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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: There's no rules. I want you all to just evaporate, imagine the 8:00 to 5:00 Monday through Friday model is a balloon, and pop it and let all the air out of that. That is not necessarily your paradigm, unless it works for you. So there's no rules. You can have your shop your way with the schedule you want, with the team that you want.
[00:00:22] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Everything that you want about your business, you can have that. Is it gonna take some work? Are there gonna be some growing pains? That's why I recommend you do all this preparation at the beginning, so you have a very clear idea of what's gonna work best for you and your team, your family, their families.
[00:00:41] JeanAnn SaintGrace: You just have to look at your market, look at what your customers need, and then let that be part of your decision.
[00:00:58] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Are you ready for a four-day workweek, or are you ready to maximize the capacity of your shop and to go to seven days? Let's explore the noise and the chatter around scheduling. Hi. This is JeanAnn SaintGrace, and welcome to this episode of Shop Talk Her Way. And the scheduling, having a, you know, a seven-day workweek or a four-day workweek or even a three-day workweek is a hot topic in the automotive industry.
[00:01:24] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And there are features and benefits to both, and you just have to figure out what your shop your way looks like. So there's economic reasons, there's life balance reasons, there's, um, you know, how to make your team happy reasons. There's so many ways to look at how many days a week a shop is open. And the argument, no matter what, is going to be, well What are the customers, how are they gonna respond?
[00:01:58] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And then how's your g- your team going to respond? And so no matter what, no matter who you are, no matter how big your shop is, there's always gonna be a customer who needs something you can't supply. Now, if you're a Monday through Friday shop and they want a Saturday, you obviously can't facilitate that.
[00:02:17] JeanAnn SaintGrace: If you're a three-day or a four-day-a-week shop, and they want a Monday, and you're only open Tuesday through Friday, you can't accommodate that. So no matter what schedule you choose, you're... you can't make every customer happy. So let's just take customer off the table. If your customer is loyal, if they believe in you, they will find a way to logistically get their car in in your, in your open hours.
[00:02:44] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And that, that's building relationship, that's exit scheduling, that's taking good care of them when they're face-to-face or on the phone with you. That's being their total car care solution and being their partner in the maintenance and care of their vehicle. We can... If you're building that relationship, we can take that completely off the table.
[00:03:04] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Okay? So, so don't, don't add into this equation, the customers will never buy it. Customers will buy it. And I can tell you that's true because, um, you know, when, um, my husband was sick and we had to spend 30 days out of state, um, for his initial round of treatment, guess what? When we opened back up, customers were waiting for us.
[00:03:29] JeanAnn SaintGrace: When we had to close every third week because of his treatment schedule, guess what? Our schedule was full the weeks we were there. There was no recrimination. There was no this or that, and we also had trusted shops in the area that we could refer them to, so they were taken care of, but they kept coming back.
[00:03:48] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So, so when you build the loyalty, when you build the trust, when you build that relationship and spend that time building repor- rapport, they're gonna come no matter what your schedule is. Okay? So, so we're gonna take customers off the table. The customers will come. Now, what about A standard eight to five Monday through Friday.
[00:04:14] JeanAnn SaintGrace: It works, right? It works. People accept you're closed on the weekends. Your team gets two sol- two whole days off over the weekend. It works, right? We go to a four-day week. Okay, are we gonna do Monday through Thursday or Tuesday through Friday, or even span the weekend? Maybe you're gonna do a, a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday to capture some, some of the market on Saturday.
[00:04:38] JeanAnn SaintGrace: You build it out the way you want it, right? The biggest thing with four days a week is you've gotta look at your labor laws, because if you're gonna end up doing four 10s for 10-hour days, then you've gotta check with your local and state laws to see when does overtime kick in, and if you're gonna end up paying two hours of overtime at the end of every eight-hour day 'cause they're working 10-hour shifts, you've gotta know that.
[00:05:05] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Some states have a 40... over 40 hours, um, overtime rule, so you can work t- four 10s and, and not have to pay overtime. So, so that's a consideration. If you're going to work four days a week, what days are your best days to get sh- parts? Um, if you're in a smaller market and your, your suppliers are a long ways off or they're not open on an odd day like a Saturday, that's a consideration.
