Should you be a hail chaser or a door dinger?
Fear of not being qualified; certification.
Hail Chaser or Door Dinger?
Years ago I noticed a little ongoing skirmish between hail chasers and door dingers. Neither cares much for the other and both groups think they are the best.
A Hail guy sees himself as an intrepid risk taker. He thinks he is in the group most like the Marines as he does his best to be first to the battle (storm). He watches the reports like a hawk and jumps in his car at the first sign of golf ball hail. Or if he’s serious, he jumps on a plane and spies out the land. He’s not at all shy to write a large estimate, nor is he embarrassed when his door ding friends tell him he makes too much.
“I only work a few months a year so I have to get it while its here” he reasons. “Besides I spend 20 percent of my income on travel and lodging.”
There’s no love lost between the two groups either. I mentioned a hail chasers name to a door ding friend one time and I swear he spit on the ground where he imagined (or wished) that hail guy might be standing.
“The problem with hail chasers is they don’t want to build a business and stick to a door ding route. So they go off and make all that money and blow it on fancy trucks and then try to take my accounts in the off season.”
A Door ding guy sees himself as true businessman and yes, even as Superman of service providers. He has no qualms about reminding you those are “his” accounts. This is usually accompanied by a speech on how he is a family man and wants to be with his kids and just make a small living. Between the lines, he is hoping that the picture he just painted of his starving kids will keep you out of the used car manager’s office of “his” accounts.
The fun really begins when you talk to either side about the other’s dent work. A door ding guy will tell you a hail chaser can’t fix the sharp door dings or the bigger abuse dents. He’ll also tell you he hates a hail storm to hit his area. To him its just an annoyance and jeopardizes his standing with the dealers.
A hail guy looks at door dingers as slow and unorganized. He believes the reason a door ding guy hates a hail storm is one, he’s too slow to make money on them and two, he’s trying to do door dings at the same time. Besides, they bid the hail cars wrong and nearly always lose the 100 cars to a “real” hail company.
Be the Best of Each
I learned about this disparity between the sub groups of dent guys early on. I set my mind on being the best of both. To take on and use the super powers of each. The speed of a hail guy with the tenacity for large dents of a door dinger.
This well rounded view has served me well. I still remember showing up on a hail storm and some hail guys who knew me as door dinger scratching their head, wondering what I was doing there. Each year after that, the broker would invite me back, each year one individual hail tech would ask the same question. “How in the world did you get hired by ____?”
Imagine his surprise when the same broker asked me to send some of my employees to work for him. I had and still have a great deal of respect for this broker as he’s the one that gave me the idea for the “You See What I See” System. The last tech I took with me on one of his storms was Jeremy. This broker gave us both a boost when he looked at Jeremy and said, “You know you’re very lucky.”
I’m sure he’d tell you the same, and you can consider that the view from the top. I do because his company did three million in hail revenue that season.
Here’s a little proof that well rounded is good. In 1999 my first trainee went off to try the hail business. Unfortunately, I could not help him much as my contacts were sparse. He decided to jump in the car with tools and stake his claim in a town where he heard there was a big storm. I do not recommend this but it can work. He walked on to a crew and started pushing. A mini van had a large abuse dent in the lift gate. All the hail guys turned it down but their jaws dropped when they saw how fast Jon worked it out. That’s the value of being well rounded.
Incidentally, the reason I don’t recommend trying to be a walk on at a hailstorm is you’ll likely get ripped off. Most of the teams he tried to work for that storm wouldn’t give him time of day. The one that did still owes him a large chunk of money. There are rip off artists out there and they are still in business.
Dmitry T., a Paintless Mentor student called me and told me he was having trouble getting paid. I asked him the broker’s name, but he only would give me his first name because, “I think I can still get him to pay me”. I didn’t need the last name because once I heard the first I knew its the same guy who ripped off Jon in 1999. He’s still up to the same tricks. In fact, you should be doubly careful because guys like him seem to have a penchant for new techs with talent. Use them and throw them away is their motto.
Is there a safe path to hail work?
I believe the safest path is introducing yourself to as many as you can. It seems to be a who you know business, but even the contacts you make in your home town can pay off. Its the “Six degrees of Hail Chasers”. You know someone who knows someone else and pretty soon your connected to the guy who has some work.
