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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: We have to be very, very cognizant of the environment we're creating in our shops, in the culture that we're building. And as we bring apprentices in, somebody needs to work with them who's got some patience. Um, we might have some really quick learners. We might have some slow learners. We might have people that are moving too fast and make mistakes, and we've gotta get them to slow down.
[00:00:24] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Or we might have them moving so slow but not making mistakes, and we've gotta find a way to, to get a little more fire in them, giving them and instilling the confidence that, yes, you need to be detail-oriented, but you can do it at a slightly quicker pace. And then that comes into a question about productivity.
[00:00:57] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Is your shop ready to be a mentor to an apprentice? That's a good question. Let's find out. Let's talk about that in this episode of, uh, Shop Talk Her Way with Jeanann St. Grace. I'm happy to be here with you today, um, talk about, to talk about mentoring, leadership, bringing in apprentices, uh, the basically the future of our industry.
[00:01:21] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Like, how are we going to build this out? We all know that we have a tech shortage, and there's multiple reasons why. And There's probably also 1,000 ways to answer this question, but I'm gonna throw my hat in the ring and give you mine. And as a shop owner in this industry years ago, we always had, um, a youngster in the shop.
[00:01:49] JeanAnn SaintGrace: We had a really good relationship with the local high school, and they had an automotive program. So we always had a young man, at the time they were all young men, um, in the shop with us. He would come and work, um, after school, or if they had work release, they would, they would come in a little bit early.
[00:02:09] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And the deal was with them, we showed them how we wanted the shop cleaned, and once they got the shop cleaning done, then they could, um, shadow a tech or help work on a car or something like that. As some of them got a bit more, um, gifted and got a little more experience, then a lot of times I would schedule a waiter oil change for them to do in the afternoon, so they had a project for them to come in and work on specifically.
[00:02:37] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So that was kind of like the progression of how it went. So we were working on growing young men into being technicians. And, you know, it's not always easy. Um, the, the kids, the young men that we had were all more or less interested in cars. They, they had, you know, cars that they were working on themselves, or they were interested in, um, moving forward in the industry.
[00:03:06] JeanAnn SaintGrace: One of the, one of the guys that we had, he, um, he was on the diagnostic team, so the, the school district or the, the schools, there were a bunch of schools that got together and did like a diagnostic challenge, and he, he was really interested in the diag side of things. So that was... it was fun to watch him do that.
[00:03:26] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So we had a, you know, a handful of characters that, that, that passed through the shop and, and I have, um, you know, fond memories of all of them and watching them progress and grow. Um, they all, you know, had their own set of challenges. They're, they're all different, right? So everybody's got a different set of challenges.
[00:03:47] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And the most important thing, I think, that, that at the time that we were working on was getting them to understand, you know, even the importance of keeping the shop clean. You know, that, that even the purpose of keeping the shop clean, it's not just busy work, there's purpose to it, and it's, it's necessary, especially, you know, if you're Working in an environment where you've got, you know, really nice vehicles, if you're working in a European shop or something like that, you know, the, the importance of cleanliness I think runs across the aftermarket shop.
[00:04:23] JeanAnn SaintGrace: But, you know, in places where you're touching, you know, 100,000, 150,000, $300,000 cars, the, the level of service requires a level of cleanliness that I think is next level. Um, but in, in a practical aspect, you know, there's cleanliness of the shop, making sure that the fluid spills get cleaned up immediately, um, which I think every technician should be responsible for.
[00:04:50] JeanAnn SaintGrace: But, you know, sometimes they can only do spot cleaning and eventually the floor needs a f- a full mop. Um, you know, those kinds of things. Helping them to understand, yes, they're low man on the totem pole, but they're also playing an integral role in the shop's proficiency, efficiency. Um, and a lot of times if, if we had a shop helper, then that meant I wasn't doing it because there was a lot of times that I was on the end of a mop, which I didn't mind, but you know, I have bigger fish to fry.
[00:05:19] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So, um, you know, it was part of our mission to help our technicians grow and even to grow them from, you know, to use analogy, little seedlings that just had to start in, in getting their, their feet wet in the industry. And I hope that, um, for them, that, that we helped to plant some seeds with them that they could carry forward.
[00:05:42] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Um, unfortunately one of them passed. He was in a car accident at a very young age a couple years after he worked for us, but hopefully the rest of them are out there, um, taking the world by fire in whatever industry they chose. Um But for the rest of us, or you, I always wanna say us, but for the rest of you who are out there fighting the good fight every day and wanting to bring young people into your, into your shop, are we creating an atmosphere that's conducive to them learning?
