources of contamination and, importantly, whose fault is it?

Rick: 5:53

So I don't want to point fingers but I don't have an issue speaking the truth.

Rick: 6:00

So after I did a really extensive background study on this to get all my facts straight and get input from a lot of areas and I talked to booth manufacturers, distributors, paint and material distributors, paint company reps, instructors for the collision industry, as well as my own background and some tech reps Tech reps are usually the first responders in there so gathered all this data put together.

Rick: 6:25

But to be point blank, there is three main root sources of dirt and contamination it's either the booth, it's the vehicle or it's the painter.

Rick: 6:36

So all three of those have multiple issues that may be tied back to them as the root source, back to them as the root source. But when you really filter it all down, you know things like the vehicle. You know it brings a presence of dirt possibly and contamination into the booth, but that can be mitigated by the painter if it's done correctly before that thing even enters the booth. So after all the you know scrubbing I did on this with the data and the percentages of where everything fell by the time I scrubbed it through what I call the influencer factor and that means the painter is a huge influencer on whether things get taken care of before it gets to that point where we're ready to pull the trigger or not. It really boils down to the painter and booth and it's almost a 50-50 split. But there's some great things to this that I discovered that a painter can prevent a lot of his own problems.

Rick: 7:32

The dirt doesn't come in the paint, like I've heard from a couple people before, paint comes clean, your gun comes clean brand new, your booth is clean, brand new and the vehicles are clean brand new. But sometimes, between when everything's brand new and you actually get that vehicle in the booth to pull the trigger, you're bringing in some dirt as a painter, you're bringing in some contamination, so is the vehicle, so is the booth, and the lack of maintenance just compiles on top of that and makes it really difficult to get a clean job. If you're looking for a competitive edge for your business or a more effective jumpstart to your personal development in 2024, I'll make your first step super simple.

Rick: 8:16

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Rick: 9:18

If you're tired of knowing there's a better version of you, waiting to shine, but unsure of how to bring that version to light. If you're tired of wanting to enjoy a more successful shine but unsure of how to bring that version to light. If you're tired of wanting to enjoy a more successful business but not sure how to start, and if you don't want to go another 12 months without better results, but you don't want to go it alone, then take the first step. It's super simple. Sometimes talking to the right person can make all the difference. Go to wwwrixelovercom contact and I'll set you up with a free consultation call with me to see if one-on-one coaching is right for you. I did find the causes, I found the cures and I found the costs of all of this.

Cole: 9:57

You are a master of segues. It makes sense that you are a professional right on the podcast side of things. I think a lot of our listeners are also going to listen to you on the MindWrench podcast as well. But you mentioned cost and, for frequent listeners here on the Collision Vision, the question of why the heck are we talking about paint booth maintenance other than its host's potential bias toward the conversation? Because I love it. The answer is this is an industry that we're always fighting for margin. We're fighting for ways to be more efficient and I think there's a lot of hidden costs associated with paint booth issues and paint issues. Talk to me about again a high level. No secret sauce here. But what kind of costs are we talking about?

Rick: 10:46

So to your point, dealing with shop owners that have had questions for years of you know, why is my paint and material bill so high? Or why do these jobs always come out looking like crap? How can we spend all day rubbing you know all these questions come into the same area of you know what you don't know? You don't know you don't know right. So if you, if you're running a business and your business requires you to paint a vehicle, or as many vehicles a day as possible, it's good to know what's going to keep that wheel from turning smoothly right and it boils down to all into all those things. So most shops don't understand the costs. Now, if they spend an extra 4 500 on their paint bill one month, I would get a phone call. In fact I'd get more than a phone call. I'd get some competitors in there looking at my customer's business going. I think we could do this cheaper, right. So they're sensitive.

Rick: 11:40

Most shop owners are sensitive to costs that they see on a monthly statement and when it moves up and down, obviously they pay attention to that. But when there's unknown cost the cost of redoing work they don't have their finger on that and they don't understand what it is and they don't see what that cost really is. But I'm telling you, based on my results, every redo has got four components to it. So it's got a cost of paint materials lost, right? Not what you didn't sell. It's lost cost, right. You have a cost of utilities that you're going to use to repaint that vehicle. You've got a cost of lost production which nobody calculates that out, but that's huge. That's probably the biggest part of this is every time you repaint an average RO, that's another RO you're not painting in its place. So you only get so many booth cycles a day. So if you're chewing up a booth cycle, that's a cost. That's about an $8,700 cost on an average RO of about $4,300, right. So that's and that's two.

