How to Juggle A Busy Life and A Detailing Business with Michael Babski

Narrator: Calling all detailers for just guiding every grind, helping detailers make more money one show at a time.

David Elliott: Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Calling All Detailers podcast. I have Michael from dbabsky Auto Detailing. How's it going, Michael?

Michael: Good, Dave. How are you?

David Elliott: I'm doing awesome. Just living the American dream. So, uh, tell us a little bit about yourself, how you got into detailing, and then we will go into how you, uh, operate and the challenges in your. Your. And being able to detail every single day.

Michael: All right. Well, it all kind of started as, uh, being curious as a child, uh, every Friday, used to wash cars with my dad. Our, uh, personal cars. Um, and then as I grew up as a teenager, I kind of got curious with the products early on, and I would go and buy different products at the store and try different things out. And my dad taught me how to use the whole old, uh, Turtle wax compound, how to wax a car, Wax on, wax off. And then I started watching YouTube. I started watching Pandy Organizer. I was like. And as a, you know, as a teenager, I was in a car club. I did car stereos. We had car car shows every Friday. So they used to bring their cars over to my house on Friday morning, line up in the middle of the road, and I used to detail the cars for the show. And then as a, uh, being in the military, I was stationed in Oahu at Schofield Barracks. And I decided it was right before COVID hit and. And one of my friends from work, he had a small Chevy pickup, brand new. And I was like, man, your. Your truck is really dirty. Why don't you bring it over? I need something to do. You know, everything was starting to shut down, and I had all the stuff in my garage, and I ended up detailing his car for, like, four hours, putting a couple sealants on there and cleaning the whole inside of the car. And he picked it up, and he was like, oh, my gosh, like, why don't you start a business? And I was like, you know what? I should. I'm like, this is something I've done. I had just lost my dad. Um, and every. You know, everything in Hawaii was closed. The beaches, everything like that started to close down. So I was like, well, this would be a great opportunity for me to. To make some extra money and to keep myself busy. So I started my own business.

David Elliott: Great, great. So this. You started this during the COVID pandemic, and. And you lived in Hawaii, and then I. I think you found me somewhere in between there and then you. And then you end up moving to where we have the office at nearby. And, and I do know you personally. Your, your wife worked for Pearl Nano for a while and we've kept in touch and uh, so that's great. So it went from just, you know, family, friends and then since you are in the military full time, you started a side gig as a detail business. Is that correct?

Michael: That's correct.

David Elliott: Great. Great. Well how, okay, so you have a lot of challenges, you know, a, you're in the military full time, so uncle, uh, Sam comes first and then you have an awesome family and then you have detailing. How do you juggle all of that and still have time to do cars?

Michael: So I use my CRM. I started off as a. So I always started my business. I always wanted to be, show myself as a professional. Right. So I started using mobile tech. RX is like a um, it's really made for pdr, but they also have it for mobile detailers. So when I was in Hawaii, a lot of the problem was not a lot of face to face, you know. So I had my own booking link and I would send that out on my Facebook page and send it out. I started a Google page and I started using that as my marketing tool for Covid. Like no, no, face to face, uh, touchless service, pay online, all that kind of stuff. So I used that CRM and I only paid like 35 bucks a month for it. So it was great. So I can, I could even upscale my, my costs for when I was doing an inspection of someone's vehicle. I can use it and I can add on if the car was for like the inside factors, if it was super dirty, um, I could upcharge them even more during the thing and send them the uh, invoice before so they can approve it and then I can make extra money. So I ended up doing that and then being in the military full time with the CRM that I use now, I use detailed bookie. I'm able to make my schedule to where people can only book for either a Friday or Saturday. And if they want to do it, like if I need to do like a ceramic coating during the week, I usually do drop offs Thursdays, uh, cause I'll usually have the car for about three days. So what they'll do is they'll, they'll drop it off Thursday morning or Thursday afternoon and then when I come home from work I'll start doing the prep work, prepping it and then I pull it into my garage and then I start my polishing and Clay bar and all that kind of stuff. Decon, making sure it's good, all the taping. And you have a couple little.

David Elliott: You have a helpers that can help you as well, right?

Michael: Yeah. So Alexander has been curious, so he's helped me a bunch. Asher not too much. He likes the game. But Gina will also do interiors for me. She's really good with interiors. She does like the. She, she's really good at with exterior but she won't, she doesn't want to touch a polisher. So as long as.

David Elliott: So you have uh, you can only detail I guess. Can you can handle one car a weekend? If it's something that you can handle with the kids and uh, you know, Christmas and other things like that. So how many cars a month do you think you get done? Maybe three.

