I Got a 240V Shock at Age 8. Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me

Welcome to the next episode of the Another Bright Spark podcast. I’m your host, Neale Mighall, and today we’re in the beautiful village of Sandwich. Don’t raise your eyebrows, Rob. It’s beautiful.

Rob 00:19

It’s very nice.

Neale 00:20

Yeah, village of Sandwich with Rob at RMS Diagnostics. Thanks for having us.

Rob 00:24

No problem. It’s good.

Neale 00:25

The first question that I want to ask you is price of oil – there’s a conflict in the Middle East at the minute. Price of oil is $109 at the minute. Is it another nail in the coffin for petrol cars? Is EV is going to be the main?

Rob 00:42

Depends on how long it will last, innit? I don’t think our infrastructure in the UK is coping yet for charging every car what they want to replace. So that’ll be an issue.  I’m not sure the exact thing with the UK but I even… My son works on the boats and they’re saying that the hybrid boats now can only really charge in France. They can’t charge this side so there’s an issue with one thing you know. So is the car’s going to be is ever going to take off? Are they going to go to hydrogen and go electric?

Neale 01:13

So you don’t think it’s a question of electric versus petrol, you think it’s other fuel forms maybe?

Rob 01:18

They’re going to try and everyone’s trying to push hydrogen, few manufacturers have pulled out already from from the EV side of it and trying to look down other routes and it’s going to be like the Betamax and VHS thing, innit? And it it’s just going to click and they’ll run that way.

Neale 01:34

Don’t you think electrics got a head start though when you say VHS and Betamax, so we’re kind of sort of neck and neck. There isn’t any hydrogen cars on the road yet though, is there? There’s lots of…

Rob 01:44

Is there trucks on the road? I think they’ve got it there but they’re again the infrastructure how they’re gonna do it and apparently it’s a dirty way of making it anyway isn’t it right make hydrogen there’s two ways ones a cheap way ones a dirty way but as long as do that in a different…

Neale 01:57

If we know anything about capitalism and then they’ll go after the good way, surely.

Rob 02:03

Exactly. But they’ll put it into a different country, so it’s not on our carbon footprint.

Neale 02:07

Of course, yeah.

Rob 02:07

So, I don’t know, I don’t know. I really don’t.  Every year, maybe 14 years ago, we was gonna go and do a hybrid course. I missed it, and a couple of lads went on it, and six months down the line, they’re all messaging each other. ‘Have you had one in yet, you had one in?’ And every year, I look into electric cars, should we do them? And nah, you know, there’s nothing around this area. But when you go to places like Brighton, and even up towards London, or Reading Way, there’s even taxis of all sort of hard red or electric. So, they’re very area-specific. It is coming down here, but down this area, there’s not a lot.

Neale 02:45

I think it’s a cultural thing, then, maybe, the argument between the two.

Rob 02:50

I think so. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I mean, I would have one. And I’ll take the mick out of everyone who’s got one.  The high heels that they wear around their Teslas.

Neale 02:58

Looking at Mark…

Rob 02:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, I would have one. It’s just, will it be the future? It’s got to be, isn’t it?

Neale 03:07

I’ve got the so we’ve got an EV and at the minute one of the big things that people talk about is is range and range anxiety.

Rob 03:16

Yes.

Neale 03:17

Mine does about sort of 260 miles which is not quite enough to do like a full trip If I wanted to sort of go and see parents in Merseyside or my brother in Bristol. You have to stop and charge at BMW.  Other EVs are available. The new i3s coming out next year sort of like 560 miles on that sort of range. I mean it costs me three. Yeah it costs me three pounds to fill it up and if you look at the price of oil and I was just saying it’s a you know yeah a big save. I love petrol cars. I love the feel of driving it and for me it’s very much a it’s a it’s a an emotional thing. Right. We’re here with your RS Turbo. When did you get into cars?

Rob 03:59

When I was probably 10, you know, my dad always used to work on cars. In fact, earlier than that, you know, you know, my first memories were when my dad in a garage, he was fixing lawnmowers and I’m like, can I put one of them in a go cart? And, yeah, it just went on from there.  And I remember him having a car, he was going to scrap it. So he’d taken the ignition lock out and stuff. We used to keep spare parts of a car. And I’ll see him hotwire it to move it when I was about 12. And I’m like, I can do that. So that was it, six out of the way.

Neale 04:27

So from a young age you saw that you could take things apart and fix them. Yeah.

Rob 04:30

Yeah, yeah, I was always into that from from a kid. No, I remember again that sort of age. Yeah, it must have been before I was eight years old before we moved out. So fixing lamps, you know 240 volt lamps and always remember one wasn’t working took it apart. Oh that wire isn’t in there.  So I’ll just give it a twist. It’s still plugged in. Before I was eight! 240 volt shock! You know you’d have social services around now but…

Neale 04:53

Yeah, of course you would.

Rob 04:53

Yeah so I was doing that and yeah and fixing stuff was just the way to go and then yeah start again to you know teenage years: mountain bikes in racing man field and things like that and then having to fix them and then sort of went on from there. Just carried on.

Neale 05:09

I think there’s a key thing that we talk about with a lot of people who are repairers, we’ve interviewed like Mend It Mark and recently Joey, Joey Does Tech, is that once you know it’s safe that you can take something apart and put it back together and fix it once you’ve gone past that sort of barrier you know you can do it right that’s but that’s initial hurdle if you do that at a young age you’ve…

Rob 05:29

Yeah, yeah, but it’s still a big thing, even when I first started it, so we started RMS, went full-time auto electrician from mechanic to an auto electrician overnight, and then you’re looking at the cars coming out, oh, you’d hear about the brand new cars that are being made and again, you’re never going to be able to work on them, you know, we’ve been locked out in the market through security and things like that, so you was always worried what was coming, but now you look at them cars which were, you know, 17 years old now, they were basic as anything, and now I’m even thinking, well, the cars that are brand new now, which the dealers are got to hold off for the next three years, are we going to be able to repair them?