Meantime, you can wisely build your skills, speed and reputation at home on door dings. Believe it or not there are still door ding guys who have never worked a hail car.
Fear of the Unknown
Paintless Mentor student Rennie B. called me because he had something in front of him he’d not tried, a hail car. When he first looked at it he just knew it was several days worth of work. It had a sunroof and a headliner, neither of which had he ever pulled down. He was ready to turn it down.
“If you just give it a try, I promise your world will change.” I told him.
He called me once he started on it and had the hood and trunk done and the sunroof and headliner out in the first 5 hours. He was a happy camper. I love phone calls like this.
So much of what we do seems overwhelming at first but once done, we wonder what we were afraid of. Your curiosity is your best quality, but it comes with a price. Each rock your curious mind overturns leads to more questions. You won’t know the answers at first and there is a certain amount of discomfort that comes with not knowing.
The winners in the world all embrace this discomfort. They are constantly taking the knowledge they already have and weighing it against the new thing just learned. They work at uncovering the next question for this is the most exciting place to be.
I am still challenged by each car I do. To not fix a dent I said I could fix is a pain not suffered easily. Really this is perfectionism, a trait I both loathe and embrace. My guess is you have similar traits for it is what attracted you to this business and me as well.
Perfectionism is a double edged sword. While it pushes you to perform at your best, it also can paralyze you from ever starting. Your fear of not being able to perform can stop you dead in your tracks.
I believe that we are conditioned from an early age to this behavior. No one wants to get an answer wrong in front of the class, much less on a test. Yet it is the mistakes in life that teach us what to avoid or conversely, what works.
Being good at dents requires you to be bad at first. Most people are not willing to go through this change from caterpillar to butterfly. There is no shortcut. You must build the cocoon and change what you are without any help from outside.
If you have ever seen a butterfly trying to emerge from a cocoon you’ve seen the struggle. Did you know that if you were to assist it with its exit, you will kill it? It seems it was created in a way that the struggle out gives it tools for survival.
We are the same only, we also are unique in our ability to let ourselves off the hook. We can kill our own chance at change by relieving ourselves of the struggle. Worst of all is our propensity for self deception. Like a misguided kind person “helping” a butterfly, we come up with all kinds of rational reasons for giving up.
Sometimes, we even grab at a few straws to prop up our beliefs about what we can become. Fifteen years ago Saturn was touting the superiority of its plastic side panels. Then Cadillac and Buick started using plastic fenders. Was this the death knell for Paintless Dent Repair? Plenty of us thought so. History has shown a moving away from plastic panels not towards. They stopped using them on luxury cars due to the large gaps between the panels. Plastic expands a bunch in the heat so the gaps were needed. Trouble is you can’t have the low quality fit and finish on such an expensive car. Now even Saturn has made a move away from plastic.
Today the irrational fear centers around Air Bags in the door. A few years ago a myth was going around about a tech who had a dent tool launched at his head because he made the bag fire. Just yesterday, “Mythbusters” on Discovery Channel covered a similar myth. It was a story of a thief using a slim jim on a door and caused it to go off. My favorite part was when they turned to the guest expert and he said, “The airbag is not inside the door, its inside the car.” Technically its behind the door panel, but when it fires it blows inward and could never make your tool come out or up or anything else. If you would like to learn more about air bags, read the article in the Paintless Mentor Archives.
Fear of not being qualified
All of this talk about perfectionism and “what if I’m not good enough” reminds me that sometimes there’s a bigger question. “What if they don’t think I’m good enough?”
One student called and said he was getting harassed by a competitor who was “certified”. How could a non certified individual be qualified to push dents right next to a guy who is?
Truth is all the fear surrounding certification is from an internal source. If you believe it then its real.
Listen, if you have done the work and practice required to do dents, and you have done some dents for money, you deserve recognition. If a student of mine,just drop an email to tim@pdrsecrets.com and I’ll send you a certificate suitable for framing. Now you’re certified.
A Primer on Polished Hammers
I had the opportunity to spend a day with a skilled trainer, John Yeager from IQ Learning Systems. He is an accomplished dent tech as well as a metal finishing instructor. IQ teaches auto workers how to use these skills on cars as they go down the line. You might be surprised at the number of dents removed from these babies as they are being born.
Join John and me on this “Polished Hammers” video as we work on an eyebrow and show why we love shiny tools.
Till next time,
Tim