[00:05:35] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So we have to take all of these things into account. We have to, to make a list of pros and cons and see what, what works out. Conversely, if we're gonna go to a six or seven-day week, do we have enough team to, to cover those shifts? Do we have team members who want to work the weekends, who are willing to give up one or two of their weekends, weekend days so that they can have days off during the week?
[00:06:03] JeanAnn SaintGrace: S- for some people, this works out. For people who may have a spouse who works shift work like, um, a nurse or an ambulance driver or a paramedic or a fireman, you know, this kind of flexible schedule might work for them because if they can have a couple days off during the week and work it with their spouse's days off, then it works for them.
[00:06:24] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So, so w- maybe we have team members who are bought into this and would be happy to work a Saturday and a Sunday because their spouse's work schedule is not conventional and they need an, an odd day off. Um, there's people who really like having weekdays off 'cause they can go to the bank and go get their hair cut and go to the, their, their whatever, doctor's appointments.
[00:06:48] JeanAnn SaintGrace: You know, for, for people who do work Monday through Friday, professionals, and don't work the weekends, you know, only having to Saturday and Sunday off doesn't work for you to have, you know, get certain things done. And, and that means that your, your people might need extra time off during the week in order to make those things happen.
[00:07:11] JeanAnn SaintGrace: But if you offer time on the, in the evenings or weekends where they can get that done, it could work. There's a lot of naysayers out there. There's a lot of people out there who said, "Oh, I tried that and it didn't work." It didn't work for you And where was the pushback? Was it your team? Was it your cust- clientele?
[00:07:30] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Was it supply issues? Was it just you didn't wanna worry about the shop being seven- open seven days a week or whatever? You know, whatever it is, there's always going to be a challenge. But just because it didn't work for them doesn't mean it won't work for you. And what I try to really instill in people is that if you make a choice to try something like this and it doesn't work, just undo it.
[00:08:00] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Just change your path. Hitting a brick wall is not the end of things. You can still go left or right, or you can retreat. Strategic retreat is a thing. You can retreat. You can regroup. You can step back and go, "Okay, that didn't work. How can we make this work?" And do a postmortem on it, and talk to your team, and talk to customers, and talk to your suppliers, and say, "Okay, how did this not work?
[00:08:22] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And let's fix it," rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and getting on Facebook, and telling everybody in the world how an alternative schedule just doesn't work, right? We've all seen that. If you're anywhere in any forums and somebody pops off about an alternative work schedule, you're gonna hear it, right?
[00:08:39] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And so, you know, you've got to listen to that own inner voice, listen to your team's voice. Think about, you know, you might have to build two different teams, a team that works, you know, three and a half or four days a week, and another team that, that takes over and works the other three to four days a week if you're gonna go to a seven-day schedule.
[00:09:00] JeanAnn SaintGrace: I definitely don't advocate, um, forcing... quote, unquote, "forcing" or making it mandatory that team members work weekends if they don't want to. You're just gonna have, pardon my language, a crappy culture where nobody's happy, and they're missing a day with their kids 'cause they don't work the weekends. So having team members that are on board for this is so key.
[00:09:24] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And from a mathematical standpoint, the fewer hours you're open a week creates less room to spread out your fixed costs. So I didn't do the math, so forgive me, I don't have good numbers. But let's say your fixed costs are $5,000 a week. If we work five days a week, then we have $1,000 in fixed costs per day.
[00:09:48] JeanAnn SaintGrace: If we go to a seven-day week, then we spread our fixed costs over seven days of business, and that, that fixed cost per day, per hour goes down, right? So that means you can ach- you can adjust your sales desires to meet or exceed your, your financial need based on your fixed costs That, that's a mathematical equation.
[00:10:12] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Sometimes the math maths. Now, in my opinion, where do I think that's a better or a possibly good model? It's in places where you have a lot of commuters, where you have people who need their cars Monday through Friday and can have a better chance of bringing it in on Saturday and Sunday. And again, depending on your area, right, depending on your parts suppliers, if you've got three parts suppliers within three blocks and they're all open on Sundays where you have a good possibility of getting, um, parts availability, that makes a difference.