Neale 06:07

The diagnostic tools have improved, don’t they? It’s a really interesting point.  So when I turned 25, I bought a Ford Capri, because I always wanted one. That was basically an engine, a gearbox, some wheels, and an axle, really easy to repair. I mean, you work in the specialist garage, but are they getting too difficult to fix? Is it, would it be better if you had the right to repair and sort of go back and be able to do things yourself?

Rob 06:34

Yeah, right to repair is good, well it was good, but so we had block exemption didn’t we which was they couldn’t keep it in house for the warranty and stuff and apparently that’s running out very soon if it hasn’t already and so the garage is where they just want to be able to do a service and reset the service like they’re holding that back now.  There’s a big thing coming in called CIRMI that is in Europe at the moment and for anyone in this business if we want, if we as in Europe, sorry, anyone here has to be DBS checked and put on a register to know that you are now able to do any security related parts on cars and they’ve already brought that into Europe, we’re not part of it now but it’s just coming in so if you’re not getting, if you haven’t got that then how can you fix your parts?  John Deere was a big one, John Deere tried to, they’re pushing it in America a lot and tried it a couple of times where you own the vehicle but you lease the software often so they’re going to hold that back. If they get that pushed through…

Neale 07:36

What’s the security risk then in the software? Is it tracking? Is it ability to control the car?

Rob 07:42

So what they want to not have to release the software for everyone to be able to fix them. Right. So everything’s electronic on them now. So they don’t want you to fix them. They’ve got to go back to them to be fixed, or you’ve got to buy their equipment, or you’ve got to be approved by them, or whatever, you know.

Neale 07:56

So they’ve got a monopoly over the repairs essentially.

Rob 07:57

Yeah, so they’re trying to do that. So monopolize it and get that. So if that ever went through, obviously everyone would follow suit and try and do that. And then all you’d be able to do was the nuts and bolts and mechanical side. But even that, you need a computer and everything to do everything now, you know, to unwind the brake calipers. That’s been going on for 20 years now, you know. But everything, we had one in the other day, somebody tried to do a brake fluid change on it.

Neale 08:23

Right.

Rob 08:23

And the car sees that the pressure had gone down. That was it. It just shut itself down. Yep. We don’t like this. And we need to be reset now when, you know, the garage is just doing a basic service, flushing the fluid through. And it shut the car down.

Neale 08:36

It sounds like there’s so many things you need to consider.  It’s not just one car, it’s all the different makes will have different issues and different technical capabilities. You said you made the move from mechanical. Why did you give yourself this massive headache of going into electrical in the first place?

Rob 08:50

I’ve always enjoyed it. Ever since I started as a motorcycle mechanic, back then, if there’s an electrical fault, I’d be the one to jump on it. And then every garage I went to, I’d be the person to do it.  And the last garage I went to, just as a mechanic, I said ‘You know, I do a bit of electrical work’. And I’d just bought my first scanner. So I was sort of working before, on my own, before I went there, bought my first scanner. Then I started working for him. And he’s like, now we’ve got our own Sparky, that comes down here. And then that was it. Every electrical job, what was coming through, we was doing it. And it was then that I noticed all the garages around the area, because it was an MOT station. They all knew about, we had this scanner down there, and I could do a look through the bits. And they were bringing all their cars to this garage for me to do with my tool. The garage did buy its own one in the end, but it wasn’t…

Neale 09:37

You were like the local wizard. Let’s take it to Rob. He’s got he’s got magical scanner.

Rob 09:38

Yeah, so we’d end up doing it. And then I actually found out my son was autistic. So he was like two, something like that. And we realized things weren’t right.  So we started taking him to a few appointments and then more and more appointments were turning up. And I said to my wife, you know, we need a bit more flexibility on this. So I said, why don’t I just go out and start traveling around the garages, plugging this machine in at 20 quid a time. You know, I was probably only on 300 quid at that garage 20 years ago. So if I do 10 of them a week, that’s 200 quid. We’re nearly enough there. And I’ve got as much flexibility as I want. And luckily my boss was set in his ways for everything. But we always got on since day one. If you couldn’t do the job, you was out within five, 10 minutes, he sacked people. He was like ‘Yeah, you ain’t working here, you’re out’. And he was very set in his ways.

Neale 10:23

Very black and white.

Rob 10:24

Yeah. And I said to him ‘Look, I’m gonna find somewhere I can do a few days a week and then I’m gonna go and be, I need flexibility’. He’s like ‘No, you’re doing that here. Three days a week, you work for me’. No, two days a week, I think I worked for him. Three days a week, I was out doing my own stuff. Done that for sort of for six months. And then I was like, I need to make the move. And just as I’d done it…

Neale 10:43

Great for you, I mean if you’re going around doing stuff at the garage, you’re networking, you’re meeting people, people are knowing you, what you’re capable of, your reputation.

Rob 10:51

Yeah it just seemed to work and it was just everything fell into place. I remember phoning out to put an advert in the yellow pages. I knew nothing about business you know I’m a mechanic and that’s how I’d ring them.

Neale 11:01

Well that’s what we used to do, the yellow pages of the book we used to…

Rob 11:03

Google.

Neale 11:04

Yeah, it’s Google in a book. A paper Google, is it?

Rob 11:07

So I finally asked her you know ‘Oh yeah, I want to advertise in your book. What do I do?’ She says ‘You got two days to get in with us or you’re not getting in with us’ and I’m like ‘I ain’t falling for all your sales techniques’ but she says ‘No, we are doing one a year if you’re not in now you don’t get in for another year, that’s it’.

Neale 11:21

‘We’re not lying to you, Rob, you’ve got one chance, yeah, take it or leave it’.

Rob 11:25

And I was like ‘What do I need?’ ‘You need a phone number and 12 pound a month direct debit. We’ll put you in a little box so you’ll stand out from all the other numbers and that’s it’. So I was like okay, I better do that. So I’ve done that my son started going to a school over in Thanet I live in Deal so probably 15 miles away as I drop him off to school I went around to some garages and given them cards and go ‘Look, I’m starting to do this’ and they’re like ‘Oh, motors autoelectrics has just shut last week. We need someone to do our work’. and I’m like ‘Okay’

Neale 11:47

That’s your fortune.

