Owner’s Pride

Dann E. Williams - Partner and President of Business Development for Owners Pride

Owner’s Pride carries a comprehensive line of professional finish care products for owners who want to protect their investment, maximize value, and maintain a lasting impression. With decades of scientific research combined with field experience in professional auto detailing, they have developed the ultimate in cleaning, protecting, and maintaining the finish of your vehicle, boat, motorcycle, RV, or ATV.

Contact: Dann E. Williams at Visit Online!

         

• History of Owners Pride; You’ve been in the car care business for a long time – how did it all start?
• Is there a keystone product that set all this in motion?
• What products does OP offer?  
• Ceramic – Graphene – Sealant – Wax – Polish – Let’s talk about the differences!
• Looking over your website, there are a lot of products with unique names.  Slick, OP X Lite, Decon X, Spotless, Super Wash, Eco Wash, Ultra Wash – some seem very similar to each other, what are the differences?
• Let’s look at all the automotive and motorcycle products – OP offers products as well for marine and aerospace, which is cool, but for a novice just starting to try OP, what would be a good starter set, which products would you recommend?
• Dann, you also host/produce “The Owners Pride” podcast, what’s that like? Who are some of your guests? How can someone get on your show? Where can it be found / how often are episodes released? 

and much, much more!

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Break fix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all over the auto sphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors, designers, and everything in between. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrol heads that wonder. How did they get that job or become that person?

The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.

Crew Chief Eric: For over two decades and across two generations, owner’s pride has been at the forefront of protection technology for all types of vehicles. Founded by detailers who have worked for, and within dealerships, body shops, and direct to consumer auto care studios, Owner’s Pride has never stopped listening to their clients, which means they’ve never stopped innovating their products and services.

Don Weberg: With us to discuss the evolution and story behind Owner’s Pride is Dan Williams. Partner and president of business development at owner’s pride, as well as the host [00:01:00] of the owner’s pride podcast.

Crew Chief Eric: And with that, let’s welcome Dan to break fix.

Don Weberg: Hey, how are you guys doing?

Crew Chief Eric: And joining me tonight is returning voice and co host of break fix.

Don Wieberg from garage style magazine. Welcome back, Don. Thanks for having me back. Like all good break, fix stories. There is a superhero origin. So Dan, take us. Back in time, 20 plus years. And let’s talk about the who, what, when, and where of owner’s pride. How did this all get started?

Dann E. Williams: I was a waiter and I was in my early thirties.

It just did not seem hip for me to go and be a manager in a restaurant. My family was really pushing me to do that. And I always had wanted a Rolex watch. However, working at Joe’s Crab Shack, I could not afford a Rolex watch. So one of the catalysts that started my detailing business was to get this watch.

And I realized within two months of starting this, and I was just doing it on my two days off a week from the restaurant, that I could indeed afford this Rolex watch. And this is literally the exact watch that I bought. And so it’s [00:02:00] always been a very big part point of pride for me and something that I’m really proud of and an accomplishment that I made.

Don Weberg: So you sound like you’ve been doing this for a long time.

Dann E. Williams: So when I first started, I would just go to like an auto zone or a Kmart or Walmart, or I think I might have just dated myself there and grab, you know, whatever they had off of the shelf. And it was what it was. My friend had a next door neighbor that had a mobile detailing business here in San Diego.

And I just bought a new truck and he put a sealant on there for me. He actually let me ride along with him for a couple of days and took me to the store. When I started professionally detailing, it was all with Pro Products, Buford Pro, that company. And from there, I went to a Mobile Tech Expo, which is one of our industry trade shows.

And this was probably in about 2007. I had gone to a seminar for Dr. Gadoosey, who is the CEO of a company called OptiCoat, which is where I used to work before here. And I told my two employees that I had with me, let’s start a secondary business called SoCal Detail Supply. I still have that business to this day.

We went in to become distributors for that company. When I was at OptiCoat, the [00:03:00] company before here, and how I learned about all this stuff was the CEO of that company wanted a dealership F& I program. And all I could see was money signs when he talked about that. And so I headed up that project and what I did to build that program out was I noticed that they had industry trade shows for the F& I world.

They have industry summit, agent summit, NADA. So I started asking for him to send me to these shows and I didn’t know anybody in there or really anything about that industry. But what I would do is I would watch the speakers on stage. And in between sessions, I would go up to people that asked good questions of the speakers and I would say, Hey, you know, that point you made about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And so I started meeting a lot of people in that industry. My second power play in there because I didn’t know anybody I was from detailer world was I saw all the big swinging dicks in the room and I went up to those people over the course of every time I’d go to these shows and I’d be like, Hey, can I get a selfie with you?

You then I’d start posting those on social media, which made it look like [00:04:00] I was in cahoots with all the bigger people in the industry. And it worked out really well. Nice, great marketing there. I really focused on that line of products very hard until I made the switch over to this one. And the main founder partner of Owner’s Pride, he’s been in the business for about 27 years.

He came from having a bumper repair and going to dealerships, doing that kind of work, mobile business. And in the last seven years, he has grown a detail shop in Omaha, Nebraska to gross a million dollars, have two managers, six employees. And then he’s been able to take his time and focus on growing the secondary business.

I was his rep when they decided they wanted to have their own chemical line and their own detailer program. They tapped me to come and be a part of it. We launched this company three weeks before COVID shut the world down. So it was a very scary trying time to start a brand new company, but we’ve just had exponential growth right through and the resiliency of the detailing industry.

Amazing because most of the people that are detailing cars made more [00:05:00] money over the past few years than they’ve made in their entire life.

Crew Chief Eric: So that makes Owner’s Pride, let’s say about four years old as we’re talking about it today. Yeah. With your extensive background in detailing and your co founder’s background in detailing, were there certain products that were in your bucket?

Things that you relied on that you went to? Did any of those spawn the keystone product at Owner’s Pride? What was that thing that launched the brand?

Dann E. Williams: Detailers are very much shiny new object syndrome havers. So they’re always wanting to jump to the next polish, the next rinseless wash, the next polisher, the next polishing pad.

