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Shop Talk Her Way is where former shop owner and coach JeanAnn Saint Grace opens up the books on what it really takes to run a profitable, sustainable, and well-balanced auto repair business.
With decades of experience in bookkeeping, operations, and leadership, JeanAnn brings an honest, no-fluff approach to shop management — all from a woman’s perspective. From financial systems and staffing to communication and culture, she shares insights that help shop owners (and especially women in the industry) take control, build better businesses, and enjoy the ride.
Whether you’re turning wrenches, balancing the books, or scaling to your next location, you’ll find encouragement, strategy, and a healthy dose of “you’ve got this” in every episode.
Shop Talk Her Way is an AutoFix Auto Shop Coaching production — helping shops thrive, her way.
Thanks to WorldPac and the WorldPac Training Institute (WTI) for sponsoring Shop Talk Her Way. Visit worldpac.com for the latest in auto parts distribution and wtitraining.com to explore training programs that can take your career to the next level.
[00:00:00] JeanAnn SaintGrace: If there's bad press out there about the automotive industry, we need to be the ones to change it. We need to be acting in a way that people change their mind. And as technicians, same thing is true. Give the owner a chance. If this owner's not the one who, quote-unquote, "screwed you," give them a chance.
[00:00:19] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Don't assume that all shop owners are alike. Don't assume that everything that you're gonna experience is exactly the same as that place that you were, quote-unquote, "abused in." And I say quote-unquote because yes, there's abuse. There are technicians who are taken advantage of, they're hurt, they're damaged.
[00:00:36] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Now we, as the next shop owner who wants to run a good shop, who wants to build a cohesive team, has to undo all that damage. They're traumatized
[00:00:52] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Does it feel like you're living in a world where everybody's got problems and nobody's got solutions? Hi, this is JeanAnn SaintGrace, and welcome to this episode of Shop Talk Her Way.
[00:01:01] JeanAnn SaintGrace: I'm so excited to be here with you again this week and share my thoughts, um, kinda get a... let you guys know kinda what's going on in the world and where we're all going, honestly. Um, as always, my topic usually flows out of something that I've seen, heard, or possibly said. Um, usually something I've seen or heard that I don't have a voice for until I get to talk to you all.
[00:01:30] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So this week, the last six to eight weeks, there's been a lot of upheaval. There's been a lot of upheaval personally for me. There's been a lot of upheaval in the shops that I'm coaching. And whether it's, um, customers or, or team members, there's this kind of feeling like the things and the people who are not meant to be ours are falling away.
[00:02:01] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And in that, we have to, we have to have some grace for it, but we also have to look at ourselves, each of us individually. And when I say that, I'm talking to me as a coach, I'm talking to shop owners, advisors, service, um, sh- technicians. Everybody in your operation, every human who's hearing my voice, I'm talking to you.
[00:02:26] JeanAnn SaintGrace: I'm not just talking to owners. I'm not just talking to techs or advisors. I'm talking to everyone in the shop environment, and even more widely, globally, whoever's ears this reaches. Because we have to, first of all, be valiantly and, and bravely responsible for, for ourselves and for our own actions. Um, I have my own baggage that I drag around with me, whether it's from childhood or from my husband passing or from whatever else might have happened in the meantime.
[00:03:00] JeanAnn SaintGrace: You know, I carry around my own set of triggers and traumas, and it's my job to manage those. It is not my r- it's not anybody else's responsibility to tiptoe around me or to act like those things don't exist. If there's something that really needs to be done or said, it just really needs to be done or said.
[00:03:20] JeanAnn SaintGrace: We have to start owning and be radically responsible for our behavior in the world and also our responses. Being reactive, acting on, you know, instantaneous emotion is not gonna get us where we need to go And unfortunately what I've seen, and worst of all where I've seen it, is in some, um, you know, Facebook forums, group chats, whatever you wanna call it.
[00:03:51] JeanAnn SaintGrace: There's all this finger-pointing. And they're from the, from the owner side, it is Employees this, techs that, service advisors the other thing, and there's all this pointing of fingers towards the team members. Then from the team member side, it's all the owner's this, the owner's that, the owner's this, the owner's that, and, and all we've got is fingers pointing at each other.
[00:04:19] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And the, the worst thing that I've seen is that when someone comes to the table truly seeking or asking for advice, they get comments like, and forgive the language 'cause I'm pretty fired up about this, but they get called dumbasses. They get called wusses. They get called idiots or whatever term, whatever derogatory term somebody wants to throw at them because they're keyboard tough and there's no face to the name.
[00:04:50] JeanAnn SaintGrace: There's no face that they're looking at. They're just throwing out one-liners to make themselves look smart or whatever. But what in fact they're doing is the person who's coming to them for advice, they've just shut them down, and those negative voices are gonna c- are gonna completely shut them down rather than them continue to scroll to find the nuggets there.
[00:05:15] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So somebody who's honestly coming in to be helpful and to give them some- the support that they're asking for, they don't get it because everybody else has thrown in with, "You're a dumbass. You should be able to figure this out. Grow up," whatever. I, I have seen the gamut, and honestly, it's disgusting. Like everybody, before you post something, you really need to think about what you're posting.