Michael: Oh no, I'm usually booking. So Friday, Saturday is usually my long day. So Friday I'll do either depending on how the schedule is. Like especially during the summertime I'll have a car Friday evening and then Saturdays I usually have three cars. Um, and then sometimes that third car will roll into a Sunday morning while I'm finishing up. I get a lot of people with a uh, mold remediation here. So I get a lot of mold or stuff for like so military. Being in the military I get a lot of people for PCs. So I have to get it ready for the VPC, which is a vehicle processing center. So I, I make sure it's up to, up to code for them. So when they ship it, when they go for their inspection, you know, they, they, they see the car for inspection and they can ship it off to wherever to you know, Germany or pretty much a lot of people TCs here to Hawaii. So.

David Elliott: Right.

Michael: So I make sure the car is good to go.

David Elliott: Well that's, you have like a, A, A uh clientele right there on base and they don't have to go very far and they can drop it off and it's, it's a small, it's a big base but they can get around without a car for a couple days and. Great. Well how do they find you?

Michael: So a lot of people, I get a lot of people through Facebook. So one uh, thing I've done is use uh, my story brand marketing approach where the customer you want them to be the. Pretty much I'm the hero, you know. Um, and I make sure that I have clear packages. Um, and I make sure I tell them, you know, I do a full inspection, a walk around. I kind of want to build that trust with My customer. Um, and you know, with, with a CRM, you know, if I get an estimate, the money isn't in the estimate, it's in the follow up. So if someone, someone is making a, uh, estimate on my page, I automatically get that notification. As soon as I get that, I, I'll text them and be like, hey, this is Mike from, you know, dbaschology Tail. I guess I'll let you start an estimate. Is there something I can help you with? And if they don't respond back, I pick up the phone. You know, my, I'm a, as a, I'm an army recruiter, so I'm not, I'm not, I don't mind making cold calls. So I'll, I'll pick up the phone and I'll be like, hey, you know, I just saw that you want to, you had an estimate. I wanted to just follow up with you and see if there's anything I can help you out with, any concerns. And then most of the time they're like, oh, yeah, I was just, I just got side busy and I was going to do it later. I'm like, well, let's, let's get you on the books for this weekend. You know, I fill up very quick. Let's get you on the schedule. And then sure enough, I send over that invoice. They, they um, even make the estimate for them and add up a couple things on there, send it over, they approve it, they make the deposit, and I got them for the weekend.

David Elliott: Wow. So I forgot that you had changed jobs. How long have you been an army recruiter?

Michael: So I've been a recruiter for a year now.

David Elliott: Okay, I didn't know that. So how you went to school. So tell me a little bit about sales training and how it equates to your.

Michael: It's funny because the army actually has their own CRM as well. They have a system. They. So a lot of, a lot of people don't know. Like when you go to high school, all that contact information gets sent to the army recruiting centers. Right. It's, it's, that's how the schools get their funding. So we have all these contact numbers for juniors and seniors and then calling people. You know, I used to not be a, you know, I'm very, uh, I used to be a very shy person on the military. Helped me grow out of my shell. I can able to talk in front of people and you know, call people on the phone. That was a big thing for me when I went to school. Like cold calling, like, you Never know how it's going to happen. Like sometimes you get some not so nice things said to you, right?

David Elliott: Never call me again.

Michael: But you know, you always have to, you know, help with the objections and you know, kind of uh, see around that because people are usually calling you for the most part. For me, like I've always had people call me sometimes I try to screen my calls and Gina kind of, it's funny because she's like, why didn't you, why don't you pick up the phone? You don't know who it is. Like maybe they're calling. I'm like, I don't know. And then I for, and then I forget. I'm like, oh, I do run a business. So like I'll, I'll kind of be like, okay, they're calling me for a detail, so I'll pick up. And then you know, 90, 90% of the time they're calling me saying they're, they're looking for a quote. And I'm like, well here's my link. Go to my, my booking page and you can make your own estimate. You don't even need me. Because every car is different, every package is different. So using that, so and how has

David Elliott: sales, besides being able to call people a little bit out of your shell now you have also some better systems and processes in place to take the customer from uh, beginning to end. And is that improved your business bottom line?

