Jake's Newsletter 5/1/17

Okay Jake....after reading your newsletter I feel I need to be your salesman. I've been selling and doing engineering for electric motors and HVAC equipment to the nuclear power industry for 25 years and want to get into cars!

After reading some his posts and visiting the website I want to take the m96 classes. I've always rebuilt v8s or i4s which are so much easier! I never envisioned installing wristpins and retainers by feel and checking with a borescope. That's challenging. I've been spoiled to date.

Some of the text: From Jake... It has been a great spring 2017, here at Flat 6 Innovations! We are continually blessed with a never ending supply of new engine builds, and projects. As always, we stay so busy that I fail to prioritize preparing newsletters, and this this year is no different. I've been busy finishing up the development of our 3.5 liter Performer, and the mechanical restoration of an original 1970 914/6, to include engine restoration. One thing has been much different this year, and that's the absolutely insane amount of emails and phone calls we have received from future Porsche owners who are looking for the perfect car, or think they have found that car, and they are wanting to hear our thoughts. Of course, we are the foremost authorities with the M96/ M97 engines; but, we don't sell vehicles here at Flat 6 Innovations. It seems that everyone wants to buy a Porsche from us, fitted with our engine; but, we are engine builders, and developers! We make poor sales people,(as evidenced by our total neglect of sending out enough newsletters!) and care nothing about selling vehicles, as our work finds us. We feel that building ad creating is a lot more fun than selling things! In past years we'd receive a couple of phone calls per week, in the spring with folks asking the normal questions, about how to buy a solid 9X6 or 9X7. Of course IMS/ RMS and water pump topics always come up, and the phone calls are almost always verbatim in their content. This year its much, much different! The amount of phone calls we have received like this is easily 6X more than it has ever been! Buyers have even more questions, and are willing to spend more money on the right car; rather than looking for the cheapest car they can find. People seem more informed, and determined to seek out the right car, not just the first one they find, and test drive. I've also noted that other people have also noted the positive differences in these earlier water-cooled examples, over the slightly newer cars. I've been bragging on the earliest examples for years, as we see around 100 9X6/ 9X7 models per year, and the early cars are always my favorites to test drive on my 104 mile test loop through the North Georgia mountains. We have more and more people who are specifically looking for the earliest of cars, and they want one with our engine. You'll read about one of these vehicles in this newsletter, and as we speak that 996 C4 can be found live on the BAT Auctions, where it has stirred quite the buzz over the past few days. The problem is, our engines are not cheap, and take time to prepare, so very, very seldom does anyone put their vehicle equipped with a Flat 6 Innovations engine up for sale... All of this crazy demand forced me to go out on a limb and create this newsletter. We don't have the office staff to answer all of these phone calls from folks wanting to buy cars with our engines, so I decided to put every car that I knew of that was for sale with our engine fitted in this newsletter. Hopefully this will connect those who are in the market with the FSI powered vehicles that we know of, and keep our phones dedicated to those with engine problems :-) Now, for the last 6 years Flat 6 Innovations has worked with a local used car dealer, Stonegate Auto Sales, to repair and outfit the Porsches that they source with our engines. When someone calls us with a broken Porsche that needs a heart, we refer them to Stonegate Auto Sales. In turn, Stonegate Auto Sales will usually sell that Porsche with a broken heart to a customer, who wants our engine fitted. In this case the new buyer gets a great deal and the very first mile they put on their new (to them) Porsche will be equipped with Flat 6 Innovations power. In other cases the engine can be repaired, and Flat 6 Innovations handles that, and applies some upgrades as well. There are also some instances where Stonegate Auto Sales will purchase a new "Stocker" engine from Flat 6 Innovations, and have that fitted to one of the vehicles here at our facility. In those instances we treat the project exactly like all the others, by applying our break- in service, dyno service, and first engine oil service, along with engine inspection. This means those vehicles are ready to hit the road without worry! So, now that I've explained this, you will find the vehicles that Stonegate Auto Sales currently has remaining in their inventory at the time this newsletter has been compiled. You will also find the link to the Bring a Trailer Auction, as well as a link to another of our customer's cars for sale on Auto Trader. All of that said, in closing I have to include the disclaimer.... Raby Enterprises and Flat 6 Innovations are not the sellers of these vehicles mentioned in this newsletter. We are hoping to pass the word about what's for sale to those who follow us, and may be looking to buy a 9X6 or 9X7 model. Please contact the sellers directly and please don't call, or email our offices with questions about any of these vehicles, as we will refer these questions to the sellers of the vehicles :-) Jake Raby Founder, President Raby Engine Development

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Rebuilding an M96 is a temporary insanity for those of us who have done engines before. You quickly realize how little you really know. It is a humbling experience. Worse is the humiliation of reading some of Jake's simple questions about oil and coolant circulation in the M96 and realizing to quote his staff: " you did not know what you did not know" and worse you had no clue you needed to ask. But if you have the time and funds - do it.

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time is prohibitive this year thanks to work. Next year will be better and work generates the funds.

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Nope. No sales people here. Never has been, never will be. Sales people force people to buy things, they have an agenda, and they want to make a commission. Not under my roof. If It will be sold, and will have my name on it, I'll be the person you'll deal with. This way I know exactly what is promised, and what we will deliver. I know what someone wants, and I ensure that we can deliver that. These are the things that anyone who is "just an employee" can never be trained to do well enough. No one cares as much about the business as I do, after all I started this business at age 13, and built it from an old barn with a dirt floor into what it is today. Today more than ever its increasingly important to vet purchasers, as more and more can't be pleased, or have an unreal expectation (that no one could meet) and have a huge desire for instant gratification. Ok, rant off!