And the best piece of advice that was ever given to me in this industry was by Joe Fernandez, who owns Superior Shine in Covina, California. And he told me, find a company that you like the people, the products, and the culture, and make yourself the best you can with that. He had done that with himself, with Meguiar’s.

I would imagine he still uses that product to this day. I did that with Opti for my time there. And you know, now I’m definitely bleeding owner’s pride. I start all my podcasts and I say my name is [00:06:00] Dan E. Williams and the E stands for EcoWash, the drought tolerant, eco friendly way to wash your car with just a little bit of water.

That’s my favorite product. That’s my jam. It’s a rinseless wash. It’s dilutable at 512 to 1. You can use it on the inside of your car, the outside of your car. It’s pH 7, so it’s not going to hurt anything. You can bring it in your house, use it on your floors, on your stainless steel appliances. So, so, so many things.

So that’s kind of one of the flagship things for me. But we put together a really synergetic line of detailing chemicals. Because they’re all made by detailers. Well, not like the detailers are the elves making them. We have them produced, but we had a heavy hand in developing them. So we made them very dilutable, very concentrated.

So for having them in your business with the detailing suppliers, these days, ceramic coatings are kind of the pinnacle of. Protection that somebody can get for their car. And we have a line of ceramic coatings that come with the industry’s most compliant comprehensive warranty program.

Crew Chief Eric: You mentioned a couple things.

Ceramic [00:07:00] coatings. Waxes, polishes, sealants, and now graphene. Can we dissect those a little bit? Can you tell us the difference? Because you see all these labels, you know, the shiny new thing on the shelf at the big box store or even online. What are you supposed to buy anymore?

Dann E. Williams: These days. The term ceramic has kind of been bastardized because you can’t go through a drive through tunnel car wash or walk through a Walmart without seeing something ceramic.

Everything is ceramic.

Crew Chief Eric: In the big box stores, you’ve seen kind of a turnover in product, but you are seeing some newcomers. You go to an end cap of Walmart and suddenly everything is Chemical Brothers, and then you see Adams polishes, and then you see Jack’s Wax, and then you see Jay Leno’s Garage, to name a few.

Dann E. Williams: If you’re going to sell your products on big box stores and shelves. You need to dilute that product down so people go through it really quick, and they come back and buy some more. Our products are very concentrated. Our EcoWatch is dilutable at 512 to 1. That’s one little capful in three gallons of water.

So that’s one of the main differences. We say we have [00:08:00] professional products without the professional problems. Everything is really concentrated and just ready to go.

Crew Chief Eric: Ceramic is really a term to kind of cover the science behind all this. We think about ceramic, we think about our coffee mugs, We think about plates and vases and you’re kind of thinking more of dinnerware than I’m putting ceramic on my car, right?

You’re not putting your car in a kiln. You’re not baking it.

Dann E. Williams: We have two different kinds. We have a silicon carbide solvent based ceramic coating and that formulation is a ceramic that’s inside of a solvent carrier that you put onto the surface. So you put it on your substrate on the paint in this scenario, all of the ceramic makes a silicon carbide cross link to the substrate.

And then the solvent carrier just beads up on itself and you wipe that off. It’s very easy to install. Some of the coatings are more of a resin based. Coating. A lot of times you might hear Tio O2 or SIO two, and those are gonna be some of the substitutes that are added into it or grafted onto the backbone of the, the [00:09:00] chain.

And those resin based coatings are more of a, if you were to think of a thin layer almost of honey that was spread over the surface. And inside of that layer, there’s little nanoparticles of either the titanium or silicon dioxide. And that kind of a coating you wipe on, then you wait for it to flash, it kind of makes a rainbow, and then you chase high spots.

Now we do have a coating that is that kind of coating that we have as a self healing coating. And by our three, five and seven year warrantied coatings are the solvent based coatings. And then I have O-P-X-O-P-X light that you can buy and do your own car with. And then OP select, which is our premium nine year warrantied self-healing ceramic coating

Crew Chief Eric: out of that phrase and that hype around everybody suddenly had ceramics, then you had sealants.

So what’s the difference between a coating and a sealant? Before we move on to something even more complicated, like a graphene quote unquote shield.

Dann E. Williams: These are very interchangeable terms. Ceramic is more of a inorganic, more so than like a pottery piece. But [00:10:00] I know that that’s kind of what your brain just automatically goes to.

We’ve tested with graphene coatings too and we’ve really not had very good results. I think one of the things with that kind of a coating is usually you’ll see them in the liquid that the graphene particles will settle to the bottom and you have to shake it up which the chemistry of a solvent based coating or even a resin based coating is going to be superior to that because it’s more cohesive and not something that you have to shake up that’s not as interconnected to itself and a lot of the sealants like we have ceramic sealants They’re just not as long lasting.

Our ceramic detail spray, the pink sauce we call it, that is a very long lasting ceramic coating, and it’s based on the same chemistry as our solvent based coatings. However, it’s in a detail spray carrier form as the solvent, if you will, instead of the solvent itself.

Crew Chief Eric: The missing link that a lot of people don’t realize is how porous your clear coat and your paint really are at the end of the day.

And when you look at the molecule size of these different chemicals that you’re putting out there, whether the [00:11:00] ceramics, the sealants, the graphenes, et cetera, they need to be able to Penetrate those pores in the paint, and that’s how they bring back that luster and that feel and that look the science behind this is really, really interesting.

And I think we take for granted to the old school thinking. I got my Meguiar’s gold class paste and put it on with a sponge and it’s thick as butter. And you’re not really thinking about well, was that just sort of taking care of the surface or was it penetrating

Dann E. Williams: underneath? A really big misconception that a lot of people have, and I hear even detailers talking about this all the time, is that the paints now, with environmental restrictions on them, have become water based, and that they’re a lot more fragile than they used to be.

And I’ve spewed out this nonsense myself multiple times. I did a podcast interview with a guy from Sherwin Williams Autopaint, and I did one with two reps from PPG. And they really kind of set me straight on this whole thing. The color coat of the paint is indeed a waterborne paint now, but the clear coat is still a urethane, so it’s really not any more tender.

One of the things I also see detailers [00:12:00] do that, it just drives me crazy, is they sell a ceramic coating as it’ll stop rock chips and meteor strikes and car accident impacts. And it’s really not like that. For the guys that say your paint is not gonna scratch, they’re measured on a hardness scale, which is actually a pencil, a lead scale.