[00:05:38] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Don't just throw away lines. Don't just call somebody a dumbass and tell them to get over it. They're actually asking for help. If they, if... Can you imagine the last place you have to go to for advice is a, is a group chat on Facebook? That's their last place that they have to go. They don't have a mentor.
[00:06:00] JeanAnn SaintGrace: They don't feel like they have somebody in the- in their chain of command that they can go to. Can you imagine having to anonymize yourself and post on Facebook because that's the only way you feel like you're gonna get help? Imagine that. To me, that is a worse judgment on the state of our world than anything else.
[00:06:20] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And I'm f- I'm sorry if I sound mad, but I am, and it's disappointing, and it's frustrating because there are people in this industry who want to see people do better, who want to help people l- and lift them up, not only in their business, not only in their careers, but in their personal life and their personal growth I had a conversation with a very trusted friend of mine earlier this week, and their comment was, "Our industry is filled with misfits and, um, oddballs."
[00:06:52] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And in some, in some ways that is true. And, and I don't like to think about it that way, but who made them the misfits and oddballs? And for me, I'm gonna firmly plant that on their upbringing and the school system. We all know there are, there are people, and unfortunately the majority of them are boys and men, who do not hold up under six to eight hours of sitting at a desk every day listening to Charlie Brown's teacher, pr- teacher drone on about things that they don't care about.
[00:07:24] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Let's be honest, my husband was one of those people. My first husband was an ad kid. He loved taking things apart. He loved putting things back together. He didn't love sitting in English talking about Shakespeare. He didn't care to sit in history and learn about why somebody sneezed in Asia 2,500 years ago and today we have what we have.
[00:07:47] JeanAnn SaintGrace: He, he wasn't there. He wanted to have his hands on things. He wanted to be moving around. He did not do well in a classroom situation, whether he had ADHD or whether he was just a red-blooded American bully who just was not equipped as a 16-year-old to sit in a desk eight hours a day, which in all honesty, luckily he landed in auto shop and ag Awesome.
[00:08:14] JeanAnn SaintGrace: That was the perfect place for him to be. They put him in work, um, work experience to where he actually went out and worked in a shop for half of the day, five days a week, and then that shop ended up hiring t- him to work on Saturdays and weekends, and he fell into the automotive industry. And he was supported by a tremendously good auto shop teacher and auto shop teacher's assistant.
[00:08:43] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Those two men mentored him through this process. The initial place they placed him for work, um, release or work, um, experience was a government shop, and within a couple weeks the guys in the shop were telling him, "Hey, dude, you need to slow down. You're making the rest of us look bad." And luckily, he had the wherewithal to go back to his teacher and say, "Hey, this is what they said."
[00:09:09] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And the teacher's like, "Whoa, this isn't the place for you. Let's find a better place." And they put him into an actual automotive shop. And from there, he flourished. A boy who started at 16 grew into a, um, master tech, an ASE-certified master tech. He had a Redbrook scan tool. He had a Vantage. He had all the stuff that he'd invested in himself, all the hand tools, all the Snap-on boxes.
[00:09:37] JeanAnn SaintGrace: He had all the things at 26 years old. And then at the point he was 32, he and I opened our own shop and ran it for 15 years. That was his trajectory. He, he could have ended up in a government shop where they just twiddled their thumbs and didn't produce anything, and yes, he, he could have just stayed there and had a nice career with a pension and all the bennies and could have probably had done that twice by working for, say, the s- the county and then the state or the city and the state or whatever.
[00:10:10] JeanAnn SaintGrace: But he wouldn't have had the fulfillment of being the technician that he was. He would not have had the fulfillment of owning his own business And, and the two people that I... There's a, there's a handful of people between his shop teachers and between the mentors that he had. None of those two things would have happened.
[00:10:33] JeanAnn SaintGrace: I would not be sitting here in front of you now if that had not happened, if those people hadn't stepped into the gap for him and said, "Hey, this is your path. This is the path to success." And at the same time, he was so blessed because he was one of those people that just had the feel. He just could look at something, take it apart, fix it, and put it back together, and he was that way until the day he died.
[00:10:58] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And there was something magical about watching him have all his tools laid out, know what his process and procedure was, and just watch him work. If there was anybody who embodied slow is smooth and smooth is fast, it was that guy. And I will never forget watching him work and how magical that, that was.
[00:11:16] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Just I would sit for hours and watch him work because he was so in control and a master of his space And, and again, he was a pro, right? We need to start talking to our people about what does a pro technician look like. A pro technician is neat and tidy, clean, clean toolbox, organized toolbox, knows where every tool is so that it's not a sudden scramble if they need their 10-millimeter socket, right?
[00:11:44] JeanAnn SaintGrace: The worst thing he ever did was he was chronic at losing flashlights because the flashlights were gray, and he'd leave them in the, in the bay when he turned them off, and he started putting reflective tape on them so he didn't lose so many freaking flashlights. So, you know, if he was bad at one thing, it was that.
[00:12:05] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So what I'm getting at is we're not showing these people who are coming into the maze how to be professionals. We're not even showing our advisors how to be professionals. In most cases, we're showing them there's the phone, there's the computer, and figure it out. Now, I am not talking to my high-level performing, um, shops.
