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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]:
Regardless of the level they're at, when they come to us, we should be moving them forward and offering continuing education as the technical knowledge becomes available and as training becomes available. This is Shop Talk Her Way with JeanAnn SaintGrace. This is JeanAnn SaintGrace with Shop Talk Her Way. And I have a question for you. What is your standard for training in your shop across all the positions, as an owner, as an advisor, as a technician, what are you expecting of you and your team for ongoing training? That's the topic for today's episode. Welcome again. I'm so excited to have you here with me.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:00:44]:
And this is a topic that's kind of been bubbling up under the surface. Like I said, a lot of times my topics come from things that are happening with my clients in real time. And so today the conversation is around training. And I think we can all agree that across the board, we all need to continue to train. We all need to find ways to expand our knowledge and to figure out the next evolution, not only of ourselves, but of our team and our shop. And one of the ways we can get to that is through training and especially for technicians. But across the shop, the technologies that we are working with are ever evolving, right? Every year there's new upgrades in the electronics processes. There's even new varieties and variants of software and vehicles happening on a regular basis, weekly, monthly, as the manufacturers can implement these remote uplinks and get on the fly programming happening, then, you know, this stuff is out there and the technology's there.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:01:59]:
So we need to have a plan for all of our team members, including ourselves as owners, to keep up with what's happening in the industry. So I'd like to start kind of at the beginning. What are we doing when we bring someone new into our team, someone who's brand new to the industry? Are we offering them some kind of training besides following one of our other techs around and learning how we do things in our shop? I would argue, as always, that there are so many ways to find training at different skill levels. For example, if you happen to be Napa Auto Care, they offer online training at all skill levels. And I think their training, from what I've heard, is one of the better ones out there. There are things like today's class where they give you a short video at the beginning of the day, your whole team watches, it takes, takes a quiz, and then you are. It's gamified so that you can compete with other shops to see how often they they log in, how many people they have, what their Results are something like that where it's quick in and out, a little bit of training every day. Then we have, you know, training where you might take your team off site or team members off site where they get classroom training.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:03:23]:
We might even have a mix of classroom and actual hands on training where somebody like World Pack or used to be Carquest Training Institute, they had something like that as well. So there's all kinds of training out there and it's really important that we find the resources that fit best for us. If we're working on imports, then import training. If we're working on domestics, you know, there's, there's ways to affiliate yourself with warehouse distributors that carry Acdelco and Motorcraft to where you can get ACDelco motorcraft training on new technologies. There's all these opportunities out there for training and, and it's just a matter of finding what fits and works best for you guys. But I think it's imperative that we require some kind of continuing education and we could create all kinds of swirls around and one of them is going to be do we pay the tax or not? And I'll get into that here in a minute. But I really want to focus back to how do we train our apprentices here in the United States. We don't have a licensing protocol like our brothers to the north in Canada do.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:04:42]:
So what is our barometer for how well trained our apprentices are? That's a great question. As far as I know. And one of the ways that I still feel is valid is to have them train towards the levels of the ASE certifications. Start at the A1 and work their way up to A8 and then into the L1 and then at that point they're eligible for their master tech. I think finding some way to tie a training program to that testing process and then consequently tying raises into their levels of certification. Also reimbursing for tests when they pass, maybe giving them a bonus. There's, there's all kinds of ways to compensate them, but I think it's really important that we encourage that to happen. When I was a shop owner, I did not have any technical ASC certifications, but I did have the ones that I was eligible for which was customer service and part specialist.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:05:54]:
I felt that it was important as an owner to have the same criteria for me that I led the charge on ASE certification. My husband of course was an L1 Master Tech or a master tech. He had all of his ASEs and he kept them in good standing all along. So there's a level of pride. It is a professional standard. There will be the naysayers out there. And I don't even really want to give that a voice because I think it's important that we find a way to standardize achievement in our professions and then recognize people for it. And it was important and special to me, especially when our apprentices got their first ASC certification where they were able to put the patches on their shirts.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:06:47]:
I would have, I would buy the patches and have our uniform people put the, the patches on and then present them to them and have everybody kind of around and celebrate that with them. It's a way to give recognition, to make it important to model that kind of success to your other team members. It was one of those things that it was happy and it was a good way to recognize people for what they were doing and what they were accomplishing. So if we step back just a hair farther when we're recruiting people in, especially if we're going to go at like the high school or junior college levels and try to recruit young people into the technician field or even into service advisor positions, that we give them a path to success, that we remove some of the stigma that is still attached to jobs where people have their names on their shirts, which I think is wrong. I think that's absolutely wrong. I think anybody who's out there earning a living, no matter what, it doesn't matter what their job title is, that they're out there achieving and excelling in their field, I think is the most important thing, no matter what they choose. So if we can give young people a path to a career, that they get trained on the job, that they have the potential to rate, to have high five figures up to, you know, six figure incomes without incurring any student loan debt, without having to spend, you know, money for education, that might not be relatable in the real world. You know, not every person is cut out to do four to six years of college.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:08:42]:
And that's been the truth all along. Right. Some people are much more gifted towards being hands on, learning a trade and excelling at that trade. So I think personally, and this is one of my high level wish lists, would be to create a training guide so that we create sets of skill levels that, I mean, if we match it to ase, that would be awesome. We might need to figure something else out. But set goals and standards for competency at a certain level. So the first level of training would be all the basics, you know, changing removing tires, putting tires Back on setting, lug nut, torque, those kinds of things, changing oil, checking fluids, brake systems, whatever that looks like, we start to set that criteria. And when they have met that level of training within a certain period of time, say a six month period, they get a raise, they get recognition.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:09:48]:
If they're able to get an ase, then we get them through the testing and hopefully they pass. And we then present them with their certificate and we move on. Another way to incentivize a younger person is that Napa has put together a cart, like an apprentices tool cart that has several drawers in it. And so you can tie their progress through their training to the different levels of the drawers. And if they stick for whatever the five to six year period that it would take for them to accomplish this training level, then the tool cart and all the tools in it become theirs. That way we are giving them a visual assessment, they're able to use all the tools, but until they actually achieve all of the criteria, then they're presented with it. And I really like the idea that Jeff Compton, the jaded mechanic has was like we put something really juicy in that last drawer like a scan tool, a picoscope, an autel, something that they can take and move forward with as they move through their careers. I really like that idea because after a six or seven year investment in time, who doesn't deserve a really big investment and a really special something to mark that occasion? So when we're recruiting new talent into our industry, there should be something really juicy for them and a really clear roadmap to follow and stay tuned.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:11:23]:
Hopefully that's something that I can accomplish with the help of some of my peers and get some kind of training criteria that's at least framework and then other shops can take that and move forward with it. Then the next thing is if we're hiring on somebody new who's, you know, a general service tech or has skills, we assess where they're at skill wise, we encourage them to get certified to that point and then we move them forward. And again we can offer raises for the accomplishment of getting the certifications. We can keep them moving from whatever skill set they're at once they've proved the proficiency and help to move them forward regardless of the level they're at, when they come to us, we should be moving them forward and offering continuing education as the technical knowledge becomes available and as training becomes available. Now you know that the shop Talk Her Way podcast is sponsored by worldpac and worldpac Trading Institute and worldpac Training Institute offers A number of levels of training and participation. So every week they have both technical and business training that is completely free, it's in one hour blocks and that is something that anybody can partake in. They also have online training that is paid and it's in larger time blocks, but you can do that from the comfort of the shop or the comfort of your home. Then they also have on, on site training that depending on your geographical area, you can look at the website and see what they offer, what the com, what the content of the classes is going to be and then decide which ones are most important for which of your texts depending on their skill level.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:13:19]:
So there's everything from a value added, no charge class all the way up to, you know, for a fee training. And I think that's something really powerful that WorldPAC and WorldPAC Training Institute have gotten behind and offer. And my feeling is that they get top notch trainers, bring really good content and then make, make it available to the people that want to participate. So thank you to worldpac and worldpac Training Institute not only for sponsoring the podcast, but also for offering that level of training. So one of the natural outcroppings of this is well, how much? And that's a great question. I personally feel like we could easily be asking and writing into employment contracts and descriptions that your team members are required to do somewhere around 40 to 50 hours of continuing education per year. And that could look like one hour at a time with a free online class or an included online class depending on, depending on your affiliations, it could look like in classroom training or it could look like hands on training. So just keeping them accountable and accumulating those hours.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:14:39]:
Now is this one more thing for a shop owner to keep track of? It absolutely is. But the benefit of having a set of team members who are expanding their knowledge regularly growing as technicians, if we're working on advisors and advisors and also as owners. So again, owners can lead by example, by having coaching, by attending the training classes with their team, by taking owners classes, even if it's not specific to automotive learning, more and more about how to be a good leader, how to be an owner and how to run a business. All of those things count towards continuing education. Now advisors, you might have to look a little harder, but I would advocate that advisors need to have basic technical, basic technical understanding of their subject matter. So they should have, you know, some kind of understanding of how the brake system work, how power steering works, so you know, within your area of influence and within the resources that you have, giving Advisors, access to mechanical and technical training I think is just as important as your texts. Are they going to be hands on? They might not be. But do they have to be able to share with the customer exactly what's wrong with their vehicle and explain it in a knowledgeable way and be able to answer any questions? Absolutely.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:16:12]:
So I think no matter what the position in the shop is, having some kind of continuing education is ideal. Now the little sticky question is pay. And I would say that there are multiple ways of going about this and I would say that it depends on a shop to shop preference. My personal feeling is multiple, I have multiple ways of doing this. So I'm going to kind of keep it as simple as possible. But I want you to see there's no hard and set rules and you need to find out what works best for you and your team. And so if we're looking at one hour online classes, I think that having your team member pulled off of the production line for an hour a week for a free class, I think that's a reasonable trade off. They should, you know, if it's, you know, their day is Thursday, then on Thursday they sit in front of the computer, they have an online class that they can, they can partake of for an hour and you pay them for that time.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:17:24]:
If you're having to pay for class like an ATG class or one of the world pack classes that's trained or paid for, then this is where there's some wiggle room. If it's mandatory that they do on, you know, after hours training, then they should probably be compensated for it. And in some states is that going to look like overtime? It is. You could possibly look at, you know, doing a flexible schedule when they're going to have either evening or after hours or weekend training so that if you know a specific tech is going to be training on a Saturday, maybe give them a day off during the week or cut some hours, you know, give them a late start, a couple days to compensate for the time they're going to be in class in the evening. There's also school of thought that if the shop owner is paying for training, that for all intents and purposes is portable with the technician. Once they've learned it, it becomes part of their toolkit and it becomes mobile with them that it's fair to ask them to meet you in the middle of. I'm paying as the owner for the class and you as the technician or the advisor goes to the training skin in the game is your time. There's a There's an area of thought about that.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:18:54]:
I don't have a clear cut thought on this. There's part of me that feels like you could pay for and pay them, you know, pay for the training and pay for them to go. It just depends on how big your shop is, how much you believe in this and what tone you want to set. Now, keep in mind that if you are not offering to pay them, then it cannot be mandatory and you cannot insist that they go. I got into a little bit of a pickle, I guess is the best word, and I was kind of upset about it. And I can see it from both the technician's position and mine. I had a younger tech and I was offering for him to go to some technical training with the rest of the team and we were willing to pay for it and he declined to go because he had a band that he was in and that was their practice night. And my question that I did not ask him was, I understand that your band is important to you, but if it's important to me that you grow as a technician and I'm offering you training for that to happen, which ultimately will end up with you earning more, I'm willing to make an investment in you.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:20:21]:
Could you miss band practice this week? But that was his choice. I was not making it mandatory and he made a decision. Now, do I have some discernment on that when it might be time to review his performance and see if he's made any efforts to make himself more valuable to the company? It's a possibility. I. Like I said, that situation still bothers me because I did kind of have a thought of, well, you little stinker, you know, I'm offering you a way to improve that I'm willing to pay for if you're willing to invest the time. But, you know, maybe his band is more important than his job, and that's a personal call. And in this age of leadership and engagement and culture, maybe that's what he needed to make himself more present and engaged during work hours. So that's a sticky situation and we have to decide what we're going to do and we also have to decide with an open heart so that it does not become a bone of contention later.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:21:36]:
So again, I'm not trying to be wishy washy. I'm just trying to explore some areas for us to consider when we're thinking about whether we pay our team for training or not. I have one client who not only do they offer training, but they travel to train their peer group 20 group, whatever you want to call it, pays for a trainer to come in for a weekend and they all meet in one location and they, they bring a technician or two with them. And that means the tech's there for the whole weekend with the owner and they're going through the training together and they get a weekend in a hotel with all their expenses paid. You know, that's a high level of commitment from a shop owner to do something like that, from 20 shop owners to get together and make that commitment. So, you know, these are all things to consider. The most important thing is that the team is getting trained. I do highly recommend that if you're going to expect additional training, that you write it into their job descriptions that they're expected to have a certain number of continuing education hours per year and outline paid, unpaid, whatever that looks like.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:23:02]:
And also that, you know, if they attain more sort of certifications to be specified exactly. That they could well be compensated for that as on, you know, a raise, a weekly or an hourly raise, whatever their pay cut, pay plan looks like. So there's multiple ways to spin this, to skin this cat, but there's also multiple ways to reward it. So like I said, it's just so important that we keep our team moving, keep them freshening. I don't honestly think it's fair to put someone in as a general service tech and have them doing oil changes for the rest of their life. They might be really, really good at it, but we should be offering them an opportunity to grow within the industry. I think we have been lacking in this area and the technicians get stale. If you are doing the same thing day in and day out, over and over and over again, you're not being challenged, you're not learning something that doesn't really feed the human spirit, that doesn't really give them something to look forward to, and it doesn't give them any room to move.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:24:20]:
And the difference in offering continuing education versus not could well be why the culture in your shop is not what it should be. And you don't have the team that you want because you're not continuously growing your people. And I could easily see where if a team member was unhappy and looking for another job, that the opportunity to learn and train and then get pay raises based on their skill levels could be a very attractive way for them to leave a current job and move on to another one. So, you know, in my opinion, again, one of my favorite things is we can't afford not to do this. And if we're going to continue to expect premium prices, then we need to have premium talent in our bays and on our counters. And as owners, we need to stay up on this stuff too, because we need to kind of know what's going on out there and if there's a warranty issue or there's a comeback issue. And as owners, we might be the final arbiter on whether that's a comeback or whether that's a new repair. We might need to rely on that technical training someday.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:25:40]:
So I like the idea that as a leader in the shop, we are engaging in very similar training to what our team is, so that we know at least as much as they do, if not more. Now, I can also argue that we should be educating our people in what it takes to run a shop in the basic financial aspects of it. Because if the only thing that we're sharing is KPIs, and that they need to have a certain level of production, a certain percentage of production, a certain amount of sales per week, and we're not giving them the why, then that is just Charlie Brown's teacher yapping about, you didn't hit your KPIs this week. There's a lot of misunderstandings as to how productive and profitable a repair shop is, and there's a lot of judgment around that too. And this can create a lot of friction between owners and team members because they think the owners cutting a fat hog when in fact they might even not be taking their weekly draws or their weekly paychecks. And I think it's fair to some degree to be transparent as to why we need a certain level of weekly sales or monthly sales or annual sales without actually having to divulge your complete financial records. But in this world where we really need to give our people a why, they need to understand ry. And they might not be aware of how much things cost, like insurance, like workers comp.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:27:22]:
There's shop owners out there that don't even know or understand how much it costs to actually have a technician or a service advisor on the floor. They don't know how to figure out their tech load. They don't know what their payroll taxes are. They don't even maybe know that there are payroll taxes on their side. A lot of owners have been under the impression that the only taxes that are associated with payroll are the ones taken out of an employee's check. But in truth, the employer is paying a significant amount of taxes on every payroll check that passes through. So it's time for us to really elevate ourselves and really become wise about our industry, about running a business, about how much to share with our team members and how much to help them grow. We want to make them loyal and engaged with us through good, positive means.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:28:21]:
I've said before, I do not like the term golden handcuffs. I do not like to think that we have chained someone literally to us because we offer better benefits than the shop down the street. But we have a really crappy culture or we have unhappy be workers and they're only staying for the benefits. They should be staying for the culture. They should be staying for the team. They should be loyal to us and to their team members because we see them and we hear them and we, we love them as part of a family, as part of a work family that we have intentionally built to have the best personalities, the best people and the best possible environment for them to learn and grow in. So as far as your advisors, like I said, they can partake in technical training, sales training, all that stuff is out there and available. It's just a matter of finding it.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:29:14]:
There are several books written on service advising and classes to go with them. You could, you know, do a little book club with your advisor or advisor team and everybody go through the book and learn. You can engage a coaching company like autofix Auto Shop Coaching, who I work for to do some very specific service advisor training. That is something that I personally enjoy because I like working with the advisors and getting them better. If we neglect our advisors, we're neglecting the customer service team. And when we're so dependent on them to communicate with the customer to share the importance of repairs, if we're not training them but expecting certain results, then that's kind of one of those doing the same thing over over and over again and expecting different results. People are not born service advisors. A lot of them have, might have very solid, soft skills like people taking care of people, helping under, you know, understanding people, but they might need help on the technical side or vice versa.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:30:29]:
So today's soapbox is definitely the training one and giving people a path forward. It's one thing to say, oh yeah, you can make six figures in the automotive industry, but are we showing them how? Are we dangling a carrot in front of them without giving the means to attain it? I don't think that's fair. I think if we're going to dangle a bright shiny carrot of a good living, good benefits and, and a way for them to have a nice life, then we need to be giving them a pathway forward and a very specific map of how do they get there? So we, we need to, as, as every team member in the shop really start to focus on what is it going to take to get me where I want to go. Are there going to be people who want to only do mechanical repairs in the shop? That. But they still need to have probably a basic understanding of electronics and how certain things work. If you have somebody that's an absolute whiz at the electronics and you want to just pour into them as much training as they can take, then by all means do that. I'm always saying, you know, you need to know the rules and then you need to know how to break the rules to make and get the results that you want. So there's no hard and fast rules here, except that we have a training plan.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:32:03]:
We're offering training and we're offering rewards for training. So those are kind of my, my most important takes out of this. So once again, I welcome your feedback. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and feelings on this, maybe even how you're doing it in your shop. What your successes have been, what your challenges have been and how you've overcome them are equally valuable. So please don't hesitate to share. Share. Everybody that hears your story will probably benefit from it in one way or another.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:32:37]:
Our experiences become more valuable as we share those with others. So this is Jean Ann St. Grace. I want to thank you for taking the time to either listen to or watch this episode. If you're interested in coaching, we have my contact information in the show notes. My company that I work for, Autofix Auto Shop. Coaching is small but mighty. We offer a very special form of coaching which gives us the opportunity to give our clients exactly what they need when they need it.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:33:11]:
We want to give you every opportunity for success and make sure that your needs are being met over anything else. Our hallmark is that each client receives at least an hour of our time every week. And sometimes things might be really hitting the fan and you might need a little more. I can speak for myself when I say I'm willing to throw my hat in that ring when it's needed. And the boss gives me the leeway to do that. So please don't hesitate to reach out. If you're even thinking about wanting or needing a coach, then please, you know, reach out and give us the opportunity. We'll be happy to lay out our processes and procedures and see how we can work together.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:33:50]:
So thank you so much again for listening. Thank you for being part of our industry. Go out there and love your people until it's weird. And build your shop your way. Thank you.