In the ever-evolving world of automotive restyling and aftermarket accessories, it’s crucial for industry leaders to stay on top of trends and technologies that shape the market. This need for constant innovation and adaptation became the center of conversation during a recent episode of the Ride-in-Style Podcast with Tom Waitzman of DPS Automotive Group and Auto Accessory Configurator.
Introducing Tom Waitzman
Tom Waitzman is an industry veteran with extensive experience in automotive restyling. He’s the owner of DPS Automotive Group and the creator of Restyler Connect and Auto Accessories Configurator. Waitzman’s entrepreneurial story provides not just inspiration, but also paints a clear picture of the changing face of automotive restyling.
The Journey into Auto Restyling
For Waitzman, the passion for cars was sparked at a pretty young age when he fell in love with a Ford Mustang that had pile driver speakers and an Alpine radio. That experience transformed him into a car enthusiast, and he knew that he had found his lifelong calling. He started off as a passionate kid who did great work but didn’t make any money. The turning point came when he decided to learn the business aspects to run a successful and profitable enterprise in addition to delivering top-notch services.
The Shift in the Industry
As with every sector, the automotive restyling industry has evolved significantly over the years. Waitzman stated that the biggest change has come from car factories themselves. Manufacturers have started paying attention to the trailblazers in the auto restyling industry, incorporating their innovations in factory cars. This evolution has compelled restylers to strive harder and innovate more to maintain the uniqueness of their craft.
Using Technology to Overcome Business Challenges
One of the biggest challenges Waitzman faced was in keeping his operations organized and efficient. His solution came in the form of software, a tool he specifically designed to help restylers manage their business more effectively.
This software, Restyler Connect, enables business owners to track, manage, and evaluate every aspect of their operations innovatively. They can follow up on leads, schedule jobs, handle financials, and so much more. Waitzman’s other creation, Auto Accessory Configurator, offers consumers an intuitive digital platform to browse compatible car accessories, providing a more professional customer experience.
Looking Ahead
While the industry continues to change, one thing remains clear: Restylers need to embrace both creativity and business acumen to succeed. For Waitzman, the future likely holds more focus on commercial customization and fleet vehicles. He sees tremendous potential in working with businesses that require fleet customization and other commercial vehicle enhancements.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the world of automotive restyling is an ever-evolving one that offers numerous growth opportunities for those willing to adapt and innovate. Business owners in this industry, like Tom Waitzman, are constantly seeking to merge their passion for cars with the needs of a growing and changing market. The Ride-in-Style Podcast provided a perfect platform for Waitzman to share his story, insights, and experiences, and undoubtedly, there’s much more to come from this industry leader.
Read The Transcript
What were some of your biggest challenges you faced in the industry yeah a lot of challenges I think like
every business owner is to is just Financial is just figuring out how do I
have fun at this and do a good job but make money it’s a it’s really hard how has the industry changed since you first
got involved and and where do you see it going in the future it’s changed in a kind of a simple fact that cars are
coming with more and cars are are looking better and they’re they’re watching our Trends they’re watching
what we’re doing and copying us welcome to the ride and style podcast
your turbocharged pit stop for automotive restyling buckle up with Jesse and
Josh welcome to another episode of Ryden style podcast today we have fantastic
Introduction & Background
guest Tom Weitsman of DPS Automotive Group and the restyler connect and auto accessories configurator a restyler and
a SAS company owner and a friend of Josh so thank you Tom for being on the show thanks for having
me Tom how cold is it in Chicago today too
cold I I every time I go visit Tom in Chicago I always think about how it man it’s so windy there I know they call it
the windy SE whatever but it’s like if it’s 20 degrees it really feels like zero in my world and that’s why Tom is
such a remote starts is what what how he pays his bills for the last 20 years
back in the day I know we’re just jumping right into this but I just got to know what was your best month ever
amount of remote starts how many we we were doing 50 a day at one point a day 50 a day we were
one point how many did you ever do by yourself the most you ever did back when you installed when I was installing oh I
would do 10 I would do 10 or 12 a day 10 or 10 to 12 a day now back then Jesse it wasn’t all plug andplay too you had to
actually wire stuff yeah my my fingers still hurt actually that was 10 years
ago probably a little bit of arthritis developed out of that repetitive stress
Tom tell us about your background how you got into Auto restyling what was your what what did you do before and
what was the journey into the industry yeah I was just I was always passionate about cars I know it sounds
crazy but when I was 12 years old my older brother came home with a Ford Mustang and had some pile driver
speakers and an Alpine radio in it and I looked at that and I said that’s what I’m going to do the rest of my life
which sounds crazy at 12 years old but it’s real I just knew that I wanted to do it so he still loves cars I still
love it I still I still love when new product comes in I want to be the one to open the box and look at it because I
just love looking at it and unboxing it and seeing what we’re going to put in cars I I love it I took that passion as
a kid and said that’s what I’m going to do for a living and I did it I I went to Best Buy and begged them for a job and
then I went to the local car stereo shop which was sound experience which was definitely the leader in Chicago back
then and I begged him for a job and I said I’ll sweep the floors I’ll clean the toilets whatever I got to do I want
to work here and and that’s what I did and I ended up going from being working at a a Best Buy to a kind of a custom
shop which was sound experience to be a tech support rep for a remote start manufacturer which avit was here in
Chicago at the time who so you were that was well before directed and
Vox all call it yeah it was when Clifford was in
California and Clifford started Avital because the own the owner of Clifford
had a daughter named Ai and or a son named ABI and a daughter named Talia and he created abital and that was in and
that was in Buffalo Grove and I lived down the street and Alden stifel was the president who is now the president and
owns maxonic Which is hyphonix and a couple Brands and he’ll tell you that I showed up there every every day almost
and asked for a job until they finally just said fine I wasn’t even 18 years
old yet I think I was 17 years old and I wanted to be a tech support rep and so I