[00:12:28] JeanAnn SaintGrace: I know from being online, this sounds like this is the unicorn, but from my coaching experience, there are shops out there who are trying to give good service, trying to take good care of their team, and wanting to make a profit and doing it all at the same time. They're not trading quality for cost or, or racing to the bottom to be the cheapest shop in town.
[00:12:54] JeanAnn SaintGrace: They're saying, "This is how much it costs, and this is the value that I'm giving for that, and we stand behind it, and we've been in business for 30 years, and we're opening up more locations so we can re- rebuild what we've built over here and do it again and again and again." And I, I am not, I am not saying that everybody's situation is different, but when it comes down to it, we need to take good care of our people And not just our people in our building, but these up-and-comers who are reaching out in the probably the worst possible environment of the internet to say, "Hey, I need some help."
[00:13:35] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Two that I saw this week were technicians who are like, "I really like the shop that I work at. They're awesome, but we don't have enough work and they're sending us home by 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon. What do I do?" So here we have someone who is breaking the stereotype that techs are lazy, that techs don't wanna work harder or more, that they just wanna skate through and, and do whatever.
[00:14:00] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Here we have a young person who is genuinely happy to be where they're at, enjoys the work that they're doing, and all they want is more work. And we've got people on the internet, keyboard commandos, anonymously going in there and say, "You're a dumbass. You should find a new job," or, "You should keep your mouth shut and just keep working," or whatever.
[00:14:23] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Instead of saying, "Hey, dude- Go talk to your owner. Tell them the situation. He didn't give any details as to how the shop is managed or structured or anything like that, but who's the next person he can talk to? If it's a service advisor, maybe he needs to jump to a manager, or maybe he needs to go straight to the owner and say, "Hey, boss, I need 30 minutes of your time.
[00:14:48] JeanAnn SaintGrace: I'd like to talk to you about what's going on here. I really love working here, but I need more money," and, and, and, and wants to have that genuine conversation. Not, "I just want a raise." "I'm willing to do more work to make more money." And if I polled any shop owner out there, I want that young man in my shop.
[00:15:07] JeanAnn SaintGrace: If he's willing to work harder and more and make more money, that's the young man I want. That's the young person I want. Could be a g- a dude, could be a lady. I don't care. The person who's willing to do good work, do more work, and, and, and help build the business, they have now become my partner. They have now become a person that I can truly say is part of my team and wants to make things better, not only for themselves, but for the rest of the team as well.
[00:15:37] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And we've got these anonymous people on the internet saying, "Oh, you're a dumbass." Not constructive. Just... I'm gonna tell you, just stop talking. Don't, don't mash down somebody who has hopes and dreams. Don't step on them and go, "Oh, you're never gonna get there, kid. You're in the wrong industry." We should be changing the industry.
[00:15:58] JeanAnn SaintGrace: We be- should be encouraging this person. This is the shop owner of tomorrow. I have talked to one personally and through clients, a couple of other candidates, and these candidates are in their mid-20s and talking about average repair order, talking about how many hours they produce, talking about what the labor rates are.
[00:16:19] JeanAnn SaintGrace: They want to understand the economics. They want to understand how the shop works. They want to be part of the shop's success. They understand that they have to be part of the process to make things better. Why are we putting our, our, our heel on their neck and saying, "Just shut up, kid, and stay down in the dirt"?
[00:16:39] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Why are we doing that? "Don't get into this industry. It's a dead end." It's hard It's tough, it's complicated, it's ever-changing. But if you're willing to take that challenge on, you can go a long ways. How many industries in, in the world are there? How many careers are there in the world where you use technology of an end wrench that was developed somewhere in the 1910s, 1920s, and you're also using AI-driven, um, diagnostic information and equipment?
[00:17:11] JeanAnn SaintGrace: How many industries are doing that? I don't know, but automotive is. So why aren't we out there encouraging people to understand that this is a profession? This isn't a job. It's, it, it truly is something where you have to dedicate yourself day after day to doing your best, doing better, learning technology, training, changing with the times, and growing.
[00:17:33] JeanAnn SaintGrace: This is a profession. This is a journey. And And part of the problem lies back to my oddballs and misfits comment, is that these boys, like my husband, who can't sit in class and listen to a teacher drone for eight hours a day, need more engagement. They need to have their hands on something. They need to be moving and engaging their brains in whatever's in front of them, not trying to absorb knowledge, right?
[00:18:01] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Knowledge of that kind. So what happens is the, the kids that misbehave land in shop, land in ag, um, because it's a safe way to warehouse them until they can get them graduated out. If you haven't checked the statistics of how many kids are graduating high school who can barely read and can't do math, you should go check that out.
[00:18:26] JeanAnn SaintGrace: It's embarrassing. So if we're funneling the oddballs and misfits into shop classes where they're learning how to do something, and if it's ag, they're learning to weld, they're learning to work on tractors, they're learning to handle animals, whatever that looks like. In mechanical shop, they're learning to work on cars.
[00:18:44] JeanAnn SaintGrace: They're learning the technology. Some shop teachers are even teaching them how to write service and how to write their, their tech notes and how to give good information to their advisor. There are shops out there doing that, shop teachers. I know them. So... And the other fault of ours, ours in the industry, is that we're not showing up at career day.