Rob 11:47

And they’re like ‘How good are you?’ ‘Just use me, you know, I’ll pop in next week if you’ve got anything you want fixing I’ll come in and do it’ and it just yeah, it went from there.

Neale 12:02

Just use me, just try with me.

Rob 12:04

Yeah, I won’t get myself off from that as well, you know, you’re only going to find out that time we do it and it went on from there.

Neale 12:10

Yeah, you talked about your passion from a young age. How did you get into the industry? Did you go to the apprenticeship route? What were you like in school? You’re an academic kind of guy or just a…?

Rob 12:20

No, not at all. I was a naughty boy and not bad, but I didn’t want to go to school I wanted to fix motorbikes and stuff.  I’d done done my work experience. It was at 14, I think it was. And the garage where I’d done done a motorcycle work experience had a car garage beside it which used to work late at night. So I used to go down there every night after school doing all that and then I wouldn’t worry about school I didn’t care about the qualifications. I’m like, you know, I’m just gonna be doing this I’ve got to turn up to school get that done finish it and then straight into the apprenticeship. Went back I went to the bike shop, done a couple years apprenticeship there and stayed in bikes for seven odd years. Then moved over the cars.

Neale 13:00

I mean you’re obviously very successful now. When you weigh up in between sort of going to university, get yourself into 50 grand’s worth of debt versus hands-on experience, it’s less appealing isn’t it, the university root I would have thought these days. If you’re a young mechanic would you definitely recommend to them apprenticeship over academic?

Rob 13:21

Yes, if anyone turns up to any garage and says I’ve done three years of college course now, you get some high-fly, but more academic people in that side of it can’t normally translate it to the workshop, you know, there’s a big balance in that.

Neale 13:37

What’s missing? Is it the world skills or what’s the…?

Rob 13:40

I think it’s so interesting, if you’re academic and you’re really clever, it does transfer over sometimes, but it’s not as much, and you’re really good at the theory, but you don’t want to get your hands dirty, or you haven’t had the experience of feeling out about…

Neale 13:54

You’d put oil on your keyboard!

Rob 13:55

Exactly.

Neale 13:56

What are you talking about? I’ve got a Macbook over there.

Rob 13:58

But I think it may be better now because obviously there’s more technical side of it. But when I was training, if you had something good in the classroom, they probably weren’t very good in the workshop. But if you get somebody turn ups, I’ve done three years at college now and I’ll come and work for you. So I’m a fully qualified mechanic and I should be on this amount of money.  There it goes, then it doesn’t work. When it takes them seven hours to do a cambelt, which takes two and it doesn’t work. But if you turn up and you say, I’ve worked for that garage, especially independents, and independents you really, you know who the boss is, you know what they’re like. If you can work for him, my old boss, if you can work for him…

Neale 14:35

You can work for anyone.

Rob 14:37

But main dealers, they’ll use you just to change oil if they want to. So if you say your main dealer trained for the last four or five years, you may have only done brakes and oil refills and that’s it. So again, are you gonna be able to translate that to multi-make independents? Yeah, so. But again, even the apprentices, you know, they get to the third year and then they go to the boss, and go ‘Right, I’m fully qualified now and I want this amount of money, which everyone else is earning’. And it doesn’t work.

Neale 15:04

You haven’t earned it yet. You got bigger juice.

Rob 15:07

Yeah, you’ve got to build that.

Neale 15:08

I mean, I can totally understand the mindset, especially if you’re academic and you’ve paid a lot of fees, and I can see a young person, even though they’re going through an apprenticeship rather, and they’re like, I’m three years in, I know my stuff, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, where’s my money, where’s my pay, I need to be earning this, I’ve got debts, I wanna go out, I wanna level up.  In your opinion then, is there a education piece in those apprenticeships, those academic courses, where this is how the world works, this is what to expect, this is a career path, so you know how to repair a car, but this is how to operate in a workplace, is that missing, do you think?

Rob 15:44

I think so, you need, I mean even just buying your toolbox and having your tool set out, you know, you need to know what tool to use for what job and will it squeeze in that, you can’t learn that on paper, you know, it just doesn’t work, so to be efficient at a job, when that’s all garages look at now is your efficiencies, can you do 40-hours’ work in 20? That’s all they are going to be interested in, you can’t do it, you can only learn that from hands on, so I think the, maybe the apprenticeship or the college courses, a lot of college courses as well, because it’s not the highest end of the spectrum on education, on mechanical side, so a lot of people in mechanical full-time courses have been sent there by their parents because they’ve got to do something, they don’t know what to do, so they’re going to try that.  If you’re really interested in cars and you really want, you’ve probably already been working on…

Neale 16:39

You’re going to do it, like you did at your age, you’re going to sack off school, it’s going to be a burning passion.

Rob 16:44

And you’ll go to a garage and go, I want to work on cars, I’m not interested in the education, I want you to teach me, so when you got to that point or you’re qualified or you got to a reasonable level, that is when you start doing some good quality training, you go down to, you know, do the electrical trainers and you learn about your electrical side, your diagnostic side or, you know, you can really push yourself forward in a certain area, even with bodywork, you know, they can get approved by all the body shop, you know, approval schemes and get the, you know, if you’re repairing a panel, it’s got to be to a certain degree, you know, only half a millimeter of filler in it and not just lodging it in there, you know.

Neale 17:20

A kind of fix.

Rob 17:21

Yeah, exactly, so you can improve yourself once you’re in there, but again, to get to the point where you’re going to be good to be able to pay a reasonable amount of money.

Neale 17:31

And give back to your employer.

Rob 17:32

You know, yeah, it takes a long time, and if you’ve done five years in a body shop, and you go, this ain’t for me, you know, you’ve got really a dedicated to it, so they’ll either move on or improve their skills there or move sort of side, but I think the market rate is really going to split. I think there’s going to be a very specific areas and you’ll go into that, and that is it.

Neale 17:54

So less generalists and more specific…

Rob 17:56

Yeah, I don’t think it will go to, it may go to specific, like a Vauxhall specialist, but especially something like that.

Neale 18:03

Well we’ve said they’re locked in, that kind of makes sense.