Rick: 12:45

Two redos a month is what I did my calculations on. I think most places probably have more than that. There's some that are going to have a few less, but I mean $8,700 on two redos in a month in lost production alone is huge. But you also have the cost of and this is something nobody will ever measure, right, but I did is the cost of retention.

Rick: 13:06

So what that painter loses when he redoes a job whether it's his fault, the boo's fault. Whatever. He's got control over this right, he really does. Now, if his boss doesn't want to replace filters but once a year and they don't want to do any maintenance, yeah, that's going to hurt, right? Most painters don't realize how much they're losing every time they have to redo a job.

Rick: 13:28

Well, I've got those numbers too right and I think they'd be shocked if they really saw, potentially, what they're losing every time they have to redo one of their own jobs, because maybe they didn't throw a suit on, maybe they sanded a job between coats, maybe they got five parts racks full of garbage and stuff in their booth that they work around. There's a million factors to this and I go through all that in my presentation. But yeah, there's massive cost in all this and, at the end of the day, all that lost money could pay for preventative maintenance for a year or longer. It could pay for new spray guns, it could pay for new clean stands. It could pay for a lot of things. So I think the sooner shops get an understanding of what's at stake here, they may react a little bit differently than they have in the past.

Cole: 14:18

These dollar amounts are no joke and, of course, anybody listening here is probably listening along and saying, yeah, it's the worst Hate when that happens. You mentioned some key terms here and I want to get into how to avoid this downtime, how to avoid redos, and that's paint booth maintenance and preventative maintenance. Talk to me a little bit about booth maintenance. What are some of the key things involved in keeping a booth operational and operating at peak performance, keeping it that workhorse?

Rick: 14:50

You know, cole, and you know because you work for a distributor you know it's not that difficult.

Cole: 14:54

Yeah, but that wouldn't be any fun. I gotta let you answer this. It's not that difficult.

Rick: 15:01

It's really having someone reliable, dependable, that you trust, that you have a good relationship with. That's in that booth distribution service that someone's getting their hands on your booth or looking at it once a month, changing to some floor filters. Maybe they're going to look at the control panel to make sure burner's working correctly, make sure the fan's not too loaded up, looking at it monthly, changing filters monthly, and most shops that have a medium to high volume, we're going to get those floor filters done twice a month, right, every two weeks. Some slower shops maybe just once a month, but you can't skip those. You can't put the crappiest, cheapest filters in the floor that you can. Because the cost, because that's going to cost you at a different level. Changing the floor filters, changing the ceiling filters. There's filters up in the air makeup units, there's bag filters. There's a lot of different filters that someone needs to look at, evaluate, go okay, yes, it's time for these to get changed. Not to mention looking at the mechanicals and going, okay, how's the burner looking? Is it working efficiently? Uh, what is the fan? What does the exhaust fans look like? Are they loaded up with? Uh, the over spray. They need to be cleaned, they need to be changed out. You know all that stuff puts wear and tear on your motors too and your motor goes. That's a big expense. So preventative maintenance most shops don't want to spend the money because it looks like a cost right, it's like well, it's working fine, everything's coming out okay. I don't really need to do that right yet they're wrong. They do need to do that. They need to stay on it because if you have a consistent preventative maintenance program you're not going to have those big costs of a motor going, of a fan sparking and catching fire.

Rick: 16:37

I mean, there's so much stuff that can go wrong inside of a booth. It's crazy shop floor porter right, go in there and flip the grates up and roll the floor filters in upside down or something like that, not cleaning it out correctly and not really taking care of it. It's maintenance and I'll throw this out there. I've got plenty of customers I've dealt with for years that big dollar earners, big shops, make lots of money, nice houses, boats and all that other stuff. They'll go out and buy a BMW or a Cadillac or they'll buy a high-end car and I will guarantee you they don't opt out of the maintenance on those. They don't go run down to the local guy in the corner that does oil changes for $12. No, they're taking theirs to the you know, the BMW dealership, the Mercedes dealership, whatever that maintenance program is that's taking care of their $100,000 car.

Rick: 17:38

They don't have an issue with that because they see that value to them. Right? You got a $150,000, $200,000 booth that makes you money every day. Right, that if it's down, you're freaking out, you're calling, you're mad, you're yelling at people. Things aren't happening, things aren't going out of your shop, your cash register is broke. That's a whole nother level of stress, right? But yet I've seen shops just totally ignore maintenance because it's a cost they don't really need to do.