[00:10:51] JeanAnn SaintGrace: If you're an hour from your best supplier like we were, and they're not open on Saturdays, w- you can't operate on Saturday and Sunday. We couldn't. We didn't have the supply. So the other, the other thing about that is if you are in a, in a place where you can't get parts availability, then scheduling the really solid maintenance items that you can just go through and do a 50K or 100K service that has minimal room for things going wrong, and you can have all the parts pre-ordered and have a tech and just put 'em on it for three or four hours, that would be ideal.
[00:11:29] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Um, I saw a gentleman, um, post to Facebook where they basically have a secret menu, and the secret menu is for work that they only want on Saturdays. So their Google is not set up f- to show them open on Saturdays. Their s- online scheduler does not show availability on Saturdays. They cherry-pick exactly the work that they wanna do on Saturdays.
[00:11:52] JeanAnn SaintGrace: They pack it full of maintenance items that are f- basically foolproof. You know, I roll my eyes and use the air quotes for foolproof because we know anything can go wrong at any time. But those low-risk, high-efficiency jobs that your techs can knock out in a short period of time with minimal risk of something going wrong.
[00:12:15] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Verifying that you've got c- correct parts, you've got enough fluids, all those things, right? So I thought that was really smart, and if you have a tech or a couple of techs who are willing to go in, just do the work, maybe write their own service, maybe have everything pre-written for them and all they have to do is fill in quantities, put in the mileage, and take a payment, that could work.
[00:12:38] JeanAnn SaintGrace: That could absolutely work if you wanna do it that way. If you've got somebody who wants to make a little extra money or needs a Saturday instead of a Monday, it's an option. So, so looking at it that way, you have to look at your market. You have to look at your parts availability. You have to look at what your clients want too, right?
[00:12:56] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Like, if you've got somebody who just absolutely can't bring their car in during the week because of their commute or because maybe their spouse has the other car, and if they don't have their car during the week, they don't have any transportation If you, if you don't offer loaners, maybe a Saturday thing is a good option.
[00:13:15] JeanAnn SaintGrace: I don't recommend taking diag. I don't recommend taking a high-end, challenging job that has multiple ways that it could go sideways. Now, if you're a shop that has loaner cars, if you've adopted that, then that takes that person off the table, right? You're able to put them in a loaner car and they can go do their thing.
[00:13:35] JeanAnn SaintGrace: But not every shop wants to go into loaners. Some shops would prefer this Saturday secret menu option than, than putting people in loaner cars. So, and, and it's... You know, I've seen arguments, "Well, the only people that wanna come in on the weekends are oil changes." You control your schedule. You can, you can limit the number of oil changes that you're gonna do to however many you normally do to protect your average repair order.
[00:14:01] JeanAnn SaintGrace: If your, if your normal average day of oil changes is two to three per day, then do two to three per day on the weekends and pack the date with the r- the other work that you would wanna do. And, and also cater to the team members who are going to be there. Are these a group of good, of guys or people that are good at good solid mechanical stuff?
[00:14:22] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So we're doing brakes, we're doing timing belts, we're doing this, we're doing that. Things that are well in their wheelhouse, require minimum amount of supervision, and they can knock the work out. It could work. It could work. If you have a religious reason for not wanting to work Saturday or Sunday, hey, don't do it.
[00:14:39] JeanAnn SaintGrace: It's your shop, your way. We all have choices to make. And, and t- but, but for, for somebody to post a, a comment saying, "Hey, I'm thinking about changing to a four-day, four-day work week or a seven-day work week," and for people to just pop on and say, "Oh, it'll never work," that just means it didn't work for them.
[00:15:01] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So don't listen to that negativity. Go and do your research. Go and figure out, you know, what does your team want? What do you want? You know, I know a shop owner whose shop is open four days a week. They have a team. They have a second in command. So their team works four days a week. They, they flex in and out depending on what they have going on in their life, and then they spend Friday doing payroll, catching up on books, working on their marketing.
[00:15:31] JeanAnn SaintGrace: That's their quiet time to go in the shop and work and still preserve their Saturday and Sunday for family It works. It works. They're not hurting their, their income, their sales are solid, their team is happy 'cause they get a three-day weekend, and the owner's happy because they can come in and do what they need to do without distraction.
[00:15:54] JeanAnn SaintGrace: You and I both know, all of us know as owners, the minute you step into the shop, there's a barrage of questions, and it's almost impossible to get work done while you've got your leadership hat on, talking to your team, maybe talking to a customer you haven't seen in a while. Unless you can lock yourself in a room with a Do Not Disturb sign, a lot of times getting anything done while your team is there is virtually impossible.