Essentially, if you were to think when you were back in school and you were taking your little Scantron test and you had your number two pencil, they test as the lead number goes up, I believe it goes up to 10, that the lead is harder. So what they do is they take a substrate, the paint in this situation, and they put a load on it.

And they drag it across until the lead is hard enough to scratch it. So a lot of the coatings will say that they’re 9H and on a hardness scale. But they’re kind of implying that it’s on the Mohs scale, which is a mineral hardness scale. And that would be mosanite and diamond. First of all, none of the ceramic coatings are as hard as mosanite and diamond.

Second, it’s a very, very thin layer that’s, you know, measured in microns. On top of [00:13:00] a substrate that’s about four on a pencil scale. So if you were to take a piece of tin and put it onto a sidewalk and step on it, you’re going to kind of take on the characteristics of that cement that’s underneath of it.

But if you put that same piece of tin onto, say, some grass and walk on it, you’re going to adopt the characteristics of the softer substrate. The reason that ceramic coatings don’t get as much marring and scratching over time is because they release dirt easier and everything just kind of releases off of the paint.

I’m glad that we’re saying that in front of a lot of people because it really just drives me crazy and I think it sets a lot of people up for failure when they get a product like this and it is a costly product.

Crew Chief Eric: And the care and maintenance of a ceramic coated or sealed vehicle is different than, let’s say, your general wax or polish type of setup, right?

I’ve heard of things like Ceramic crackers. You go back to the classic powder tide and that will break apart the quote unquote seal that the ceramic creates. Is that fact?

Dann E. Williams: Is that

Crew Chief Eric: a myth?

Dann E. Williams: If you polish the car, it’s going to remove the coating. That’s the only way that these ceramic coatings come [00:14:00] off is via abrasion.

We’re 15 plus years into ceramic coating. So there’s a lot of great ceramic coatings out there. Well, one of the things about them is they’re made to absorb impacts from acids and enzymes, you know, be it higher or lower on the pH scale, and to seal the paint up so the UV rays aren’t fading it out and your color’s dying.

As far as washing the cars, the safest way to wash your car. Always is going to be to take it to your professional detailer and have them baby it for you That’s like going to the salon and getting your nails and your hair done That’s the way to go second is going to be to wash it yourself in your driveway with some owner’s pride eco wash That’s how I do my own and some ceramic detail spray.

That’s literally how I wash my own

Crew Chief Eric: You see a lot of guys using either aerators or filters foamers, some sort of spray system for the soap. Does the eco wash sud up like that? Or is it more like a traditional soap?

Dann E. Williams: We have the only rinseless product that it’s just jam packed with emulsifiers. So if you put it into a foam cannon at a little higher concentration, it actually does make a [00:15:00] really thick foam that you can foam onto the car.

And I believe it’s the only rinseless watch that does that.

Don Weberg: I get my foam can and I put your product in it. I blast my car. I walk away?

Dann E. Williams: Well, then you’re going to take something and wipe over it because the emulsifiers are going to loosen all the dirt and its foam is going to start dripping down. Take your towel and wipe it, then you can just dry the car off.

Do you have a specific formulation as a wheel cleaner as well? I would use DeconX on my wheels. Traditionally, people have used like ammonium bifluoride acid on the wheels, which is a derivative of hydrofluoric acid. And it’s really kind of dangerous. I’ve struggled with some arthritis problems myself.

being it’s not genetic necessarily. I think it’s because in my younger days of detailing, I was a little bit willy nilly with the acid and that could possibly be a thing. So if you’re going to use a stronger acid like that, then for goodness sakes, make sure that you wear something over your face and your eyes and your hands, but Decon X is going to be 6.

and it’s going to be very safe. Also, back in my detailing days, I could not tell you how [00:16:00] many Mercedes brake calipers I stained with acid. DeconX will not do that.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s a definite contender for our next battle against brake dust competition that we do every year. The difference in the way we carry on that competition is we’re using battle tested race wheels where the brake pad material is way more caustic than anything that’s on the street.

The wheels are running at higher temperatures, things like that. It oxidizes almost immediately. God forbid it rains. Because now you’ve got stuck, just baked onto those wheels. So it’s really cool. Every time we get new products in, we battle them against our previous champions is up when there’s been some surprise turnout.

So I’m really looking forward to bringing in some deconnects and seeing how it does against a lot of the other products that we have stacked up for this year’s

Dann E. Williams: competition. Well, gosh, I am too. So let’s make sure that we get that in there. I did really kind of a fun experiment four or five months ago. I had seen somebody make a post that using the acid on the brakes itself would deteriorate the brake pads and the metal on that.

So what I did is I went to the auto parts store and I [00:17:00] bought some little motorcycle brake pads because I just wanted something cheap because I was going to do a test. And I took one glass Pyrex dish with some decon X in it and I put it in there and it indeed turned purple. And then I took ammonium bifluoride and I put the other Brake pad in there kind of wore all the paint off of the brake pad that had the ammonium bifluoride side, but it did not degrade it.

Like I thought it was going to, I really thought that the brake pad itself would start to crumble. And I left that in there soaking for a week.

Crew Chief Eric: What happens when you apply heat? That’s an experiment for another day.

Dann E. Williams: I would pass off on saying, I would say go to a touchless car wash. Because a lot of times if you go through the tunnel car wash with the brushes, even though they use almost like a wetsuit material now, and it’s not like old school nylon brushes, but still stuff can get in those and it can mar your paint a little bit more over time.

Don Weberg: You have products as well for marine and aerospace, which is very, very cool. But for a novice or just starting to try OP, What would be a good starter set? Let’s just say, okay, I’m a mother’s man, or I’m a [00:18:00] McGuire’s guy. I want to try OP. I want to take a walk on the wild side. Dan, what would you say? Okay, Don, I want you to use this, this, and this first.

Just try this. What would be your starter kit?

Dann E. Williams: I often say on my podcast, if I was stranded on a desert island with my car and only two products, it would be eco wash and ceramic detailer. I would be lonely, but my car would be on point. So that’s answer number one. That’s literally what I use to wash my own cars.