Rob 18:05

Yeah, but I think it will go more, they’ve always tried it – clutch and cambelt centers, but I think there’ll be DPF centers just fixing emissions-related faults, or the engine-running faults. Yeah, tires and saws. Yeah, there’s so many areas on the car what you need to know so much about. I don’t do any engine-running faults, because that’s a… I can have a whole bay set up for that all day, and have it fill up every day. But you need to know that, and you can learn 80% of theory, and then put it to each different car. So you don’t need to know a Vauxhall, or a Volvo, and any of that sort of stuff. So, yeah, I don’t know how it’s going to go.

Neale 18:45

Are fossil fuel cars too complicated? So if you’ve got you’ve got an engine in there right, I said let’s go back to my Capri, you’ve got an engine, you got a gearbox, you got a fuel tank, that’s that’s all you need, starter motor, whatever, right? My mom’s got an Audi A4 ‘Hi mom!’ She’s got an Audi A5 sorry and it’s 10 years old and in the last year there was a brake sensor fault and it basically said you cannot drive this car it was just the sensor the brakes were working fine that cost I think it’s 1,300 pounds to get that sorted. And she’s recently had a air filter sensor which is gone but it’s saying she can’t drive the car, and that’s gonna cost 1,200 pounds, she’s paid like 600 quid in tires to get through an MOT recently. It’s 10 year old Audi A5, and the car can run fine without these sensors but she’s forked out a fortune, right? You’ve got you’ve got a car like that with those little faults, should be running fine. Go back to EVs you’ve got what eight moving parts everything is software yeah everything software based…

Rob 19:45

Yeah, it’s still got the same faults. OK, so the drive train is different and the emissions related stuff is different. But your braking systems, although they can. Hybrids, especially, but your full EVs, yeah, they do use the motors to slow them down and stuff. But you still got brake calipers, which can seize up because they haven’t been used for however long because it’s doing engine braking all the time to regenerate.  So then calipers are never getting moved. You’re still getting blower motors inside the car, electric windows, doors, all that side of it. The only thing different is the drivetrain. Bobby Sutherland, he talks about difference between if we presented now an engine fossil based fuel, and so we’re going to use this engine. We’ve got to put a fuel tank in there and we’re going to have a certain rev range, which has got power, and we’re going to put it through a transmission, which we’ve got to change gear every time and then get it out. Or we can have this one motor, which gets faster and slower.

Neale 20:43

Yeah, if EVs was the normal and then someone said I’ve invented the petrol engine. Yeah, of course. It’s a lot more efficient. It’s smoother. Yeah, of course.

Rob 20:50

That’s right, but the base of the car is still the same.

Neale 20:55

Or are they too, going back to my question then, are they too complicated? Do you need all these sensors? Do you need, I know it’s a safety feature, but is it?

Rob 21:05

So safety related is airbags and ABS, see breaking and all that sort of stuff. So that is safety and that’s fine.  The problem with all the other faults what we see being complicated is the engines are as efficient as they can get that mechanical or auto cycle four-cylinder engine. They can’t make that any better. So then they put an aftermarket treatment center outside of it. And then they’re sucking in the exhaust and putting it back through and then doing it again and doing it again. And you look at the Volkswagen scandal, what they did…

Neale 21:33

Oh the emissions, they fudged the figures.

Neale 21:37

Yeah. So the Volkswagen scandal was when it went to diagnostic mode, it changed the emissions. So when people tested the car, it had lower, was it carbon coming out of it?

Rob 21:49

Yeah.

Neale 21:49

But when it was actually running, the emissions were higher. That was the…

Rob 21:54

So the way they’d done it there is a Netflix series on it. On a rolling road is absolutely perfect: you start it up, turn it on the rolling road – it’s fine. And all the other manufacturers are going ‘It can’t be, it can’t be producing that power with that’. And they set it all up and they go what it is but it’s not producing it as soon as you go on the road as soon as you turn the steering wheel it turns from that mode into full mode and they had to be strapped to the back with the emissions and it’s gone sky high.

Neale 22:20

It’s like a nappies on the back of the exhaust they sort of…

Rob 22:22

Yeah so they just turned all the the software off until and they knew it’d only get tested on the rolling road you don’t turn the steering. So um and they tried hitting one man for that, when it went viral I bet, ‘Who said yes to that?’

Neale 22:33

Really, they would scurry all the way back?

Rob 22:35

Yeah yeah so they’d done that so um so yeah but and all down to that you know they’re making all this aftermarket treatment on the engines and in the exhaust a couple of filters in the exhaust now and treatments what clean it before it goes out the back and all the different sensors to make sure that it’s everything doing okay, even down to um your oil pump in your engine. They can turn that down now if you don’t need it let’s turn that down, let’s turn everything down just to get them emissions right. Because they got lower emissions in a lower tax bracket they’re going to sell the hundred thousand cars to a lease company to sell them off because they’re cheaper they do longer um service plans now – 12 000 mile services, 20 000 mile services, because over hundred thousand cars over four years you’re going to save all this money if you buy our car and that’s what the costs cut’s about.

Neale 23:22

Yeah, I was going to say, it sounds like these minute efficiencies, you just said they can’t improve the forces on their engine. So all the tiny little efficiencies make it harder, and the end consumer is basically paying for it, eventually.

Rob 23:35

Yes, yeah. There you are, especially when the diesels that they pushed us into, really low tax bracket, as soon as they get to 80,000 or 100,000 miles and everything breaks, you’re literally saving up your tax money to spend it in 10 years time when it all goes wrong, so you’re not saving anything. But all they’re really interested in is the lease companies and the fleet stuff in the first four years, let’s push all them out to them, they’re not worried about the customer going in and buying a one Volkswagen Golf.

Neale 24:03

For life.

Rob 24:04

They don’t care about that.

Neale 24:05

Their job for life, no car for life.

Rob 24:07

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Neale 24:08

Wow. Right, well, what I’m really interested in is your YouTube channel. Why did you decide to get started?

Rob 24:15

I don’t know, we were too busy, that was the main thing, as you see we’ve got a reasonable size workshop, we’ve got a lot of parking outside and for two weeks I didn’t book a car in just to clear some work out and two weeks later I still had the same amount of cars out there, I couldn’t get one car up even the driveway.