[00:06:15] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Um, possibly for the first time having the kind of structure where they're working for a business. Um, you know, a lot of v- younger people now are, you know... It's longer and longer before they have their first job. They've- their focus is on school. Um, a lot of them have not had structure to the point where they know, you know, what's the pr- what's the proper way to mop a floor, what's the proper way to clean a bathroom, those kinds of things.
[00:06:46] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Um, you know, kind of the lay of the land in a shop. Um, some people have no concept of how much a toolbox costs or how much, uh, a ratchet or a wrench costs, and they don't have respect for the tools that they should. And so all of those things need to be instilled in them. So we really need to not make assumptions when we're bringing someone into the shop.
[00:07:12] JeanAnn SaintGrace: We need to start them at the basics and work their way up. Um, there's... I was listening to my friend, The Jaded Mechanic, the other day, and one of his guests was talking about how he was in a shop and the owner's son just thought he could just come in and use whatever tools out of his toolbox that he needed.
[00:07:32] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And y- you know, that's, that's a that's not okay. As he said, it's like going into a woman's purse. Like, you don't mess with somebody's toolbox or somebody's tools. And so they need to learn basically the rules. Like, it's its own little ecosystem, its own little society, and we need to have A culture that fosters them, that brings them into a learning environment.
[00:08:02] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And I was talking to, um, a service advisor the other day, and he's like, "Well, um, you know, they just need how to learn, to learn how it is." And I'm like, "You know, we can't, we can't manage people the way that we used to. We can't use that militaristic top-down leadership style anymore. We need to meet every, every person who comes onto our team as an individual and figure out really what makes them tick."
[00:08:33] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And it's, it's, it's kind of a joke, but it's kind of not. Al- almost all of us now need a minor in psychology of managing people and leadership. And we have to, first of all, not make assumptions, and second of all, create an environment for learning. And, and, uh, honestly, the shop is becoming a place for education.
[00:08:57] JeanAnn SaintGrace: We're educating our customers about their vehicles. We're educating our people on how to work on these vehicles, how to properly care for them, and then how to be in a shop environment. Like, this is all a big learning process for most of us. And I think, um, the minute we stop learning, we're all in trouble, right?
[00:09:18] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Our, our, our brains, our capacity is, is ever-evolving. We should be constantly learning. And as the leaders in the shop, as an owner, we need to instill that into our people. And If we, if we bring a, for lack of a better term, a young cub in, to use a, an animal analogy, if we bring a young cub in and we've got somebody who's got a grizzly bear attitude and their first thing to do is to, you know, smack the cub on the head and growl at them, that's not a conducive leadership style anymore.
[00:09:59] JeanAnn SaintGrace: There are or were generations that would hold up underneath that, but that energy and that, and that kind of leadership teaching doesn't work anymore. So we need to make sure that our shop environment is ready to bring in an apprentice or somebody that is, um, less experienced. And do they need to know, you know, hands off the toolbox?
[00:10:22] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Yes. They need to learn that. They need to know that if they need something out of a non-shop-owned toolbox, that they need to ask, and that when it comes back, it needs to be wiped down clean and put exactly back where you found it, and, and probably a checkout and say, "Hey, Bob, I'm borrowing your end wrench," and, "Hey, Bob, I just put that wrench back, and it's clean, and it's back where I found it."
[00:10:47] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Um, which then makes it incumbent on the shop to have a s- a toolbox that the young one can work out of to make sure that they've got what they need that... And again, with respect, right? Even if it's a shop toolbox, it needs to be clean. It needs to be put back where you found it. These are the, the laws, I c- the laws of the West, right?
[00:11:09] JeanAnn SaintGrace: The laws of the West are when you find a gate open, you close it. When you do, you know, you do the things that you're supposed to do. It's like the cowboy way, except this is, like, the technician or the shop way. And so, you know, tools are expensive. They cost money. Um, it costs m- a lot of money to replace it when we look at, you know, having...
[00:11:32] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Depending on your profit model, if you have a 25% net profit model, if you need to buy a wrench, you have to sell four times the amount of that wrench in order to replace it. And if you only have a 10% profit model, then you have to sell 10 times the cost of that wrench to replace it. So if a wrench costs $100, we have to sell 1,000 to have enough profit to cover that.
[00:12:00] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And So while yes, we should have a budget for tool replacement, all of those things are true, we need to know how much those things actually cost. And so the, um, and that's why I advocate for a higher profit model because that, that way we've got more money sitting there for things like tool replacement, total aside.
[00:12:24] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Um, and we have to have our people ready, our existing team ready to bring this young person in, and we probably need to have somebody on our team to actually be their direct report or their mentor. If we don't have an, a dedicated shop foreman who would most likely be their direct oversight, then we need to have them Working with one of our experienced technicians to make sure that they're learning properly, that they're getting the right advice, that they're getting pointed in the right direction, learning the way to do things that we do them in our culture.
