Training for Car Detailers

Be sure you do two things before you even touch a customer’s car:

Learn a set of professional skills, including: the best way to bring engines to like-new, best way to remove carpet and upholstery spots, how to destroy smells, how best to polish as well as wax paint to the point of a better-than-new look, how to get rid of water spots, how to detail “nooks and crannies” (dials, vents, toggles, under seats, etc).

Buy professional gear. Don’t spend too much! There are just a handful of completely necessary items: wet/dry shop-vac, Cyclo polisher and waxer, electric power washing unit, and the all-important air compressor.

Understand professional marketing tactics. Today’s detail business must have good, working relationships with local vehicle businesses (dealers, mechanics, reconditioning shops, and body shops). It must also have a professional, visible website.

There are 3 resources you can find for training as a detailer:

Apprenticeships.
Car Detailing Schools.
Learn from the house.
Let’s take a moment to look closer at your options.

Option 1: Apprenticeship

If you asked me, I’d say that this is the most thorough means of getting the business knowledge. Simultaneously, it is also the toughest to arrange.

It will require that you labor for 6 weeks at an reconditioning shop more than 1 hour from where you live. Contact auto reconditioning shops outside of your area and explain that you want to start your own shop. Be clear that you will NOT be a competitor even if you do happen to be starting a mobile car detailing business. Offer to work at minimum wage or even less in exchange for total immersion in the technical and business workings of their shop.

For the first weeks, you’ll ideally be performing actual detailing: interior, out, and under hoods. You will encounter all the common cases (beverage spills, dog hair, food spots) that drive into a pro shop. You will get much faster at making them clean again as the owner shares his top car detailing tips.

3 weeks into your apprenticeship, you should start to learn the business aspect of the shop: what things to buy, where to get them, how much you should pay for them, how to get your name out there, keys to running a website, how to advertise to dealerships, how to treat customers, how and at what point to run specials, how to handle complaints…all of the plethora of issues that show up at a detail business daily. This portion of your training is far more critical than the first weeks in which you learned the fundamentals of how to detail a car.

At the end of 6 weeks, you should have adequate knowledge to do it on your own. But expect plenty of new issues to come up in the first half year that you will have to confront and succeed at fixing on your own.

On the job training only works – but only if you are ready to drive to a distant shop for 6 long, barely or not paid weeks, and only if you have a shop owner on board. I repeat: you may have to work for nothing (ie, an internship) to get a detail shop owner to agree to this.

Pros: Completely all-encompassing, hands-on learning in a real detail business.

Cons: Very hard to locate a shop owner receptive to training you.

Option 2: Reconditioning Schools

There are lots of detailing schools around the country which specialize in training prospective business owners with formal detailing lectures and seminars:

Detail King – located in PA.
RightLook – based in San Diego, CA.
The Total Pros – based out of L.A., CA.
Detailing Success – located in Big Bear City, CA.

Enroll for 16 hours in training classes, if not more. Be ready to pay at least $1200, including travel costs, and be gone for at least three days. Make sure that you pay for and get adequate marketing training – since it’s marketing-not your ability to do good detail work-which will make or break your business.

I have heard good things about these 4 companies, but at the top seems to be Detailing Success in Big Bear-run by Renny Doyle.

Pros: Doing based learning. Schools offer technical and marketing training from teachers who have done and seen everything there is to see.

Cons: A lot of money. Not a truly real-world experience in which you can learn how to deal with real-world customers and real-world issues (broken tools, irremovable odors, customer troubles, etc.)

Option 3: Learn at Home

There are books and DVDs you can find on Amazon.

Theses books and DVDs offer excellent technical training. They do show you ways in which to detail cars fast and thoroughly. However, they are mostly lacking in marketing training. They’ll cover marketing and sales, in general, however they offer not enough specific advice. For example, they recommend shelling out for phone book advertising. Phone book advertising is all but history in the car detailing business today.

Pros: Price and availability. A truly practical way to use your time and funding.
Cons: Doesn’t have a hands-on component.

Conclusion

How one chooses to train ultimately depends on budget and time availability. There isn’t objectively a right or wrong way to gain the skills needed to run a detailing business.

Here are 2 important pieces of wisdom for new detailers:

No need to overspend on supplies and equipment. It’s possible to do excellent work with only a few items of hardware and chemicals.

The real training will happen in your first 6 months as a detailer, independent of what method you used prior to going into business. Every vehicle is unique. Each customer (along with what they’re looking for) is different. After 6 months you can expect to have gained a whole lot of confidence.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments Off

Cheap Data Recovery

The average computer user has only a vague understanding of how their data is stored. They know they have this “hard drive thingy” inside the computer and they know that’s where their data is kept. That’s about as far as it goes for most users. Many don’t even know what a hard drive looks like.