did that and it was great I learned a lot and then worked went to some other retailers and I started my first shop in
2000 which was mobile Soundworks which was more of a retail did you know right a way that you were going to want to
start your own thing like how did you how what was the mental shift of hey I’m working for somebody now I know I got to
go out and start my own that’s a big jump for most people yeah I I think I always knew that I started my before I
started mobile sound where actually mobile Sound Works really started when I was still in high school I didn’t even finish high school and I was working out
of a friend’s garage and that was my business and I didn’t even really know that I didn’t know that much at that
point I’d only been professionally in the business for a year or two years but I faked it and and I got some customers
and I figured it out and really I went back and forth from being the owner to working for
someone really to learn I started that business in the garage then I ended up
working at at apt Electronics I learned a lot at apt Electronics then I was at
obitel right after that and then I started my business mobile
Soundworks and I ran that for four years from 2000 to 2004 and I was a passionate
kid I loved what I did I did great work for people but I wasn’t a business I I didn’t make any money I didn’t know I
didn’t know how to run a business I knew how to work on cars but I didn’t know how to make any money so I went to go work for one of the biggest expeditors
really in the country which was SNS automotive and they were in their Heyday larger than anyone we when I worked at
us and I went there as their director of technical development that was a title that I made up on my own and they said
all right fine that sounds good so I made up that title and I was basically responsible for teaching all the guys
for looking at new products for um helping with sales calls with putting out fires with cars that we couldn’t
figure out or whatever and so I learned a lot about business there that that was
a serious operation you asked me how many remote starts I did 50 a day at SNS we were doing like a thousand a day some
days it mean it’s we had 100 installers a thousand car a thousand remote starts
a day yeah maybe not quite a thousand but there was a hundred technicians on the road and and these guys were real
soldiers and these guys would grab a case of remote starts and they’d go out dealership to dealership working in the
parking lots working in their service drive whatever snow whatever they they’d be outside wearing snows suits with the
car on and the heat cranked and they were installing remote starts there I don’t think there’s too many companies
that ever existed that did the kind of volume that SNS did amazing and so I
give them a lot of credit for teaching me how to run a business and how to look at the numbers and how to you got to do
a good job and you got to have fun at what you’re doing but if we’re not making any money where are we going to go we’re business so wait a minute so
wait a minute so that so mobile Sound Works and then SNS right so any of so if any of our manufacturers are listening
and they see something that where mobile Soundworks owes us money how can they get hold of you they can’t they can’t
okay also that business is gone the fight disc the phone’s disconnected okay yeah no Tom pays all his bills so that’s
we’re not worried about that but so you worked for SNS for a while yeah
um you did that and that and that’s when you started DPS yeah so I it was 2009 I was um oh
great time to start a a car a business in the automotive World 200 so it’s 2009 I I just felt like I
was a caged animal it sounds like weird but I felt like I’m an owner I just I can’t do it I can’t you are the biggest
entrepreneur I know you you bleed business owner okay yeah I just I needed
and I tried when I was there every day I treated it like it was my business I see a bag of zip ties on the floor I’m like
what are we doing guys why are we wasting these zip ties so anyways I actually I I put in notice there and I
was actually G to go work for audiovox and the timing wasn’t right for me I was single I was living downtown in the city
I was at the age when I’m looking to find my wife and traveling all that time wouldn’t have made sense for me it just
wouldn’t have been good for what I want to do so I said you know what I’m just going to give it a try and start my business again so I called the three
dealerships that were like my main customers before I went to work for SNS and I said guys if I start this thing up
again do I have your business and all three of them said you don’t even have to ask of course you it was a risk for
me but it was a pretty calculated risk because these all three of these stores said you got it so I started DPS out of
the backseat of my car I had no shop I had my stock room in my apartment in the city I would go out to the dealerships I
would do work I would come back to my and I would handr write invoices I would come back to my house and I would enter
those invoices into QuickBooks and then I’d start that thing over again and I would stop at my local distributor every
day from my because I lived in the city so from the way from the city to to the suburbs where I was doing the work A&M
Distributors was right on the way I’d stop at A&M I’d get what I needed and then I would go out on the road now were
you doing other were you doing all electronic stuff like radios and everything okay so
Yeahs yeah but most of it was remote starts but it was remote starts Rader detect your mobile video that was back
when we were putting nav radios and cars all the time and we were putting overhead TVs and headrest cars man it
was a just a different it was just a different time let me see there if there was one thing I missed product Wise It’s
overhead DVDs oh those things were so great man you would be able to blow one
of those out in a half hour make five 600 bucks bucks just do and and have 10
of them waiting behind it like boom 10 inch nine that was the only choice what do you want seven 10 or nine I don’t
know whatever the size were back then but but Tom what kind of vehicle were you working out of wasn’t it like a
little sedan or something it was it was a Nissan Ultima Coupe a twoo a twoo
coupe a twoo open the trunk and it was fil it fill remote with remote St I
still have the same license plate I got license plate DPS Auto still got it and I transferred it from from car to car so
did you meet Savon in that thing yeah I did she married you you know what’s
funny is she didn’t know anything about cars so I had debadged that car because that Ultima Coupe when it came out oh
yeah looks like it looks like it was really slick yeah you didn’t know what it was it was really slick so I took the emblems off and she didn’t know she was
like what is that she didn’t know anything about cars yeah it was G G37 or what whatever
G30 whatever it was back then but yeah it was and then I got my first shop and it was like a two-car Bay and then I
hired my first employee and then we went to a fourcc car Bay or a five car Bay
and just kept on going from there today we have 30 employees I got to go back really quick you made a quick comment
about when you were in high school working out of a garage what were you doing back then what kind of projects