Neale 24:34

It’s hard being popular, isn’t it Rob?

Rob 24:37

Or I just can’t fix them, one of the two. So yeah I was like, I don’t know what to do, we’ve got the work, we’ve got everything working, we’ve got a good reputation, we can fix cars but I just can’t seem to get a flow of things going, watched a lot of Kaizen stuff and lean manufacturing and I’ve found it so interesting. And then I watch somebody and they’re going to just do a vlog, just what gets measured, gets managed, start doing something and go in and say, I need some help even, even if your viewers are going to advise you and go, we’ve done that in our garage or something, get some efficiencies going and try and change your business around. A friend of mine he’s doing YouTube and we’ve all taken a mick out of him for doing it and I phoned him ‘So how do I do this? What do I need: laptops and blah blah blah?’ and he’s like ‘Calm down, press that, send it out’ and I said ‘It can’t be as easy as that’. Yes, it can, you’re not going to have anyone watching you to start with, start sticking it out.

Neale 25:33

You’ve got a Hollywood studio in your pocket.

Rob 25:35

Yeah, and it works and I said ‘Okay’, so I thought I’d do that and people seem to like it and we went from making a few changes to sort of showing some of the jobs in the awkward parts, the awkward customers, the awkward jobs we have and the sort of challenges we’re up against and yeah, it just seemed to be alright and then one day I’d done one full video of a start to finish on a job and I’d be like ‘Oh, that’s brilliant, we really like that’. I didn’t ever want it to be that. There’s a big thing about giving information away, we always used to be on behind closed door forums, helping each other out, so don’t put this out to the public.

Neale 26:14

Like the Wizard of Oz, what’s behind the curtain and gatekeeping knowledge.

Rob 26:17

But that was 20 years ago when you used to see people working on the side of the road on their cars. You don’t see that anymore. You know, everyone wanted to fix their own cars, they’d done their service work and they’d done all that. But they didn’t have, you know, that’s changed, you know, so you don’t see that anymore.

Neale 26:33

If you are not going to talk about it someone else’s might as well.

Rob 26:35

And it’s all out there. Yeah, it’s all out there. So I made a conscious decision that I wouldn’t say, this is how you fix that. You know, I didn’t want it, I could do that all day long.  I’ll fix that, look how good I am, look at that, look how good I am, it’s not me. I’m like, here’s the story. Car’s come in, customer said this, said that, said that. Let’s confirm that fault. Let’s go through it. Let’s look at some diagrams, show what we do. This is the tool I used to fix this car. And there we go. And it seemed to be all right, you know.

Neale 27:03

It’s being genuine, isn’t it? I mean what you’ve just said you know you don’t want to sort of go ‘This is how I did it this, this is how I do it’. No one wants to watch an arsehole go ‘Oh, I know better than everyone else’ you know. And if you’ve done that intentionally or not I think the reason you know you have had the success that you had is because you’re genuine like this is this is how it is this is what I’m about and this is this is my experience and things.

Rob 27:22

Yeah. And the other thing, you know, people say to me, you’re losing work, you’re showing people how to do it. And I don’t think that’s right. How many people are going to be able to do this type of work?

Neale 27:31

How many people have got this equipment?

Rob 27:34

Yeah.

Neale 27:35

Yeah, they’re not going to buy all this just to fix their one car, are they?

Rob 27:37

No, no. And the knowledge and the experience and all that side of it. But there’s certain faults on cars which you go to straight away. And they’re your bread and butter work because some cars will take you 10 hours and you can only charge five.  When you sort of know what the fault is or you’ve got to get it in, confirm and do the repair. If I start going, well, you don’t need to do this anymore. If you’ve just done this and bought this part and put it in there, I’m taking work off myself. I’m taking work off everyone around the country. Everyone has helped me get to where I am. We’ve all helped each other. I’m taking their work off of them. So I’m like, I don’t want to do that. So that was what I was really conscious of. So where with mine’s just a story, mine’s an entertainment journey of this is what it is. And yeah, it’s done alright.

Neale 28:17

Yeah, well you clearly enjoy it because you keep on doing it, yeah. Do you like, what do you enjoy about it? Do you like the education side? Do you enjoy entertaining people? What keeps on making you want to do it?

Rob 28:27

So, we have dropped down a little bit, because of the – and, yeah, you do it for the viewers to start with, and you want to get to a certain point, you want to get monetised, you want to get 1,000 subscribers, everyone wants 100,000 subscribers, but so you’re trying to build that up, then it gets a bit addictive, you’re like, oh, I’m just looking at numbers, I don’t care about the rest of it, but.

Neale 28:48

Why is this short only got 500 views?

Rob 28:51

Yeah, why has that one done 40? You don’t know why, nobody knows why.

Neale 28:54

I do.

Rob 28:56

So this one will be good then, will it? So, we got a little bit bored of it and tedious about it. I was like, how long am I going to do this for before making a change, making a video every week to do that? So that’s why we’ve started doing a buying and selling thing. Because I can’t talk about the customer’s price, how long it took me, what I charged them. You know, it’s not right…

Neale 29:19

Well, it’s not right to the competition, it’s not right to the customer privacy or any kind of stuff. But if you’re buying a car for X amount of thousands of pounds, you’re doing your own work and labour on it, you’re going to sell for X thousands of pounds. Interesting story, and it’s your story.

Rob 29:33

Yeah, so I can tell everything, you know, how long it took me, some little tips and tricks and things like that. So we’re going down there, I’ve put £1,000 into some projects. Every time we make £2,000, we’re going to put £1,000 back into the project funds and give £1,000 away to a charity or a cause. So the first one we’re doing for an autistic school, which my son went to funny enough, so it’s good.  We’ve got a sponsor on board with that. Every episode we make on his first series till we get to £2,000, he’s going to put £100 in as well, which goes direct to them. So they could potentially get, you know, £2,000 or £1,000 or something. So that sort of works and it keeps me interested. Instead of the views, let’s do something else. And then we’re going to do an apprentice toolbox.