Fantastic. I can’t express my love for EcoWash enough, but it’s real. It’s real. And then if you wanted to like really try our products, we currently have a sale right now on like a box kit that has seven products in it and it has everything that you need to take care of your car. And I’ve kind of mentioned this before, we have the only compliant comprehensive written express warranty in the detail aftermarket.

And because of that, we have to follow a little bit of rules that a lot of companies can duck under because we have this compliant warranty program.

Don Weberg: So your products are backed by a seven year warranty. Is that right?

Dann E. Williams: We have a three [00:19:00] year, five year, seven year, and nine year warranty program. So you have different tiers for it.

Yes. And then for RVs and boats, we have a five year warranty program. Same we have for power sports. We can put a warranty on a side by side or a snowmobile. We have a paint protection film warranty that we’re getting ready to launch very soon, and it’ll come out with our paint protection film. And that will cover any road debris that comes up and strikes the vehicle, breaks through the paint protection film.

Damages to paint will pay up to 2, 500 to pull the film off, retouch up the panel and refilm the car.

Don Weberg: I’m going to take my car. I’m going to take your product, slap it on my car. The warranty is in place. How do you know I applied it properly? Tell us about the warranty and how it works. What does it take to accidentally deactivate the warranty?

What does it take to activate the warranty?

Dann E. Williams: So only the warranties can be sold through our authorized installer network, and we have about 350 in the United States authorized installers right now. And once they do it, they input it into our portal system and you have an actual hard [00:20:00] card that is the warranty itself.

And being that it’s a compliant warranty, it has things listed on there because it’s a written express warranty. It really lists everything that’s covered, everything that’s not covered. An insurance company who backs it, 1 800 number to call in case you have any warranty claim. An aggregate that you’re working towards if you have any warranty claims.

And here’s what’s really, really cool about it. What gives me a lot of confidence. If you were, say, in Florida, and you got your ceramic coating from somebody in Florida, and that detailer went out of business, what are you going to do? Well, with Owner’s Pride, you’re going to call this 1 800 number, and we’re going to take care of you.

What if owner’s pride went out of business? It happens. Businesses do go out of business. Well, even if we went out of business, we have an insurance company that backs all of our warranties. So you’re going to call 1 800 number. You’re going to get taken care of. Here’s another scenario that people don’t really think about.

What if you get your job done in Florida and you move to the middle of Montana and there’s not an owner’s pride installer for 500 miles in any direction? Well, I think you guys see where this is going. You’re going to call that 1 800 number and we’re going to find [00:21:00] somebody to take care of you.

Don Weberg: The guarantee is really, really cool today.

Like you’re saying, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that before from a wax and polish company. But how do you guarantee them for that long when most waxes only last three to six months on the outside? How are you guaranteeing it for that long? And what do I need to do to make sure I don’t void what you’ve done?

Dann E. Williams: A wax and a sealant, that’s a lesser time of a product that goes on a car. Like if you think of a wax, when it gets hot, it just kind of melts like a candle. So that kind of technology doesn’t stay as long. A ceramic coating is just a much longer lasting, because it actually makes a chemical cross link to the substrate.

As far as the warranty itself, because it’s a compliant warranty, there’s really not a whole bunch of hiccups in there that are going to get you. We know that there’s going to be a one to three percent warranty rate claim. That’s just kind of the industry standard, and we’re going to pay some of them out.

As a matter of fact, if there’s a company that is selling a warranty, and some of them do use the word warranty, if they were to switch it over and use the word guarantee, like you’re [00:22:00] saying, that would make them absolutely compliant and okay. But the word warranty comes with a different set of rules. But really the only things that would mess you up in there, again, if you have damage on the car, I believe it gives you 60 days of noticing the damage that they want you to report that now there’s really no way that if it was a hundred days, they would, nobody would ever really know, but it’s on there for that.

But there’s not a whole bunch of gitches because it’s an actual compliant warranty. We’re really trying to do business a little bit different.

Don Weberg: We’re really talking about ceramic

Dann E. Williams: coating. We’re not talking about waxes. Correct. And as a matter of fact, we don’t even have a wax. I literally have not one single wax product in our line.

Don Weberg: Let’s go back to what you were saying though. You ceramic coat a car, the customer goes out two, three months later, four months later, whatever, either the owner or they hire someone, a detailer to polish it, wax it, bam. They’ve just pulled your ceramic coating off there. Now the ceramic coat is gone. They call you for a warranty.

How do you know that it was polished and removed?

Dann E. Williams: We’d never know. We would just pay it out and move on.

Don Weberg: [00:23:00] No kidding. Yeah. And when you say pay it out, do you mean reapply it or give a refund or whatever the customer wants?

Dann E. Williams: Every warranty that we have has an aggregate. So say our seven year warranty has a 4, 000 aggregate.

We’re the only company that actually would compensate the detail shop who is doing the repair. We’ll pay them a 70 an hour labor rate to do any repair plus give them product. And the customer will get whatever problem they have taken care of. Very

Crew Chief Eric: nice. So like a car warranty, where you have to take it in for scheduled maintenance and things like that.

Do you have to do the same thing for the owner’s pride products? Do you have to have it reapplied to basically stay within spec?

Dann E. Williams: In the Magnuson Moss Act and the federal trade commission who regulate warranty sales in the United States, you can’t tell somebody if they pay for a warranty for a ceramic coating, that they have to do anything that’s like out of the ordinary.

or extraordinary to maintain it or their warranty will go to waste. And some companies do indeed say, if you go through a tunnel carwash, that it’ll avoid your warranty, or if you don’t come back and give them money to do a [00:24:00] reapplication once a year, legally can’t do that. It’s kind of the wild, wild West out here in the world of detailing though.

Once you sell somebody a warranty in the United States, you cannot legally ask them for more money to keep that warranty in force. Once you have it, you have it,

Don Weberg: Dan, looking over your website. There are a lot of products with unique names, slick, OPX light, Deacon X spotless superwash. Look, I was a valet and a bouncer for years.

And I’ll tell you something. A lot of the guys I work with had names just like this. Okay. But a lot of them, when you get into them, they sound very similar to each other. You could read everything about what the differences are, but what are some of the differences highlight us on that?