really stereo so you really into stereo right away it was like sound systems and then that kind of got you and electronics eventually that was your
major interest yeah it was stereo systems and when I was in high school it’s different today unfortunately when
I was in high school everybody wanted a stereo in their car they weren’t putting a loud exhaust in their car we weren’t
looking at our phones changing the color WAP no we we were putting we were putting as many subwoofers as we could
in there to make it as loud and ridic and obnoxious as possible and actually my friend whose house it was he had a
Jeep Wrangler and I don’t think we ever even finished it I think I just go there and hang out and try and build a sub wer
enclosure I didn’t know what I was doing but it it kept me it got me that free garage to do other work out of so I just
kept on working on his car and and then that was it was just a it was a different time it’s still a fun business
but back then it was what about challenges what were some of your biggest challenges you faced in the industry and you probably had to
Challenges & Triumphs
overcome a lot of challenges yeah a lot of challenges I think like every business owner is to is
just Financial is just figuring out how do I have fun at this and do a good job but make money it’s a it’s really hard
and I think that I think it’s a problem in in our industry maybe every industry
maybe not just our industry but it’s a problem in our industry globally where a lot of guys who started businesses were
are like me or no different than me and and Josh I’m sure you agree with this
that they they don’t they’re not business people and they don’t think about it like that and they just I think
that if our industry of SE a pro whoever if we could do anything to educate people or to help shops is to help teach
them about business about how important it is to be organized how important it is to know what’s going on in your
business where business is coming from where you’re spending money at I’m not trying to drive all this into my
software restyler or connect is the the the number one success of my company in
my opinion are two things number one is the simplest thing ever that every business should do is I’ve always done
the right thing no matter how painful it is I’ve paid for things that I probably shouldn’t have had to pay for I’ve
warrantied things that I shouldn’t have warranteed I’ve done whatever that’s number one in any business if you don’t
do that you’re not going to succeed but number two is that as my business started to go from a oneman operation
into multiple technicians and multiple customers which a lot of guys are there
or getting there are already away past that I said I I can’t you can’t run a
business and you can’t grow and scale unless you are very organized and I’ll tell you Jared Cohen from autoaction
he’s the one who inspired me to even think that way and to look for something because Jared was really very forward
thinking in that and he had something built for himself years ago and I remember at one of the SEMA shows him
showing me his screen and he’s look I can click here and see what’s going on at this shop and this color means this
and I’m like man that’s that’s really cool like he’s sitting here in Las Vegas and he’s watching his business in New
Jersey and he knows everything that’s going on and I’m thinking to myself in the 10 minutes that he showed that to me
I got like 15 text messages Tom Where’s My Car how come this car is not back what’s my cost on this how much does
this remote start cost and I thought to myself this is out are you saying that you’re going to give credit to Jared I
am for am the brain child of AC Resler connect yeah yeah hold on not AC because
AC was a different deal that was a dealership who was unhappy with add-on Auto yeah yeah yeah but Jared inspired
me to look for something now I didn’t have I didn’t have Jared kind of money so I couldn’t build my own software yeah
but so I started looking and I’m like there’s got to be something out there that we can tweak or whatever and I can figure it out so I ended up um doing
like Trials of a ton of different softwares that were mainly for field service management because there’s a lot
of softwares out there for HVAC guys and plumbers and electricians and guys who work on the road and in some ways their
businesses are similar to us because they’re going out and they’re doing work on the road and they’re needing to
communicate with their customers and needing to watch what guys are doing out on the road and if you’re a restyler
that’s doing dealership work that’s your biggest struggle is what’s going on where and how you get work done so I
ended up finding a software called mhel desk and it worked great for me for six seven years and that was that’s when I
we looked at it and I’m like all right why don’t we just take that which is pretty cool but why don’t we make something that’s made little bit more
just for us because there’s other softwares that are for our industry now but they’re not just for us they’re for
mechanic shops and as much as we want to think with or at least as much as they want to think we’re the same as mechanic
shops we’re not yeah it’s a we’re not body shops we’re not mechanic shops we’re not service depart apartments and
they they just don’t get that so anything you he’s right Jesse anything that’s out there you almost have to shoehorn your business into and make it
work they’re like we can’t do that feature but you could do this and this and I’m like that defeats the whole purpose and yeah you got to pay him
monthly and or it’s changed so much down the line and there and he I think most
of the restylers like Tom’s talking about there’s a lot of people that have just grown up maybe it’s like a window
10 shop where he was just a a guy was just a window tener and then all of a sudden his business got too big so like Tom he had to hire somebody and a couple
people and now he has this business that he’s running but he may not have the the full software or the weight or even have
the financial understanding of how to run a business but fortunately in our business if you do the right thing you
can still make money even if you don’t have all that information so I think Tom’s a lot smarter than me when it comes to the finances because he’s
always asking me hey what’s this and this and I’m like I don’t know I didn’t look today I would say you’re the smarter guy in the room but you know
what we’ve had what two or three like amazing years in this business It’s Gonna Change we have a
bright future ahead of us so I’m not in any way saying that we don’t but what I’m saying is that it’s not going to
come as easy to us and we’re going to have to work harder and we’re going to have to get better at what we do and
every business does if you’re not getting better then you’re going backwards and you’re going to die so I think now more than ever we all need a
look at our businesses and we need to figure out how we’re going to make the same money we made the last two or three
years on Less business because we’re going to have less and or and organization is let’s talk a little bit
more about that how do you na how have you na navigated the supply chain issues the low dealership inventory the economy