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No offense to all you sales types out there. Holy ****, Jake, you make them sound almost as bad as lawyers and pedophiles. (Apologies to pedophiles)

I'm just saying...

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Thats pretty much how I feel. I'll never hear a purchaser say "I was promised xxxxxxx by your salesman". I document everything and have extremely clear understanding up front.

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I disagree on your take on salesmen. I've been one for 17 years and never once have I sold something just to make a commission. I think you are confusing real sales guys with bottom rung car salesmen. I don't sell cars, I sell solutions in a different industry. If an individual is interested in my solution, my job is to tailor it to their needs. If my solution isn't a fit, I will literally tell them where they can find what the need. While I agree that the person you describe exists (and can be most often found selling cars), there are tons of us out here that could help your business. With the right person they can meet all of your objectives; setting realistic expectations, translating what the customer desires into the best fit for the product you offer, and delivering it to the customer in a manner that satisfies them. All the while the customer never feels they are being "sold" on anything.

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I agree with this statement, I've been selling high dollar repairs for 25 years, plus I do engineering and I try to teach my customers everything I know. I don't sell $250K repair jobs by trying to tell them something that isn't true. I agree there are a lot out there, but I'm not one of them.

A good sales job is the best job in the world. A bad sales job is one of the worst you can have. And you can say whatever you want about sales people, good or bad, and probably find an example to match. But nothing happens in a business until somebody sells something. The truth is though, Jake is a great salesman. He listens, analyzes your needs, and then uses his vast amount of knowledge to get you a solution that precisely matches your application. But because his pipeline is full and he has no desire to expand, he's in the unique situation that he can turn away business at will. So maintaining control of the sales process allows him to screen his customers to determine if he wants to do business with them. I wish I could get away with this.

I learned a long time ago the best machinist in town seems to be the biggest jerk initially.

....in my experience, THAT is true of every truly gifted technician in every field. All of my best, most trusted folks I take my motorcycles and cars to are the same. All of the best folks I have hired to roof my home, fix my plumbing, or air conditioning, have all been the same. And that's why I am the same. I have the exact same personality and that's why all of my vehicle repair experiences have been top notch. I "get" these folks, because, in my own way, I'm ONE of these folks. Jake has made my life sooooo much more fun. I owe him a tremendous debt. He and Jud, and everyone else at Flat 6 have been a joy to work with. Because of them, I own my dream car. Because of them, my wife and I have taken multiple cross-country, dream vacations in our 986 Boxster. When I read forum trolls complaining about Jake, or other knowledgeable techs who seem a bit "short" with them, I think about that scene from the movie "Tombstone". Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday and the posse get into a big shootout with Curly Bill and the Cowboys at a river. It looks bad for the fellas when Wyatt walks into the gun fire and kills Curly Bill at point blank range and Doc and the others step in and they drive off the cowboys. After the miraculous battle, "Creek" Johnson sees Doc Holiday coughing up blood and asks him, "Doc, why are you here?" Holiday says, "Wyatt Earp is my friend." Johnson says, "Hell, I got lots of friends!" Doc Holiday simply replies in a quiet voice, "I don't." In my mind, techs like Jake are like Wyatt Earp. They are the best at what they do. They don't suffer fools. And if you are their friend, then you have a TRUE friend. And those folks don't have a lot of casual friends. But the friends they do have, are friends for life.

My wife is in sales and she is great at it. However, when you own a small business and your name is on it, direct control is often the best route to go. It ensures your business fits your goals and visions. Im not sure many of you remember but when Sam Walton was alive his stores were nice to visit. Now I'd rather injure myself than enter a Wal Mart.

Sales people have their place. It just isn't here. If I wanted to offer a generic product that was mass produced and like everything else, then I'd likely get bored with selling engines and wouldn't care who they were sold to. In that case a sales person would be great.... Just like advertisements in magazines and etc, which we also don't do. The last time I placed an ad for an engine was 2009 and that was just to **** off a competitor. Hell, the newsletter that was the focus of this post was the first non training related email that I've sent out in over a year. I should update the website, since I haven't touched it since 2011, but then people would just steal info from it, and we'd get more calls and emails than we want. My business is perfectly balanced and if it were to grow we'd likely collapse. Doing what we do requires extreme detail per project. No two are the same. Nothing is generic, or prepared in advance. I have tried to do more work per year than we do now, and some years we did twice as much work as we do today. I was miserable. Too much support was required, and I ended up actually having a couple of complaints that year. After that I said "never again", and it hasn't happened since. We could do what others have done; use a great reputation to build a huge enterprise of image, focused on production, marketing and hype. Within two years the place would collapse. We offer things that must actually work. They must work for a long time. Even one failure is not acceptable. It's not like selling a piece of jewelry, or any other commodity Trust me, you wouldn't want to be a sales person working for me, anyway. It takes a special breed to work here, but my shortest term employee has been here for 7 years. If you last a week, you'll probably be here forever. If someone else owned this business that didn't start it, like I did, they'd most certainly take it places where I never will. They'd not care about the things that I do, and accounting would be tighter. They'd take on 2-3X the amount of jobs and it would more than likely be very lucrative. I don't give a damn about all that, I live very simply, and I have fun. I deal with who appreciates what we create.

...I sold cars for a living for ten years. I now train auto sales consultants for a living. I have tremendous respect for sales people. And, Jake, thanks again for helping to make my life a LOT more fun!