
102 - 5 Steps to Grow Your Shop Margins and Become More Profitable
August 22nd, 2024 - 01:06:29
Show Summary:
In this podcast, Cecil Bullard, CEO of The Institute for Automotive Business Excellence, dives deep into the importance of margins for auto repair shops. Margins are the key to increasing your overall net profit, but many shops struggle to achieve the profits they deserve. Cecil walks you through actionable steps to improve your shop’s labor and parts margins, helping you reach your target profitability.
Key Takeaways:
- Understanding the key factors that impact your margins.
- Practical techniques to maximize your labor and parts profitability.
- Strategies to consistently reach and exceed your financial goals.
Host(s):
Guest(s):
Cecil Bullard, Founder & CEO, The Institute
Episode Highlights:
[00:03:00] - Cecil explains why having solid gross margins is critical to achieving real net profit in your shop.
[00:05:10] - The first easy win: install and follow a legitimate parts matrix to boost parts margins.
[00:08:29] - Labor rates in the automotive industry are far behind – Cecil compares them to other trades and stresses the need to raise them.
[00:10:59] - Cecil shares real-world data showing that raising your labor rate rarely results in losing customers.
[00:19:15] - Labor margin issues often stem from low productivity – Cecil breaks down how to identify and fix it.
[00:22:12] - The “brick wall” analogy helps owners pinpoint company vs. employee roadblocks to productivity.
[00:30:40] - Use a labor multiplier to account for things labor guides don’t cover, like test drives and paperwork.
[00:35:43] - Labor leakage is everywhere – from underquoted diagnostics to free inspections – and must be stopped.
[00:41:48] - Improve estimating and workflow by getting four key pieces of info from techs to speed up the process.
[00:48:07] - Cecil shows how applying all five margin strategies can add up to nearly $400K in additional profit.
In every business journey, there are defining moments or challenges that build resilience and milestones that fuel growth. We’d love to hear about yours! What lessons, breakthroughs, or pivotal experiences have shaped your path in the automotive industry?
Share your story with us at info@wearetheinstitute.com, and you might be featured in an upcoming episode.
👉 Unlock the full experience - watch the full webinar on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed6KkS6Rgrw&t=1s
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Amber Wright: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us. It is a hot summer day here in Atlanta. And we're glad to be back with our webinar series. We did take a little time off, but we are kicking it back in full swing and we are super excited to have our very own expert Cecil Bullard with the Institute here with us today.
Amber Wright: Before we get started, as always, we're going to kick off with some housekeeping notes. We are recording this session, so if for any reason you need to drop off, you get busy, or for whatever reason your internet fails you today, please do not worry. We always send out the recording no later than Monday. Of the following week, and then we also always post the recording on our website under the resources tab on autoleap.com. So, to kick it off, I do want to also say we are on webinar, so you guys are not on video, you do not have voice. But you do have functionalities so that you are able to enter in your questions depending on how the session is going, I will leave them in for Cecil will do a few here and there during the session, but if not, we'll kind of leave the majority to the end so that we can make sure that we get through the content and you guys really get the full scope of this expert session.
Amber Wright: So today we're going to talk about the five steps to grow out. Your margin and being more profitable. Why are margins so important? Well, they basically help you become more profitable. So, again, today we have Cesar Bullard, the CEO of the Institute of Automotive Business Excellence. And Ogden, Utah.
Amber Wright: And really the things that we're going to take away from this is understanding your margins, improving your labor margins and reaching target margins. So Cecil, I'm going to pass it over to you. And once again, we really appreciate your time and being here with us today.
Cecil Bullard: All right. Thank you. Thank you.
Cecil Bullard: Thank you for the opportunity to be here. I was going to ask ask you if you would pay attention to the questions, but you already answered that. So, we do like questions especially if they're about the material. So, don't feel free to ask. And I would see there are no dumb questions, really.
Cecil Bullard: But there probably are a couple, but most of them are not. So, you know, do your best. What you're seeing right now, there's a QR code there. There is a simplified workbook. It's really just the slide set with some notes. There is a parts margin and there are there's a calculator there that you can get ahold of if you fill that out.
Cecil Bullard: So you'll see that a couple of times throughout the thing. And then again, at the end why are margins important? Let's kind of start with that. If you're doing, I don't know, a a million dollars in business and your gross profit margin, which should be somewhere in the neighborhood of say 62% if you're loading your labor loaded labor means I'm taking into account all the cost.
Cecil Bullard: Like a few to workers comp. If you're not loading your labor, you probably want to be closer to 74 percent on your gross margin, maybe even 80 percent on your gross margin. If you are not hitting your gross margin, then It comes out of your net margin. So if I lose 10 points because I don't charge enough for my parts or I discount stuff, or my technicians are not efficient and productive, then instead of on a million dollars making a hundred thousand excuse me, instead of making 200, 000, I make a hundred thousand dollars.
Cecil Bullard: So, and there are coaching companies that will tell you it's okay. You know, not to worry too much about your margins to worry more about gross profit per hour. And there is something to that, but if you don't have margin, you don't have profit. And so I may have a decent gross profit margin per hour for a few hours because I did some jobs that are low margin, but when I add it with everything it might get me in trouble financially.
Cecil Bullard: So, what should my business earn me? I think that's, we need to kind of start begin with the end in mind Stephen Covey. I want to make about 20 percent net profit and that's not my salary. So I make money as an owner in two different ways. I make a net profit. That's about my risk and my investment and et cetera.
Cecil Bullard: And then I also make a wage based on what I do for the business. So if I'm a manager. I make a manager's wage. If I'm writing service, I make a service advisor's wage. If I'm a tech in my business, then I make a tech's wage. Excuse me. And if I'm doing all those things, then I make a higher wage because now I'm making bits and pieces from each of those areas.
Cecil Bullard: So I think we need to keep that in mind. I mean, this is my goal. This is my target. So, what's the easiest thing? The easiest thing there's two easy things. We're going to talk about them. Not going to spend a ton of time here. Because I've done so many webinars and we have so much on our YouTube channel about these first two things that I'm just going to go quickly here, install and follow a legitimate parts matrix.
Cecil Bullard: In other words, I have a methodology for charging parts and I stick to that methodology. And I know that some people are going to call me and say, I want to bring their own parts. That's a no, I don't do that. I also know that Sometimes I'm going to look at a part. I'm going to say, wow, that's really expensive.