[00:13:02] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And that person needs to be able to recognize when they do well, and they're gonna need a lot of recognition for doing well. And when they maybe make a mistake, we need to wrap their mistake around their successes. Um, unfortunately, I don't have a better term, but I call it the poop sandwich, right? The first piece of bread is, "Hey, you did a good job over here."
[00:13:27] JeanAnn SaintGrace: The poop in the sandwich is, "You really messed this up." And then the last piece of bread is, "But, you know, we expect you to do better. We know you can do better," some other nice thing so that the, the poopy part of the sandwich is, is in the middle of two forms of good solid recognition and, uh, building up of their, their successes otherwise.
[00:13:50] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Um, we cannot have a grizzly bear attitude when we're apprent- having an apprentice working with us. And are there gonna be times when we lose our cool, we lose our temper, they've done the same thing for the 15 millionth time, and we're like, "Don't do that again"? You know, maybe that might be an appropriate time for the grizzly bear to come out, but the grizzly bear can't be the first form of mentorship and leadership.
[00:14:17] JeanAnn SaintGrace: The, the because I said so, sometimes you're gonna have to lay that down, but it should be layered under multiple, um, layers of leadership and correction, not just go full blast on, um, you know, "You effed this up. You're a whatever." You, you guys all know the language. I don't need to, I don't need to lace it in here.
[00:14:43] JeanAnn SaintGrace: You all know what I'm talking about, right? And, and the, the biggest thing is, and I'm not saying this as a pejorative, these younger generations don't hold up under, um, a militr- a militaristic leadership style. You can't bark orders of- at them and expect them to conform. You're just gonna make them cower down, and that cowering instills fight or flight, then they're in survival mode, and now nothing else is gonna penetrate their ears until the fight or flight calms down.
[00:15:22] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And so we need to be careful when we bring an apprentice in of who are they working with. And as an owner, to take this, the level all the way up, you know, you might be the one mentoring them. Your techs might be too busy working for them to, to do this and it could fall on you as the owner. Now there are, there are trainings out there for how to mentor an apprentice.
[00:15:51] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Um, I think if you have the luxury of doing that, I think it's a great idea. But if you don't, then you need to dial your leadership style into, um, to mentorship and to build a, a trusting relationship and also some form of accountability and self-reflection of, of them. You know, if they make a mistake, you know, you say, "Okay, this didn't go the way it should have.
[00:16:19] JeanAnn SaintGrace: What could you have done different?" And see what they have to say to you before you say, "Well, this part of your r- your thinking is correct, but we need to reevaluate something over here." So I know it sounds like we're, we're coddling. I don't necessarily think that's what we're doing. But to, to throw down with, "I had to walk up and, up, you know, I had to walk to school both ways in the snow uphill," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, just to say, you know, "We're harder," quote-unquote, "as a, as a generation than you are," isn't going to cut it.
[00:16:59] JeanAnn SaintGrace: We have to give them the whys. We have to help them to see the path, and we have to really watch our language and tone in order to, um, to bring this along. And they, they're worthy of respect and, and they need to be treated that way. Is there going to be times when the shop environment is rough and raucous?
[00:17:26] JeanAnn SaintGrace: It is, and they need to grow into that. But if we're giving them, like, one-on-one, um, training and correction, it needs to be done in a way that helps them to learn. Um, and if we've got the right person, if we have an emotionally intelligent, um, person who is self-aware and can be like, "Yeah, I made a mistake.
[00:17:50] JeanAnn SaintGrace: My bad. Let's fix it and do better the next time," that's something that we should be looking for when we're recruiting. If we have someone who just doesn't care and they've got a, pardon my language, F it attitude, then maybe they're not the person for you. Maybe they're not the right apprentice. Maybe they're not mechanically skilled.
[00:18:10] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Maybe they don't have what I call the touch, right? That mechanical touch where you, you have feel, you have understanding that's almost, like, intuitive and inborn. Um, some people just don't have that. Anything they touch, they break. And maybe that's a person, then maybe we move them. If they wanna be in the industry and they have the skills, maybe we move them into CSR.
[00:18:35] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Maybe we move them into the office and get 'em on the phone scheduling, teaching them how to write service. Maybe that's how we bring them into the industry. But there might be times too when we have to cut losses and be like, "I'm really sorry, but this isn't working out." And, and as business owners, there's only so much we can take, right?