[00:19:07] JeanAnn SaintGrace: We're not showing up at career day and saying, "Hey, we have a path for you that doesn't involve $100,000 in student debts. We have an option available where you're gonna start at an entry-level pay, and we're gonna help you attain the training and the tools and the knowledge that you need to succeed in this industry."
[00:19:24] JeanAnn SaintGrace: We have techs out there saying, "Well, I can make $100,000 a year out there." That's awesome. You can. But not everybody has that clear-cut path. As shop owners, we need to give them a realistic expectation. Can you become a $100,000 tech? Chances are you can. But in our shop, you're gonna cap out at this because that's what our labor rate is.
[00:19:46] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Because at 40 hours of labor a week, I can't afford to pay you more than X amount. So guess what the shop owner's gotta do? They've gotta raise their prices. And they have to be willing to look the customer in the eye and say, "Hey, in order for me to keep A, number one top-notch people, it's gonna cost a little more."
[00:20:04] JeanAnn SaintGrace: That's what we've gotta do. But we can't continue to see ourselves as shop owners being squeezed in the middle by the techs and by the customer. We have to stand up for ourselves and say, "Hey I wanna make a profit. I wanna make a living. I wanna do this. I wanna do that. We have to stand up for ourselves as shop owners and say, "These are the terms on which I choose to do business."
[00:20:26] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And guess what? The customers are out there. Customers are out there. I have shops doing average tickets between $1,200 and $2,000 in small towns with low car count. They're doing it. It's out there. It's available to you. I have shops selling 10 and $13,000 tickets just on repairs and maintenance on a regular basis, and people say yes, and the biggest challenge they have is they don't have enough help to get it done fast enough.
[00:20:54] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So we have to create a roadmap. We have to take these, quote-unquote, "Oddballs and misfits," and show them a home. If you're one of these kids, and I want you to imagine yourself in this position, you're a 15 or 16-year-old kid. Somebody tells you you're a troublemaker because you can't sit through class.
[00:21:13] JeanAnn SaintGrace: You're a problem 'cause you can't sit through class, and they kick you out into the ag shop or to the auto shop. Now you've been labeled as a problem. Do you think how... Can you imagine how formative that is for a 16-year-old kid to be told you're basically trash, and we're just gonna warehouse you for the next two years just so we can graduate you out, and you've got a diploma, and you can go on your merry way, and you're not our problem anymore?
[00:21:40] JeanAnn SaintGrace: That's what that kid hears. So they go into auto or ag, and if we're lucky, they've got a good ag teacher or a good, or a good auto tech teacher, and they start to raise them up and say, "Hey, look- You're just not equipped to sit in a class for eight hours a day. You need something to do. So let's fix some cars, or let's fix a tractor, or let's learn how to weld.
[00:22:02] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Let's do that. And if we do this right and get them understanding, "Hey, you've got a knack for this. Hey, you've got a gift for this," then we find a place to put them as an apprentice, and then they learn in the real world, and then they've got a head start on everybody else who might spend the next four to six years going to school and accruing student debt, while they're out there learning and getting paid to learn and building knowledge in a trade.
[00:22:27] JeanAnn SaintGrace: But we're not going to... We're not even being invited into career day. "Ugh, we don't want those people. Those people work with their names on their shirts. We don't want those people." Well, guess what? You need mechanics. You need air conditioning techs. You need plumbers. You need electricians. All those people, guess what?
[00:22:48] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Names on their shirts, and when they put their, their skills to work are making good money with no student debt. Why aren't we, why aren't we being invited into these halls? Why are parents and teachers looking down on these kids as being troublemakers when in fact they're the technicians of tomorrow if we handle them correctly?
[00:23:05] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So that's one place we can lift them up. But if they go through auto shop and they do fairly well, but that's all they kind of really know and they kind of like it, then they graduate from high school, and they go looking for a job at a local shop. We don't as shop owners give them a uniform, give them some basic knowledge in cleanliness and orderliness and productivity and professionalism.
[00:23:28] JeanAnn SaintGrace: We just give them a rag and tell them, you know, "The rag's for cleaning up. Use your T-shirt to wipe a dipstick off." Had it happen. Had a kid come out of a shop just like that. He doesn't think about getting his hands clean before he gets in a customer's car. He doesn't think about not putting fingerprints on things.
[00:23:50] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So now we have to revo- refine his skills. We have to get him thinking about this. The first DVI that he did, I was so proud of him because he popped up a picture of, um, an air filter housing and the, the, the, um, the fasteners were stripped. The, the, the screw holes were stripped. He took a really nice picture.
[00:24:10] JeanAnn SaintGrace: He made little circles around the holes and put an arrow on it and said, "Hey, this thing was damaged before I touched it." I told the shop he works for, "I don't care what else he did bad today, you go give him big gold stars for this one," 'cause it was a better write-up than I've seen out of most of my experienced techs.
[00:24:28] JeanAnn SaintGrace: I was so proud of that kid that day. So and a little praise goes a long way, right? You can imagine this kid has been told he's an oddball, he's a misfit. You can't sit in class. You're being punished, quote-unquote, by going to ag or shop class. And then he gets a job in a shop, and now somebody's saying, "Hey, kid, you did a good job."