and the impacts on your business I’d love to talk about that a little bit and I think you’re we’re going segueing there already yeah I I wish I could say
we struggled through it but we didn’t it was Greatful for us everybody in our industry maybe if your business was
heavily reliant on dealership preloads on some stuff but for what we do we had
dealerships saying just come and tint every car come and put ppf on every car so that that hasn’t been the problem the
problem is starting to happen now and it’s going to start going forward when dealerships are like oh we can’t preload
every car now we can’t charge over sticker now and it’s been three years since we’ve had to look at your stuff to
make money and now we need to do it again so the challenge is actually now
not the last three years of how do we re-educate our dealerships and and
selling our products again and showing them that we’re a profit Center and now we have different people too because we
have different salespeople who have not had to work hard at all they know how they don’t know how to sell we first of
all we don’t have sales people that know how to sell anymore and then dealerships don’t have sales people there a
difference there’s a difference between an orderer and a saleson yeah and these gu they didn’t
even have to be order takers it was I got two cars in the lot which one do you want and it’s 10,000 over sticker what
do you want me to tell you but now now so now you now we’re going to have to work hard not only in educating them but
now more than ever we need to have the tools for them so that these guys who are used to doing everything on their
phones that they can do that and that we can communicate with them efficiently which again I’ll plug back back in I’ll
go back into AAC AA Auto accessory configurator is the perfect tool for that where a resell can walk into a
store and say here don’t worry about brochures don’t worry about knowing that much about accessories because let’s be
honest they’re never going to take the time to to understand our products or understand our business and I don’t
blame them it’s not they’re there to sell cars they’re not there to sell our products so while we’re on the topic
we’ll talk about it and then and then I have a couple other questions on on your shop and I’m sure Jesse has your questions because he had by the way he
has the cleanest shop I’ve ever seen in my life in fact Jesse if you were to
take like a I don’t know like a little piece of silicone or something like that and put a squirt about a quarter size on
the floor somewhere in his shop he would be able to find it in less than five minutes because he if his Shop’s so
clean it’s so clean it’s beautiful it’s great in fact he put in a car wash for his dudes yeah that’s awesome I’m not even
gonna ask how much he spent for that on a car wash to put in for his guys to
clean the cars before they start ceramic coding and everything like that but anyway we’ll get I want to we I want you
to think about that because because he moved from Electronics to now film and protection I’m real really successful so
we’ll talk about that in a minute but since you brought up restyler connect why don’t you tell everybody a little bit it’s restyler connect.com why don’t
you tell everybody what does it do what problems is it solving and why do you have the best partner in the industry
yeah so which should I talk about the last part first they don’t know who it is so it’s
fine all right restyler connect is a shot management tool it sounds like a simple explanation but it is a shot
management tool and it has everything to manage the operations of your business from start to finish and then takes that
information and pushes it into your accounting system so you’re accounting uh can be ran in an accounting software
whether that be QuickBooks online or Zoho books so our software handles from
a lead coming in to creating an estimate to the estimate being approved to a work
order being generated the work being scheduled and dispatched to a
technician uh check in checkout to document vehicle pictures damage any
specific notes that a customer wants to be stored forever in our Cloud to creating an invoice and then
commissioning your technician and your salespeople so I said a lot in one sentence but it really is everything
that you need to do to run your business regardless of whether you’re a retailer only and a a an expeditor only or you do
both retail and wholesale sales it handles everything and it it also has a
real-time connection to any car dealers that you might do business with so your car card dealership can be in front of a
customer offering accessories they could submit that order that order comes in real time to your platform to your
restyler connect dashboard and you’re able to just with a click of a button turn that into a work order and dispatch
that workout so it handles everything now let let me really quickly just for
clarification so everybody understands you’ve got two names here that just to make sure people aren’t confused there’s
the term restyler connect then there’s the name the auto accessories configurator how do they relate how are
they different are they the same thing as one a part of the other how would you describe that to a restyler or a
dealership for that matter yeah so they’re same company but two different platforms so Auto accessory configurator
is a an accessory configurator so it is a tool that allows a dealership to
present accessories to a customer and only shows them the accessories that’ll fit their car it shows them all the
information that they need to make a buying decision the pricing of it and then allows an order to be submitted and
fulfilled either within the dealership internally or then connected to restyler
connect restyler connect is your shop management software they’re two different tools but they link together
and have two completely different purposes and you don’t need one to have the other yeah so you could be you could
you can use Auto access configurator to help dealership sell accessories to help you sell accessories put it on your
website you can use restyler connect to run your business or connect them
together which which is ideal and I say this with all the confidence in the
world there is no other platform like restyler connect that is made for our business there just isn’t I’m not saying
that to downtalk any other softwares there’s lots of softwares out there that are great products that are built by
smart guys and good teams and I’m not saying that they’re not a good product they’re just not built for our business
and and this is the only platform where two guys who own shops in this industry
who know the pain the Pains of the industry said let’s build something just for us and did that and another thing
that I say that I know sounds like it’s cliche but we’re not software guys we
are restylers and retailers that built a software a and that’s so important
because software guys they don’t get it I don’t care how smart they are I don’t care how many questions they ask you
right they could ask all the questions but they don’t live and breathe what we do every day they don’t they can’t
install 10 remote starts in a day like that I can’t either I don’t know if I can get one done at this point I don’t