[00:18:55] JeanAnn SaintGrace: We all know we can't have comebacks. We can't have lug nuts left loose. We can't have drain plugs left loose. We can't have vehicles leaving with low fluid levels. So, so there's this balance beam that we're walking of getting them tuned into what we need them to be, but also, do they have the innate ability that we need them to have to do this?
[00:19:17] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So as much as I'm, I'm kind of laying out some generalizations, we also can't have, um you know, people in the shop that aren't, quote-unquote, "capable" of doing the job, and some people aren't detail-oriented enough. They're not, um, they're not proactive enough. They're not curious enough. Um, we might have somebody who is really good at changing oil But that's all they can do.
[00:19:44] JeanAnn SaintGrace: That's the, that's the top out of their skill level. And at that point, you know, that limits how much we can have them have we- how much we can pay them. Um, it limits how useful, quote-unquote, they are to the shop. And unless you're running a high volume model where standalone oil changes are a part of your bread and butter, we might not have a place for somebody who can just bust out oil changes.
[00:20:12] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Um, if we don't have somebody who can do brakes, can do flushes, can do higher level diagnostics, right? If, if that's not part of our work mix, then we need to send them on to a place where they can thrive in an environment where the repetitive nature of doing an oil change is the thing that, that keeps them going.
[00:20:31] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Um, and unfortunately still, that limits their earning capabilities. That's the brakes, right? That's how we work. Like, we have to have, you know, raises that are appropriate for skill level and growth and how valuable are they to the business. And that's why, you know, in my mind, if we always have an apprentice who's at that, that skill level where we can be profitable with them doing basic services like oil changes, and then move them into flushes and move them into brakes, and then we've got a solid C tech and then a solid B tech, and maybe we raise them up if they're capable into a, a solid A tech.
[00:21:13] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Um, or they become, you know, the solid B who can just bust out mechanical labor at an amazing rate and have no comebacks. That's equally valuable in the shop. But if we're, we're asking the same thing of every person, that's not a good model. That we're gonna, we're gonna burn them out, we're gonna frustrate them, we're going to have an unhappy player on our team.
[00:21:41] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And it might be the thing that washes them out of the industry. Um, you know, and we have to have a solid training plan. And I think, um, like every other big, you know, trade, we need to set in our employment, um, documents that part of their employment is that they have like an hour a week of training or a certain amount a month, whatever we're looking at.
[00:22:08] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And we probably need to look at making sure we're paying them for that, that, that we dedicate an hour of time every week for them to get paid to sit in front of a, a computer and get some, some technical training. Or we bank those hours knowing that, hey, uh, Worldpac's gonna be in town or ATG's gonna be in town, and, um, you know, maybe we bank eight hours of, of training so that they go to this training and we've paid them for the time to go do that.
[00:22:42] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Um, those are real, that's real. That is real. And there are some shop owners who are s- are thinking that if I'm paying money for training, then it's the, the technician's investment in time. Every shop's gotta decide how they're gonna do this. I can see both sides. You know, I've been a shop owner, now I'm a coach.
[00:23:04] JeanAnn SaintGrace: I can see both sides of it. And if we're, if we're putting people on productivity pay plans and that hour of, of training takes away from their productivity, then we've gotta have that built in too. Um, everything that we're doing in the shop has to be a win-win. It has to be a win for us and it has to be a win for the technician.
[00:23:27] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And, you know, there's a big move in, in these younger generations to have better work-life balance, and I understand that. I am, I, you know, through everything that I've been through, the days of me working 60, 70, 80 hours a week, I don't I can't do that, right? I don't have the, the energy to do that anymore.
[00:23:53] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So, you know, we have to think about making sure, like I said, that we're playing to each individual skill set and each individual's abilities and energy levels. And we also have to be prepared that if we're making training part of our requirement, that we're going to be willing to pay for that training to happen, both in the training itself and, um, and their time.
[00:24:21] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And I'm, I'm good with that. Again, we just have to have it built into the budget. We have to have a profit model that supports that. And, um, you know, there's a lot of great programs where you can get free training. Sometimes we gotta pay for it. It all depends on what you want and what you need, and what the skill set we're looking for is.
[00:24:38] JeanAnn SaintGrace: But what I know about other trades is there's continuing education that's required. There's level of mastery. Um, you know, I'm here in Texas, and an apprentice electrician cannot work without a journeyman present. They are, they're not allowed to do that. That is a state requirement. Um, and they have to have their own little certificate once they've made it to journeyman, where they can work on their own.
[00:25:06] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And I am the first one to tell you, I don't really want the government involved in this. So as an industry, you know, we need to start thinking about qualifications. How do we, um, how do we qualify our people to be doing these jobs? And, and there's some kind of qualification process. Um, the closest thing that we really have is like ASE certifications, where those are standardized testing and, and everybo- you know, if you pass, you get a certificate.