Neale 30:12

You’ve got a bigger goal to get to that’s more…

Rob 30:14

Just a different goal. And then we start out, the training sort of side of it and that’s a different interest. So it just, yeah, instead of just sitting there going, well, let’s see how many views we get because I want to be famous. That’s not what it’s about, you know, so the money would be nice. But unfortunately, we have every YouTube channel where you see successful. There’s so many that aren’t, they don’t make money for years doing it.

Neale 30:38

Yeah, you say you don’t get noticed, you were saying before you get, you’ve been noticed and you had a few autographs and you’ve been noticed at Wetherspoons, haven’t you?

Rob 30:45

But, it’s normally trade people, you know. I did get recognised in France a couple of weeks ago.

Neale 30:49

Oh, très bien!

Rob 30:50

Yeah, there we go. But my wife hates it because I know everyone anyway.

Neale 30:55

Don’t stroke his ego!

Rob 30:55

Yeah, yeah. And everywhere we go, I was on a cruise down to Norway and literally a bloke in the queue’s ‘Hello, Bob, how you doing?’ Can’t we go anywhere? And then was at Hever Castle. Someone’s like ‘Oh mate, I’ve watched your channel. Can I grab you and have a word?’ My missis is like ‘I’m going, see you later’.

Neale 30:55

I have to speak to my fans.

Rob 30:55

Yeah. Yeah, so it’s fun. That side of it is good. But the trade side of it is really nice. We go to trade shows now, you know. The companies pay us to sort of go up there. So we get free weekend away. People come up to see us and chat.

Neale 30:55

You can’t complain about that, can you? Yeah, yeah.

Rob 30:55

That’s great. You know, we’ve done a really good conference. And there’s normally just me and Barney, my apprentice, we go to the sort of exhibition type.

Neale 31:33

Is that the giggling Barney, the one who was laughing at the start of your videos?

Rob 31:38

He’s a good lad. So he’s really good. But the last one we went to was a conference like dinner and dance type thing, so the wife come to that one so she couldn’t mind and yeah it’s really good so it gets us around gets around the country opening up sort of a network and chatting with people doing this you know I’m here on a Friday we’re doing this.

Neale 31:53

Yeah fantastic. Is it mostly trade or end users? Because I can see trade getting benefit and sort of watching you know don’t you they might have a similar car model that comes in. I would also see a very you know someone who wants to start off an end user sort of like ‘Oh I could buy a car, I could do this, I could fix that up’. What’s your audience split?

Rob 32:11

I would think mostly trade. Probably 70% trade. A lot of people do watch it just because they watch me or they know me. My daughter’s school teacher found out yesterday from 15 years ago. He’s like ‘Oh, watched your stuff. It’s really good’. But they’ve obviously got an interest in cars and stuff. Nobody’s going to watch it just for what I do.  They must have some sort of interest in it. We’ve actually got a car outside. Somebody had seen my channel. Their neighbour’s car broke down. He said, I’ll buy it and just send it down to Bob. Didn’t even ask me. Is that a car that’s on its way?

Neale 32:41

Just took the initiative.

Rob 32:42

What? What if I can’t do it? It’s all right. And he just wanted to be part of it, which is great. And yeah, so I think a lot of it is trade. A few people just watching it to see… But we don’t do… Some people are into the car stuff where they want to see cars going fast and all that sort of stuff, which most petrolheads want to do. And we don’t really show that side of it.  But it could be somebody just technically minded likes my stuff. I watch Joey Does Tech. I don’t do any real circuit board repairs or anything. I like his stuff. But especially…

Neale 33:16

Do you sleep to his videos? He’s got a big fan base that falls asleep apparently to his videos.

Rob 33:21

I’ve got a real old audience.

Neale 33:22

Right.

Rob 33:23

Probably 45 upwards are my main audience.

Neale 33:25

Oh thanks, you’ve got a 45-year-old thanks, thanks for that.

Rob 33:30

But my mate, he does Volkswagen Caddies up and he’s got a really young audience. So yeah, he gets a lot of that.

Neale 33:36

It’s quite inspirational for the youth, going on holidays, doing them up.

Rob 33:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Modifying cars and all that sort of stuff and you know, so we get the more who just want to sit there and relax and listen to somebody do stuff.

Neale 33:47

Calming, yeah.

Rob 33:48

Yeah, but I don’t know how YouTube works. I watch a bloke who does these walnut tables and stuff. I’ve got no interest in woodwork, you know, and I’ll just watch it and I’m like…

Neale 33:55

It’s a common theme, we speak to a lot of YouTubers and they don’t know their secret to success. I mean, Mark and I have sort of said we think it’s potentially personality, people just like people, you know.

Rob 34:06

Yeah, it might not even be the subject and some of them, well even Joey at the moment. He’s doing his garage up. And he was like I don’t know if I should be doing this on this channel because it’s completely different to what I was doing but he’s still getting good views on it.

Neale 34:20

Because people want to see him. Well there you go, so here you go LinkedIn, here’s what I learnt on YouTube, from YouTubers that people like people and buy from people, that’s the secret sauce.  Common faults then, what these days people are coming in, what are you seeing more and more common? Has there been a recent trend?

Rob 34:40

We’re getting a lot of faults, which the garages are not interested in, basic faults, because there’s a massive lack of mechanics out there. So it is a big issue.  You don’t get many people under 35 in this trade. The snapper man who used to come around selling tools, this is 2000, probably at the garage. He used to turn up there. Four apprentices went out, filled up their toolboxes. I don’t know any apprentices anymore. We’ve got Barney, he’s probably one of the only ones around here.  You’ve got main dealer people, youngsters have gone to main dealers. A lot of dealers now are giving even toolboxes. They don’t want you doing private work. So there’s your toolbox. You just work for them…

Neale 35:22

Yeah, you work for Audi, these tools work only on Audi and I’ll do that sort of thing. Oh you mean they mustn’t take them back.