[00:24:48] JeanAnn SaintGrace: His little ears start to perk up and he's like, "Wait a minute, I'm good at something." Maybe he's good at that, and maybe he's good at something else in there. Maybe he's, he's got a knack for taking stuff apart and putting it back together. Now we teach him how to organize his tools, how to be clean, how to be productive, how to be a pro tech.
[00:25:06] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And now, not only are we building a good employee, we're building a good team member, we're building a good human being. We're giving him something to be proud of about himself instead of all those voices who said he was an oddball and a misfit. We start to break that down, and I'm gonna tell you what, it takes a lot more to break it down than it did to cause the hurt.
[00:25:30] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Because now we're working on an uphill battle to help this kid understand to believe in themselves, and that they're not an oddball or misfit. They just didn't fit into the mold other people wanted them to. But we appreciate them, and we want them to have the best. We want them to buy a house and have a nice vehicle and have a nice toolbox and have a nice life with a retirement, with health insurance, and with all the things our society has expected them to have.
[00:25:56] JeanAnn SaintGrace: But because they're just a technician or just a mechanic or because they wear a shirt with their name on it, they're not worthy of that, or they'll never have that We as shop owners need to be the ones to pick them up and say, "Come here, kid. We've got cookies, and we're gonna show you the path forward."
[00:26:14] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Is it unfortunate? Yes, it's 100% unfortunate. I didn't break it, but now we've gotta fix it, okay? And I know my tone is a little, a little on edge today, but this is heartbreaking. These young people are not being anything to... given anything to be proud of themselves for. They have all these adoit- adult voices telling them, "You don't fit in over here, so we're gonna push you off into the dustbin and wish you well."
[00:26:43] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And they never think about them again. They're not giving them a path. They're not creating partnerships with local shops or local, um, tradesmen to bring these kids in, give them an apprentice job, teach them the thing, give them some skills, and help them to build those skills and build their self-esteem, 'cause the two go hand-in-hand, right?
[00:27:06] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And the other thing that we are guilty of as owners is we promise them the sun, the moon, and the sky to get them to come to work for us, but then we don't follow through, and now they feel betrayed. We're just one more person who's betrayed them or abandoned them. All we think is that they are a number.
[00:27:20] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And that's one really bad misperception out there, is the techs persist in telling this younger generation that the owner's only out there for profit. And for some owners that's true, but I'm gonna tell you, I bet it's the, the majority of them are actually out there to build a good business and to take care of their team.
[00:27:38] JeanAnn SaintGrace: I would, I would challenge you to go out and talk to 10 shop owners, and I bet you 9 out of 10 are there because they wanna have a good business, they wanna serve their community, and they wanna serve their team. And they will probably sacrifice themselves and their bottom line in order to take care of those people I will almost guarantee you that.
[00:27:59] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So again, we have to stop talking so bad about our industry. A lot of people tend to exaggerate when they've had a bad experience. Ever done that? It's happened to me, right? They might have been in one shop one time, and they tried to take advantage of them, and now this becomes all shops all the time, every time, and it's happened every time they've gone into a shop, and that's BS.
[00:28:25] JeanAnn SaintGrace: They either have really bad taste in shops, or they've been in one bad shop and didn't give any other shop the benefit of the doubt. And we also get mad when people call shopping for price, but they don't know what else to ask. They don't a- uh, know to ask, "Are you using OEM quality parts? Are there different qualities of parts?
[00:28:42] JeanAnn SaintGrace: How do I know I really need this? How can I trust you?" They're not... They don't know what questions to ask. "How well trained are your technicians? How, um, how, how is this whole process meant to work? Like, what's the right way for this to look?" And the minute we get a customer who starts asking these questions, we shut them down because we feel like we don't have time.
[00:29:04] JeanAnn SaintGrace: We don't have time, I don't have time, is generally a personal perspective, and it's a prison of our own making. We haven't made time for us to have these conversations with customers who genuinely have questions and wanna learn because the last few that we've talked to have only wanted to shop on price, and we haven't spent the time to educate them, and build a relationship with them, and welcome them into our shop.
[00:29:27] JeanAnn SaintGrace: "Hey, come see the shop. Come meet me as a service advisor. Come meet the owner," you know? And then make a decision instead of just trying to make a decision over price over the phone. "Come see us. Come visit the shop. Come take a look." You know, the, the number one compliment I got on our shop was, "Wow, I can't believe how clean it is."
[00:29:45] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Yes, you could eat off the floor in my shop. You could. And people don't have that vision. They have a vision of a me- of a mechanic or technicians who look like they just rolled around in a puddle of oil, and they've been wiping their hands on their shirt all day. They don't have the, the vision of a neat and tidy tech in a really nice uniform shirt and pants with steel-toed boots who can come and have a conversation with them if we need them to.
[00:30:12] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Or can, who, who can reliably diagnose their vehicle to the level of technology that we have today, and then give them a logical laid-out plan for repairs and, and a solution. So if there's bad press out there about the automotive industry, we need to be the ones to change it. We need to be acting in a way that people change their mind And as technicians, same thing is true.
[00:30:38] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Give the owner a chance. If this owner's not the one who, quote-unquote, "screwed you," give them a chance. Don't assume that all shop owners are alike. Don't assume that everything that you're gonna experience is exactly the same as that place that you were, quote-unquote, "abused in." And I say quote-unquote because yes, there's abuse.