[00:25:38] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And I know there's arguments for and against ASE, and I'm not here to argue those, but we've got to come up with something, some way to make sure that the people that are working on our customers' vehicles are qualified, have proper supervision, making sure p- that they're leaving safe. You know, everybody has a bad day.
[00:25:58] JeanAnn SaintGrace: I, I, I, I would challenge every shop owner to raise a hand if they haven't had a vehicle leave with a lug nut loose, right? Like, we've all got that phone call And if you haven't had it happen, you, it's just that it hasn't happened yet. Um, and, and hopefully if, God forbid, that does happen, the customer catches it right away, we catch it on a test drive, and the customer's not sailing down the road and watching one of their tires bounce past them, right?
[00:26:28] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Um, and nobody gets hurt. And, and, you know, we've all had our F-ups, right? We've all been there, so I'm not judging anyone. I've been in that position and I've eaten my share of, of parts and labor. Um, you know, I, I don't know if I've told this story on the podcast, but I'll go ahead and tell it again if I haven't.
[00:26:48] JeanAnn SaintGrace: We had one of our high school kids, um, he was restocking fluids. And in hindsight, was this a bad idea on our part? Maybe. And it, and it was corrected, was we had a big bottle of brake fluid, and we would take the big bottle and, and break it down into a smaller bottle so that they were easier to handle when they were cl- you know, filling up, um, uh, brake master cylinders.
[00:27:18] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And my tech, uh, accidentally put power steering fluid into the brake A fluid bottle. And guess what happened? We s-- we, um, we, I take full responsibility, it happened on our watch. Um, he was... he did three or four services that day, and he topped off three or four brake systems with power steering fluid, and it wiped out four braking systems.
[00:27:51] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And we had to, you know, as soon as we figured out what was going on, we backtracked and figured out how many brake-- how much brake work we did in that day. Again, this is why, um, documentation is key. You know, we had a DBI, we looked at back and said, "Okay, we topped off brake fluid here, here, and here. We did this brake job."
[00:28:11] JeanAnn SaintGrace: We got ahold of those customers and got 'em back in. And, you know, we had an F-150, it-- we had to replace all the hoses, calipers. We did a four-wheel brake job on us because of, you know, three or four ounces of power steering fluid in the brake fluid. And we did four of those. Um, that was blessedly all that we had.
[00:28:35] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Now, from that point forward, we never transferred fluids. It came out of the original bottle. We didn't, you know, having, having spent several thousand dollars on parts that we were not getting reimbursed for, buying a small bottle of brake fluid at a higher price per ounce was what we had to do. Um, and, and was it his fault?
[00:28:58] JeanAnn SaintGrace: I mean, he screwed up, but at the same time, he was doing what he was told. He had a lapse of detail. He had, what, whatever you wanna call it, he lapsed, and he screwed the pooch. Um, but ultimately, he felt bad. He helped fix it. Um, you know, as a team, we got in there, we got her done, we got him back on the road.
[00:29:21] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And one of the customers was one of our most loyal customers, and he would tell people the story and be like, "Yeah, they, they topped off my brake fluid, and it ruined my braking system. And guess what they did? They went through and replaced the whole thing for me, no questions asked. They called me, they let me know what was going on, they fixed it, and I've, I've never gone anywhere else since then."
[00:29:43] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And, and there's part of me that was like cringing, you know, "Oh, don't tell that story over and over." But it meant a lot to him. He knew that we could trust him, you know, and we worked on his car, and his wife's car, and his four daughters' cars, and their boyfriends' cars. You know, he... And he brought us a lot of people.
[00:30:00] JeanAnn SaintGrace: He referred a lot of people to us based on that, that one situation. And so, you know, how we handle our screw-ups and how we instill that in our people. You know, if, if this young man had come to us and said, "You know, boss, I think I screwed up. I think I put power steering fluid in the brake fluid bottle."
[00:30:20] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Okay, all hands on deck. Let's get this fixed. Which cars did you do that to? And which other cars might have been exposed? That, that level of character was what we were looking for and, and, and not, you know We might have in pro- in private screamed into a pillow or let some words fly, but we didn't do that to him because he already felt bad enough.
[00:30:47] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And if you've got the right people who have this level of integrity that when they make mistakes they'll own it, you're golden. You can't train people into that. If they have that intrinsic integrity, um, you can't train that into them. And, you know, w- we, we fixed our, we fixed our problem. You know, as much as I told my guys, "I want you to imagine that this car is leaving with your name on it," when it all came down to it, the business name was on it.