Dann E. Williams: Product like slick ceramic detailer and ceramic plus are all sealants.

They have a little bit of ceramic component to them. We use ceramic plus mostly as a drying aid. A lot of people, when I say we use a drying aid, they’re like, I have a towel, buddy, what do I need a drying aid for? And there’s a great answer for that. So if you’ve ever like dried off a, maybe a dark [00:25:00] colored SUV or a big vehicle, and by the time you get all the way around it, you got to go back around with the detail spray and catch all the snail trails.

While the car is still wet, put a shot onto the panel and just dry it off as you go. It makes a nice little glow on the paint and you don’t have to go back. So it does make you more efficient. Slick is a ceramic detail spray, and then so is ceramic detailer. The difference in those is about four percent.

40 in price for a 16 ounce bottle. The difference is the amount of the raw ceramic material. There’s a whole bunch in that pink sauce.

Don Weberg: Some of those bottles are the size of a thumb and you’re looking at like 40, 50 bucks. I mean, it was pricey to say the least. So that little bottle does not look like it would get around my entire vehicle.

Dann E. Williams: This one little bottle, because it’s just this really thin layer of ceramic coating that goes on your paint. This is enough to do a big old SUV. 29 milliliters or 1 ounce.

Don Weberg: No kidding. How do you do that? How do you take that and apply it all over? Let’s just take a Range Rover.

Dann E. Williams: We use an applicator pad.

Okay. That’s a sponge wrapped in some sort of cloth and like a microfiber [00:26:00] kind of cloth. You just put a nice wet layer onto the side of it and then just rub it onto the paint. And like with the three, five and seven, these solvent based coatings, again, it’s just lay it wet and let it sweat technology.

Don Weberg: No kidding.

Dann E. Williams: Some of our self healing coatings are a little bit more tricky because they’re a lot thicker and it’s a very different application,

Crew Chief Eric: but all of those are not DIY products. Those are to be installed by a professional, right?

Dann E. Williams: Yeah, and I do have a couple of DIY ceramic coating products, which is my OPX light, which is the self healing coating.

And that’s a solid two year coating on the consumer level. But the tricky part when somebody does their own car is getting all of the prep work done prior to putting the ceramic coating on. That’s where all of the hard work. The coating itself, not that tough, but typically to put ceramic coating on a car, we’re going to decontaminate the car, both mechanically and chemically.

So we’re going to get the car wet and wash it. Whether you use eco wash and don’t rinse it at all, or you use traditional, get it wet with a hose and rub some soap suds around on it and then rinse it. After that, we take our [00:27:00] DeconX product and DeconX is a thiol base. Thiol is a derivative of sulfur. So it stinks.

It smells like farts, cherries, and feets. It’s pretty stinky and money because it’s a really cool product. But what it does is you mist it onto the car and it attacks all of the ferrous oxides that are embedded into your clear coat. So if you were to think about you’re driving your car down the street and you hit the brakes and it smashes against those calipers and then brake dust forms, this vacuum is behind your car.

You stop and all the dust. Falls down onto your car and then it just embeds in your clear coat. And some people, I don’t know if you’ve ever done this, but if you feel your paint and it feels like it has bumps, it feels like you’re reading a Helen Keller novel, that’s fallout that’s embedded in the clear coat.

Decon X just melts it away. So as soon as it hits it, it starts turning red. It just makes it look like the car’s bleeding. We use that in tandem with a clay towel or a clay bar. A clay bar or a clay towel will shear all of the fallout off. So if these little nubs on my fingers were pieces of fallout, it’s going to kind of shear [00:28:00] everything off.

But you’ll still have the stuff that’s in the pores, kind of like the pores of your skin. So if you use it in tandem with the DeConX, you’re shearing everything off and you’re melting it out of the pores and getting your paint as bare as possible, even prior to polishing it, before you put a ceramic coating on it, is imperative.

So after that step, we’d rinse that off, and even though it’s stinky and it turns color like that, it’s pH of like 6. 7 to 7. 3, so it’s very neutral, you’re not gonna do any damage to anything with it. Also works great for wheels. You see like a lot of, especially the European cars, they throw off so much brake dust and they just turn black.

Well, this’ll do the same thing with that and just kind of turn red and dissolve it all off. Use a little brush on there. Looking good. Looking good. So the next thing I do is I rinse the car off and then you’re going to want to use spotless. Spotless is a very light acid and that is a mineral deposit remover.

If we think of the scenario, maybe you don’t have big chunky water spots all over your car. But, in that scenario that we talked about a little bit ago where we dried the car off with just a towel and we had water remnants [00:29:00] on there, over time, if that’s how you’re washing and drying your car, you can really build up minerals on the outside that you can’t even see.

And I would argue before I polish a car, I want to make sure that I get all of the metal pieces off so they don’t get stuck in my polishing pad and my compound, as well as any minerals that are on there, because I don’t want those to be mixed in either. You can schmutz it around with a brush or just let it dwell and then rinse that off.

And then the last step that you’re going to do before polishing a car is if there’s any oily or greasy dirt or anything like that on there, we’re going to use some of our Grime or Clean. Grime is a heavy duty degreaser, so if you have a big road tar or something on there, it’ll move that off. And Clean is about 11 on the pH scale and it’s an all purpose cleaner.

I would rinse that part off too, dry the car off, now you’re ready to polish.

Crew Chief Eric: So do you guys carry a polisher? Do you have a mid size? step before you go to the coding.

Dann E. Williams: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So what we have is owner’s pride compound and we’ve kind of simplified the process. A lot of things that we look at is trying to make everybody efficient and profitable [00:30:00] and run a business as well as protect the cars.

Owner’s pride compound is a one step. All in one compound and polish. So it’s pad dependent. So you can use it with our foam cutting pad or our foamed wool pad, and you’re going to get a lot of cut the maroon pad. You can do a lot of cars on a one step, some of the darker color vehicles. You’re going to have to do a second with a softer pad, but the cool thing that makes it so efficient is you don’t even have to wipe the compound.

off of the car, you know, use one pad, then switch pads, use a little more product and go right over it

Don Weberg: with all these steps. This is why we probably just want to hire somebody like you or one of your people to take care of the car. Cause it sounds like the days of dishwash, soap and turtle wax are over.