[00:30:58] JeanAnn SaintGrace: There are technicians who are taken advantage of. They're hurt. They're damaged. Now we, as the next shop owner who wants to run a good shop, who wants to build a cohesive team, has to undo all that damage. They're traumatized. And if you don't think that's trauma, it is. And for these kids, for these young people who have come out of this high school environment where they're an oddball or a misfit, and then somebody points them in a direction of automotive and they continue to get beaten down, guess what they think?
[00:31:27] JeanAnn SaintGrace: "Everybody in this world is here to beat me down. There's nobody here to help me pick myself up." So they don't even give you a chance anymore. They... If you're an, a solid, good owner who wants to see them grow, who wants to help them with training, who wants to help them become the best tech that they can be, they don't believe it because they've been lied to before, and now we have to undo that damage.
[00:31:48] JeanAnn SaintGrace: I'm a horse person. For anybody who's listened to me, you can talk about horses, you could talk about dogs, you could talk about children, whatever. When some- someone or something has been abused, the next time they have an even harder time trying to trust. And if it happens again and again and again, then rebuilding that trust takes a lot more effort.
[00:32:10] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So we've got a, a person now who's been told they're a misfit, told they're an oddball, told they're this, told they're that. They've had people tearing them down their whole lives, and at 25 years old, all they've ever been is torn down. They've never had anybody there to help build them up. And now we step in to try, and they don't trust us.
[00:32:29] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Guess what? It's gonna take extra. It's gonna take extra time. It's gonna take extra investment. It's gonna h- mean that you have to show up for them all the time, every day, in order for them to overcome all the mistrust and all the hurt and all the abuse that they've suffered under And I know I'm making a generalization, but I want you to think about the techs that you know.
[00:32:51] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Think about that. We're not encouraging the valedictorian to come and become an automotive technician. Of course, we would welcome them, but that's not where they're driven. "Oh, you're the valedictorian. You need to go to college, and you need to go get $100,000 worth of, of education that you can't pay for, um, so that you can get some job that doesn't pay you to do what you really love."
[00:33:14] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Maybe that's your next tech. But because we weren't invited to sit at the table at the career fair and show them a pathway to a lucrative career and ultimately a way to probably own their own business, there's nobody telling them there's a different path. So, so we're taking kids who are probably could be very well naturally gifted at hands-on work and learning the technology that they need, probably good at video games and computers and know how to do all that stuff, and that's gonna be what we need them to do now in addition to, to turning wrenches.
[00:33:46] JeanAnn SaintGrace: They're probably just as smart as that valedictorian. They just weren't the ones who could sit through class, and we're just labeling them and funneling them into what they... is considered a lesser pathway to success. So how are we, how are we engaging in our community? How are we engaging with our team?
[00:34:06] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And how are we holding up our end of this bargain? Those are the three questions I have to ask for you. These are my questions to my shop owners. As technicians, are you bleeding on shop owners who have not cut you? Are you walking in wounded with blood all over you saying, "Well, that shop owner hurt me, and the other shop owner hurt me, so this one's probably just gonna hurt me too," and you're not giving them a chance?
[00:34:29] JeanAnn SaintGrace: There's bias on both sides, on all sides, because service advisors come into this as well, and I just generally talk in shop owners and techs. But then there's the service advisors who are just kind of off in their own world, getting thrown into doing things that they don't always understand or have technical s- technical training at because they're good on the phone, right?
[00:34:50] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And I will advocate that your advisors need to have just as much technical training as your techs do, even if they never turn a wrench, because they have to be able to talk to the technician and then translate that tech speak into things that the customer and the consumer can understand. So they're caught in the middle of this all too.
[00:35:09] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And the other thing, and one of my biggest beefs with big coaching companies is they will tell you, "You can take s- anybody and plug them into that service advisor position and they'll be great." That is the biggest bunch of BS I have ever heard, and I've been on both sides of the coaching arrangement.
[00:35:25] JeanAnn SaintGrace: I've been a customer and I am a coach. And looking back on my time as a coaching client, that was the biggest bunch of BS that I was ever fed. Even if I hired a, an experienced service advisor, they don't know how I think. They don't know how I write service. They don't know how we sell jobs or present jobs.
[00:35:47] JeanAnn SaintGrace: They're gonna fall back on whatever bad behavior they've been enmeshed in over here. You know, I had one, and you guys have heard this story, worked in a big time franchise. "Oh, let's get this thing apart, and then we're gonna call the customer and say, 'Oh, everything on here is unsafe. We can't put it back together without fresh parts, and that's gonna cost you $2,000.'"
[00:36:07] JeanAnn SaintGrace: That's not how we sell in the aftermarket. We don't do that to our customers. I didn't do that to my customers And I don't expect anybody to do that to their customers. So I was faced with, am I gonna undo this, or am I just gonna let this guy go? Because it didn't seem like I could undo it, 'cause he did it even after I told him not to.
[00:36:28] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Do not do that, and he did it anyway. And I put the... I pressed the hold button, and I picked up the phone and finished the conversation with the customer, 'cause I was not gonna let my customer be treated that way. So am I hot about this? Yeah, I'm hot about this. This hurts our industry. It hurts our businesses.