[00:31:18] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And when somebody made a mistake, we circled the wagons, and we supported them and got them through it and fixed it. Um, were there times when those challenges started to add up and we had to let some techs go? We did that too, and, and you and I, you and I, all of us know we've been there too. Techs we've really liked, techs that it broke our heart to see them go.
[00:31:41] JeanAnn SaintGrace: You know, they... We were a small shop. We were like family, and, um, to, to have to let somebody go because they had comeback after comeback after comeback, you know, at some point something's wrong, right? And if we counseled them, if we did everything that we could to try to correct the problem, adjust their, their scope of work, do whatever, and they still couldn't get it together, then they needed to go somewhere else.
[00:32:12] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And there's a lot of times that they're in an environment that just isn't the right one for them, and they go somewhere else and they flourish, you know? And if somebody had called me for, for this young man or for some of the techs that we let them go, would I hire them again? I would. Um, but we had this challenge, you know, and I know you have to be careful what you tell a prospective employer if you're being used as a reference, but I think it's important that they know, yes, as far as their personality, their integrity, their ability, they're capable, but sometimes they have personality traits.
[00:32:54] JeanAnn SaintGrace: If you've got somebody who gets frustrated and wants to throw wrenches or, or gets so flustered they've gotta walk out of the shop, and their, their production goes down the, the hole because that happened for multiple days, you know, it, it's It's challenging, right? Like, what do you do? Um, and so it's tough.
[00:33:18] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Like, it's tough 'cause you get to, to love your people, you get to care about them so much, and you don't wanna see them struggle, but you also can't afford to keep them in the shop. And, and that's, that's a real thing. So if we can send them on to hopefully a better op- opportunity with a good reference, then, then we need to do that.
[00:33:39] JeanAnn SaintGrace: But back to my original thought, which is, you know, we've got to meet every individual where they are. And, and that's good advice, I think, when we're looking at apprentices, but also when we have, you know, more experienced people on the floor, that they're, they're being, um, given opportunities to s- to grow, to get better, to maybe fall down and scrape their knees, but in an environment where we pick 'em up, dust 'em off, and figure out where did, where did this go wrong, and show them a pathway forward, and then keep moving on.
[00:34:18] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Um, you know, and unless their, their scrapes are so spectacular that you can't, and by spectacular I mean expensive, that you just can't afford to keep it going, then, you know, we, we need to make a decision. Um, I worked with a client, and they had a, a young man who wanted desperately to be a technician, and he would just get so frustrated that he would, um, you know, he would pace out of the shop, get upset, um that kind of, you know, reaction.
[00:34:53] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Um, and the opportunity came up where they needed a customer service rep that would grow into a service advisor. Put him on the counter, he flourished. He loved talking to people. He loved building estimates. The mechanical knowledge that he had aided him in doing that work, and then he would work with the other techs to learn more so he could s- he could sell and present the jobs properly, and he did great.
[00:35:17] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So, so we were able to... We, the shop, was able to give him an opportunity to shift gears but still be in and part of the family and serve in a different way. That was a win-win-win, right? That was a huge win 'cause he just took to it and did a great job. So we, we have to be very, very cognizant of the environment we're creating in our shops, in the culture that we're building.
[00:35:47] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And as we bring apprentices in, somebody needs to work with them who's got some patience. Um, we might have some really quick learners. We might have some slow learners. We might have people that are moving too fast and make mistakes, and we've gotta get 'em to slow down. Or we might have 'em moving so slow but not making mistakes, and we've gotta find a way to, to get a little more fire in 'em, giving them and instilling the confidence that, yes, you need to be detail-oriented, but you can do it at a slightly quicker pace.
[00:36:18] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And then that comes into a question about productivity. And, you know, as shop owners, we need to know what our technician loads are. Like how... We know our hourly wage, but do we know how much our tax load is, our benefit load? Uh, how much our uniforms cost? How much does it actually h- cost us per hour to have this person suit up and be in the base?
[00:36:43] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And the same goes for an advisor. Like we've gotta know how much our people are costing us. And it's shocking, um, even working with shop owners who have been in coaching for a long time who don't know their load and are still just operating off of their hourly cost for wages. Um, then we've gotta know, um, not necessarily where our break-even point is, which we might need to know break even on an apprentice, but where's our profit margin at?
[00:37:08] JeanAnn SaintGrace: You know, do we need a person, just for rough figures, um, somebody who's in the $25 an hour range, depending on your tax and benefit load. If we take a, like a 1.2, like a 20% tax and benefit load, then you take their hourly wage, multiply that by one to 0.2, then we get our true hourly cost, figure out what they're costing us m- by the week, and then we can figure out how many hours they need to produce.