Dann E. Williams: Yeah. And that’s what I was hoping that we would highlight. Like we do have the products and for those. Auto enthusiasts who love doing their stuff. This would be really great. As a matter of fact, we do training classes. You can call our 1 800 number and I’ll walk you through it. If you’re a consumer, I absolutely love talking about this stuff.

I do it all day long, but as far as ceramic coating the car, [00:31:00] there’s a lot that goes into it. And not only that, Don, back when you were polishing cars with your DuPont number seven, you were using a rotary polisher and a wool pad. I already know the answer to this because that’s what they had then. Right?

He’s like Mr. Miyagi. Oh, those old rubbing compounds. gotcha.

Don Weberg: Yeah. I was raised up in the day when you used a polisher and the compound or polish, whatever you’re using, you had this very, very high chance that you were going to burn the paint. Back then the paints weren’t as good as they are. Say what you will about water based paint.

Honestly, I see no trouble with them. I really don’t, but yeah, those machines were so fast and they were so powerful. They would just burn right through the paint. So I never trusted myself with one and I never trusted those machines. So yeah, I basically young, dumb and all muscle, no brains. Let’s just.

Polish it out and we got it done. It wasn’t until years later that I literally was taught how to use a buffer by the McFlyers wax company of all people, they literally brought me in to do a photo shoot. And okay, Don, let’s get the buffer. Oh [00:32:00] God, do we have to use a buffer? Oh, how do you do it? My hands, you know, right here.

And, oh, no, no, no, come on, we’ll show you how to use a buffer. You’re never going to burn paint with this buffer. It’s a brand new type of buffer. Oh, really? And yeah, they showed me that buffer technology, like everything else, had evolved. And that was what gave me the confidence.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, Don’s not alone in this camp.

And he found out recently that I still don’t use a buffer, and went out of his way to get me one. And then I got to learn how to use it. But I still do it the old fashioned way, but I also grew up and still use products that require that more genteel approach where it’s like, you need to do it by hand.

You need to spend time with the car. It is a system. They do work together. Things like that. My fear too is with some of these other products is man, the minute I put the buffer on there, I’m going to end up burning the paint or someone to have some sort of adverse reaction. So it’s sort of like, I learned how to do it a certain way and it works and it comes out great.

So I’m going to keep doing in that way till maybe I switched to a different product. You

Dann E. Williams: guys are. Fun. This is just a fun conversation. My gosh. Okay. Polishers. So back then we had rotary polishers, right? [00:33:00] And you’re right. Those are more dangerous of a polisher because it’s just going in a forced rotation and it creates a lot of heat.

You sit in one spot for too long. You could burn right through there. Also body shops. They still use those predominantly. So they’ll do a body repair. They put paint on the car. They use their 3m in the purple bottle, which just. Fills everything and it looks magical when you leave the body shop, wash the car twice, and it looks like a tiger stripes all over the car.

And those are called holograms. Your paint is supposed to be a very flat surface. So if that polisher head gets turned up to the side and it’s kind of cutting a little divot. And so as you move your head around in the sun, that’s what those are. But gosh, they’ve come a long ways with polishers. Now, when I started there was Porter cable was kind of upgrade and there was something called cyclo.

So the cyclo is the two little pads. They made those for polishing aluminum trailers originally back in the, I believe the late fifties, then the Porter cable came into play as an [00:34:00] orbital polisher, I think it’s like 24 is the model and it’s a little sander, but it has about a seven millimeter throw. So it has a very small throw.

I bought a Fez tool, R O F E Q one 50, which is both a forced rotation. And an orbital. Later Flex came out with a similar polisher that’s a lot more known in our industry. Woodworking tools. But that Fez tool is an army tank, I’ll tell you what. That is a really cool machine that I have. Fast forward a little bit more.

Jason Rose was one of the big people from Aquires. I don’t know if that’s who taught you to polish, but he’s at Rupes now. I’m doing a training class with him in Colorado in a couple months.

Don Weberg: Yeah, they have a beautiful facility up there.

Dann E. Williams: They came out with like a really big game changer in the entire world of polishing.

The 21 millimeter long throw polisher. So now it’s not a forced rotation, but that orbit is 21 millimeters, which really has a lot more travel and you can get a lot more correction done. And it’s a lot safer. [00:35:00] I venture a guess you could put that polisher in a brand new person’s hand. And, you know, as long as they don’t have something that they’re going to run into or go over trim, maybe really anybody could polish for that thing.

It’s really, really nice. And you’ve got to try to hurt the paint with it.

Crew Chief Eric: As we’ve talked about the evolution, not only of polishers and equipment and gear, but the chemicals themselves, we’re also starting to see an evolution. In the way we paint cars, and there’s one company in particular that is taking a step completely away from paint and going to wrapped cars from the factory, and you’re seeing more and more wrapped cars on the road because of the porous nature of paint, which we already understand.

Wrap is even worse. Then you get a chemical that gets underneath of it, maybe starts messing with adhesive. Has owners probably taken into account wrapped cars? Have you developed products specifically for them? And again, your warranty, because wraps are so much more sensitive than paint is.

Dann E. Williams: We don’t sell a vinyl wrap product ourself, so we certainly couldn’t put a warranty on it.

[00:36:00] Plus, I don’t think other than whatever comes from the manufacturer of those is going to be viable. If I had a car that was vinyl wrapped, instead of putting a ceramic coating on it, I would just wash it regularly and use some of the ceramic detail spray and you would be really good and protect and just use it every time you wash it.

Don Weberg: So you can use a ceramic coating on

Dann E. Williams: Yeah, you can. I’ve seen a lot of guys put it on like rally stripes on some of the cars, you know Even like a matte finish it doesn’t add an extreme gloss to it It just keeps a nice sheen maybe makes it a little bit darker in color a little bit richer But it does still offer some protection on there for you It

Crew Chief Eric: offers some UV protection from fading and a lot of other things I was alluding to the one manufacturer that is now starting to wrap their cars from the factory and that’s the Tesla.