Rob 35:26

It’ll be in your bay. So that’s your bay, there’s your tools, that’s what you do with your tools. Some of them don’t want you even having your own tools to bring into work because if you’ve got them you can use them at the weekend to go and do some private work, they want you refreshed, they’re going to pay you a lot of money, don’t work the weekends, we’ll pay you a reasonable amount of money, come back on Monday.  But yeah, lack of mechanics is a big thing, so when you’ve got a garage absolutely flat out with clutches and cambelts and service work and stuff and then somebody turns up and says I’ve got two headlights out, all happened at the same time, can you have a look? They go nah, just take a straight to RMS. They’ve either got to stop what they’re doing now, go over there and have a look and may not be able to fix it and have wasted time, or they can just say just go RMS, go speak to him. So that’s what we’re getting in.

Neale 36:12

You’re not going to be around forever, how are we going to fill that skill set, in the nicest sense? You know, you’ve got 20 years or whatever.

Rob 36:20

I was worried until… Probably 15. Until we had Barney come on board, I thought I was just going to close the doors one day and that would be it. There’s going to be garages out there what do have the right person in there really interested in it. But a lot of mechanics, they’re so interested in efficiencies and getting their service work done on time. Didn’t want to go and spend four hours on a job they could possibly fix or not possibly fix. There’s no guarantee they’re going to be able to fix it.  Dealers, they take him on because they got all the equipment, they got all the diagrams and they have one person specific in there, some sort of master tech in there. But multi-make garages. But even the dealers now, when you’ve got MOT work, it’s 55 pound, whatever it is, but they got a tech there and 180 pound an hour. Are we going to put them on that for 40, 45 minutes? Or should we just send it down the road and have it MOT’d down there by people doing that? So there’s such a lack of that. So yeah, and so we just get put on phone calls. Yeah, got two headlights out, got an ABS fault. We do get them where they go in, have it checked somewhere, they’re fitted to sensor on there. It didn’t work. Then they say, yeah, just go to Bobbie and there’s going to be a broken wire, there’s going to be a module or something. We don’t want to go that far, which is fine. But there is so many of, we don’t want to do anything. Not even opening your bonnet and having a look. Had a big one, he said the two headlights are out. They said, it happened at the same time. And it comes in, it’s two headlight bulbs every time. And it hasn’t gone out.

Neale 37:27

What is… is one tripped on the other?

Rob 37:27

No, one’s gone out. You still see where you’re going. When that one goes out, you can’t. And they go, yeah, both happened at the same time. So they probably didn’t.

Neale 37:27

They just didn’t notice.

Rob 37:27

You just didn’t notice the first one. And they always argue, go nah, they definitely both did.

Neale 37:52

You never notice your break light until an officer knocks on your window and says ‘Your break light’s out’.

Neale 37:52

Or both of them have gone out at the same time.

Rob 37:59

Yes, and that’s what we’re getting really.

Neale 38:02

When did you start your channel?

Rob 38:05

Two years ago.

Neale 38:05

Two years ago.

Rob 38:06

Probably now.

Neale 38:07

Two years. Okay, and if you were gonna do it again anything you’d change?

Rob 38:12

You learn so much in there of what you shouldn’t do, what you should do, but if you’re going to do it, if anyone is starting, just have a go, you know, because you’ve got no viewers, you’ve got nobody watching you, you might as well be rubbish then, you know, and just keep going and have a go and try and, you know, get you in it, edit’s nice and all that sort of stuff and… What I did do, I bought a cheaper camera, used my phone and then thought I’d buy this camera or I’d buy a gimbal and if I was going to do it now, to buy the best you can afford at the moment, some good microphones, a good camera, you know, DJI are amazing now, you know, it’s all there and just have a go, just keep putting it out, but definitely quality over quantity, it’s got to be good stuff, they’ll listen to you if you’ve got good sound, if you’ve got bad microphone, bad sound, they won’t even bother, but yeah, we’ve put them out, you know, four a week, try and do that, but they were all probably a bit rubbish.

Neale 39:09

But then you make and you learn mistakes.

Rob 39:12

Yeah, exactly. It doesn’t really matter, so you’re learning faster, so that’s okay when you’re starting. You can’t just sit there with no subscribers or no viewers and put your heart and soul into an hour-long video and nobody watch it, which happens so often.  And you try and work out YouTube because nobody’s going to do it, and you’ll put out the worst video and it does amazing. My best one to begin with, I’ve got like 150,000 views on a BMW M3, which we’ve done, and all my views were like 1,000 views every video. And this one, we just went sky high, and it was weird. And I watched the scale going up, and it kept going up overnight, because normally you see them, you know, 11 o’clock at night, it’ll  off. It just kept going, so it must have gone to different countries.

Neale 39:52

Yeah, of course.

Rob 39:53

Maybe it was the car, you know, or, yeah, I don’t know, but YouTube, they’re a nightmare. You know, they’ll just send one out, which you think is rubbish, and then you’ll make the best one, you can say the most demoralising part of YouTube.

Neale 40:08

Well the process, Mend It Mark said that I think the one that that blew him up was he needed something and it was, I can’t remember the actual product, but it was it was a bit of equipment you know he does like audio equipment and TVs and stuff, doesn’t he? He’s great. And he just needed something quickly and so he got this on the bench, took it apart and was like ‘Oh I can’t actually, I can’t fix that, oh well’ and that was the end of the video so he said it was really unsatisfying he always tries to get a conclusion, stuck it out…blew up and that was the one.

Rob 40:35

There’s a comedian Matt Rife in America, he was putting lots of little shorts out and stuff and apparently he was a bit late for a gig and he was just about to upload a video and he said, I’m not going to bother doing that, let’s go and he said ‘Well you’ve got it done, just upload it now’, went into the comedy club, come out and he was famous and it literally just got mentioned and that made him, now he’s massive. So you just got to keep going.

Neale 40:58

That’s the advice. So any aspiring YouTubers out here.

Rob 41:01

And know what your goal is. Why are you doing it?  Do you want to be famous? Do you want to be a celebrity now, you know, because I could make a channel laughing and joking and taking the mick and doing pranks on Barney and things like that. How long is that gonna last for?

Rob 41:14

Put some high voltage up his underpants. Sorry Barney.

Rob 41:18

You see all them people they build up, they’re famous for two years and you don’t see them again, you know. So that’s not gonna be sustainable for anything. So if you’re doing YouTube, really try and get a goal of where you want to be to what you want to do.