Cole: 17:59

So I can't emphasize that enough right, it's an investment right. These booths are money-making machines. They are the second most important piece of equipment in your shop, behind only a compressor. Everything's running through this booth before it runs out that door and into that cash register. So to make sure that you're keeping that operational and fully functioning well worth the investment, in my opinion. I know you don't have a checklist or anything in front of you, but give me an example of how folks should look at preventative maintenance sequence. What are they doing, just at a high level for us?

Rick: 18:38

Well, like I said, they touch everything on the booth, at least quarterly and then yearly, right? So if you're on a monthly program or even a quarterly program, you're going to get filters dropped off every month. You'll have stuff. Either the booth company, whoever you're using, is going to change them once a month and maybe leave you a set of filters for the next change if you're high volume enough to where you got to do it twice a month, or if it's quarterly, they're going to come out there once a month and they're going to do an install of filters. They're going to leave you cut filters that are ready for the rest of the quarter.

Rick: 19:14

But they'll look at your mechanicals. They'll look at all the belts and the pulleys and all those things that wear and that you know at some point need to be replaced. They monitor that stuff and they record that. You know, like I know with the car van distributors, they record all those things. So they have an active log of what's going on with your booth or booths and then they'll keep a sheet outside on the front of your booth where you can see that they are out. They checked all these things, they changed these filters. So you have a visual and they have a record of what they've done to your booth. But, quite simply, you do that all year long. It prevents big things from going wrong. And then, once a year, our distributors do what we call a deep clean, an annual clean, and that's where they pull everything out. They power wash the floor, the grates, the walls, they clean the lights out, they go through all the mechanicals and they'll do booth coat on the walls and you get a full, clean, feels-like-new booth, which, number one, helps towards retention.

Rick: 20:18

So if you've got a painter that makes good money where he's at and kind of likes to shop, but he's got to do all the maintenance on his booth. He may not think of that in the same light if he gets an offer from some guy down the street that'll pay him the same money that has a nice newer booth that gets maintained by a company, uh, every month, because that's his, that's his cash register too, right. So there's, there's, I can't say enough positive reasons to have a preventive maintenance program. I really do, and I and I was talking about this with my shops back before I was working with a booth company.

Rick: 20:54

OK just my perspective. It was common sense. You know I'm with you. I love painters. I was a painter before. I know what they go through. I know the stress. I know the upset when you got to redo something. I didn't. I didn't realize the cost. Now looking back at the cost, oh God, I wasted a lot of money back then.

Cole: 21:14

No, it's man. You continue to tee me up in a great way and I appreciate that. All of that just I completely echo. We've talked about the problems and the challenges and some of the causes we talked about, with preventative maintenance a part of the solution. What other solutions would you have that shops can implement to go ahead and reduce, reduce and downtime caused by contamination, fisheyes, et cetera.

Rick: 21:44

So like I said earlier, it's not all the booth's fault. There was three main sources of contamination. I kind of whittled out one of them because that's easily mitigated. It's not all the booth's fault. There was three main sources of contamination.

Rick: 21:56

I kind of whittled out one of them because that's easily mitigated and that's just by, you know, cleaning that vehicle before it even comes into your shop for the start of the repair process and then cleaning it again before it goes into your booth. Right, you got mechanics and you got body guys that may have some grease and stuff on their hands and they're touching this whole thing. So cleaning can prevent a lot of that stuff and that's going to be done by the painter and the painter's helper. But if you eliminate the vehicle out of the process, you've got the painter and you've got the booth. Those are the two main sources. Now we just talked about the booth and what you can do with preventive maintenance. But there's a lot the painter can do and I would start with just saying if you're a shop owner or manager or you're an MSO shop, you know, facilitator, have a good SOP, like most, like most high-end shops. Have a good SOP for every process throughout their shop. Have a process for your paint department, a pre-checklist to go through before they pull something in and bag it and pull the trigger. So there should be certain things a painter can do that's going to help him help himself from losing money by eliminating all the potential dirt that he's going to bring to the party. That means blowing yourself off having a clean paint suit, on, having good head protection like a sock or a full-faced fresh air mask gloves. Don't go in there with your bare hands. You've tacked it off and you're getting your final preps done. You should be doing that with gloves on Fully protect yourself number one as a person trying to avoid getting contamination within you, but you're also keeping your contamination off the car.