know so you mentioned some of the pains and I wrote some of them down but let’s just talk about those what some of the
pains that restyler connect is solving so talk about let’s say for instance you made a link to a driver or a car is
being picked up or a customer’s dropping it off what pain Point are you solving with royler connect so we’re solving a
problem a pain that happens all the time is we get blamed for damage or I go back
to what I said from the beginning always doing the right thing maybe we damage a car and we’re trying to argue with him
about it that we didn’t for me I want the full transparency if we use that link to take pictures of the car and the
dealership calls and says hey there’s a scratch on the car I want to look the pictures from before and say you know
what you’re right the scratch wasn’t there before and I’m going to take care of it so it’s that that is a major point
and we’ve all tried to solve it by using Band-Aids by taking pictures from our
phones by trying to get a dealership to maybe your a customer to sign a piece of paper yeah or just or marking it on a
little diagram on a on a piece of paper it just doesn’t work but nothing will
end a conversation faster than here is a Time user and date stamped image of your
car your dealership before it got picked up before I touched it that has a scratch or better yet here’s the picture
when I dropped it off a day ago or two days ago and that you’re calling me now two days later telling me that I damaged
your car but here’s the picture from two days ago when I dropped it off and there was no damage there yeah so it it had to
have happened after it was out of our possessions when you show that and I can’t tell you how many times that we’ve had a car that was damaged and the
dealership would say to me right away Tom show me some proof that you guys didn’t damage it and then it’s okay then
the conversation’s over and when I say I don’t have any then of course you’re going to say what do you gon to tell you
you got to pay for it that could be very expensive you’re talking even if it’s just one door Jesse to if it’s a scratch
on a door a dent a dent might come out but it’s going to cost you a hundred bucks if they have to paint the door it’s going to be a few hundred oh 400 if
it’s a broken windshield now windshields are anywhere from 500 to $2,000 so yeah
you know it’s it unfortunately so that’s one pain Point what about you mentioned leads that come in what what do you what
do you think we talked about these uh shops that maybe are a little smaller and they don’t know how to run a business and things like that how is
your lead set up what problem do you think that’s going to help an owner with well so the leads not only for a shop
that I don’t want to say I hope I didn’t make it sound like I’m saying guys don’t know how to run their business but I that’s what you said you I like that
rewind it because you said no one knows how to no there but no we all struggle there with certain aspects yeah I I
think that it solves a problem that maybe not just for smaller guys but for guys who have spent most of their career
selling the car dealerships and are trying to be in the retail business and this is all new to them so they’ve never
had to take in all these phone calls and go after all these leads and follow up on them they’re just used to pounding on
the dealership’s door every day trying to get the business so for them this is a way way for them to step into the
retail business and our software actually works great to both directions if you’re a retailer that’s never been
able to to do any dealership business we have a lot of tools to help you sell to dealerships on the flip side if you’ve
always been in the dealership world and now you want to get into the retail world we have tools like the lead system
where you can put in a lead talk put all the information in there about what you discussed with the customer so if
someone else talks to that customer he knows exactly what the conversation was was you can send text message and emails
in that lead and everything stays in there so all that communication stays in one platform so next week the guy calls
and says hey I want to get that stereo system you’re like oh what did I quote you now now you have all that in yeah
and in a platform that that never goes away I have to ask a clarifying question again I know Josh you’ve got more but
Tom who is this for and and let me explain why so there’s the restylers
like you guys that have been around a while maybe they are a full service shop they do a variety of different things
interior exterior Electronics security all of it but then there’s also the smaller installers that they may
specialize in something and they maybe they want to grow into a bigger business but they’re not there yet and I’ll give you an example I’ve got a bunch of
companies contacting me that are RP installers they focus on wraps and now they’re just starting to Branch out like
now we’re adding ppf and now we’re adding window 10 but they’re essentially not full service they have that one
would restyler connect still work for them yeah any shop that that is doing
vinyl ppf window tint truck accessories car stereos Electronics ceramic Coatings
undercoating bad liners anything any anybody who is accessorizing cars from
any part of that industry would absolutely benefit from having an or an
organized way to to run their business and a process and any business in any
industry will always stress how important processes are and the reason why I asked is because I had a light
bulb moment because I was thinking at first I was thinking yeah of course if you’re an established shop you’ve got a
really good business you’ve been in business years you need this software for sure you’re probably late you needed it years ago right but then at the same
time if if you’re a little guy or gal and you’re getting going you might still want the software because it could help you grow faster I don’t know if that’s
something you would consider but no you’re right it not only can It help you grow faster but it it shows immediate
professionalism when you’re texting a customer through a platform when you are outside taking pictures of the car when
you’re checking the car and the customer what are you doing out there we take pictures of all the cars and before and
after and keep track of it or you’re just getting into the dealership business and you go into that dealership
and say hey look here’s a link you can now have all your salespeople use this
to present EX accessories don’t worry about a catalog don’t worry about whether it fits or not our system is
going to do all that for you that that just takes you from being that little guy to to being the real deal
immediately that’s awesome so when it comes to another
paino what about talk about how did you guys do commissions on for sales or for
technicians before how did you keep track of that and how’s the new software doing that for you yeah I have anxiety
just thinking about what what I used to have to do I mentioned the platform we used to use and so that
platform would spit out a little bit of information but it was a lot of manually going through every single work order
line by line and plugging in a number and that would obviously be time
consuming we would make mistakes whether it be in our favor or the technician’s favor but either way to the technicians