[00:36:43] JeanAnn SaintGrace: It hurts my heart to see human beings treating each other this way. So kinda hit me at every level. But the upshot of all of this is we need to be the change that we want to see. We need to, when we see a young person on the internet wanting to do better, to step in there and pull out our supportive, um, owner's hats and be like, "Hey, dude," or owner's techs mentor hat and say, "Hey, dude.
[00:37:13] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Look, this is what I would recommend you do. If you need more help, send me a message. I'll get you on a phone call. We'll figure this out. I will do whatever I can to help you." That's what I do. If I see somebody that genuinely needs help like that, I'm gonna help them if, uh, if they'll take it, if they'll accept the help from me.
[00:37:31] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And if all people wanna do is call names and say, "Oh, this, that, the other thing," and discourage them, just don't tippy-tap your keyboard. Just don't. Just stop. Because you're not fixing anything. You're perpetuating the problems that we have in this industry. If you want better techs, then you need to start taking better care of these young men and these young women.
[00:37:53] JeanAnn SaintGrace: That, that technician was asking for help. He was looking for a lifeline, and you threw him an anchor. Just because that's the way we were raised... I'm 53 years old. I was raised in the sink or swim, figure it out, do it yourself, or just get out of my way era. We're not in that era anymore. These kids will not...
[00:38:13] JeanAnn SaintGrace: I call them kids. These young people will not hold up under that. They need support. They need to be cared for. They need to be shown a path. We need to keep telling them how they're doing and what's next and keep them on those two rails, or else they're gonna go off the rails on you, and you're gonna end up with just another generation of jaded, unhappy, unfulfilled people who think the whole world has abandoned them, and you're a perpetrator in that line.
[00:38:41] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So how do we fix this? Well, first of all- We learn and we do. We become better leaders. If you need a mentor yourself or you need a coach or you need a peer group or a 20 group, find yourself one. Napa's business development groups are great as long as you've got a good group of people around you, as long as it's not just there to be like a beer and wine fest.
[00:39:04] JeanAnn SaintGrace: I am lucky to be around or adjacent to some wonderful peer and 20 groups who do nothing but help raise each other up. Get yourself some help. You can't be a shop owner in a vacuum anymore. You need help and support. You need people to bounce ideas off and share the stresses that you have and find out, oh, hey, they've got the same problem I do.
[00:39:26] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Maybe we can find a solution. But instead of just all of us getting together and complaining about our problems, why don't we start talking about solutions? I'm really getting into this area of the three before me, where if you've got a problem, you need to come... You need to have checked three resources, and then when you come to me, we need to have explore why those three resources didn't support you and if you have a solution, and then we work on it together, not just me fixing the problem.
[00:39:54] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And yes, I'm a coach. It is my job to help people fix their problems, but I can't... I'm not on the ground running the shop. So we need solutions that fit them. So I can make suggestions as a coach. I can tell them what I have seen work before, but I can't tell them what the ultimate solution's gonna do.
[00:40:12] JeanAnn SaintGrace: That's something we have to work on together. So, you know, that's what I'm doing here, and I feel like by having this podcast and coaching people, I have better reach than by me owning my own shop and having a microcosm, right? I get to help other people by virtue of my experience, by virtue of what I see, what I've seen doesn't work, and what I've seen does work, and then try to help them find the thing that will work for them So in my opinion, I'm doing the best I can up here, but I'm just one person.
[00:40:47] JeanAnn SaintGrace: There are other coaches out there. There are some really tremendously good, wonderful, warm-hearted people in this industry that wanna see other people succeed. If you're one of those people, take one of these challenged people under your wing and start helping them out. Start to talk to other shop owners about how, "Hey, we did this and it worked for us.
[00:41:07] JeanAnn SaintGrace: You know, I'd be happy to discuss that with you." We need to stop gatekeeping the information that we have because it might end up in somebody else's world. If I create a spreadsheet as a coach and I share it with one person, that becomes public domain. They can go share it with 50 other people, and it's not my product anymore.
[00:41:27] JeanAnn SaintGrace: It's just out there in the world. Does that mean it's no good, or I should've, I should've kept it personal to myself and not shared it when it could help so many people? My ideas need to be out there. Our ideas need to be out there. We need to have a thought for these young people that we're bringing into the industry who are in our industry, because it's not just the 20-somethings.
[00:41:46] JeanAnn SaintGrace: We've got 30-somethings and 40-somethings who are equally a part of this, this, this trail of oddballs and misfits who have never been properly cared for as te- as team members And it's our job to do better. It's our job to raise them up and hopefully build trust with them to where they realize, "Hey, I've got a good thing going here.
[00:42:06] JeanAnn SaintGrace: I can actually engage with these people, do better, get better, and then buy product, make more money, have a retirement, have health insurance, have financial stability," whatever that looks like. But we can't continue to demean each other and expect our industry to survive and grow, and that's what we need right now.
[00:42:29] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And my challenge to, and I'm gonna try to find a way to do this, my challenge to these big companies like Napa, like, um, Worldpac, like O'Reilly, like, um, Snap-on, you know. Let's do a profile of what a professional techni- technician looks like. What does Snap-on's customer look like? It's offi- awesome for them.