Rick: 23:36

You know hair gels, sprays. You know beard creams. You know all these different things, hand lotions that most people use throughout a day. All that has a negative effect on contamination. You can create fish eyes just with what you put on your own body that day. Right, there's been tons of studies done where you know it ended up fighting deodorant can mitigate its way right through your clothes, through your suit, and still end up causing fish eyes.

Rick: 24:05

You know, make sure that vehicle is decontaminated. Make sure your booth atmosphere is decontaminated. You don't have issues with whatever's laying in there. There should be nothing in a booth but your tack rag and your spray gun and the vehicle. That's it, or parts rack, right. So those are just a couple of key things. I've got a complete list of potential issues that cause dirt and contamination, but the paint are doing the right thing, and I've seen plenty of them that do the right thing and I've seen incredible results. From someone that takes the time to prepare themselves, prepare the vehicle, boost right, you get an almost flawless job. There's always going to be a little something, but a quick nub is nothing like having to redo because you got nasty, gnarly chunks of crap blown out of your gun into the base coat, clear coat. Now you got to sand it down, redo it Right.

Cole: 24:59

Right on Nope, a lot to think about and you mentioned something that I think you can't put a hard cost on. But that employee, that technician efficiency and morale piece, the technician safety piece cannot be understated and I've said this before on the show, that's, that's the most basic requirement to get someone to work for you is safety and the ability to do your job. Help them help themselves, help them help you and make sure they can do that help themselves, help them, help you and make sure they can do that.

Rick: 25:36

Yeah, this is the 1970s, where you can spray your lacquer on the floor with a towel wrapped around your face and you're protected, you're good, the car's fine. I mean, those days are long gone, but I lived through those days, so I'm talking from experience. The cleaner you can get yourself, the cleaner you can get the car. I only want to paint one time and I don't even want to rub.

Rick: 25:52

I hate rubbing. I hated rubbing when I was a kid, hated it throughout my career. I still hate it now. Yet I see it almost every shop I go to. They got a detail guy and that's all he does all day long is wet sand and rub these cars. You shouldn't have to do that. It's not. It's not part of the. It shouldn't be part of the process.

Cole: 26:09

It really should. So, man, we probably could have an entire episode about just ridiculous things you've seen in a booth and that I've at least heard of seeing in a booth. I know some of the stories my dad had from selling paint booths in the eighties to see how you know, hey, the booths, the booths messing up my paint. Yeah, buddy, you're. You're smoking a cigarette in the booth while you're painting, like that.

Rick: 26:32

Come on now, Uh so, um, yeah, I can, I can have a complete series, uh, and it would be more of a comedy than anything else. Uh, you know the crap I've seen happen in my career, uh, in the body shop industry. But I will say this it's, it's cleaned up a ton, it's gotten so much better. And there are shops that operate at such a high level, like a surgeon would right, and I remember seeing years ago slides of and I think this was with 5S programs that a lot of pain companies had and show a picture of a just nasty shop with stuff all over, and then show a picture of a surgeon in a medical, you know, room preparing to do surgery. And the point was is you know which way do you want to be operating? You know, in filth and disarray or in a nice, clean, organized, sterile environment?

Rick: 27:24

If you're painting a vehicle, if you're painting a $75,000 car, you know, one of my customers was a Ferrari dealer, you know, and their jobs had to be really, really nice because they don't want to be wet, sand and rub it. These things they really don't. These are, you know, multi hundred thousand dollar cars. So, yeah, the cleaner, the nicer you can get that environment, the better performance is going to be all the way around and you're not losing all that money that I alluded to earlier. Like I said, if I did the whole presentation, it would take about 45 minutes or an hour and you'd have probably a lot of shop owners lighting your phone up. So we're not going to do that right now.

Cole: 27:59

Fair enough, I'll be in full contact throughout the course of this year.

Cole: 28:03

Yeah and keep us updated there. I'd love to share your speaking schedule for people who this has really generated some interest in checking that out can do that. I want to zoom out a little bit, or at least pivot and talk about paint booths in general. We've talked about kind of the topic of the day but now we can zoom out a little bit, talk about when we mentioned paint booths as a revenue generator, a moneymaker, folks might be saying, hey, I need to replace mine, I need a new one. We are expanding. What should body shop owners be thinking about when they're thinking about buying a new paint booth and choosing the right piece of equipment?

Rick: 28:45

Great question, cole. I could probably come up with a couple ideas on that. So I'd say, first and foremost, I'm going to say this and people are going to go oh God, that guy sells booze. Cheaper is never better. Do not make your decisions based on cost alone, because that is very short sighted. So quality does cost more than something cheap, right, but think through what you want to do with your shop. So if you're an existing shop and you're producing, you know $100,000 in labor a month, right?