Cecil Bullard: And the good news is it's not coming out of my pocket. So I'm not paying the bill. The customer is paying the bill. And frankly, if you're not willing to make let, allow me to make a profit, then I don't know that I want you as a customer. So you want to hold your margin on your parts and therefore you need.
Cecil Bullard: methodology. And the best methodology is to have a parts matrix. So if you're a shop doing, say, 600, 000, now you may be a shop doing a million and a half. I mean, we have some shops that do 10 million in a year or more, but let's say you're doing 600, 000 and you actually have a parts margin that isn't 58%.
Cecil Bullard: Let's say you're currently doing 38%, which is not That's fairly typical when we see a shop that really hasn't had coaching, etc. And you just raise your parts margin by 10%. So you go from 38 to 48. It's not 58, but it's still more. That gives you an additional 2, 250 in parts profit each month. You know, assuming that about 45 percent of your sales is Parts and about 55 percent is labor, which would be fairly typical.
Cecil Bullard: And that's 27, 000 a year just for being paying a little more attention to your parts holding the line a little bit, making sure that your parts margins are correct. And you know, why am I in business? Well, I'm in business cause I love helping shops and I'm in business because I love what I do and I love coaching and I love doing webinars, but you know, I'm also couldn't be in business if I didn't make a profit and couldn't take care of my family.
Cecil Bullard: So you deserve to make a fair profit, decide what that is, and then stick to your parts matrix. Here's an example of a parts matrix. And again, if you go to the QR code. You can get that parts matrix and a matrix. It's just a methodology that basically says when I get a cheap part or an inexpensive part, my cost, I might mark it up times 3.
Cecil Bullard: 8 or even four times. So I take a 2 part. I charge 8 for it. And that would give me a 75% margin on that part. And so when I'm doing 75 percent or even 80 percent on a small part. Then when I'm doing a big part, like an engine or I don't know, a control module, and I'm only getting 40 percent when that all balances out, I end up with the 55, 58 percent that is the goal and the target to get our parts margin.
Cecil Bullard: And again, if you have questions, please ask questions. If you go to our YouTube channel. I believe that's a gear for shops dot com. There's more material on that. So that's all that I'm going to say there. I wouldn't be a coach or really care about the industry if I didn't say raise your labor rate.
Cecil Bullard: Our labor rates at this point are not enough. They're not enough to pay the technicians what we need. They're not enough to buy the equipment we need and get the training we need. And frankly, this industry is way behind in labor rates. So what does a plumber charge? Well, here in Utah anyway, from about 300 an hour for a cheap plumber, all the way up to about 500 an hour for a great plumber.
Cecil Bullard: Electrician, my electrician who is a friend of mine works for about 300 an hour when they come and do work, but his company charges four or 500 an hour for the work that he does. Working for his company. HVAC, they're 300 to 500 an hour. I just had some HVAC work done on my house, and it was about 450 an hour.
Cecil Bullard: And that's by the way what they charged me. If you look at the time they spent on the job and what they charged for labor, they were probably closer to 650 an hour. In the automotive aftermarket auto leap did a survey. I think we're about a year out from that survey. And the average, I think on that survey was 128.
Cecil Bullard: There's a couple other companies that have done surveys. 128 would be kind of normal right now for the industry, but. It should be much higher. I mean, I think we, I used to talk about us needing to be two 50 an hour. And now I think we really need to be talking about three to three 50 an hour as a automotive businesses because of the complexity, the education, the equipment, and the other things that I need, and then we can't even talk about lawyers and doctors and dentists dentists make oh my gosh, I, I don't even know, but dentists are the highest paid.
Cecil Bullard: Many doctors depends on which field you have are also paid over a thousand dollars an hour. And I know they have medical insurance and all of that, but I have liability insurance. I have other things that I have to pay for. So, raise your labor rate. I've been doing this for 24, 25 years now as a coach, I've been in the industry for about 44 years, getting old.
Cecil Bullard: And if, I've told people all along to raise their labor rate and we have a lot of shops that will go home and raise their labor rate from a class or a webinar by 10 an hour. And they don't get any complaints from their customers, clients, et cetera. Or if they have anybody complain, it's really just the five worst customers that you have that you're trying to maybe not work on their car.
Cecil Bullard: Anyway, I did a calculator on the. The average labor rate from 1980, because I was, I owned a shop and was running shops in 1980. And I just raised the labor rate 3 percent a year for the cost of inflation. And that would have got us over 250 an hour as an industry, if I just raised my labor rate 3%.
Cecil Bullard: And of course you know, we're certainly our our inflation is much more than 3 percent today. I don't care what they tell us. All right. So raise your rate. What if I increase my rate by 10 an hour? If I was a shop with three techs with the average productivity that we have of 72%, that's 362.
Cecil Bullard: 9 hours a month that my technicians would do based on like a 21 day month, which most months are actually 4. 3 weeks or about 21 days. If I raise my labor rate by 10 an hour that would give me an extra 3, 629 in labor margins, labor profits which is about 43, 000, a little over 43, 000 a year.
Cecil Bullard: So, you know, I also have to tell you that I, having talked about this for, you know, 23, 24 years in the industry. I don't think I've ever had somebody go, I went home, I want to raise my labor rate by 10 bucks an hour, and my customers left me. In fact, in almost every class that I do when I'm teaching service advisors or owners and we're talking about margin, we talk about labor rate.
Cecil Bullard: I ask people, you know, have you ever attended a class? Have you ever went home and raised your labor rate? And most of the class will raise their hand and say, yes, I have. And then I asked them a second question, which is how many of your customers left you? And almost everyone in the class says none, zero, nada.
Cecil Bullard: So, you know, if you're not making the profit you need, the two easiest things, put a parts matrix in place, follow it. Don't get emotional about it. Number two, raise your labor rate. Even if you lost 20 customers because of it, the bottom 5 percent of your company that average 500 repair order show up 1.
Cecil Bullard: 2 times a year. I would still earn 31, 000 more per year in profit by raising my labor rate 10 an hour. And there's a place where your labor rate probably is too high. I don't know what that is because I've got clients right now that have effective labor rates well over 200 an hour. I have some clients that have posted rates well over 2 50 an hour and in my, all the clients that I have in the company, the Institute the ones that are doing the best, the ones that have the most consistent businesses.
