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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.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:00:00]:
In some ways it's like reverse engineering. We don't want to say we have this shop. We say, what do we want to be in this shop? And build that shop around that. I think that's an important conversation. This is Shop Talk Her Way with Jean Ann St. Grace. Hi, this is Jean Ann St. Grace, and welcome to this episode of Shop Talk Her Way.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:00:29]:
Have you ever wondered what you want to be when your shop grows up? What role you want to play? That's our topic for discussion today. So thank you again for joining me. And I think it's really important that as a shop owner or even as a member of a shop, a shop team, that you know what you want to be when the shop grows up, especially for owners. I think it's important they, they don't always define their role as their bringing their shop into, into reality. And sometimes they end up in roles that they're just not really suited for or really don't want to play. And I've talked to enough shop owners to know that this is a thing. This, this definitely happens. And it's maybe because they don't always know the role of the shop owner.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:01:20]:
I think a lot of shop owners think that you know, they're technicians, they want to have their own shop, but they don't realize really what goes into owning a shop. They end up wearing all kinds of hats. They have to, you know, learn accounting. They have to learn how to read financials. They have to possibly learn how to do payroll or at least hire a payroll company. They have to have a lawyer, a financial advisor, an insurance person. They have to also be, you know, the HR department and start to create operating procedures and standards and even higher-level things like what are our core beliefs in our business? How do we want to be and engage with customers? What kind of relationships do we want to have with our community? What do we want to specialize in? If we want to specialize, do we have a niche? It seems like a very easy thing to say, I want to be a shop owner, but so many people fall into the challenge of, oh, I, I now am a shop owner and I don't know what to do with all of this. So I want to thank WorldPAC and WorldPAC Training Institute for being our sponsor for the podcast.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:02:42]:
I am so grateful to them for throwing their support behind us and me specifically to bring the podcast into the world. It's important to me that WorldPAC brings quality parts, quality service, and also quality training to the industry. They were an excellent partner of mine when we had our shop, and I really appreciated how much they helped elevate our business. So I deeply appreciate and I'm super grateful to WorldPac and WorldPac Training Institute. Please be looking out for opportunities for training. Their conference is coming up this summer, STX. If you want more information about that, please check out WorldPac's website and WorldPac Training Institute as well. So back to this conversation of what do you want to be when your shop grows up? I think it could be evolving.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:03:32]:
I think in the short term from inception, there's going to be multiple hats and there might not be the budget to have other people wear those hats. So, you know, speaking from my experience, I was the bookkeeper, I was the person who answered the phone. I probably essentially started off as a customer representative, a CRM or a CSR, customer service rep, because I didn't know a lot about service advising. I knew parts, how to look parts up and that kind of thing, but I didn't really know pricing. I didn't know how to build estimates. I was really starting kind of at the bottom, if you want to be very frank about building estimates. And I started off with the easy stuff like oil changes. So, I was wearing the accounting hat, the customer service hat, the payroll department, the HR department, the IT department.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:04:37]:
That's my least favorite. If you can farm that one out, definitely I recommend you do that. I was the one who organized, you know, opened bank accounts, put together the leases for the equipment that we needed to lease. All, all of those things. And my husband, because he was a technician and had been writing his own service, he was being the lead technician, the shop foreman, and the lead service advisor. And he was, you know, slowly over time teaching me how to sell jobs, how to write jobs, and how to do that work as well. So we had all of the owner hats very definitely on our heads. Now, we were kind of unique.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:05:23]:
That's not always an option for a lot of people starting a shop. My experience is it's usually a technician who, you know, it's his, it's his thing to do that, and his spouse is either not involved in the business, whether they're raising kids, have another job, whatever that might look like. The overarching group of people that are in my coaching cadres are men who open shops and did it mostly themselves. I had a handful, fair amount of husband and wife teams and then some business partners. I had one shop that they made great transitions and hopefully I'll get him on as a guest soon, that they were high school friends. They worked together in a shop, decided to open their own shop and then really split their roles into shop foreman and business management, business administrator, and they do it beautifully. And there was no problem with that. Sometimes those jobs, especially the administrative jobs, it's like, you know, everybody lines up and whoever didn't step back gets stuck with it.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:06:36]:
So, there's all kinds of challenges around this. I'm going to tell you right out, there's also some resentment around it. I got stuck doing this. I wanted to have my own shop so I could be a technician, and I ended up doing this and that and the other thing in the business. And I don't want to do those things. I want to be a technician. And so it's important to kind of know, you know, what are your, your gifts and skills? What do you want to do and how do you want to do it? Sometimes it's accidental, sometimes it's intentional. I'd like it to be more intentional, and I'd like us to have more education, more training for technicians who want to be a shop owner and kind of get them a head start, give them the basics, put them through an owner's class, help them to understand everything that goes into that.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:07:32]:
And that might help them, A, to be more successful, B, it might shift their thinking around opening a shop. And not that I would ever discourage anyone, but I think it's better to have kind of eyes wide open than to be kind of like blindly going into it. So there's— it's, it's complicated, right? It can go from something very simple of I want to own my own shop and all of a sudden you do need a lawyer and an accountant and an insurance agent and all these people that you have to rely on for expertise. And so suddenly you have somebody who had the entrepreneurial seizure. Now they're in a world where they don't know the vocabulary, they are not an expert, and sometimes they get taken advantage of, get pointed in the wrong directions. These are the things that I would like to help them avoid. But the biggest thing and kind of the most heartbreaking thing that I have encountered is the the shop owner who was a technician, wanted to have his own shop, doesn't have the support and they're carrying all the load of the shop on their own shoulders. And it's a tremendous amount.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:08:50]:
And so, you know, it not only turns into an 8-to-5 job, it sometimes turns into a 6-to-6 job or a 6-to-10 job because they have to wait until after hours to call to close things down maybe get their own work done, maybe work in the office and get some bookkeeping done or some invoicing done or some— whatever that might look like. It's not easy to do that on your own. And the other thing about being a shop owner is you really need to know how everybody's job is done so that you can audit them, you can hold them accountable, you can make sure that everything's getting done properly. So here's the deal I made with my shop owners who wanted to be technicians. I tell them, that's fine if you want to be in the bays, we can allot a certain amount of time in the bays, but you can't neglect your owner's duties. If we need certain reporting completed, if we need certain, you know, updates to your financial system, whether you're using QuickBooks or something like that, to make sure that those things are done or your shop management system's up to date, all the invoices are posted and closed and paid. Whatever that looks like, so that we can have a conversation when we meet for our coaching calls and make sure that we have good numbers to work from. So it's like a balance and it's kind of a deal, right? So, you know, you get time in the bays, but you can't completely take off your owner's hat.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:10:20]:
You just can't do it because, and I've said this before and I'll say it again, as much as you might find people that you can trust, you need to trust but verify. You need to be able to know that they're doing their jobs. The way they need to. And whether it's your advisor, or if you hire a bookkeeper, if you hire a CSR, whatever that might be, you need to know their job and their duties so that, you know, they might not be there some, you know, one day, maybe they're out sick and somebody else has to fill in. And it's probably the shop owner. Let's face it, when there's somebody out sick, the shop owner puts their hat on and does that job, right? So I really want to emphasize the importance of the shop owner understanding exactly what every job is and what their requirements are, and then how to hold them accountable. If you have a service advisor, we might look at putting in place some KPIs of, you know, hours per ticket, total hours sold, gross profit margins for parts and labor. We might look at, you know, a car count, those kinds of things, average repair order, and make sure that they're hitting certain KPIs, key performance indicators, if you don't know what that is, make sure they're hitting their marks.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:11:43]:
And with a lot of the shop management systems these days, that report is fairly easy to find. It should be able to come up, but we have to set the goals and then hold them accountable. We also need to know if we have a bookkeeper, how the, how the accounting system works, how QuickBooks works, where can I find the reports that I need, make sure all the bills are paid, make sure payroll's correct. You know, it's, it's not so much that they need to be able to do it, but they need to be able to audit and double-check. And again, you know, they might need to know how to do it in case, God forbid, their bookkeeper's out sick on payroll day or something like that. So, you have to become the jack of all trades. And as a coach, I'm never the one to say, this is your role. I'm only here to say, you can have whatever role you want, but you cannot abdicate the owner's roles.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:12:38]:
So, you know, I'm very big on everybody enjoying their work, on living their life in a way that they want to live. And I think too many coaches try to tell them, well, if you're the shop owner, then you need to be the shop owner. You shouldn't be in the bays, you shouldn't be on the counter, and you should be up here. And not everybody wants that. And so I think it's important. Again, one of my taglines is your shop, your way. So do you want to be a technician? Do you want to be the lead tech? Do you want to be the shop foreman? Do you want to be the service advisor or do you want to be an owner? Do you want to be an owner who doesn't touch a wrench, who doesn't touch the counter, who comes comes in, does the owner things, and then is out. Like, you know, not necessarily an absentee owner, although that's an option as well, but a truly hands-off ownership level owner where all you do is manage the finances, look at the, the numbers, make sure the numbers are being hit, doing your one-on-ones, those kinds of things.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:13:48]:
That role is fine too if that's the one that you want. We need to be careful, of course, because sometimes— and forgive me— owners being on the counter maybe isn't the best thing because you might know that person or you might feel, oh well, we can give them a little bit of this or a little bit of that, or we don't need to charge them so much for this or so much for that. Some owners should not be on the counter, and that is definitely a conversation. But if that's what you want to do, then it's my job to hold you accountable to your KPIs so we make sure that we're not giving away the farm. And I'm so— it hurts, it hurts my heart honestly to think of somebody playing a role in their business that doesn't suit them or where they don't find any purpose or satisfaction. And I think sometimes, especially owners who have worn so many hats, they run around all day putting out fires and they never feel like they accomplish anything. And it is no fun, and I know this from personal experience, to have the soundtrack of your life be circus music and all you do is run around all day, you know, caging up the monkeys, making sure the elephant's fed, making sure all the little people are in the car and the clowns have their little red noses. Like, that's not a good feeling.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:15:14]:
It's not a good feeling to feel like you're in some kind of a revolving door of kookiness that you have to somehow feel like you're managing. So, so it's again, what do you want to be when your shop grows up? And that plays into how big a shop do you want? How many techs do you want to have? How much money do you want to make? I personally think there's room for us in this industry to have a good solid, you know, 3-man operation, an advisor and 2 techs with the right, right mix. That can be a very lucrative, very efficient, very profitable model. There are some people who want to own 3 shops or 5 shops and be, you know, like an automotive mogul and be a multiple shop owner. Some— for some people, they can do that. You know, maybe somebody wants something in the middle. Maybe you want a 10-bay shop and do tires and alignments and be full service and just do all the things. It's your vision, and it's not anybody else's job to tell you you're right or wrong.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:16:24]:
As a coach, I'm just here to help you get what you want out of it and have work-life balance and, um, you know, have time for your vacations or to leave to go to training or to, to, to have a life outside of work. I think there's a shift that, um, you know, if you're, if you're a business owner in the good old days, right, it was not an 8 to 5 proposition. It was probably— well, me personally, sometimes it was an 8 to 10, 8 AM to 10 PM, not 8 AM to 10 AM, uh, an 8 to 10 proposition, 3 to 5 days a week. And sometimes a Saturday and sometimes a Sunday because I just couldn't get everything I needed done in a week, especially when I started to take on more and more of the service advising duties. And again, I knew you guys, I will tell you over and over again, that was my own doing. My husband and I were control freaks. We wanted things done a certain way. We had tried and tried to find a service advisor and went through at least half a dozen prospects and none of them worked.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:17:35]:
So we just decided to kind of dial back, hunker down, run lean for a little while. And then go back into looking for an advisor or somebody who could be our second in command. And so, you know, all of those things. The other thing that an owner's got to look at is hiring and hiring the right people for the right positions. And the last few episodes have been about both hiring and firing and how to do that. So I recommend if you're anywhere near having to hire someone, go and listen to those episodes because I hope there's some good information in there for you. But what we really need to focus on as owners is how much time do we want to give to this? What do we want our role to be? What job, what things can we delegate? What owner things can we delegate? And again, my non-negotiables are I do not feel like you should delegate away your one-on-ones with your team. And I don't feel like you should delegate away your signing on your checks, making sure the bills are paid properly to places where, like, fraud can happen, like bad things can happen.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:18:53]:
So those are my two non-negotiables, not fraud so much in the one-on-ones, but making sure you're staying in contact with your team, that they're engaged, that you know what's going on with them and that they are very clear on your goals and their goals, how, how they help you achieve your goals. Other than that, you know, finding a bookkeeper, finding an accountant, finding a really good service advisor, finding a team of technicians that will support you, those are all things that are so, so, so important. And finding that right support. And like I said, you want to be a tech in your shop, Okay, but you've got to do your owner things. Do you want to be the service advisor? Cool, but you got to do the owner things too. If you want to be an owner and just do the owner things, we can do that too. It's all about you and what you want. And sometimes that takes some real soul searching because there's all kinds of outside judgment.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:20:01]:
There's all kinds of other people doing other things, telling you you're wrong, telling you that's not the right thing to to do. And my argument would be, if we can keep your numbers solid, if we can keep your profits where they need to be, and you feel supported, and you can make it work, then let's at least try. We can always pivot, we can always change, we can always do something different. But if the most important thing to you is to have a specific role, then let's try to make it work. I'm never in I'm personally never in the space of that will never work. And honestly, that's one of the biggest pushbacks a coach gets is, well, that'll never work. Well, we haven't tried, so let's try. Let's find a way.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:20:53]:
Maybe you're the one who has the breakthrough and makes it work because you have a different perspective, some unique talent, something that makes you exceptional at what you do, and you can make it work. And there's probably nothing more satisfying than going from, I don't think that'll work, to look what we did. We worked this process, we worked the system until we found the thing that did work, and we pivoted and we changed and we, we adapted until we found the right mix for us. Those are, those are leadership qualities. That's a level of commitment and personal awareness that not everybody has, but everybody has the opportunity to have. So, you know, step 1, we have a shop. Step 2, what do you want to be? What do you want to— what role do you want to play? Um, the other thing is, is that a lot of techs who become shop owners feel like if they're gonna be the boss, they have to be bossy. And I think that's to some degree a fallacy.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:22:14]:
You don't have to, to boss people around to be the boss. Creating a culture where, you know, people understand your whys, when you ask them to do something, they do it— creating that kind of will help you to not have to be the bossy boss. And this goes for, you know, anybody who is a shop owner and even advisors and even technicians who find themselves in leadership positions. The new style of leadership, our modern leadership, is a leadership of service and helping people to understand why they're doing what they're doing how they're doing at that, and then what is their next step is key. And if we can create that culture and model that as leaders in our shops, then it proliferates down. So you don't have to— pardon my language— become an a-hole to be a shop owner. There are also some limiting beliefs that if you want to make profit, you're greedy, or if you charge too much, that you're, um, trying to find an acceptable word because I don't want to use the word that's coming to my mind, um, that you're taking advantage of somebody or you're overcharging or, um, you're, you're too, too much. Um, we have to make sure that there's enough, enough profit on the bottom line to make the business valuable.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:23:47]:
And worth it to you to continue to have. Owners who are not taking regular draws or regular paychecks, that's not a feasible situation. And so it's watching the model and creating the model and starting from the place of what do you want it to be and working our way out from there. In some ways it's like reverse engineering. We don't want to say we have this shop, we say, what do we want to be in this shop and build that shop around that? I think that's an important conversation. You know, I joke about the accidental shop owner. Sometimes that's the case and they just end up doing all the things they don't want to do, either because they don't, they don't want to, there's nobody else to do it. And so they kind of You know, the poop runs downhill and there's the one left hand holding all, all the sticky situations.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:24:47]:
So, you know, and, and, and hiring out some of this stuff is expensive. And I tell my owners, that's a freedom tax. If you have to pay a service advisor, for example, somewhere in the range of $90,000 to $100,000 so that you only have a 3-day work week, that's a freedom tax. If you have to hire a bookkeeper and it costs you, I don't know, $1,000 to $2,000 a month, that's a freedom tax. So we have to make sure that the shop can support that and still have the profit margins that it needs. And we can do that. We can plan it backwards. We can work from your fixed expenses backwards to see how much does the shop have to make and is that feasible.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:25:33]:
You might have to raise a labor rate. You might have to change your pricing matrixes, but it can be done. There are shop owners I was blessed to be working with, some really, really tremendous shop owners. And as they started to grow as business owners, they were having their best years ever as they built the right teams, as they built culture, as they became engaged with their team. And then started to really pay attention to the numbers at the level they needed to, all of a sudden their businesses are blossoming and they're having their best months ever and they're having their best years ever. And they're playing the role in the shop that they want to play because they're happy to come to work. They enjoy coming to work. They get to do the things that they like in the shop.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:26:23]:
So in my world, like I said, I have a few non-negotiables, but No one should tell someone else what role they need to play in their own business. They can point out the challenges, they can point out what could be some pitfalls or some great successes. But until we try, we just don't know. And we might just find the secret sauce that it takes to make it work and to have your shop your way. So thank you so much for joining me today. I really, from my heart, appreciate all of you out there My heart's with all you shop owners, all you advisors, all you technicians. You all make this all go around. So if this has been of help to you, please like, subscribe, share the podcast with others, and please take the time to take good care of your team, take good care of your people, and love them till they're weird.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:27:19]:
Have an awesome day. This is Jean Ann St. Grace, and I'll see you next episode.