Rick: 29:22

Do you want to increase that or are you just going to stay at that level? You know, have your plan as far as OK. What does my growth look like Now? To do that growth, I need to do X amount of cars a day at some point. Make sure you're going to buy something that's got the capacity to do that much work. Right? If you bought an old cross-draft booth or something smaller or too small for what you're doing, you're going to limit yourself on how much production you can get.

Rick: 29:49

If the bake cycles are really slow because it doesn't get up to heat very fast, or if it doesn't really have the capacity to bake fully at the temperature you should bake, then that's not going to be a wise choice. Look at your potential mix of business too. So if you're just doing regular vehicles right now but you see yourself getting into doing more of these sprinter vans, well then a normal size booth, a normal height booth, is not going to work. You're going to need a high top type of booth, which I've seen a lot of those go in. So you know, take a good look at what your shop looks like right now, what you want to look like in the future. Prepare for growth, pay ahead for the growth now, because once you put a booth in, it's in.

Rick: 30:31

It's a lot of work to pull one out and put a different one in. Oh, got it. I should have gone two feet higher. I should have gone three feet longer. Four feet longer you can order a booth, at least with Garmin I know you can go in one foot increments, both lengthwise and heightwise, right. So make sure that you're getting the right size booth that you want For your production and your size shop. Maybe a double prep deck might make more sense than two booths. Maybe you need one booth, but you need double prep deck because you can do parts, you can do cut-ins, you could do small jobs, whatever. You've tripled your ability to spray rather than just have one booth or increase it by 50 cent if you're just going to have two booths.

Rick: 31:09

So look at your capacity, look at your production load. How much do you want to be able to do? Then look at your shop size. I mean, do you have the room to put extra booths in? I mean, will you have to do some construction? And then, lastly, probably look at where you're going to put that booth at. The last thing you want to do is shove the booth up in a corner and it's a drive-in, back-out booth. That means, oh, but I get so much more production space for my bodyguards. Yeah, that's great. I hope they don't mind moving all those damn cars out. Every time the booth's got to, you know, we got to take one out of the booth to get another one in.

Rick: 31:45

I've seen that a million times and I think God don't let the architect and if there's architects and designers out there, I don't mean to offend you, but do not let the dealership architect tell you, mr Body Shop Manager, where the best place is for your booth as you're setting up a new shop. I've seen this mistake a lot of times too. Get your paint company involved. Get your distributor involved. Get your you know your booth distributor and your paint material distributor. Get those people in a room with you and think through this, plan it out, make a good decision up front and you won't regret it. Right, and I think that there's a lot more to it, but those are probably the top things I can really think about is you know current state, future growth, what your shop looks like and buy the best booth you can buy for the money that you can. Right, if you're ordering one out of the back of a magazine, it's probably not going to last right Value over price right you want value Yep.

Rick: 32:44

And lastly and like I said, it's not really a plug for Gar-Mat, you can take it as a plug, but buy something that's built in the United States and I'm not knocking anybody's booth systems. But if you're buying something that's built overseas, there is going to be a problem. If you have a down booth situation and you're waiting in a park, it's not like they can run to Grainger and get a replacement part which and you're waiting in a part, it's not like they can run to Grainger and get a replacement part which. With most US booths, I think most of the parts you can get something that'll work at a Grainger location. But if you've got an overseas booth, wherever it comes from, sometimes you're going to have to wait. It could be weeks, it could be a month by the time you get a needed part and I will tell you if your booth is down.

Rick: 33:25

I didn't throw this number out there, but I'll throw the number out there now. If your booth is down, you're a four cycle a day producer, right? So you're painting two cycles in the morning, two in the afternoon. That's an average good to average shop, right? Four cycles a day. If you lose that, the booth is down, you can't produce, you're losing $17,400 in production a day. If you lose that, the booth is down. You can't produce, you're losing seventeen thousand four hundred dollars in production a day. So that thing is going to cost you a lot of money, while sitting there not producing.

Rick: 33:54

Now you can say it's not really cost me anything. It is if you normally produce four cycles a day and now you're doing zero cycles a day. Right, it's just. It's just simple math. So Opportunity.