Cecil Bullard: Are the ones that are the most expensive. They have the highest labor rates. They have a more consistent business. They're able to buy nice things. They're able to provide for great technicians great employees, et cetera. So raise your labor rate. If there are any questions, please feel free to ask them.
Cecil Bullard: I know that Amber is paying attention to that
Amber Wright: I was going to say yes. I think there's a really good comment to kind of just like, discuss and. There has been some really good advice in the chat. So, aftermarket parts and accessories generally have a set advertised price that we generally have to try and stay within.
Amber Wright: Otherwise, they think we're overpriced as they have the set retail price. And so some of the suggestions is just increase your labor rate to compensate the loss of revenue on parts.
Cecil Bullard: I would argue the point about aftermarket parts. There's a cheap place to get parts. We all know that if my client goes online and they go to Amazon or any of the rock auto online auto parts, they can probably buy them cheaper.
Cecil Bullard: Something I believe I saw a statistic that 20 percent of the parts that are online are what do they call them when they're faked. You know, they're not real. They don't, they're not coming from where you said they were coming from. So they're they're not. They're not good parts 20%.
Cecil Bullard: Number two I've been dealing with parts pricing for 43 plus years, because when I started in business and I was a young tech, young service advisor in my shops or the shops I was working for we had parts houses and my client can go into any parts house and get a price. We have dealerships and I think some people believe that the dealership price.
Cecil Bullard: Is the price. There's a manufactured list. Well, if you call three dealerships on a certain part today, call three Ford dealerships, three BMW dealerships for the same part, today you're likely to get three different prices. And by the way, if I don't earn enough profit on those parts then I still make the money I need.
Cecil Bullard: So even a dealer list for me doesn't mean a thing. And I've run shops. And had shops and been a service advisor and been an owner and a manager. And I've been pricing my parts based on a matrix, which often is more than the dealership might for, I don't know, since the mid eighties. And we have a lot of shops that earn 58 percent margin on their parts.
Cecil Bullard: And which means that they're pricing dealership parts higher than maybe the dealership would. I think you have to understand that in sales it's about creating value. I think that if I talk about going to McDonald's and getting a hamburger, that's different than going to five guys and getting a hamburger and they're different prices, and it's different than going to a really nice restaurant in town and getting a hamburger, all three different prices.
Cecil Bullard: But wait a minute, doesn't McDonald's set the price on hamburgers? They're four bucks a piece or used to be two. People go to places and do business with places more about how they feel about the place and what they believe the value is of what they get then about what the price is. And you know, as the economy tightens, yeah, we probably have more people that are paying a little more attention to prices, but.
Cecil Bullard: Do they like our service? Do they enjoy what we do? Do we give great warranties? Do we do a great job on their vehicle? Is their experience a great experience? That allows me to price myself where I need to. And when you've worked with over 3, 000 shops, and you've seen that a good 20 30 percent of those shops the top producers, Are routinely charging matrix price parts, which are more than they could buy somewhere else maybe.
Cecil Bullard: And their and their clients are fine with it. I think it, that, that argument goes out the window and yeah. Now there's an idea of I'll just charge more for labor and less for parts. Cause people are more paying more attention on parts. I'm not so sure that's true. When I teach classes. In a class of you know, 200 clients and shop owners and potential clients, non clients.
Cecil Bullard: And I ask in your neighborhood, in your area, are people more focused on parts pricing or labor pricing? It's usually almost split down the middle where 50 percent are saying, well, it's labor and 50 percent are saying, well, it's parts. And it's your mentality. I have two shops in a major city in the United States.
Cecil Bullard: They both are really good shops. They both do really well. One of them believes that you can't get more than 50 percent parts margin in their area. So they're routinely around 47, 48%. The other shop believes you can get 58 and routinely gets 57, 56, 58 percent on their parts, same neighborhood, same parts, same places.
Cecil Bullard: Why does one person get more than the other? I think it's about. Do you believe in your product? Do you believe that the value of your product? Can you build that value for your client? What's your marketing? There's so many variables. And I can tell you from having taught, I don't know, 20, 000 service advisors in the past 20 years, maybe even more than that.
Cecil Bullard: The service advisors that believe in their pricing can build value for their clients are always going to get more margin and their clients are going to buy more at a higher price. I don't know if that helps, doesn't help, but there it is. I really want to spend some time on this idea of increasing your productivity because there's really two types of margin that we have.
Cecil Bullard: We have parts margin and we have labor margin and most labor margin problems are not. Our productivity problems, not pricing problems, really. Although again, you could probably raise your rates a little and nobody's going to pay attention or really care that much. So, so I want to kind of go through several things that are productivity related or productivity issued because the more hours that my hourly or salary detect can do.
Cecil Bullard: In an eight hour day that I can sell to a customer, the higher my labor margin, the higher my profit. So, in my shop over the six and a half year period, the last shop I ran personally we had 119 percent productivity out of our techs because we did a lot of these things exceptionally well. So I'm going to talk about those.
Cecil Bullard: And again, if you have questions. Please feel free to ask them. Currently the average productivity in the United States about 72%. It's from surveys and stuff over the last, I don't know, five or six years that we have seen you know, in any given year it might be 73% or 74%, or it could even be 70%.
Cecil Bullard: That number's been very consistent for a long time. In our industry, the shops that we work with. Probably are much closer to a hundred percent. I would tell you, we're probably in the very high nineties for many of the shops that we work with, if not most of the shops that we work with or above and it's about these things.
Cecil Bullard: So if you take a three tech shop, I've got three techs, I'm 128 an hour. And I have a 45 to 55 percent partial labor ratio and you look at what they're actually doing. I should be doing 1, 369, 805 in sales, but I'm actually doing 986, 259. So there's a very big difference between what I'm actually doing and what I'm doing.
Cecil Bullard: And by the way, if I'm paying hourly or salary to my employee. When I'm doing 986, 000, I might be paying out 250, 000 to my tax. And when I'm doing a 1. 36 million, 1. 37 million, I'm still paying the same amount out to my tax. So when I'm doing more, I have a much higher labor margin. So, costing this shop.
Cecil Bullard: Because of their productivity, 383, 000 in annual sales and 76, 000 in profit. If you look at a 20%, a net profit. So what do I do to fix that? You know, we talk a lot about management. I want, I have this visual, I'm a very visual person, so. I'm looking at this particular visual, and it's a wall. So, I'm looking at a wall that's made up of bricks, and there are two types of bricks in my wall.