Michael: It definitely has. Using detail Bookie has definitely helped me scale my business even more. And like using like my Google business profile for like the five star reviews, that puts me up top more. And the thing is with being in the military community, you do have a lot of people start the side hustles during the summertime. And you know, I have no problem with people starting their side. I think that's great. Everybody starts somewhere, right? But the problem is a lot of people in the military community, they really want to pay for a, ah, cheap, fast service, right? And I usually tell people, I'm like, listen, ah, when you come to me, you're coming to me because I'm the professional. I'm here to, I'm going to make your car, your car's gonna be with me probably more than four hours, you know, but you're paying for quality service. There's not gonna be a mistake. If there is a mistake, I'm gonna fix it. I'm not gonna just be like, go away and take your money. I'm not trying to make a quick dollar off of you. I'm um, I'M trying to keep you in the long run as a long term customer so you come back. Because most of my customers I've had since I've been here have come back to me or referred more people to me. So word of mouth, word of mouth is a good thing. Visibility and content like TikTok, I haven't really got into too much but Instagram posting consistency, that's helped a lot on the Facebook spouses page and stuff like that, the spouse networks and all that kind of stuff. This is kind of put your business out there more. And then you know with Facebook you have, you can, you have the business suit, uh, app where you can like schedule your posts, your postings. So I use my chat GPT and I put all that stuff, I say hey, make myself a uh, story brand, a marketing approach for the week and some call to actions. And I put that in there and it draws it up for me and I put that in, I copy and paste, put some stuff from cap cut on there for videos from past stuff and put that on there and post it into the groups. And you know I, I try to hit it on the weekends and Fridays cause a lot of people, I see that from my analysis from Facebook what times are mostly hit and viewed for my time. So I, I try to post at the same times so I get more people drawn in for vet, you know, like more outreach I guess.

David Elliott: Okay, how about ads? Are you doing any Facebook ads?

Michael: I haven't done, I really haven't done any ads since I was in Hawaii. Most of the time, um, I'm pretty, I'm really, really busy and um, it's, it's, it's a lot of. I uh, mean I think it's really just being my content posting every day at least once or twice a day. Uh, you know, right now during the holidays I've kind of wanted to just take a break and it's been, I think with the government shutdown at one point it's kind of slowed down just uh, just a tad bit for me which is good because I needed a break to kind of like refresh myself. And that's the great thing about owning my own business and being in the military with a busy family is I can, you know, if I wanted to, I can just shut down my. Not be able to have anybody make any bookings on my, my site.

David Elliott: That's a good idea. Yes. That, that's how you control who can come in and who can. They just can't drop their car off at your house.

Michael: Yeah. So if they. I mean, I was mobile for a little bit when I first. Because at the older house, I, uh, I didn't have my own garage. Like, I had a lot of street stuff, so people were dropping off in the front of the street. And it was, it wasn't ideal because we were in an older house. So all my stuff was in the basement, so I was bringing all up. So now everything's in the garage. I have it all set up, like, you know, nice professional lighting and all that kind of stuff in there. So I've always wanted to make myself professional looking. You know, I have, I have, uh, a process. When people drop off the cars, I introduce myself, I say, hey, thank you for choosing me today. I do. I'm like, hey, just for. And as this is for, everybody can do it. You know, I have a kind uh, of like a customer agreement, you know, service agreement. I have it printed out. I use that with my iPad. I walk around with my paint gauge, I inspect their car. I even, you know, advise them like, hey, your headlights are a little cloudy and you want to get these fixed up today. I can do that for you. You know, I always try to upscale my stuff, um, and try to walk them through the process. And I'm like, hey, you see this? And while I'm doing that, I also educate them because here in Washington, we get a lot of mold, you know, moisture in the car. I'm like, hey, you got a little bit of molding growing on your carpet here. You know, one good thing is you can put some dampered stuff in your car. They have the absorbent bags you could put in your car. Dehumidifier bags. Let's, you know, you can order that on Amazon.

David Elliott: Are you extracting the mold out with the extractor or how are you helping with that?

Michael: Yeah, so I have an extractor, I have a steamer. I have it all. Um, I've taken a couple classes online for mold remediation. Just, uh, to kind of get like a different kind of have a little bit more knowledge of how to get rid of mold and stuff like that. Um, I use some different chemicals, I treat it. I also have like, the big fans to dry it out. Because what. When I usually do mold remediation, I usually keep the car more than 24 hours. So I, I try to make sure there's no moisture in the car and then I send them off. Because usually for the most part, I've had a car. This guy went to the field, he had a Honda crv. He left the whole entire Sunroof open. When he went to the field for a week and it rained and his whole entire spare tire area was full of water. It was just, everything was covered in mold.

David Elliott: So it went in the, in the car onto the floor and then gravitated towards the back.

Michael: Yeah, it was, it was like the seats, there was mold spores everywhere, everywhere on the plastic, everywhere. I ended up having wearing a mask. Oh yeah, I wear a mask and gloves, a whole suit, everything. And then when I'm done with my stuff, I have to sanitize everything. So if I do mold remediations, you know, it's a two day, two to three day process. And then it's a whole day of just, you know, cleaning all my stuff. Um, because I won't put it in anybody else's car once I clean it.

David Elliott: What do you charge for something like that?

Michael: Roughly around 600 to, you know, $800 or something like that, depending on how bad it is. And then I try to just, you know, it's really all uh, what I tell people is like you, you get the estimate for my, my booking site when you bring it in? You know, we do, I'll do the full walk around inspection. I make sure there's, there's no damages. You know, I'm taking pictures with them, I'm getting their vin. And then one thing, I also, to add value to all my stuff, reports to carfax. So that's another, that's another thing I use as marketing. I'm like, hey, don't go to side Joe. Um, because his services don't bring value for your car. I have carfax reporting services. If any, any type of service, any coatings, stuff like that, all that goes onto your carfax. So when you drop it off at the dealership to sell it for resale value, they can pull up your history and be like, hey, it's been detailed, that's been ceramic coated. You know, this person really took care of their car.