Cole: 34:06

Cost is real, absolutely. It impacts your business for sure, and I'd echo a lot of that sentiment from a business value perspective. Potential buyers, for example, value good equipment and equipment that's well-maintained and in good shape. So it's good for the now, it's good for maximizing your money, for keeping your technicians happy, and it's good for the future, whenever that time comes. So love all of that. I guess I'd end with one thing the paint booth industry is not one that's really known for a ton of innovation. Necessarily over the last few years you have some really quality manufacturers that create workhorses. Is there any innovation that you're excited to see in the industry or within Garmat that you'd like to?

Rick: 34:53

share To your point. I mean, it's a box that moves air and provides heat. There's only so much you can do with it, right. But I will say the boosts over the last few years. They're much nicer. I think they're more efficient than they ever were as far as energy usage and heat. I think the lighting systems have improved drastically over the years too. I know with Garbats. I really like the way their lighting system is set up horizontally as opposed to vertical. It really reduces shadows. So that's kind of a cool thing in there.

Rick: 35:28

And they've got a new piece of software, a new piece of hardware that they're test marketing right now in probably 50 shops or so to monitor what's going on with your booth from both a preventative angle and, from you know, being able to remotely diagnose something that might be going on with your booth before it becomes a problem. So I won't say a whole lot about it, but we did have it at SEMA. It is very, very advanced. It's very cool. It's nothing like anybody else has out there. But there is a, you know, a connectivity trend that's been going on with Boost in the last couple of years, and Garmad is part of that. But we've kind of looked at everybody's and what they had and kind of developed something that's a little bit more out of the box than that and I think once they release this out into the public it's going to be pretty cool. It really is.

Cole: 36:23

Love it. Well, I guess I have to take that back about the lack of innovation. I apologize. Sounds exciting, no, all good man. Before we wrap up and say goodbye, I'd be remiss if I didn't tee it up for you to remind us about the MindWrench podcast. And where can we find it? Where can?

Rick: 36:38

we listen to it. What is it?

Cole: 36:39

all about.

Rick: 36:40

The old MindWrench. Yeah, so I'm still doing the MindWrench. It's not as often as I was. I was doing a weekly show and now it's a bi-weekly show but I've got lots of stuff that I'm doing and still want to keep that going because I really enjoy providing anything I can do of value to share with shops and technicians. I was just talking with Jay Gonen earlier and we're going to do something together pretty soon here as well, because he's in.

Rick: 37:07

He's in the same mindset. But yeah, Mind wrench podcast. I think I'm almost up to about 190 episodes right now. You can find it everywhere. It's an. You know, it's Apple, Spotify, iHeart, Amazon music. It's. It's on almost every platform out there. You just got to look for it. If you can't find it, hit me up and I'll get you a link to it.

Rick: 37:29

But it's a lot of fun, Cole, as you know, because you've been doing it for a while now and that's how we met was through the podcast. It's enjoyable. You get to meet some great people and you get to provide some value. For me, for an older guy, I get to give back a little bit more and I really enjoy it. So I'll keep doing it till they pull me off the air. I love it, man.

Cole: 37:53

It's. Love the show, really appreciate you and the friendship we've developed and appreciate the insights you've offered here today. I think it's really good stuff. Where can people get in touch with you now from a Garmat capacity?

Rick: 38:14

Super easy. So ricks at garmatcom goes right to my email and, like I said, I'm national account manager so I get involved in a lot of stuff. It's great to be able to use some of my industry knowledge and background to help our company in the direction they're going and things they need to look at. It's been really, really enjoyable. I can't say enough good things about the company, how they treat their employees, they know about retention and just it's been a fun place to work. Cole, I haven't had more fun at a SEMA since I did last than this year. So there we go.

Cole: 38:45

No, it's a company that I've worked around for many, many years with the family business, so a lot of good friends there and excited for you and what you got going on, man. But hey, thank you so much for joining us once again on the collision vision and look forward to staying in touch.

Rick: 39:00

Absolutely. We'll keep doing this till they tell us they can't take anymore. Let's do it, let's do it. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it. I really do. Well, I hope you enjoyed what we shared on the show and if you're a shop owner, manager or paint tech, hopefully it opened your eyes a bit on the financial impacts that can be avoided with a little better housekeeping, a more disciplined approach to being properly prepared before your next refinished job, and how crucial it is to protect and maintain that cash register of your business. If you want more information on the subject, check out my three part series Keeping it Clean. I'll leave a link to those episodes in the show notes, along with a link to the Collision Vision podcast that Cole had me on as well. Thanks again for tuning in. I really appreciate your support and I hope you have a great week. I can always be reached at wwwrickselovercom, where you can find all my social media links podcast episodes, blog posts and much more. I'm out.