Cecil Bullard: So, in my business, there are walls that we come up against, and our employees come up against them. We, as a company, come up against the wall. And there are two types of bricks in this wall. One is a company brick, and the other is an employee brick. So, if we looked at bricks you know, there, here's a wall with bricks in it and as a manager or an owner, I want to get rid of the bricks because I want to get on the other side of the wall.
Cecil Bullard: And bricks for company bricks would be things like scheduling. If you're not scheduling properly, your technician shows up at eight, they don't have cars. If you're not you know, like, they get done with their car at 10, but I don't have another car scheduled till noon. Then they don't have work to do.
Cecil Bullard: That's a scheduling problem. If you're have waiters and you're pulling your tech off of a 6, 000 job. And you know, for a waiter in a way that's a scheduling problem. So you're doing a waiter oil change where you're really not making money and pulling them off of a 3, 000, 5, 000 job. And then they have to get back to that job.
Cecil Bullard: They have to get caught up. That will cause inefficiency and productivity loss tools in education. Do you have the right tools? Are they in the right place in the shop? Are the, can the techs diagnose or. Do the job in a reasonable amount of time. Again, you know, we're going to talk a little bit about book time before we're done today.
Cecil Bullard: You know, can they beat. Book time in doing a normal job, we have a lot of shops where we have texts that are probably under qualified, trying to do diagnosis on a vehicle where we've told the customer, it's going to be 150, a hundred dollars, whatever, and the tech is taking three, four, and five hours to do that diagnostic, that's a brick that's in my wall, that's keeping me from being profitable and keeping my tech from being productive.
Cecil Bullard: And that brick is it's an education brick. You know, how do they know enough? Have we taught them enough? Have they taken enough classes? Dispatch is a company brick. Are we dispatching properly? I would tell you to dispatch all the cars, get them all in the morning for the day, dispatch them all, and then manage your flow throughout the day as opposed to scheduling customers all throughout the day.
Cecil Bullard: And the reason why is when your technician has three cars, Instead of one sitting here, if they have one sitting here and it's a two hour job there's a law, can't remember the name, Tony's law or whatever it is. It's not Pareto's law. It's a different one, but it basically says that a technician will make the available amount of work fit the available amount of time and my history.
Cecil Bullard: My experience is that's true, but give a tech a two hour job and they think they don't have anything for the next three hours they'll fill in and that job will take three hours. If I give a tech you know, a six hour job with maybe five hours of time to do it, my techs would get the job done in five hours or maybe even less.
Cecil Bullard: And if the tech has one job that's a two hour job and another job that's a six hour job, they start the two hour job, they know they have the six hour job, they'll work at a different pace, they'll get the two hour job done faster because they have another job lined up that they know needs to be done and should be done today.
Cecil Bullard: Estimating, are you estimating the proper amounts of time? We'll talk about that a little more. Parts. Are we getting parts in a timely fashion? Are we getting good parts? Are we matching those parts up? Or do we wait until, you know, two days later when the car gets pulled in to check the part and see if it's the right part and then we find out it's not the right part.
Cecil Bullard: So, parts can be a brick. Culture. We have a culture of laziness. We have a culture of, well, it doesn't really matter what we get done. Or do we have a culture of, we want to produce you know, 120%, 9. 6 hours per day. What's the culture of the business. Those are company breaks. And unfortunately, when I look at poor productivity in shops, and I've been doing this for a very long time, and I've probably personally been in over 2000 reviewing their stuff, their work orders, their productivity, their processes you have a lot of employees that are underproducing because the company has not removed.
Cecil Bullard: The bricks has not solved these problems. You have employee bricks what are employee bricks organization employees, not organized. They don't keep their tools. They spend 10 minutes looking for a 10 millimeter socket because. They can't remember because they don't have a structure and organization about how they, you know, how they take care of their tools or even how they work teaching kind of a work process.
Cecil Bullard: You know, you get a car in, it's got a check engine light on, what do you do first? Right? For me, it's like research, you know, run the code but kind of do a little history on the car. Take a look at the car, research the code. What's the code about? Etcetera. Because if I do that, I spend that time there, I can be more organized in my approach.
Cecil Bullard: And if I have an organized approach, I'm probably going to be more efficient and more productive tools. Do they have the right tools themselves? Do they know how to use them? Skills? Do they have the right skills? You notice I said education in the top company brick. Are we educating our people in the bottom?
Cecil Bullard: I said skills for the employees. My employees may have lack of skills in certain areas. And it is up to me as a company to educate them. But it's also up to my employee to keep their skill sets up work ethic attitude. You know, we, I've had employees work for me that got a bad attitude, whatever was going on in their life, whatever was going on you know, in their work, they get tired of doing break jobs or whatever.
Cecil Bullard: They just had bad attitudes and the attitude affects productivity. So. If I can help the employee understand that their attitude is not in a good place and we have a good culture in our company, then I can work with them and then they'll be more productive teach them good work habits. So I have this as a manager in a business, I have this vision of this wall that has these bricks and if I am managing you and you're my employee and you're not, you know, producing what you should, you have too high of a comeback rate.
Cecil Bullard: Your attitude is poor. I'm going to look at the bricks and try to determine, you know, do you have a poor attitude because the company's holding you back? Are you not as productive as you need to be because the company is holding you back? Our processes, our systems, or. Is it something that, that you're holding yourself back?
Cecil Bullard: And I would tell you it's probably in the beginning with an employee, you've got a good employee and their productivity starts to go down, et cetera. It's probably 80 percent or 90 percent company breaks and 10 or 20 percent personal breaks. And then over time, if we don't solve the company breaks, then it's maybe 50 percent or 60 percent company breaks.
Cecil Bullard: And 40 or 50 percent employee bricks getting in the way. And what we need to be doing as management is we need to be identifying and removing those bricks. And so, if I if my job as the manager, my job is to make sure that you hit your goals and targets so the company can hit their goals and targets, then I need to be identifying the bricks, and then where I can, where it's my responsibility solving those problems.
Cecil Bullard: Where it's your responsibility, helping you understand how to solve those problems yourself, or helping you identify those problems and in a way, maybe holding you accountable or helping you accept responsibility for your own issues and problems. I think we have a real management crisis. I would also tell you, we have a customer service crisis in this industry and probably in our in the United States, Canada.