And so that invites us into a conversation about EVs. And both Don and I have heard that there are some unique properties to EVs, especially non hybrid pure EV vehicles, where they’re actually doing some advanced body and chassis grounding. And so it has these [00:37:00] interesting ionization properties where people are claiming that wax actually doesn’t adhere to the bodies of these EVs.

So I’m wondering there, Have you come across this? Is this myth? Is this fact? Are there challenges with EVs, especially with the owner’s pride products?

Dann E. Williams: I’ve not heard anything about this. Kind of makes me think of like, if you have a boat that’s sitting out in the ocean, you have that chunk of zinc that sits on the back of it, you know, in the water.

But I, I don’t really know. I’ve got, I haven’t seen any Teslas. Clang it around a chunk of zinc behind it. It would

Don Weberg: be a good solution though, wouldn’t it? Now that you

Dann E. Williams: mentioned it, we’ve

Crew Chief Eric: myth busted that. Thank you, Dan.

Dann E. Williams: I have heard however, on airplanes, because we have some guys that do airplanes and I have heard that there are some components on an airplane that you don’t want to put coding on.

I have never coded an airplane personally, never even actually been involved in detailing of an airplane. So I don’t know that. And as far as a wax sticking on some kind of a surface. I would imagine it’s going to sit on top of a surface until it melts [00:38:00] off. It doesn’t just magically get pushed off. I wouldn’t think.

I wouldn’t think. But I think a ceramic coating is going to be superior over a wax every time.

Crew Chief Eric: And it’s an interesting dilemma that Tesla is specifically faced with, because as we know, they’ve had issues where the paint is literally falling off the cars, which is why they’re going to wraps. And you know, there is a cheaper side to that from a cost perspective too.

I mean, there’s a lot of speculation of what the heck is really going on, It does lend itself to a very interesting question about, well, do other EVs suffer these problems? You know, what are we faced with now as we’re starting to change the way cars are built? And the paints of today, as you already said, are different than the lacquer paints of a Packard of the 1930s.

I mean, those paints will stand the test of time, and then some. So, It’s really interesting how all this is changing and playing out.

Dann E. Williams: And then, okay, Elon. So he wants to be putting wraps on cars for goodness sakes. Now he brings out his truck and it’s like you’re DeLorean. It’s a, you know, all stainless steel.

Crew Chief Eric: You guys are going to have to make a product for that. I

Don Weberg: know. I mean, obviously the end caps [00:39:00] of a DeLorean are a urethane product with paint. I mean, honestly, DeLorean people for the most part use household products. They use Bar Keeper’s Friend is one of the biggest ones that they grain the DeLorean with it.

There’s one guy out there who uses. Pledge of all things. He literally grabs his pledge and sprays it on there and he wipes with the grain and he says, it looks great. The trouble with him is he’ll pledge up his car wherever we meet. And then we go to destination B and by destination B, his car is just completely.

Slathered in dirt and dust and grime because that pledge of just attracting everything to it. I

Dann E. Williams: guess at least it smells lemony fresh.

Don Weberg: Yes, that’s true, but we try to avoid lemon references to DeLoreans. We try to get away from that, you know, we have enough problems already.

Crew Chief Eric: This is an interesting dilemma. It maybe wasn’t a big deal 40 years ago, but If Cybertrucks are going to be as popular as people think they are, now we got an issue of carrying and [00:40:00] feeding for a stainless steel finish.

Don Weberg: But is there anything you recommend either from your product line that would be good or the stainless that maybe we don’t know about?

Dann E. Williams: My wife uses EcoWash on our stainless steel appliances and it works really, really great. So I’m going to say EcoWash for one. Number two, What the heck do you put on a stainless steel?

That’s a great question. I had an interview with Carlotta Champagne and she was talking about hers and I think she said that she uses oven cleaner.

Don Weberg: Yeah.

Dann E. Williams: And I just saw a really interesting discussion about this in a detail forum and they were talking about because these things are stainless steel, it’s such a hard metal, we have a metal coating and I don’t really know how viable it’ll be if it can really grab onto that really hard surface.

Maybe paint protection film is the way to go on these things.

Crew Chief Eric: So you’re basically wrapping it at that point.

Dann E. Williams: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, what’s interesting is I think the stainless steel of the DeLorean 40 years ago is a different caliber and quality of stainless steel of what’s being put out today, because I’ve been around Don’s car, I’ve driven his car.

You know, we were. Tooling around and hooning in it, but the difference [00:41:00] is that when you would open and close the doors, you touch it. It didn’t have that marring effect. It didn’t leave a lot of handprints. You know, you look at a modern appliance in your kitchen and the minute you touch your dishwasher, my hands weren’t dirty.

Why does it look like this? And so people are saying the same thing about the quality of the stainless on the cyber trucks. The ones that are running around the day one additions that are out there. What we really need is that anti marring, anti fingerprint protection more than anything, because stainless clean, dirty, or otherwise, it’s really hard to tell.

Don Weberg: I’ll tell you one product that everybody wants, or they try to get from their appliance cleaning stuff. Are those little wipes that come out of the plastic baggie? My God, we could sell those all day long to DeLorean people because then they’ve got their little wipe. They just wipe it and they’re done.

They throw away the little cloth versus, Oh my God, I gotta pull out the Windex. I gotta pull out the paper towels. I gotta make sure the graining is right. If some company out there would develop that, I guarantee it would sell pretty well. Especially, like I say, with Cybertruck coming out, if it’s really [00:42:00] stainless, yeah, you’re going to have more interest in it.

Dann E. Williams: Writing down the note right now.

Don Weberg: Yeah, I see that. Yeah. One thing I was wondering, Dan, coming from a detailing background, OP offers the opportunity to become an installer. Tell us about that. How do we become an OP pro?

Dann E. Williams: We have a network of authorized installers to become an installer. You have to have a business license and insurance, you know, be running a legitimate business because we’re selling a compliant warranty program.

We reach out and Have a phone interview, get a feel for what they need and what they’re looking for and what problems they’d had before and see how we can fix it. And if we’re a good fit, if it’s a good fit, both ways, they have to buy a starter kit and they get listed on our installer map and they have a private group and we offer business coaching.

Inside of our network, which is really cool.