they thought we were trying to cheat them which obviously we weren’t but for them they look at that how can can you make a mistake and so it was I would say
almost two days if we had a process payroll on Thursday we would start doing commission Tuesday at some point and and
and we would spend a full two days between me and my office manager doing that with restyler connect with a little
bit of setup from the beginning I can pull a commission report in real time in
seconds for any technicians there’s absolutely no manual entry at all which
not only saves me time and money but it alleviates the mistakes and if there is a mistake it’s because the tech
didn’t accept the job or didn’t do something like that so at least you’re never hearing that back from your text
and they can also see in real time so before I would do it say I started it on
Tuesday maybe Tuesday afternoon I would have a report that I could give the text so the text can review it and they would
have one day to say okay fine it looks good now I can print a report Monday
morning I can hand it to the text and say okay okay guys we’re doing payroll on Thursday you got four days to tell me
if you think that you’re missing anything and and they’re not because everything’s automated but so that just
it just saves so much time and it lets me focus on things that are more important to running the business let me
run the business I don’t want to sit in front of a computer and manually plug numbers in a spreadsheet and I think
mistakes that could be a that could that could cause a wedge real quick between management and employee when their pay
gets messed up to get that as clean as possible as quick as possible and then all of that is going into the accounting software like you
said the commission doesn’t go into the account it’s in the items but it doesn’t that doesn’t sync with payrolls really
if you look at your whole business as a restyler retailer you really would only need two systems or three systems you
need restyler connect you need some sort of accounting system and you need a payroll service now most both of those
accounting systems Zoho books and QuickBooks Online you can link up a payroll service with them but so you’ll
still still have to handle payroll accounting potentially your benefits outside of that but in most businesses
and it should be like this those are really two different worlds let my operations live within restyler connect
and let my office and Human Resources live within my accounting system and my payroll service then it cuts down on the
subscribers you need for your accounting you don’t have to have a bunch of people on it 10 users you could just have two
or three which cuts down cost and everything like that if Styler connect
was not clean as your as clean as your shop okay I just want people to
understand cuz you’re like the brains behind this so I don’t know about that but and there’s a little OCD it’s okay
it’s great but you are really clean but how do you think that how do you think
that actually benefited everybody else with the way you’ve come up with restyler connect oh it’s my sickness and
let’s call it what it is right let’s I didn’t say I I’m using as a compliment
but yeah your sickness say Neurosis my sickness it it makes me look at the
platform and make sure that everything is right and it’s in its place and makes
sense and because I know that forget my OCD but it’s already a struggle every
day to run a business right every day it’s always some sort of headache there’s some sort of problem happening I
don’t care how organized you are I don’t care how good you are how good your team is things are going wrong right
do I need to fight with my software platform too do I need to wait for a
little circle in the screen for five minutes for the next step to happen do I need to try and spend a bunch of time
figuring something out no I don’t I don’t think there’s any platform that you can just walk right into and know
how to use it immediately but it is so intuitive and it’s so easy to use and
it’s so easy to navigate and our number one priority is to make it fast because that’s so frustrating and so and and and
so detrimental to to in already stressful day to fight with your computer yeah and it’s people so what I
love I one of the customers the other day had said hey my whole business can burn down tomorrow all I do is go grab a
new laptop over at Best Buy and I’m back up and running that’s a good thing Jesse I got to tell you a funny story so
restyler connects so Tom and I are having this meeting because he’s about to meet with the developers and he’s so
worked up and I’m like Tom what is wrong what’s going
these stupid blah blah blah blank Tabs are not lining up and I’m looking at on
staging and it’s literally the little the little notes section and the and then there’s the stock number and then
the VIN number section and they’re literally just stair stepped a little bit they’re not lining up and he’s just
and which I appreciate because I’m the opposite way I’m the minimalist I’m like dude it’s I don’t care if notes is
spelled right as long as there’s a section for it right but he is very oh my gosh no the font’s the wrong color
the Box needs to be bigger it’s all to his credit when the software does come out and we’ve released it it’s got all
the minimal things on there thanks to me but then it’s got all of the good things on there and the way it works and the
way it looks thanks to Tom Tom’s OCD yeah hit Tom’s OCD his sickness
we’re gonna call it my sickness how did you guys we should ask my wife what she calls it I believe it how did you guys
even meet oh okay so Tom let’s tell him the story about how I was your worst enemy
yeah in the beginning I was the one guy that was probably the furthest from ever becoming his partner yeah but so let’s
go back to the one guy that made all that happen oh do we have to give him more credit and and that’s Jared Cohen
Jared Cohen oh you know so Jared was part of the restylers United group and
Jared became a friend of mine and so I was always talking I was in the group Tom wasn’t in the group but I was in the
group so Jared and I were close and Tom and Jared were close but go ahead and so
Jared got Jared got me invited to one of the meetings in the early stages of configurator and Josh was you know
blasting everything and and of course Jared’s my friend so he’s telling me afterwards like yeah Josh
doesn’t he he doesn’t think we should be involved I had pretty much partnered
with another a another competitor yeah and I was like their poster child for a
while um and I liked certain things that it had which Tom’s system didn’t have
now I did think Tom’s system was clean but it didn’t have all the behind thescene stuff that it needed to make to
help the business work we’re having this meeting Tom does his presentation and then the other thing I
laughed at with Tom is like because we go okay how much is this he goes I don’t know what do you guys want to pay it’s
I’m just like I was trying to I’m a Chicago salesman I’m trying to make a deal you tell me what it’s worth yeah
I’m like oh my gosh I I’m I come from Ohio where you know if it’s $5 on
Walmart shelf you go to the store and you pay $5 I don’t ask for a discount I just go do it but anyway yeah so after