Cecil Bullard: But I would also say we have a management kind of crisis because We have a lot of people in management that aren't, they don't have good habits. They're not, you know, finding and removing the bricks on a constant basis. Again, if there's any questions, please ask them. And all right. So that was kind of, that was kind of a preemptor to the three, four, and five, number three, make sure you're using a labor multiplier.
Cecil Bullard: And that labor multiplier is appropriate. Why do we use a labor multiplier? Why am I charging if the book says it's a three hour job? Why am I charging four hours for that job? Well, the book and the labor guides really don't consider the test drive. It's not included the writeup, the paperwork, the time that the tech is now spending in creating the story and saying, this is what happened.
Cecil Bullard: Go back 25 years ago. We didn't have our techs write up what was going on with the car, why it needed what it needed. We basically had you know, in many cases, the technician walking into the service device saying this car needs breaks and here you go and away you go. Now we've got technicians in AutoLeap writing stories out and taking their time and many technicians are not.
Cecil Bullard: Great typers, some of them are not great spellers. So it takes them longer. None of that is considered in the labor guidebooks. The age and condition of the components that's not considered when they're setting labor times, they're working on brand new cars that haven't been sitting around for a long time that haven't had issues that haven't had another technician over tighten bolts or, you know, screw something up.
Cecil Bullard: They're also not considering cleanup time. And I call those. Brown bananas. And so, you know, in the grocery store interestingly enough, the margins are very low and the grocery store has a thing called the loss rate. A loss rate is things that are stolen. And things that spoil things that go bad.
Cecil Bullard: And so my grocery store is going to buy, I don't know, 10, 000 bananas this month, this week, but they're not going to sell 10, 000 bananas because some people are going to grab a banana and eat it as they walk through the grocery store and then throw the peel, you know, in with the milk. Some people are going to steal a banana, put it in their pocket and walk out of the store with it.
Cecil Bullard: And some bananas are going to go brown and go bad where nobody will buy them and end up getting thrown away. And what the grocery store does is they charge a little more for the green bananas so that they can pay for the brown bananas and the leakage the loss rate. Our loss rate, our leakage is in test drives and write ups and the age and condition of the components.
Cecil Bullard: Our Brown bananas are, you know, other texts have screwed things up and now the job is harder than it supposed to be. Ours is in the cleanup. These are our brown bananas. And frankly, customers have to pay for those brown bananas. So we use a labor multiplier or a labor matrix today. And I can also tell you that 20 years ago, we didn't today.
Cecil Bullard: We do most of the shops that we work with. And by the way, when I say most, I would say a hundred percent. But then somebody might go, well, I know Bob and he doesn't, but I'll tell you right now of the hundreds of shops that we work with every one of them unless they're just coming into our program, they don't understand it uses a labor multiplier.
Cecil Bullard: And that multiplier today in most shops is somewhere between 20 and 30%. And I do know that some of my BMW guys are using a higher multiplier because of the way that BMW does their labor guides, but. A minimum of 20 percent and probably to 30 percent on a labor multiplier. If I use a 25 percent labor multiplier and I have three techs doing, you know, 72%, 362.
Cecil Bullard: 9 hours and I multiply that by 1. 25, that's 453. 6 hours. That extra 400 that extra 90. 7 hours at 128 an hour, It's going to generate 11, 610 per month. And by the way, that is likely that's going to add to my labor margin. It will add to my productivity, depending on how I'm defining, I can define productivity by dollars or hours produced and the labor multiplier, if it's an hour and we're now we're charging 1.
Cecil Bullard: 25, if it's six hours and now we're charging, you know, whatever it is. Eight point whatever that's going to add to my profit. And so in a typical shop with three texts doing 72%, number one, you're 72 percent is going to go up. Number two giving you a better labor margin. Number two, you're going to get more money for that job and you're going to put 139, 000 into your gross profit, most of which will probably fall into your Bottom line profit.
Cecil Bullard: And again, if there are any questions, please feel free to ask next find your leakages this goes back kind of to the wall. Where is labor leaking through my shop? And I'm going to talk about a few different areas that we see that are fairly common. Every shop we have has some labor leakage, meaning we don't charge enough.
Cecil Bullard: We don't get enough. Our tech takes longer. Sometimes we don't charge at all. And so here's a few areas. Number one, In your canned jobs. A lot of times we have canned jobs that were put in six years ago, eight years ago, and even though we've raised our labor rates, we have not done any adjustment to our canned jobs.
Cecil Bullard: So, you know, an oil change that used to be 39 average is probably now 89 average because of components and costs of parts, but also because of labor increases and because, and if we have a canned job, that's a, I don't know, 39 oil change. And we've raised the rates everywhere else. Maybe it's time to raise the rate on some of our canned jobs.
Cecil Bullard: And I always tell my clients, if you don't think you can go all the way to 89 between 39 and 89, where do you think you can go? That's that's kind of a management methodology. It's a sales methodology, but it's a, okay, I can't stay at 39. I don't know that I want to go to 89. So I don't know, take it to 49, get another 10.
Cecil Bullard: That's going to increase your margin. And if you're putting that in labor, it's going to increase your productivity and your labor profits. Charging. We do this all the time. I go into shops and I sit down in their office and I read a people magazine or whatever you got, or I'm on my phone, but I'm paying attention and I'm watching and what happens is customer calls.
Cecil Bullard: And says, Hey, I've got a problem with my car. It doesn't run right. Or it's got this, or it's got that. And we go, okay, let's get it in. And that's going to be, I don't know, 140. That's my one hour diagnostic. And if you've got a good salesperson, when the customer comes in or good service advisor, when the customer comes in, they'll ask them, is there anything else that we can do while you're here?
Cecil Bullard: Is there anything else going on besides that one problem? And I'll see a customer say, yeah. You know, I've got this really bad rattle coming from the rear of the car when I go over bumps and tech service advisor, write that down and then yeah, and you know, I've got this weird electrical issue.
Cecil Bullard: My driver's door, sometimes it doesn't roll down automatically. I have to turn the car on and off or I have to jiggle the switch or bang the door, whatever it is, and they'll write that down. And now I've got a technician's got three problems to diagnose in really three different areas. But we never increased the time.
Cecil Bullard: So now I'm giving a technician instead of one potentially, you know, MIO problem and I'm giving them three different problems, but I'm only sending it out for one hour. And so I would be teaching and training the service advisors, how to sell the additional labor to the customer at the time. And in my world crazy as that might be.