Neale 41:32

And speaking of goals, you’re moving into educating, you’re doing live online courses, you had one fairly recently. Is that again education is that passion of yours, something that you want to give back?

Rob 41:45

The money is. Again, not giving too much away with trying to take things off other garages and stuff. If I’m going to do more technical stuff, which I would like to do, you know, and get into what I do in little tips and tricks, that needs to be not in the public domain, really. This is for invested individuals, you know. If they’ve got a garage, they really want to learn about it. And they’re all asking me, so can you teach me how to do that?  Can I come down? But what most technical trainers are, get six to eight people in on a Friday or two-day course. But that takes up so much time in preparing it and doing the presentations and doing all that.

Neale 42:24

And then you’ve got people around.

Rob 42:27

Yeah. And we’re not really set up for it.

Neale 42:28

It’s a big space, but it’s not big enough to cater to that.

Rob 42:33

I was wary of that. And again, with the YouTube side of it, when you start doing YouTube, you get monetised, you get a certain amount of money, and then you start trying to gain money from other sponsors or your community members. Same as Joey, he set up his YouTube membership page, so you can pay a couple quid, and you watch slightly different kind of edited or, you know, more intricate stuff.

Neale 42:54

More Joey.

Rob 42:54

Yes. Which is really annoying.

Neale 42:54

Did you hear that, Joey?

Rob 42:54

Yeah, no, that’s not his fault either, you know. Because all of a sudden, I’ve been watching him near enough since the start. As you open up YouTube, you’re sitting down, going to have your dinner, opening YouTube up, and he’s got a video out, members only.

Neale 42:54

Right.

Rob 42:54

And I’ve watched him forever, and now I can’t watch this one unless I pay.

Neale 42:54

Okay, yeah.

Rob 42:54

And I know what it’s like from a YouTuber’s side and from a viewer’s side.

Neale 43:26

So as a content creator you want the extra cash but from a fan…

Rob 43:29

…you don’t.

Neale 43:29

…you feel I don’t know

Rob 43:30

And I’m like you know if I’m taking offense to that other people are going to be taking offense to that and it’s not Joey’s fault if YouTube have changed it. When he used to do it, when he first started, that maybe three or four years ago, that was all members only page with no I didn’t even know he had one. So it didn’t matter to me. Then YouTube caught on that they wanted more people doing this or more people subscribing to it and now he can’t turn that off on the main page. You can’t, so anyone can be advertised to there, he has no choice over it. So now they’re telling everyone he’s done it. So then…

Neale 43:59

Joey’s cheating on you, he’s having an affair basically.

Rob 44:00

Exactly, you know, and you might get people shy away from it I don’t but then normally people go over to Patreon and that will be fine. Joey’s got I’ve got this here this is what I’m doing on my YouTube and I’ve got a Patreon if you want to go over there go and do it and you got your discourse and things like that and he does really well on all that side of it. And also I don’t want to do members thing, Patreon’s okay and then I’ll see the platform Skool S-K-0-0-L and that’s been invested in by Alex Hormozi and I looked into that and I thought actually what what the thought was I was going to do a motorcycle wiring thing for classic bikes. So I’ll sell you this for 40 quid and it’ll have everything on there, every circuit, everything you can do and you just buy that and I’ll make it once, and it sells for years – that was the idea. And then looking more into it I was actually I could do these little bits and instead of doing training courses people just sign up to that and the YouTubers don’t they don’t care they’re like yeah well you’re still doing our entertainment videos over here but the technical ones you’re now selling to trade people which is like 25 quid a month coming out their business account they don’t really care because, they’re not interested in the entertainment they don’t care what the customer said they want to know did the nitty-gritty stuff yeah so keeping them separated it doesn’t upset anyone.

Neale 45:21

No.

Rob 45:21

But on YouTube where they’ve done it again and they go right here we go we want more members on Joey’s page.

Neale 45:28

But it’s not going to hurt that you’ve got a YouTube channel, you’ve got a personality, you’ve got a brand, you’re not in the hundreds of thousands, but you’re a known entity, you’re a known quantity, you know you can present that you’ve got a successful business. That translates, doesn’t it?  You can present, you know what you’re talking about, I’m going to educate people, there’s no reason why that wouldn’t be a success.

Rob 45:49

My wife laughed at me when I, I’ve had all five of my kids work here and they go I can’t do it dad, I don’t know, you can’t teach, you can’t teach and I’ve tried teaching people, I’ve had loads of apprentices, can’t teach them, it doesn’t work. Well that’s their fault, not mine.

Neale 46:04

That’s great growth there, Robert. Fantastic. Yeah, yeah, you’ve had your breakthrough.

Rob 46:09

Exactly. But then when I go to all these trade shows and they go, mate, I’ve learnt so much from you, and I go, I haven’t really shown you any educational stuff. I’ve shown you what I’ve done in one bit you may have picked up little tips and tricks from each video.  And I say, okay, so there’s brilliant technical trainers out there, but people just like the way I put things into layman’s terms of there is no whiteboard on diagrams, but there’s no real theory behind it. And this is how it all works.

Neale 46:36

Here’s a physical thing, it’s connected to that and then it doesn’t work when…

Rob 46:39

Yeah, that’s why it’s roughly how it works. Yeah, that’s about all you need to know.  You can go too deep into, you know, you can get how electrons flow and all that sort of stuff. The more you know, the easier it is to understand, as we all know, but for the basics, where a mechanic is trying to fix a car and he just wants to know a rough way of doing it. And so I’m like, well, if I’ve got a car room with a short circuit on it, let’s show four or five different ways of doing it, four or five different tools, and mechanics will go ‘Oh, I didn’t know, I’ve got an amp clamp, I didn’t know you could use it like that, let’s just, okay, that’s brilliant’. And one thing might resonate, you know, with them people, so we’ve set that up and people seem to enjoy that as well.  Retirement fund, slow down a little bit.

Neale 47:13

Going down to three days a week.

Rob 47:13

Yeah.

Neale 47:13

That’d be fantastic. Right, brilliant. Rob, thanks for your time.

Rob 47:25

No problem. Cheers, mate.