he leaves then we’re debating the whole group of us is debating okay do you like this this software but the problem was
nobody in that group really they might be listening but they none of them had the foresight of
where the industry is going and why it was so important to have U the people in that room at that time that was years
ago in Chicago but so afterwards Jared goes you and Tom need to just talk and
basically Jared wanted us to arm Russell and find out okay which company are we
gonna stand behind and Tom goes so I called Tom and I said listen I love you
I love what you’re doing here but can it do this no but we could do it I was like oh that’s interesting because normally
every time I talk to a software company they’re like oh no we can’t do that we can’t do that but Tom always said yeah
but we I could build that out I could do that oh yeah that we that’s a good idea I will do that and then I asked him or I
said what about this backend stuff and this and that he goes yeah he goes why don’t you just why don’t you just be my
partner and I’m like oh I hate people from Chicago I’m
like oh do I really want to be this guy’s part no but it was a good opportunity so we talked about it and we
we met at after I think we were at SEMA and we just started talking about some stuff and I had ideas and a vision and
he had ideas and a vision and they were pretty similar pretty they weren’t too far talk about that did I miss what were
the vision yeah you’re missing you’re missing actually a really big thing yeah what was you basically gave here to back
up a little bit I was burnt out on this thing and I was ready to let it fizzle out that’s when I’m like all right I
need a partner that’s why me and Josh started talking but Josh gave gave me a test he’s look oh yeah I want to see how
you can make this work show me that you can do this in this functionality and I’m like all right fine so he gave me
this list of things that he wanted the software to do and I got him done and he
kept up his end of the deal and we became Partners so that that’s that that was good after that and then ever that I
forgot that ever since then we’ve been wondering why we continue to put time and money into into this thing now now
Vision Then & Now
explain the you said the Visions were slightly different but compatible tell me about the vision before and the
vision now I want to yeah where’s this going and where’s it been Tom Tom’s a more Tom’s a more realist right okay
because he he’s more on the developing side and I’m more of a dreamer of okay
why can’t this why can’t this just Why Can’t This software just come in and run my business so I can just stay in bed
and times it’s because it doesn’t have human fingers okay you can’t type stuff in oh okay so no I I I my vision was to
have a to have my vision at the time wasn’t restyler connect cuz I was like I didn’t
think we were going to go down there that was a customer actually we didn’t think about that yeah was pushing us to do that but my vision was to have some
kind of digital catalog that I could not have to make price lists and stuff like that and be able to offer to my dealers
and ultimately do online ordering and that’s where my vision was his was to
take care of and sell more products and show the stuff and get a clean wio and
just make the process a little bit easier so they were right there together and we looked at this thing going man if
if this could be basically another $ an hour employee for us that’s a great that’s a great system so get all your
business on that so then it jumped into reyler connect and all that stuff so it’s it’s gotten out of hand but it’s
it’s finally it’s finally done to the point where it’s dude we got you can run your whole business you can have all
your dealers do online ordering and there’s cool stuff to come too where we’re in the middle of to we can’t talk
about anything don’t give Jesse even no but what but what I was goingon to say is I think it was last night I
had a customer call me and he’s like hey this invoice is wrong or something like that and and just uh on Thursday we
released um a bunch of updates where we improved it responsiveness where you
could really look at everything clean and good on your phone and I open up my phone and I logged in and I found the
invoice and I changed it and I sent it to the customer and I’m like man this thing really works good it’s really it
was super fast it was really easy to look the customers wow you sent me an invoice already it was just like it’s it
made me feel honestly like for it’s been a long time where I got to this point we really built something cool we really
built something that really works great in in a world of things that don’t work
so good and softwares that suck and make a lot of promises and don’t keep up with them like we really held our standards
high and we really thought through I I feel really good about how we thought through everything we did we
really took a step back every time we were making a functionality and really thought about how we and other restylers
would use this to run their business and what challenges they would run into and Tred to solve as many of those as
possible we couldn’t solve all of them obviously but we solv so many of them so many things I look at and so many
problems we we eliminated with the processes that are automated within the system that it just
you know I’m very proud of what we have we’ve been over a bunch of these but I I
think this would be a good time to talk about like the big benefits which are okay how does this make a restyler more
money and or how does it save them money or save them time so you’ve touched on
it but let’s dive into that what how does it make them more money and how does it save them money in time those are two really simple
questions to answer I don’t think I don’t think they real you never know but I’m saying the first one is how does
it make you money is it it it it allows you to spend more time running your business and less time chasing after
paperwork and orders and mistakes and all of these things that you would if
you don’t have this digital process in place that’s how it makes you money and that’s also how it saves you money in a
big picture in a shorter picture it saves you money because a lot of people may be on platforms that cost them more
money and don’t do what our system does well also like auto accessories configurator you can make an argument
that makes you money because it’s out there as a salesperson for you or it’s assisting the salesperson or the
salesperson at the dealership so that they’re more likely to actually to sell to upgrade to look at bigger packages to
look at options whereas otherwise they’re looking at an old catalog with an old price trying to figure it out and they’re they’re not going to yeah and
you can’t even look through an old catalog because if somebody goes hey how much is cruise control for a
vehicle and the and the dealer goes I let me find out so what do they have to do they have to call they have to try to
find a book they have find like a document on their their desktop somewhere or they got to text the purse
of their rep and say hey how much is a cruise control all right it’s $500 let’s say whatever and then they tell the
customer all right $700 what’s it look like on know and then let me text this guy or that guy you already you
