Automotive Repair News Today

Braxton Critcher [00:00:05]:
Welcome in. It's automotive repair news today. I'm Braxton. He is Tom Shearer, my guest today. Hey, Tom, how are you?

Tom Schearer [00:00:13]:
I'm good. How you doing today?

Braxton Critcher [00:00:15]:
I'm great. So, automotive repair news today. I love talking about what's happening and well, it's timely that I'm doing this podcast the past year because there's a lot happening, there's a lot going on, a lot of changes. And so Lucas messaged you and I the other day and said, hey, you guys should record a podcast. You know, we, we want to try to help drive people to go to tools in Pennsylvania. Coming up, Memorial Day weekend in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And he was like, you know, let's get people to go. There's a lot of skeptics out there, but there's a lot of open spots at the event, so you need to go.

Braxton Critcher [00:00:59]:
And so I thought, you know, let's have a conversation, let's do a little role play about the probably normal thought process that a lot of shop owners and technicians have when they think about going to training. And I've been in this industry for almost a year and a half and so I've, you know, heard a lot of these questions too. And I know you have as well, Tom. But someone right now is listening and they either have never been to training or it's been a long time. And the qualifying questions as to reasons why they shouldn't are as follows. We'll go through them, but I just want to play a little role play right now. I'm going to throw some questions at you as the person who's thinking about going and you tell me what the answer from your perspective is.

Tom Schearer [00:01:50]:
Sounds great.

Braxton Critcher [00:01:51]:
So I think as a shop owner, as a technician, whenever you are presented with really anything in life in general too, most of the time it comes down to cost, cost benefit. So if I'm a shop owner, I hear about training. Okay, sounds cool. Training's probably not a bad idea, but it's expensive. I don't want to deal with it. How much is this going to cost me and is it worth it?

Tom Schearer [00:02:21]:
Right. Well, yeah. So I mean, if you're looking at the cost itself. So I mean if you're a, if you're a Mid Atlantic Auto Care association member, you're looking at a single attendee price of 379 for the weekend, which includes meals and everything. If you are in a non member, I believe it's 469. Don't hold me to that. But it's somewhere right around that area. And you know, I think when we're looking at the cost of it, I think we should look at some different points of view though.

Tom Schearer [00:03:01]:
You know, it's, yes, there's a cost associated with it, but, but I think we should be focusing on what the return on investment is on that rather than just how much is it going to cost me. So instead of just looking at the cost, we can say, okay, what am I going to get out of that and what's it going to cost me by not going to that training?

Braxton Critcher [00:03:29]:
That's an interesting perspective. Okay, what's the answer to that? What's the answer if, if I choose not to go? Because I think, you know, I, I don't want to afford or I can't afford that price. What, what am I actually paying without going well?

Tom Schearer [00:03:44]:
So we can look at it from a bunch of different angles. So let's say we're looking at it from the owner's point of view. Okay, I, I don't, I don't need to go to training. You know, I mean, I'm doing good, you know, it's, I'm, I'm doing the, I'm doing better than the average independent repair shop. Every year I'm making 5% net rather than the average, which is, I think it sound around like two and a half or three percent. Well, there's people out there like Rick White, for example. He's got an amazing owner's class and I believe is mostly owners focused for this year. But you know, there you can learn a bunch of different points of view on how to, you know, make your business more profitable and maybe you can get that net up to 10%, 15%, 20%.

Tom Schearer [00:04:32]:
There's a lot of money you're leaving on the table by not coming to that training.

Braxton Critcher [00:04:35]:
You think simply going to a training like this, I could maybe do that. Like, I could legitimately spend that money and within a year's time really grow my net profit.

Tom Schearer [00:04:48]:
Absolutely. You know, it's, you have to go in there with an open mind. You know, you can't go in there thinking, man, I, I don't know why I'm here. I already know all this stuff. You know, it's, I'm not going to learn anything. You have to be willing to accept that there's a different way to do things than what you're doing it right now and be willing to make those changes. So it's, yeah, I mean, can you make a couple points on your own? Can you go from 5% net to 15% net on your own. Absolutely.

Tom Schearer [00:05:18]:
It's just how, how aggressive are you going to be with, you know, putting yourself out there and making changes?

Braxton Critcher [00:05:27]:
So let's say I'm at, I'm at 6%, I'm at 8%. I'm doing well above the average. You still think there's room for growth and me going to training, training my technicians, training myself, I can continue to grow if I push myself.