[00:16:20] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So, you know, what's your lifestyle desire? Do you have a kid who is, like, in a-- in sports, and you wanna be able to be free during certain times to take care of, of their sports stuff? Or if they have a, a fair project or 4H project, or you're homeschooling and you need that time during the week to do that and then work on a Saturday or, or, you know, a Friday or Saturday or Sunday.
[00:16:46] JeanAnn SaintGrace: There's all kinds of things that are shifting in our, in our consciousness, in the collective consciousness, and people are beginning to have more understanding of quality of life, of work-life balance. And if s- if tweaking your schedule, changing it to something that your team really wants and you really want, imagine what that does to your culture.
[00:17:13] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Imagine what that does to a team who all of a sudden has a three-day weekend, or they can work a, a Wednesday through Sunday instead of Monday through Friday, and now they've got something they can do during the week that, that they can get done, and they-- It's lowered their stress level because they can take care of certain things during the week.
[00:17:32] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Say they're caring for a loved one who's going through a cancer treatment, and they've gotta-- they're the ones who have to take them, and they can only do it Monday through Friday. Imagine having the flex of either being able to work four days a week or work Wednesday through Sunday so that they can be the one to take their loved one to their cancer treatment.
[00:17:50] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Imagine that, and they didn't lose any, they didn't lose any work. They didn't lose any wages. That's a gift. That's something that is powerful that we can help our team out with. And, and having flex. You know, maybe we don't open at eight o'clock in the morning. Maybe we open at ten and work till seven.
[00:18:12] JeanAnn SaintGrace: That's a viable option. Maybe we have people working from eight to seven and fluctuat- you know, change their arrival times, but we don't have any customers coming in until ten o'clock. So that way, the morning starts out with everything getting lined up, everything getting put into, into process, into the workflow, and then adding in those later appointments as they move in There's no rules.
[00:18:38] JeanAnn SaintGrace: I want you all to just evaporate. Imagine the 8:00 to 5:00 Monday through Friday model is a balloon and pop it and let all the air out of that. That is Not necessarily your paradigm unless it works for you. So there's no rules. You can have your shop your way with the schedule you want, with the team that you want.
[00:19:02] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Everything that you want about your business, you can have that. Is it gonna take some work? Are there gonna be some growing pains? That's why I recommend you do all this preparation at the beginning, so you have a very clear idea of what's gonna work best for you and your team, your family, their families, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:19:22] JeanAnn SaintGrace: It's not, it's not something we should just take off the table because some bloke on the internet says, "That didn't work for me." You know, maybe this doesn't work-- maybe a seven-day work week doesn't work in a small town of 2,000 people where everybody goes to church on Sunday. You're not gonna have clients on Sunday, so why be open?
[00:19:44] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Maybe on Saturdays, you know, you have a bunch of people in that situation who commute 30 minutes to an hour away, so working Saturdays might be a great idea. You just have to look at your market, look at what your customers need, and then let that be part of your decision. And what I meant earlier when I said don't take your customers into account, don't take in to the ones that you're never gonna make happy.
[00:20:09] JeanAnn SaintGrace: You know, there's gonna be those people that you could be work- open 24 hours, seven days a week, and they're still gonna have something to be upset about. So, so take those outliers out of it, but look at the customer base that you have. Take a poll. "Hey, if we were open on Saturdays, would that be a more convenient time for you to come in?"
[00:20:29] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Maybe. Maybe. Maybe not. But, but figure it out. Don't, don't make this... This is not one of those decisions you can make in a vacuum and just, you know, come from on high and say, "This is what we're doing," and wave a magic wand. Your team's gonna be mad. Y- you might lose team members. The culture's gonna take a hit.
[00:20:49] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So anything around this, a s- a, a different shift in your, um, in your scheduling, make sure your team's on board. If you have to hire extra team members, make sure that your hiring team members, you advertise what shifts you're hi- you're offering. Because if you have an interview that comes in and they only wanna work Monday through Friday, but you're looking for somebody to do Tuesday through Saturday or Wednesday through Sunday, they're not your guy.