[00:37:38] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And the answer to that equation is somewhere in the 18 to 20 hours a week to make profit, right? To be profitable at a 60% profit margin on labor. A $25 an hour tech at a 0.2 load is coming out somewhere around 20 hours of labor. Then we can start to build a productivity plan. If we have, you know, you know, obviously the scale goes higher and lower and we can do that math, but you can kind of see where we're going with this.
[00:38:08] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So Joe, at this pay r- at this pay needs to be produce this much labor to pay for himself and give us profit. Um, break even is closer to 11 or 12 hours just for rough figuring. Um, and of course, I have a spreadsheet for that. Um, so if anybody wants to delve deeper in that, I've got a spreadsheet for that.
[00:38:30] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Um- But it is like we've gotta know because the building block of this is, you know, we've got three techs. Each one of 'em has to produce this, this, or this for us to make profit. That means then we've gotta tell our service advisor, "Okay, we need s- to sell this many production hours. This is our goal for productivity, where it's anywhere from 60, 65, 75."
[00:38:57] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And I'll tell you, if I've got a technician who can be 75% productive in this profit model and also build in some productivity bonuses, no comebacks, does great inspections, um, is part of our culture, wants to help other people, help be a mentor, I'm gonna, I'm gonna triple down on that. I will take... I will have a shop full of those guys, you know, because they're the bread and butter.
[00:39:22] JeanAnn SaintGrace: They're the backbone of your, of your system, and we need probably one above them and one below them to balance that out. Um, but, you know, those, those good level 75% producers, they can make you money all day, all week, all year long. So, you know, we need to know these things. We need to know the numbers, and I, I, I often get pushback of, "Oh, I don't need to know that," or, "I don't need to know this."
[00:39:50] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Well, that all drives your hourly rate. That all drives, you know, how many cars do you need? What does our average repair order need to be? Et cetera, et cetera. It's a snowball effect. It's a building block to figuring out what do our financials need to look like. And it, and it starts honestly between our fixed costs, but I would argue more importantly at our labor cost.
[00:40:11] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Um, and we build profit models, I build profit models. Let me rephrase that. I build profit models either off of what's our, our tech load, our labor load versus what's, what are our fixed costs, and we play to whichever one's higher. Um, there's computations for both. Um- So we've gotta know this when we're bringing somebody on to know how much we need them to produce, how much the mentor is going to be, um, their resources are gonna be drawn down for production.
[00:40:41] JeanAnn SaintGrace: All these things come into play. Um, and so again, we're building wins. We're building win-win situations for both the shop and our techs and our advisors and our people. So if you've got a grizzly bear in your shop, see if we can dial down the grizzliness. For those of us who were raised in the Genghis Khan school of management, which is, you know, the beatings will continue until morale improves, we have to shift our thinking away from hand-holding, um, babysitting, those kind of labels.
[00:41:14] JeanAnn SaintGrace: We have to just pick every single one of those and throw it in the trash because we can't be looking at these younger, um, tech prospects as babies. We need to show them a path forward. We need to give them checklists. I mean, even some of our older techs need checklists. Um, something that I think is really smart that I got from a client is every piece of their equipment, they have built a QR code, um, specific to that piece of equipment, and there's a sticker on it so that all a tech needs to do if they need to know how to maintain that machine is click, uh, click the QR code, and it comes up with an internal document that shows them this is the process for the proper use and cleaning of this machine.
[00:42:01] JeanAnn SaintGrace: That's genius. Instead of having a drawer full of manuals, we've got something they can easily click with a phone or tablet that they have in the shop anyway, and they've got it right on their phone or their tablet, and they can scroll through the checklist. And with the, with the advent of AI, that makes it even better.
[00:42:19] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So, hey, Mr. ChatGPT, please build me a maintain, a maintenance checklist for this piece of equipment and put it in a PDF that's fillable so they can check the boxes and submit it if they're the one responsible for maintaining that. Um, you know Building a smarter shop, finding ways to leverage the technology that we wanna use.
[00:42:43] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Now, I'm gonna tell you, I am terrible about technology. I still wanna hand a tech a paper, a work order, a technician worksheet, um, because my big fear is they get into pencil whipping check, check, check, check, check boxes, and they can do it as easily on paper, I know. But it might be easier if they're just going through clicking boxes on a computer and they're not actually physically checking it on, writing it off, doing the things on paper.
[00:43:10] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Um, and I'm a Luddite, not gonna lie. So, um, you know, we've gotta find... And, and there might be... Here's another thing. You know, we wanna have a paperless shop. What if one of our technicians does much better with a tactile piece of paper on a clipboard? Are we going to release them from the shop if everything else about them is wonderful, they fit our process, they fit our procedure, they fit our culture, and the one thing they need is a piece of paper on a clipboard?