Cecil Bullard: If you don't want to pay me to fix the rattle or to find out what it is, then I don't want to fix it. I don't like working for free. I've been doing this so long that, you know, I just, I see this happening and I see this labor leakage and then at the end, the shop's not making the money they need.
Cecil Bullard: So this is an area that I can go in, I can pay more attention to times. I can make sure my service advisors are you know, paying attention to times. My technicians when they had an hour long diagnostic, they had a 45 minute timer. They put on at the end of 45 minutes, they stopped whether they had finished the diagnostic or not.
Cecil Bullard: I told, I taught my techs, tell me what you've done, what tests have you run, what have you found, tell me what additional tests you think you need to run to diagnose the car and and tell me how long you think that's going to take. And then we went to the customer and talked about their car, what we've found, what we've done, the additional tests that we need.
Cecil Bullard: I go to the doctor the other day. And you know, I'm in the doctor's office. I paid my deductible. The doctor gave me a shot in my shoulder. I've got a problem in my shoulder. So, that was another 79 once I paid for what I had to pay for. And then the doctor said, you know what, Cecil? I think we might have a problem with XYZ.
Cecil Bullard: I want to do a blood panel on you because you've got this issue, blah, blah, blah. So, now I'm going. To the lab and now they're going to run blood work and I'm going to pay an additional fee for that blood work. I mean, we just, we're so used to doing it everywhere else. We need to be conscious of that here.
Cecil Bullard: Paying five tenths with no charge for an inspection. I tell my shops, get rid of your oil change, stop changing oil. Stop talking about it that way. Start talking about servicing the car instead of having a, you know, 69, 89 oil change, have 139 you know, service of the vehicle that includes the oil and filter, but also the inspection.
Cecil Bullard: So maybe I'm paying my tech five tens. And right now I'm getting nothing. I don't care if you get another two tenths out of it or another three tenths or another five tenths, get something out of it. And then when you're estimating a lot of times because of your process, the service advisor is the one doing the estimate, but the technician, the one that looked at the car.
Cecil Bullard: So broken bolts, rust cleanup, things like that are not being considered in the time. So make sure that your techs are aware of that. So that they can let your service advisors know. And if that gets you another, I don't know, a few hours. So what if I captured an hour a day per tech? And again, in that same three tech shop, that's 99, 000 a year by capturing an hour a day, because I worked in these five or six areas, five areas.
Cecil Bullard: Just even just doing a little in each area. Produce another hour per tech per day. If I'm willing to do the management and pay the time number five, look at your workflow because this is the thing that holds your techs up for being productive, probably the most and make sure that you have good scheduling, good dispatch and really great estimating process.
Cecil Bullard: You know, how easy, how quickly can I get the, that estimate done properly through and back to my tech in a lot of shops, that's taking two hours and three hours when it really should only be taking 30 or 40 minutes. And it's because in many cases, the service advisor doesn't have the information that the service advisor needs.
Cecil Bullard: So in, again, in my shop our techs gave us four pieces of information because. As a service advisor, I needed those four pieces of information in order to do an estimate, do it quickly and do it accurately. So number one, what does the car need? In other words, here's the problem. See, so, okay. Number two, why does it need that?
Cecil Bullard: Well, here's what, why it's broken and it failed the test. It's out of spec. It's you know, leaking, you know, whatever that is. And I used to tell my people. My service, my, my tax, I used to say, if you could describe it in a paragraph, describe it in a paragraph, but if you can describe it in one sentence, do that instead of a paragraph, and if you could describe it in two words, instead of a a sentence, then do it that way.
Cecil Bullard: So like in my shop, we created standards and we created kind of a shorthand so that my tech could say to me you know, this is a 0 percent on tires. And on brakes, 0 percent means it's time to replace the tires and brakes because they're worn out. You know, we had these this is a leak. Well, a leak is different than a drip.
Cecil Bullard: A drip gets on the ground. A leak is actually leaking, but getting in the belly pan and not reaching the ground. So now I can talk to the client and speak better about it. How much what does the car need? Why, how much time do you think it's going to take? Because. If you're the tech and you look at this thing and you see that somebody else has jacked it up or there's a, you know, it's really rusted or, you know, Oh my gosh, this is an intake on, or excuse me an exhaust manifold on this kind of vehicle.
Cecil Bullard: And man, I don't know how many of these I've taken off where almost every single time one of the bolts is broken. Then let us know that because as a service advisor, I don't know that. And I might just look at the book time and estimate it per the book time. When I need to be considering that there's going to be a broken bolt.
Cecil Bullard: So in your estimating process, make sure that this additional stuff is being told to you by the tech. And then last but not least, what parts do you need that will help us on the getting the parts, getting the right parts, getting the, all the parts you need as a service advisor. So my guys did all of this.
Cecil Bullard: And it only took him a few minutes, but what it did was keep me as a service advisor from walking out in the shop, grabbing that tech away from the job that he's doing, having a five minute conversation or seven or eight minute conversation about what was needed and why it was needed. And, you know, is there something else I need, what parts.
Cecil Bullard: And so it really improved the time that I was spending with the customer, you know, with the estimate. Because I wasn't walking out there to have that conversation. I rarely went out in the shop and we have some service if I say, well, I got to see it before I can sell it. I'm sorry. I personally don't agree with that.
Cecil Bullard: I've seen lots of bad breaks. I've seen lots of oil leaks. I've seen, I don't know, a million tires that were worn out. I've seen, you know, exhaust systems falling apart a thousand times. You know, I've. As a service advisor, having done it for so long, I've seen all this. I don't need to see it again.
Cecil Bullard: If I have a good trust between myself and a good communication between myself and the tech, it will. Create more efficiency, which gives the service advisor more time to spend on the estimate, which gets the estimate out faster, and it also will increase the time for the technician. So if I spend my time here, it's going to reduce time spent later by both of us and improve the workflow.
Cecil Bullard: I get the estimate out faster. The faster I get the estimate out, the more time the tech has to get it done. The more likely they're going to get it done faster, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, on and on infinitum. So I'm going to work on my workflow. I'm going to improve my estimating process. And it seems really simple and it really is, but in many cases.
Cecil Bullard: We don't have a good estimating process and or process if you're in Canada. And it takes additional time, which is one of the things that's killing the technician's productivity and actually hampering the service advisors productivity. So what if I did that and I improve that workflow and if you had an effective labor rate here's the formula to determine what your hour's worth.