[00:42:54] JeanAnn SaintGrace: They sign these guys up for $100 a week, whether they've got it or not, but they never talk about what does it take to be a pro. What does it take to, and look like for them to have the customers that they want, which are good technicians who need their tools, who can afford to buy them. But they are not out there talking about top techs or pro techs.
[00:43:16] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Nobody's out there talking about that, so we've gotta start talking about that. So maybe that needs to become part of your marketing. "Hey, meet our professional technician, Joe," or, "Our professional technician, Bob," or, "Our future professional technician, our apprentice, Joe." Maybe that's what we need to do, and start putting them out there in a way that they're something to be revered.
[00:43:40] JeanAnn SaintGrace: These men and women have super- superhero qualities because if they can't fix it, they're gonna help you find who, who can. So once again, I know I sound fired up, and I am, because this, this last week I have just been so pushed and triggered, for lack of a better word, by people who are throwing this younger generation away instead of throwing them a bone, and I want it to stop, and I'm the first one.
[00:44:09] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So if you need something, if you're a technician, you're an advisor, you're an owner, you have a problem and you need a solution, first call's on me. My email address is in here. You can catch me on Facebook, JeanAnn SaintGrace. I'm there. I will give you your first coaching call for free, whatever you need.
[00:44:30] JeanAnn SaintGrace: That's on me. And if that's all we ever do, I am more than willing to make that investment. But I am not gonna be this person who says, "Oh, shut up, kid. Just get in the trenches with the rest of us and heave your own burdens 'cause we're not here to help you. We're just here to make money off of you." And I guarantee you that is not the shop owner of tomorrow or today.
[00:44:50] JeanAnn SaintGrace: I bet you there's one in a hundred, one in a thousand that's like that, but the general majority of shop owners are good, honest people who wanna see their people do well, and they wanna take good care of their customers, and they wanna have a nice life. I bet those three exist out there. Okay? So my challenge: who can you help?
[00:45:09] JeanAnn SaintGrace: If they come to you and ask you for help and you offer it and they accept, awesome. If you try to help somebody and they don't take your advice or they don't take your help, all you can say is, "I did my best." It's their choice whether to engage with you or not. That's all we can do. But if we find them one that wants help and we can help bring them along and help them succeed, then guess what?
[00:45:31] JeanAnn SaintGrace: We helped that one person, and maybe that one person helps other people, and we become the, the pebble in the pond that ripples out across our industry and makes everybody better. That's all I'm asking. So I got so excited about my conversation here that I did not do my live reads for my sponsors, so here we go.
[00:45:53] JeanAnn SaintGrace: There's gonna be two, so hang in there with me Today's episode is brought to you by AutoFix Auto Shop Coaching. Running a s- a su- a successful auto repair shop takes more than knowing how to fix cars. You're also managing people, managing processes, managing your customers, and managing your economic or prof- economic health or profitability, and that's where AutoFix comes in.
[00:46:19] JeanAnn SaintGrace: AutoFix Auto Shop Coaching helps shop owners strengthen their operations, develop their teams, and build a healthier business with practical coaching designed for the realities of the automotive industry today. If you're ready to spend less time putting out fires and more time building the shop that you want, learn more at autoshopcoaching.com.
[00:46:40] JeanAnn SaintGrace: That's autoshopcoaching.com. AutoFix Auto Shop Coaching, helping shop owners build better businesses. All the information that you need is down below in the show notes, or you can just go to autoshopcoaching.com. The second part for our sponsor today is that AutoFix is now teamed up with ADP. So a AutoFix has partnered with ADP to help auto repair shops simplify payroll, human resources, compliance, hiring, and employee management while unlocking exclusive savings for eligible auto repair shop owners.
[00:47:15] JeanAnn SaintGrace: This isn't just a partnership on paper. The owner of AutoFix, Chris Cotton, is not only a coach, but he's also the owner of three auto repair shops, and he believes in this partnership with ADP so much that he's moved all of his payroll over to ADP. Through this partnership, ele- eligible AutoFix members can receive a 20% lifetime discount on eligible ADP services, waived setup fees, and up to six months of free payroll.
[00:47:42] JeanAnn SaintGrace: ADP can help you accurately pay hourly, salaried, seasonal, and split shift employees while supporting your tax filings, your hiring processes, onboarding, compliance, employee benefits, workers' comp, and so much more. If Chris trusts ADP across all of his businesses, it's worth seeing what ADP can do for yours.
[00:48:02] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Check your eligibility and connect with a dedicated ADP partner using the AutoFix and ADP link that's also in the show notes. So thank you for giving us a minute to pay the bills for the podcast. I appreciate you sticking with me this long. I know this has been a fiery rendition of what do we need to do for our industry, but the most important thing is we need to learn to support each other, whether it's owner to owner, owner to advisor, owner to tech Tech to tech, tech to advisor, tech to owner.
[00:48:32] JeanAnn SaintGrace: We need to start having open and honest and transparent conversations. We need to stop blaming the past for what is going to happen in the future and give other people a chance. Just because somebody with a title has hurt you doesn't mean that everybody with that title is going to hurt you, and we just gotta give it a chance.
[00:48:52] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So this is JeanAnn SaintGrace telling you to go out there and love your people till it's weird and build your shop your way. Have a great day, and thank you for joining me