already already walked away or worse yet they just go oh it looks great it looks
just like Factory that’s what they say and then all of a sudden we get it done and now the customer’s not happy we’re
taking it out dealership oh why do you not put in good stuff and blah blah blah come on
dude we’ve never gotten those phone calls before and Tom’s one that loves this
industry I love cars I love it I just think about the nightmares
problem thanks for reminding me of all that yeah there you go welcome you just you just burst my bubble how has you’ve
Evolution & Trends
been doing this a long time how has the industry changed since you first got involved and and where do you see it going in the
future it’s changed in a kind of a simple fact that cars are coming with
more and cars are are looking better and they’re they’re watching our Trends they’re watching what we’re doing and
They’re copying us and we’re having to work harder and harder to make cars look more unique so that they are looking a
little bit different I personally in my business have trans like Josh mentioned before into a heavily film business film
encodings and even just recently transition into graph into Commercial Graphics and that’s allowing me to to
transition to into commercial build outs shelving and latack and things like that and I think that the industry still has
plenty of meat on it and there’s plenty of business to do but like I mentioned I think a few times already we have to
continue to work hard at it and we have to continue constantly innovate and pivot and look for different things to
do we cannot sit by the phone and wait for that phone call for the leather or the backup sensors or the backup cameras
or even the remote start business that just is is not gonna be there like it
was before just isn’t when you go in the let’s say you walk out the back of your shop all right you could I think if my
memory holds me back you probably can hold eight 10 cars right yeah if you’re not in the aisles you can hold like 12
cars okay so 12 cars so six five years ago six years ago what
would have been those 12 cars maybe how many like couple remote starts what would have been the makeup of those 12
cars versus versus this week yeah so five years ago you would have had about
40% of the so let’s say had a 10 cars four of them would have been remote starts four of them would have been rust
proofing undercoating packages and then two of them maybe would have been window
10 or ppf for vinyl and those would have been contractors that come in and do it
that I have no control over and I’m making not that much you were subbing it all out yeah that’s how I and I tell
people all the time when people ask me how do you get into topf and win the T vyl you need to start by subbing it out
get the business going get the reputation going and then start hiring people and start doing it on their own
but you can’t just go out and hire a person and don’t have the business more importantly you can’t go out and hire someone even if you hire an experienced
guy and even if you can get the business but not know anything about the business I’m glad I started with contractors
because I learned about it these guys not only were I was Contracting it to them but I was asking for their help and
I was asking their opinion and I’m very grateful for all the contractors that I’ve had because they’ve been great guys
and they’ve gotten us to that point so I was Contracting it so today though when I walk out into that shop everything is
filmed right now except for and I’m looking actually on my cameras right now and everything is film except for one
Corvette that’s getting a radar a K40 radar and some film but so when you say
film tell everybody the different types of film you’re doing these days so we do a lot of window 10 we do a lot of paint
protection film we do a lot of color change vinyl wraps commercial graphic
wraps where we’re designing and installing commercial wraps for Vans or
trucks with company logos and everything on them and Chrome Del and Chrome delete
two or three years ago was probably bigger than it is today again the factory copied us and they started
coming out with these blackout packages and that’s again how we had to Pivot and that was quick I started doing blackout
packages like seven or eight years ago and it’s already look at how many cars it’s an option on or it just comes with
now yeah the OE just they were slow to the game but now they’re yeah you get some they’re totally blacked out totally
no good that’s the makeup of where do you you think it’s going to be in five years I try to copy my friend Josh and I
would like my business to be a third dealerships a third retail a third Fleet
so I see us doing more and more on the commercial end because I think those are
good customers those are people who like spending money who appreciate good work who understand that timelines can’t
always be met as hard as you try that that’s good business to have where my next pivot is going to be because I’m
always thinking about where my next pivot would be not necessarily being in ass sign business because that’s a
really hard business and there’s a lot of people in that business but more in that commercial space where where I
could be that One-Stop shop for businesses where I can do their cars and
I can do the graphics in their building and I can do their personal cars because let me tell you the guy who owns the
HVAC company or who owns that plumbing company he’s most likely a car guy and
he likes to spend money anybody who doesn’t realize what a gold mine that market is really missing out because
those guys are great customers they really are yeah awesome how do how do we
find out more about restyler connect and all of your systems and
programs DBS yeah yeah so you can go to DPS dealers.com to to go to go to my
website which I’m constantly redesigning every day so there’s always stuff new on there and then the tabs don’t line up
yeah everything has to be lined up I get very mad if they don’t line up on every single screen size in the universe it’s
got to be right that’s why I bought an i12 iPhone 12 mini just because I’m like Tom look at your website on my little
it’s messed up he’s immediately on the phone with the developers DPS dealers.com to learn more
about Auto accessory configurator you can go to accessory configurator dcom
and if you want to learn about restyler connect you can go to restyler connect.com awesome that’s great and if
people have questions for you there’s a restyler that wants to get a hold of you do you want them to just go to the website and fill out a form or should
they follow you on social media or send you an email or yeah me personally I’m happy to talk
to any restyler about my software about my business whatever I’m happy to help and I feel like people can learn from me
and I can learn from other people I don’t have all the answers by any means so I love to balce ideas off people you
can email me Tom DPS dealers.com or even the contact forms on the website go to
directly to awesome thank you Tom this has been a really good interview learned a ton this is
exciting thanks Tom thank you guys appreciate you being on brother thank you all
[Music] right and there you have it another high octane episode of the ride and style
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