David Elliott: Now can anybody, any detail or sign up to be a Carfax reporter?

Michael: So you can most. So most of the uh, most of the booking, the CRMs that are out there on the market, most of them have like if you, you can pay for the Carfax, like if you have a booking site like uh, Orville I think it's called, you can use that and they have like a, uh, you pay, you pay monthly. I think it's like a hundred bucks. There's road fs, there's a bunch of them. Different, there's different ones. You Just have to see what's for me. 69amonth for detail bookie where it comes with preset packages set up already made and you can just add your own and customize it to the way you want. It's great.

David Elliott: I met those guys in Sema a couple years ago and I think their business is doing great.

Michael: Yep. And then I don't know if you know Dustin Jackson.

David Elliott: That's who I met. I'm pretty sure.

Michael: Yeah, he has his own down there in Alabama so. But he's great.

David Elliott: So let's transition to, you know, this podcast is all about how to make more money for detailers. Right. So you gave us some great nuggets CRM, how to uh, you know, pick up that phone, make those calls, you know, walk them through. And then you talked about Carfax and even going as far as mold remediation. I don't know. A lot of people are doing that that I know it's, it's big here where we're at because it's raining all the time. But what other kinds of tool, tools or tips or tricks that you'd like to uh, you know, give to the other guys?

Michael: You know, it's you know, don't hide behind social media. You know, that's, that's, you know, don't hide behind uh, behind social media and pick up the phone and, and call people. That's, that's going to help you book people. Because a lot of people nowadays, even like a lot of teenagers I see, they don't like to be the talk on a telephone. They like to send out a text message. And, and that's why I always, if I get someone that uh, goes onto my booking site, they, I see that they did it. That's why immediately I, I, I follow out that text message and be like hey, this is Mike from you know, so and so what can I help you with? You need some help navigating on the, on the site and if they don't respond back then I'm like, you know what, I'm going to give you like 5, 10 minutes and I'm going to call them right away because they're already reaching out to see like a lot of people shop around and you know, you want to, you know I'd rather over follow up than under earn, you know, so I rather more reps with everything, fixes everything. So you know, calling them, texting them, you know, show, show them like hey, I'm going to build the estimate for you and send it over to you. Just take A look at it, see what you like, you know, and then when you drop it off, try to make them feel like they're really coming to you. Uh, because you're the professional. I'm like, why shop around and look for something cheaper? Because a lot of people you want to start your. You don't want to really like. I, I always say that it was like a, kind of like a side hustle for me, but I really, I started a business from the get go. You know, I started from the beginning. I always wanted to be a professional. I started my own website. I had a website in Hawaii and I had like my uniforms. I had a SOP in place. I, uh, you know, I, I try to start off because I, I don't know, because I was in retail when I started at Publix years ago and I was a manager and all that kind of stuff. I just always wanted to be professional and show that, hey, if you're coming to me, you know, I have the skills that have got me started and, you know, now I have the systems that are getting me paid.

David Elliott: Right. Right.

Narrator: Wow.

David Elliott: Uh, this, yeah. If you are a professional, act like a professional, look like a professional, have your work speak for itself, use high quality products, report on Carfax if you can, and answer those phone calls. In my business, I hear a lot of customers saying the other companies never answered their email, never took up the phone. And you know, I'm a sales guy. This is what I live and breathe, sales stuff. And, and I knew you, you know, I've known you for a while. I know that you're a little shy and to see you blossom and go out there and crush it and uh, call those people and juggle your, your family, the military and your business, it's all awesome. I really like it. I'm glad that you guys are doing great. So any, any last words before we go here?

Michael: I don't know. I mean, my goal is to build a business that works for me without holding a polisher. So that's, that's something in that I'm hoping one day when I retire. I'm, um. You know, I'm 43 now. I don't think I'll be holding a polisher. Maybe I'll be kind of more like Dustin Jackson and running, being, being the brains of everything and then having all your little workers work for you to bring you the money instead of.

David Elliott: That's how you run a business. You do it in the beginning and then you transition to managing other people that do it. But you're always there oversighting, all seeing, make sure everything, trust but verify as Ronald Reagan said. Yep. Excellent. Excellent. Well, it was great talking with you and thanks so much for being on the podcast and, uh, we will see you on the next episode and maybe we'll catch up with you in a year or so. All right.

Michael: All right.

David Elliott: All right. We'll see you later.

Narrator: All.

Michael: Uh, right. Have a good one.

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