[00:21:18] JeanAnn SaintGrace: They're not your people. So be clear in your advertising. What shifts are you hiring for? That could be a huge bonus to somebody. Somebody might just wanna come in and work two days a week. Maybe they're looking for part-time, and they wanna work Saturday and Sunday. Maybe you have a retired service advisor who just needs a little extra income, and they can come in and be a, a part-time flex, where they take that second part of that, that shift, that Friday, Saturday, Sunday or something like that It can work.
[00:21:48] JeanAnn SaintGrace: You just have to be creative, and you have to soften your perspective and widen your perspective into what the possibilities are. So like I said, I'm not advocating for anything except that you have your shop your way. So, so take all this into account. Put it through your mental computer. Talk to other people.
[00:22:08] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Um, just like I said, the first... The people who just say, "No, don't do it, it'll never work," those aren't your people. If you get a logical, thought-out response of, "We tried this. This is the, how big our community is. This is how big our client base is. This is how far out we're booked. Our, you know, our team was not on board.
[00:22:26] JeanAnn SaintGrace: We decided to do it. Everybody was unhappy, so we had to stop." Okay, they didn't talk to their team. Or like I said, maybe their parts availability wasn't as good as it needed to be to float this. It's possible. But please, please, please, if this is something that in your heart, in your soul, this is something you desire to do Just do the math, do the investigation, look at all the features and benefits, and look at all the cons, and then make a decision.
[00:22:55] JeanAnn SaintGrace: Don't just put it in the pipe of, "Well, this is how we've always done it. We're not gonna change." Okay? Because there might be some magic sauce here that revolutionizes your life. Maybe you're a fisherman and you like to go fishing on Mondays 'cause nobody's at the lake. Well, work Tuesday through Friday then.
[00:23:16] JeanAnn SaintGrace: It's easy, and your customers will get used to it. They will get with the flow. If you've built that relationship, if you've built the loyalty and trust, they will figure it out. They will follow you because they trust you and because you're their total car connection. So we've had a change-up in our sponsor for the podcast, and our new sponsor is ShopFix Auto Shop Coaching.
[00:23:41] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And I coach for Auto Shop Coaching, and we are a much different, um, coaching company. We are here to directly address the needs of our clients exactly when they need them. We don't have an agenda. We don't have anything to sell you except our coaching. You get up to an hour of coaching per week, and there's no contract.
[00:24:05] JeanAnn SaintGrace: You, uh, agree to a monthly coaching fee and what's included in that. And the other nice thing is, is that we can build out a custom coaching plan for you. If you want to be coached as an owner and you want your service advisors to be coached, we can create a coaching plan for that. If you are looking for succession or leadership or QuickBooks coaching or how to get your financials in order, we can offer that level of coaching to you.
[00:24:34] JeanAnn SaintGrace: And we're a small company, but that gives us the opportunity to really dial into what our clients need. Um, whatever it looks like, whatever you need, we can coach you at that level. If you're a startup company and you, you really wanna lay your financials down right, get your fl- workflow correct, and, and be hitting your profit goals from the start, we can coach you there.
[00:25:01] JeanAnn SaintGrace: If you're in the middle and you've got a shop that's doing well but you wanna do better, we can coach you in that realm as well. If you're a really mature co- um, shop owner and you want succession plan, how to build a second in command, how to build a shop that works for you, and truly get your shop your way, we can coach you at that level as well.
[00:25:22] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So no matter what you need, we can dial in and work at your... at whatever level you need us to work at, and we're happy to do that. So all of the contact for ShopFix Auto Shop Coaching is in the, um, show notes. Please feel free to either reach out to me, or if you go through the website, you'll, you'll talk to Chris.
[00:25:44] JeanAnn SaintGrace: We'll do a discovery call, figure out what you need and what that would look like for you, and then h- how can we proceed. So I encourage you to make a- an appointment for that discovery call. If you're feeling like maybe you need a, a shift, maybe you just need temporary coaching for a special project or a special thing that you need fixed and you need an outside perspective, we can do that as well.
[00:26:07] JeanAnn SaintGrace: So no matter what, we're here to help and serve you in, in the capacity that you need us. So as always, go out there, love your people till it's weird, start building your shop your way. And this is JeanAnn SaintGrace for Her Shop Her Way. Have an awesome day. Thank you