Cecil Bullard: So in a shop that has 128 effective labor rate. It's the formula to understand what your hours worth is. One plus parts over labor. If a 45 percent of what you do is parts and 55 percent is labor, then you're 128 times 1. 82, meaning that your hours were 232 and 96 cents. Every time you sell one, that's what it's worth.
Cecil Bullard: Every time a technician does one, that's what it's worth. Well, what if I improve my workflow process so that now my technician could get more work done? Because the estimates are happening quicker. There's less time spent on, you know, verbal and face to face communication et cetera. And I could put another hour and a half into my day, right?
Cecil Bullard: And so now I take an hour and a half. Now, by the way, if I've got three texts, it's a half an hour of tech. And if I got if I did that 250 days a year that's 87, 000. What if I only got half of that? You know, what if I only recovered 15 minutes a day per tech? Well, that, that would be another 43, 000 in, in my shop.
Cecil Bullard: So in order to really increase your margin, you have to become efficient and productive. And you have to be charging properly and you have to, again, in order to charge properly, you have to learn how to sell properly and build value for your clients, et cetera. Okay, well, what if we put all of it together?
Cecil Bullard: What if we just did a little of everything? And and so we're going to increase our parts margin by 10%. That's going to bring us about 27, 000. I'm going to increase my labor rate by 10 bucks an hour. That's going to bring me 43, 000. I'm going to increase my labor multiplier or use one. If I'm not, that's going to bring me 139, 000.
Cecil Bullard: I'm going to reduce my leakage one hour a day per tech. That's going to bring me 99, almost a hundred thousand dollars. And I'm going to improve my workflow. Just by adding 1. 5 hours a day, by looking at the bricks and getting rid of the bricks. That's going to give me 87, 000. So, and the total there is almost 400, 000.
Cecil Bullard: Well, what if I only got half of that? What if I could only do half of it? And what if I only got half of that to drop to my bottom line? That's a hundred thousand dollars a year. And so sometimes I look at this overwhelming, like, man, I'm working my butt off. I'm not getting the profits I want or need.
Cecil Bullard: You know, this is difficult. The other thing that happens when you clean up these processes and we start tearing the bricks down. Your employees see that their job is easier. They're more fulfilled when they're more fulfilled. They're actually more productive. You know, there are side benefits to doing these things.
Cecil Bullard: And not just the profit that you might make, but it's a happier environment. Now I have money to pay people more than I would have paid them and to motivate them to be even more productive. So anyway, that's. You know, I'm constantly working on tearing down the bricks in the wall. You have to be doing that if your shop is not at 20 percent net, you know, if your goal is a 62 percent or 64 percent gross profit.
Cecil Bullard: With a loaded labor and you're not there, then what are the bricks and how do I take them down. So, we're at, we're close to the end. We got another five, six minutes, Amber, do we have questions?
Amber Wright: Yeah. So what is the best way to inform a customer that the job is going to take more labor than what the customer approved job for me?
Cecil Bullard: I think number one, don't create the expectation that. You know, my diag is the final thing, you know, when I had, I'm sorry, it sounds like I cut you off, Amber. I didn't mean to do that. No, you're fine.
Amber Wright: It was just, he was giving an example, but you go.
Cecil Bullard: Yeah when you know, I'm setting the diagnostic up as a service advisor, every, almost every customer I'm like, you know, by the way, when we get this done sometime at real close to one o'clock, are you available?
Cecil Bullard: I'm going to call you and we're going to talk about it. And if there's anything that we need to do to take care of this problem, then we're going to talk about what that cost is. You know, and I think there are jobs where you should be able to go. This is the price. So, you know, I'm doing a break job.
Cecil Bullard: Gosh, if we can't estimate a break job accurately, and I got to call the guy back and talk about extra money maybe we're just not doing as good a job as we should, but there are other jobs. Like when you get into an EVAP system, you know, I'm going to run these tests and this may not diagnose the whole thing.
Cecil Bullard: I may have to replace a component and then there might be additional efforts. Or when I get into a car, you know, customer calls me on the phone. I know nothing about the car. I've had customers call me and tell me they had a Toyota Corolla and when they came in it wasn't even a Toyota. And they don't even know what they're driving.
Cecil Bullard: And so You know, all we know is that there's a check engine light. I'm not guaranteeing in that hour that I can diagnose and tell you what's wrong with your car. I'm going to run some tests. You know, we, you know, I can tell you that probably 70 percent of the time we can figure it out in an hour. I've got great techs.
Cecil Bullard: I may have to call you to talk about additional testing. You know, if you prep your customer in the beginning, it's much easier. And I, you know, a lot of times we have owners that are nervous or scared to make those calls because they're really not salespeople. And they are so invested and they're really afraid.
Cecil Bullard: I just don't want my customers to hate me. And they're very careful about what they do. I'm sorry, I can't. Yeah. Broken bolt. Well, broken bolts, a broken bolt. You know, I didn't make the car. I didn't drive the car. I did. I didn't buy the car. I didn't get the benefit of it. Why am I paying for broken bolt?
Cecil Bullard: And by the way, if you're a tech, or you're working on cars, occasionally a bolt's gonna break. And if you're blaming the tech for that, now by the way, if I have a tech who keeps breaking bolts, maybe I better teach him how to take out a difficult bolt. But if I have a tech who doesn't normally break bolts, it's not a thing and the bolt breaks, is it our fault, or is it a condition of the vehicle?
Cecil Bullard: And if it's condition of the vehicle, is it my responsibility or is it the owner's responsibility? So I have no problem calling up and saying, you know, while we were doing this, you know, we, there's a bolt that broke coming out. This happens occasionally. I hate to be making this call, but here's what we need in order to take care of that.
Cecil Bullard: And I will tell you the clients that we've worked with that have actually gone back and been able to do that. 9 percent of their clients don't argue about it. They're just like, okay, you know, I go to the dentist. I don't think I have any cavities. When he comes in and says, I have a cavity. I'm like, okay, fix it.
Cecil Bullard: And he goes, digs in and he gets too deep and he goes, Oh, we're going to have a root canal. I don't go, well, wait a minute. It's your fault. I'm like, oh, that's horrible. I hate to pay for a root canal. Okay, you know, take care of it. I think in this industry, we just, we're just so emotionally attached and Just afraid that our customers are going to hate us because we, it wasn't exactly what we said.