Tom Schearer [00:05:45]:
Absolutely. And you know, so I'm just talking about one point of view from the owner's point of view. But if we look at this training conference coming up, I mean there's training for the owners, there's managers, there's advisors, there's obviously a lot of technical training. So we go down through the list, okay, we get our managers more in tune with KPIs and everything in what the company should be doing and everything that's going to help give us a boost. You know, we look at the advisors and get them trained up on how to properly estimate and, or sell, you know, that's going to give a boost. It's, it's pretty much just across the board and obviously, you know, I didn't get to one of the very important parts as a technician. You know, it's, there's, there's a lot of technical training out there to help them be better equipped to diagnose, repair these cars. You know, this cars out there these days are very technical and I mean it's, if you're, where are you going to learn it? You're going to, you're going to learn this stuff hands on and basically potentially cost your clients money because you mess something up rather than knowing the proper way.

Braxton Critcher [00:07:07]:
So what about, you know, okay, I can swing, I can swing the $500, you know, per attendee, you know, I can get a hotel room, I probably can handle that. But you know, so the event is May 29 to June 1. So you'll have to close your shop for one, maybe two days, especially if you have to account for travel. So then you have to think about how much you lose when you close your shop. What, what do you say for something like that?

Tom Schearer [00:07:42]:
Well, for me it's so understand our shop here at Shearers, we do at least once every other year we close down for I think it's three days and we head out to some other training conferences. Three through with, with worldpack, with scx and you know, so there's the, there's all that cost. There's, you know, how much it costs to register, get there and then we have to look at the lost revenue for those days that we are out. I think we need to look past again, look past the cost and what that revenue, what that revenue that you're losing is and focus on what are we going to gain out of that. What's our return going to be by having a better trained team? You know, if you're taking your whole team with you, there's, there's so many other things that go with it other than just the cost. You know, you have the culture, you know, you're building a stronger culture with your team out and about outside of the shop environment. So there's just, there's a lot of positives to, even if it is shutting down for a day or two to attend something like this.

Braxton Critcher [00:09:02]:
How long have you been going to training?

Tom Schearer [00:09:06]:
So I personally, I mean I've been doing training for many, many years. So you know, and individually our team has been going out here and there for, you know, again, many years. We first started going as a team in 2022 and yeah, so we, we've been to the STX events twice so far and you know, we're expanding that out. So tools this coming up the end of May, we have 10 people and myself registered. So it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's well worth it to be able to build on your team's knowledge and just come back better equipped to take great care of your clients.

Braxton Critcher [00:09:54]:
When you first started thinking about going to training, did you have any of those, you know, skeptic thoughts questions?

Tom Schearer [00:10:08]:
Yes. So I mean for me there's, there's obviously the cost that's involved with it and you know, the initial, you know, knee jerk reaction is yeah, what's this going to cost me? I can't do this, I can't do that. But stepping back again, looking at what the return is, what you're going to get out of it, that's basically helped me change my focus to looking at more in a positive rather than a negative and you know, having a better outlook as far as what's going to happen. You know, we've had team members in the past that pretty much push back pretty hard. Well, I don't need to go to training. I know it all. I mean, just listen to what did I just say there. I know it all.

Tom Schearer [00:10:52]:
Okay, what does that tell you? You know, it's, it's just putting out this vibe that you're better than everybody else and maybe you are, but I truly feel that if you are not investing in yourself and training that you are going backwards.

Braxton Critcher [00:11:18]:
I agree with that too. I mean, you gotta, you know, we're never a completed project.

Tom Schearer [00:11:24]:
Right.

Braxton Critcher [00:11:25]:
Like you said, with the technology, things are always changing in this field specifically. But as just people, if, if you're not trying to work on yourself and grow as a human being, then, you know, you're, you're getting lazy and things that you don't even realize are happening. You're falling backwards. You are. Yeah, for sure.

Tom Schearer [00:11:48]:
So, yeah. And that's something that we always, you know, in our staff meetings and, you know, any conversations we're having as a company, you know, we talk about the fact that we're all we. Part of the requirement to work with Shears is training. You know, annually we have a minimum requirement of 40 hours of training. Our recommendation is 80 hours of training every year. And I back that up. I'm not just sitting here talking about, hey, you need to go and do this, you need to go and do that. I'm training myself.

Tom Schearer [00:12:20]:
I'm constantly working on leadership training, you know, coaching, you know, I have a business coach that I work with, you know, things like that. And so even myself, you know, if I'm not constantly improving or looking to get better and improve upon what I'm doing, I'm going to be going backwards and that's not the direction I want to be going.