Crew Chief Eric: You obviously wear many hats at owner’s pride and one of your other jobs is the host of the Owner’s Pride podcast. Now tell me, for those of us that are hearing about this for the first time, is this show just about like waxes and polishing? Like are you going off the deep end [00:43:00] talking about this kinda stuff or what’s the show all about?

Dann E. Williams: So with Owners Pride podcast, and I’ve been doing a podcast essentially since about 2017. When I came to this company, they wanted me to do one here as well, instead of just. Being four detailers and like staying in a really small niche group. I have a lot of connections to people and I I’m able to bring in, you know, I’ve had Alan Sir, Jr.

On Paul Page, who’s the voice of the new 500. I’ve had Mike Michalowicz, Joey Coleman, Marcus Sheridan. These are all authors. A couple of Playboy models have been on here that have really neat car collections. So we’ve kind of expanded and opened this thing into more of all things, auto enthusiasts. The reason that we do that is we can touch different people and it puts our name and brand right in front of their face.

Gosh, stories of people who are successful and have done really great things or written great books. They’re just incredible guests to have.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, then we’ll treat this as an unofficial crossover and maybe you’ll see us on one of the Owner’s Pride episodes in the future.

Dann E. Williams: Oh my goodness. [00:44:00] Absolutely. I would love to have that happen.

Crew Chief Eric: When we look at this, this movie, Long journey that you’ve had in the world of detailing and now with owner’s pride and the business development side of things and the podcast and everything’s going on. You got a pretty full plate. So what’s next, Dan? What’s next for you? What’s next for owner’s pride?

Anything you could share with us? Some spoilers maybe?

Dann E. Williams: I’ve been working really hard on building a structured coaching program in owner’s pride. And um, I got certified with Mike Michalowicz fix this next. It’s just such a great system. And all of the people who do coaching in our space, kind of like the podcast, they do it in a group where you maybe watch videos or you go to a group thing.

And they’re really just pushing marketing stuff and trying to take people’s money. You know, we charge a very fair price. And what we do is we use a tool to assess. And find the most vital need of a company. And then we work together to set a plan that we can measure and nurture and follow through to repair whatever that problem is.

And then we move on to the next thing. All the [00:45:00] while, you know, we’re still putting all of the components in the business, but it’s very focused on fixing one problem at a time. Because I think a lot of business owners Biggest problem is they don’t know what their biggest problem is.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, Dan, we’ve reached that part of the episode where we like to ask our guests any shout outs, promotions, or anything else you’d like to share that we haven’t covered thus far.

Dann E. Williams: Out of everything that we do, my favorite part of it is I get to really help a lot of them, younger people who are newer in business, start to realize their true potential and actually grow and scale a business and take care of their family. Because this is such a blue collar industry, a lot of people start, if you have a bucket and some soap and a towel, you can have a detailing business.

Essentially. A lot of the guys focus so hard on becoming the best polisher and being the technician that they really skip over the business side of it. And we can come in and we help these guys realize the business. And then they actually scale their business. And there’s not a lot that’s more rewarding for me out of this industry than that.

If you do have a small business and you’re interested in any of that side, you can go to [00:46:00] ownerspride. fixthisnext. com and you can take the assessment and we can either work together or you can just find out what’s going on with your business. Second, Owners Pride podcast. It’s available on YouTube and everywhere that you can listen to a podcast.

Please do check it out. Ownerspride. com is our website. You can go there and get products. You can find an authorized installer. You can apply to become an installer. I think that’s about that.

Don Weberg: Owner’s Pride carries a comprehensive line of professional finish care products for owners who want to protect their investment, maximize value, and maintain a lasting impression.

With decades of scientific research combined with a field experience in professional auto detailing, they have developed the ultimate in cleaning, protecting, and maintaining the finish of your vehicle, boat, motorcycle, RV, or ATV. A better than showroom shine with ten times the surface resilience and owner’s pride finish will outshine and outperform your expectations, guaranteed.

Shop their entire line of [00:47:00] interior and exterior detailing kits, ceramic coatings, rinseless wash, and more. Professional wheel and tire brushes, microfiber edgeless towels by visiting www.ownerspride.com or following them on social media at Owners Pride Club on Twitter, at owners price Care, on Facebook at Op Care on Instagram, and be sure to check out their YouTube channel as well as the Owner Pride Podcast.

Everywhere you stream or listen.

Crew Chief Eric: With that, Dan, I can’t thank you enough for coming on BreakFix and sharing your story and educating us on owner’s pride. I’m actually really excited to try out some of the new products that I’m learning about here. I have a new way of thinking about things. I’ve got some things I want to experiment with.

So this has really been exciting to take a deeper dive into the world of car care. And I really thank you for sharing your knowledge with us and with our audience. Absolutely. Thank you so much. I had a blast.

Don Weberg: Good to meet you, Dan.[00:48:00]

Crew Chief Eric: We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of break fix podcast brought to you by Grand Touring Motorsports. If you’d like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure to follow us on all social media platforms at Grand Touring Motorsports. And if you’d like to learn more about the content of this episode, be sure to check out the follow on article at GT Motorsports dot O R G.

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So consider signing up for Patreon today at www. patreon. com forward slash GT motorsports, and remember without you, none of this would [00:49:00] be possible.

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

• 00:00 Introduction to Break Fix Podcast
• 00:50 Meet Dan Williams of Owner’s Pride
• 01:28 Dan’s Journey into Detailing
• 04:42 The Birth of Owner’s Pride
• 06:40 Understanding Detailing Products
• 08:05 Ceramic Coatings Explained
• 18:55 Owner’s Pride Warranty and Maintenance
• 24:14 Exploring Owner’s Pride Product Line
• 25:45 Applying Ceramic Coating to a Big SUV
• 26:22 DIY Ceramic Coating Products
• 26:41 Prepping Your Car for Ceramic Coating
• 27:11 The Importance of Decontamination
• 28:40 Rinsing and Spotless Application
• 29:41 Polishing Before Ceramic Coating
• 32:56 Evolution of Polishing Tools
• 36:43 Challenges with EVs and Wraps
• 42:05 Becoming an OP Pro Installer
• 42:46 Owner’s Pride Podcast and Future Plans
• 45:10 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Bonus content available as a #PITSTOP mini-sode.

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