Cecil Bullard: I don't know. I've been doing this a long time and I can't tell you how many times I've called customers later and said, Hey, while we were there, we found this. And here's what it's going to take for us to take care of that. And I would just do it without any emotion. I mean, yeah, I feel bad for the customer.
Cecil Bullard: But I don't feel bad for me. I didn't do anything wrong. It's their car. I don't know if that answers that or not. Amber, do you have a couple more?
Amber Wright: No, no more questions at this time. Just some kind of comments and suggestions on how other people handle that as well, which I love that you guys are engaging in that and helping each other.
Amber Wright: If you guys want to give it another minute we can ask any questions or any last minute thoughts, Cecil, from you.
Cecil Bullard: I would just say. You know, for management wise, you need to be looking at your business. You have goals and you need to feel like these are the targets I want to hit 20 percent net X percent gross profit.
Cecil Bullard: And I'm going to manage my business and look at that wall and tear those bricks out and get rid of those bricks constantly, because, you know, it's amazing. You can tear the whole wall down. And then, you know, two weeks later, someone's putting another brick or two on the wall. So for me it's manage it.
Cecil Bullard: Manage it. And then I'm also not, I didn't buy the car, I didn't build it, I didn't drive it, I didn't break it. It's not my responsibility. My job is to help the customer understand what they need to do that well, but not perfectly. I don't have perfect techs, I'm not a perfect person, I have never met a perfect person.
Cecil Bullard: You know, there's a few people that come fairly close they're Amber.
Amber Wright: I
Amber Wright: hope that's me. I see what you did there. I did. Hey, I think you made my day. What are your thoughts on commission based text versus non commission?
Cecil Bullard: I don't like flat rate. In some states, it really does violate the labor laws today.
Cecil Bullard: I think there's a real black cloud over flat rate today. And if you're paying attention to the blogs and the, you know, the online channels and all of that. There's a lot of texts that are, they've just been used and abused. The problem with flat rate is it puts almost all of the responsibility and all of the risk on the technician shoulders.
Cecil Bullard: The problem with hourly is that it puts all the risk on the business and the technicians have no, no push, no drive. And so I like to build what we call performance enhanced pay plans. I do it all the time, probably four or five a week for our clients which are a combination kind of a blend.
Cecil Bullard: Where there's a reasonable base, probably somewhere 60 to 70 percent of what I can pay for that position. And then there's a bonus structure around performance and education and things that I want from that position. And so my thoughts on, you know, commission only, you know, by the way, I was always a commission guy as a business owner.
Cecil Bullard: I'm. 100 percent of commission guy. My company doesn't make money. I don't survive. But I think today in the marketplace, it's more difficult to get texts that way, and I really think we need to rethink the way we have paid technician service advisors in the past. And really think about a new model for that.
Cecil Bullard: And my model for that is kind of a blended where the technician knows that they're going to make money. If you follow Maslow. You know, Maslow says, if you can't take care of your basic needs, then you can't think about higher function, things, God how to do this better being productive. And so I'm not a giant fan of commission only, although I will tell you, I will also have technicians and owners that will say, wait a minute, I love that because I can go out and do 80 hours and make twice the money.
Cecil Bullard: Okay, great. You should.
Amber Wright: Love that. One last question. And of course, if you guys want to put up the screen on how people can reach out to you again, while we answer this last one Preston said, I work on classic cars and many clients have purchased their own parts before they find me. They're usually the same parts I would have bought anyway.
Amber Wright: I have taken those jobs in but increased my labor rate to accommodate the lost parts margin. I don't feel like I have the best delivery on explaining why. I'd be curious if you have input on that scenario and explaining it to the client.
Cecil Bullard: If you reach out to me, I have a whole write up on that. That's one page for clients.
Cecil Bullard: There's three reasons not to do parts that the customer supplies. One is I don't know the provenance of the part. I don't know the quality of the part, the fit of the part. There are 20 percent crappy parts online. And then, you know, there are my, I'm an opinionated guy because I was a tech. And so there are certain places where if you got the part there, I don't feel good about putting it on your car.
Cecil Bullard: So one, one reason is that, and the provenance issue is an issue for me and my liability and my insurance. So, my insurance finds out I'm putting parts on your car that you're supplying. That creates more risk for them. They can raise my rates or cancel me. So they could literally say where that part come from.
Cecil Bullard: And I'm like, well, the customer supplied it. And then they'll say, I'm not taking care of that. And I could have a 12, 000 engine job, go bad. That now I'm responsible for because the second reason is the courts see us as the experts. So if I go to court, whether the customer supplied the part or not, the judge believes I'm the expert.
Cecil Bullard: So I should have known that part was not a good part or not a high quality part or whatever. And so I'm responsible for warranteeing that part, whether or not I made the profit on the part that I want to, or I need to. And then the third reason is. Part of the money I make in this industry and maybe, you know, 20 years from now, that won't be it.
Cecil Bullard: We won't, we'll just give parts away for free, but we'll charge five times the labor. I don't know but today a good portion, 40 percent of my profits or 45 percent of my profits come from parts. And so if I'm taking their parts in and I'm not raising the labor rate high enough, or I'm not financially in a place to even.
Cecil Bullard: Hold up the warranty. So I, you know, there's three great reasons not to do that. And I would literally tell you, show me a restaurant in town that will let you bring your own steak and that will cook it and and take any of the risk at all. Just show me one restaurant and then we'll have a different conversation about parts.
Cecil Bullard: You know, and don't tell me it's my best friend, my buddy who owns a restaurant who I help and I go in now that doesn't count. Just show me a restaurant where it's not your friend, where you could go in, you know, an Outback, a Longhorn Steakhouse, anywhere else where I could take my own steak and they're going to cook it and lower the price of the meal for me.
Cecil Bullard: Show me where that's going to happen. And then we'll have a different conversation on Don't do it. That's my answer.
Amber Wright: Well said. That's what they said. So, appreciate it guys. We did. I put some key takeaways in the chat. There is a survey, but we will also send it out afterwards. Again, this session was recorded, so you will get access to that following.
Amber Wright: We really appreciate it, Cecil. A lot of compliments, excellent points. Thank you. So, we look forward to having you on our next webinar.
Cecil Bullard: Can't wait. Thank you very much, Amber.
Amber Wright: All right. Bye.
Cecil Bullard: Bye bye.
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