However, when you are faced with data loss, you quickly learn a lot about hard drives. Not only do you begin to get an understanding about how complex they are, you also find out how expensive it can be to get your data back. At least once a day customers will ask “Why does it cost so much? I only paid $100 for my hard drive”. Yes, data recovery can be that expensive. My answer is simply this, if you had a million dollars sitting in a $50 safe, and you couldn’t get to it…does it really matter how much you paid for the safe? Data recovery should only be sought, if the value of the data exceeds the cost of the recovery.

Data Recovery Costs

On average a reputable data recovery company is going to charge anywhere from $400 to $700 for a logical hard drive recovery. A logical recovery is where there is damage to the file system, or partition table and the data becomes inaccessible. This can be caused by an accidental format, electrical issues, viruses, etc. In some cases physical issues with the drive can also cause this problem, especially if the drive has weak or degrading read/write heads. A logical recovery can typically be performed without having to make any repairs to the drive.

Physical recoveries can be priced all over the place. It really just depends on who you call. A physical recovery actually requires the hard drive to undergo some type of repair before the actual data recovery process can begin. In most cases a physical recovery entails swapping out the read/write heads, repairing the electronics or transplanting the platters. There are a handful of companies out there that are very skilled at performing this type of recovery. A word of caution though, for every one good company, there are probably five dozen others out there that will make the situation worse.

Budgeting Your Data Recovery

If data recovery is not in your budget now, and the data is not time sensitive, one thing you can do is just keep the drive stored somewhere safe. This gives you time to save up money in order to have a competent lab recover the data for you. You should look for a lab that offers free evaluations, and will give you a firm quote in writing before they start the recovery process. That way if the price ends up being too high you can just have the drive shipped back to you, and you would know the exact amount you would need to save up in order to get the recovery done at a later date. It’s not going to hurt the drive, or make the chances of a recovery any less possible if the drive is stored somewhere while you save up to have it recovered. Keep in mind that any reputable company will not charge you anything if the data is unrecoverable. This is one critical thing to verify with any company you contact. Consumers can be caught paying a lot of money for data recovery services, and still not have their data when it’s done. It’s not uncommon for some companies to charge $150 to $300 for parts, lab fees, attempt fees, or whatever they want to call it even on cases where the data is not recoverable.

Things You Can Do Yourself

If you suspect your hard drive has failed there are a couple of things you can try on your own to avoid the costs of shipping the drive to a data recovery lab. First of all, if the drive is clicking, knocking, or making any unusual noises, you are out of options to try yourself. Those cases definitely need professional data recovery service. Regardless of what you read about putting drives in freezers, opening them up, or whatever, anything you do in a case like this can only make the situation worse. If the drive makes any unusual noises at all, it’s best to just immediately power down the drive.

If the drive sounds ok, you may want to try it in another computer. It could be an issue with your motherboard, or even the cabling in your computer. Make sure all connections are secure to the hard drive. If you don’t know what to look for, see if you can find a family member who is knowledgeable with computers to help you.

If the drive is in an external enclosure, like a backup hard drive, and it no longer powers up, remove the drive from the enclosure. Check for signs of an electrical short. If it was severe enough, you will smell the burnt electronics. In a case like this, a data recovery professional would be needed. In most hard drives today, you can’t simply replace damaged electronic boards from one hard drive to another. There is unique, adaptive information that is stored on various chips on those boards and the data won’t be accessible without it.

If there are no obvious signs of physical damage to the drive, then you might want to find another computer or another hard drive enclosure and try the drive in that. It may have been an issue with the drive enclosure that prevented the drive from powering up. If it still has problems, then chances are you are going to need a data recovery professional help you.

Cheap Data Recovery

Try to avoid companies that price themselves too low. You wouldn’t have brain surgery performed on you by the doctor who bid the least would you? In a way, it’s the same thing with data recovery. Consumers don’t realize how difficult data recovery actually is. Some of the information out there doesn’t help, and will often times tempt users into trying to perform the procedures themselves. YouTube videos, even the ones that we have out there, one of which is titled Western Digital Head Swap, simplify the process and make it seem easy. Our videos were never intended to be instructional. They were meant to give our customers an overview of the process when we repair hard drives for data recovery. There is a lot more to data recovery than will ever be shown in a video. If the data is worth it, and many times our pictures, business files, and intellectual property is priceless, then it will be worth it to go with a company that you have confidence in. Not just some fly-by-night company who says they can do it for $199. Sometimes the parts alone can cost that much.

In closing, while data recovery can be expensive, cheap data recovery can cost you more in the long run. Do your homework, study the industry, and choose a company you feel comfortable with.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments Off