[00:43:39] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Are we gonna do that for them to give them the tools that they need? My answer to that is yes, I would. If everything else is yes, and the fact that they just cannot work off of the computer screen and need a piece of paper in front of them, you're darn tootin', I'm gonna give them a piece of paper all day, every day.
[00:43:57] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So, you know, we have to be careful that because we want something in our shop, we wanna be paperless, or we wanna be all digital, or we wanna do this, or we wanna do that, we might have to modify our SOPs to fit certain people's needs. We can't get so hung up in this is how we do it here that we don't find a way to include somebody who might, might not be able to Um, you know, there's-- my nephew has dysgraphia, where it's much easier for him to type than to write.
[00:44:30] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So in that shop situation where I might be wanting him to make notes on a tech worksheet, he-- I'm gonna encourage him to do it on the computer and type his notes right into the computer because he's gonna get it done faster with less frustration. And that's a thing. I mean, people have learning disabilities.
[00:44:49] JeanAnn SaintGrace: People have challenges that we can work around, but we have to be open and we have to be willing and we can't g-go-- get so stuck in this is how we do it here that we miss the opportunity to have a tremendously talented person on our team just because they have a challenge with one of our processes. Um, we're going to have to learn to be flexible.
[00:45:12] JeanAnn SaintGrace: You know, the other pl-place we might need to be flexible is work hours or pay plans or this or that, where we've really gotta get out of this one-size-fits-all process to where, where we can carve out an exception for someone if everything else about them is perfect and there's this one thing. Now, I'm not making c- we're not carving out areas for psychopaths and narcissists and people causing drama in the shop.
[00:45:40] JeanAnn SaintGrace: That's a different story. That's a totally different story. But if we're talking about the difference between looking at a computer screen and having a piece of paper, I think we can live with that. Um, if we're looking at maybe giving somebody a staggered start time, um, or working a four-day week as opposed to a five-day week, that, that there's room for all of these things to happen.
[00:46:03] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And if we find a person that is that special, then finding some carve-outs to help them have the life that they wanna have and the wor- the work life they wanna have and the outside life they wanna have, maybe we can, we can have room for that. So to circle all this back around, as we're bringing people into our shop, both as apprentices and as new hires, we need to make sure that whoever's training them has a, a mind for education, coaching, mentorship, leadership, service leadership, not top-down militaristic.
[00:46:38] JeanAnn SaintGrace: If we really have to get down to the base level of because I told you so, that person might not be the person for our shop So as always, um, back to training. Um, I wanna thank the Worldpac and Worldpac Training Institute for being the sponsor of Shop Talk Her Way. Um, they have been wonderful in supporting the show, but also I think in supporting our industry, offering tremendously good training, high quality and high caliber trainers, and subjects that are pertinent to what's going on in the automotive industry.
[00:47:14] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So please don't hesitate to give Worldpac a chance and to also check out Worldpac Training Institute for training for your people. I think that is another win-win, um, in our industry. So once again, it's your shop, your way. I understand that I'm asking you sometimes to do things a little differently, but finding ways to, to accommodate special people so that you've got a really special team, I think can be part of the process.
[00:47:41] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And, you know, for those of us who were raised walking uphill both ways to school in the snow in bare feet, we have to learn that there's a better way to do things, and just 'cause that's how we were brought in doesn't mean that's how it has to be. We can do better. When we know better, we do better. And we can tell stories and we can joke around, but the most important thing is that we open our doors to these people, give them a chance, and, and help to mentor them into being a part of our industry.
[00:48:13] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And, uh, like last week if you listened to the podcast, I'm recording in June, and June is Men's Mental Health, um, Month, and it is important that we are very aware of the mental health of our teams. Um, men in the automotive industry have a suicide rate of three times the national average. Actually, it's three and a half, and it's almost one in 1,000.
[00:48:38] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So unfortunately, most of us probably know someone who has, um, chosen a final solution that takes them off the planet and out of, out of our world. So please, you know, we can build a kindler, gentler, and still productive, still efficient, still profitable business, but taking really good care of our people.
[00:49:00] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So as always, thank you for, um, listening to or watching Shop Talk Her Way. If you feel this is powerful and you'd like to share it, please share, please like, please subscribe. Please don't hesitate to leave comments if you think I've missed the mark or you think I'm spot on. I welcome it all. Um, but you guys go out there, love your people till it's weird, build your shop your way, and I will see you next time on Shop Talk Her Way.
[00:49:26] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Thank you so much.