Braxton Critcher [00:12:44]:
So you, you mentioned the technician that says, I know everything that sounded like, you know, something that's happened to you. Like that's an experience based answer. So for the person that you've talked to, whether they were on your team or not, or even a shop owner that you've connected with and they've said something like that, but somehow you convinced them to go or they decided to go anyway and just try it one time and see what happened. The follow up conversation you had, what did they say and have they been more open to going back in the future? Did they see what you were talking about? The actual results, that it is worth what you do?

Tom Schearer [00:13:27]:
Well, Braxton, I'm going to be honest with you. That experience that I'm talking about, that one person that kind of comes to mind is actually no longer employed with us. And, you know, it was part of that decision was based off of training and willingness to be a part of that. There's other members of our team over the years that have kind of shown some concern and, you know, skepticism and everything. But yeah, the conversation afterwards, I mean, they were willing to, to jump in and go and join in with the Team. And I mean everybody, everybody. The first time we went to that training event down in Florida as a team, I think we had. With a couple spouses, I think we had like 12 people there.

Tom Schearer [00:14:19]:
And I mean we came back and I mean it was just totally different world. I mean it just totally changed the game for us here at the company. And everybody's, you know, sharing what they learned and talk about how great it was, you know, very excited for the next one coming up. So I mean it was just. It's definitely changed people's opinions over the, over the years.

Braxton Critcher [00:14:48]:
So tell me about tools. We're talking about training. Obviously there's classes, that kind of thing, but what else? That person that's listening, that is skeptic, you know that that's not gone to training before. Set the scene and paint the picture of what actually happens and what you do and all that takes place from the second you get there to the moment you leave.

Tom Schearer [00:15:11]:
Yeah. So there's a lot going on here this year and I'm going to say Brett Faidley has done an amazing job building up this program and you know, I'm excited to see where it goes. So I mean I believe there's like 52 classes, 52, 53 classes available for that weekend. And it all starts with a. And you know, Thursday, all day Thursday classes that you can choose if you want to attend or not. But I mean you got people like Brandon Steckler there, you got Rick White, you got Andrew Fisher, I believe I'm just trying to rattle off some other names. Drawing a total blank here. But you have Kim Arnauer and I'm sorry, I butcher her name up all the time.

Tom Schearer [00:16:03]:
I apologize Kim, but she's got some great classes on. My apologies, I just kind of lost my focus there. But it's on time management and things like that. So there's, there's great classes pretty much across the board no matter what position you're in at, at your shop. There's also collision classes. So. And I think that's an area where I'm not sure how. Why do you guys, if you guys get involved with the collision side at all.

Tom Schearer [00:16:37]:
But you know there's, there's a good amount of collision classes available as far as estimating and I think there's some more hands on stuff as well. So I mean it's out there for everybody. There's for the owners, some of the owners don't take a lot of classes. I'm not taking a lot of classes this year, this time around. And I'm really excited about the networking, just getting out there, getting to visit some of the friends that I've gotten to know over the years all over the country, and just talk about what's going on, you know, help each other out. And, I mean, I'd be doing you a disservice if I did not talk about Josh Parnell being there this weekend, this. This year as our keynote. And I'd be doing you a disservice.

Tom Schearer [00:17:26]:
He's going to get a chuckle out of that when he hears it, because that's one of his lines. He talk. So. But Josh is a really good guy. I've gotten to know him recently, and I love what he's doing out there on the leadership side. So there's just so many different things that are. That are available for you. You know, there's.

Tom Schearer [00:17:49]:
If you're bringing your family out there, there is Dutch Wonderland across the street to take the kids to. I mean, you're Lancaster, Penn. You're in the middle of Amish country, so there's just a lot of different things to experience out in the area.

Braxton Critcher [00:18:04]:
So there, you know, there's obviously some free time where you can go do other things, too, with your team, your family, you know.

Tom Schearer [00:18:11]:
Yeah.

Braxton Critcher [00:18:12]:
Okay.

Tom Schearer [00:18:13]:
Yeah.

Braxton Critcher [00:18:14]:
Great.

Tom Schearer [00:18:15]:
Absolutely.

Braxton Critcher [00:18:16]:
Well, again, it's Tools, the Auto Care, the MACA Auto Care Alliance, Mid Atlantic Auto Care alliance that is May 29th through June 1st in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And you can just Google it. Tools Conference Pennsylvania. Or you can find their website, MidAtlantic, ACA.org and you can find the register link, all the details, address, all the good stuff right there. And I have not been to Tools. I will not be at Tools this year. My family goes on vacation every year this weekend, so it just doesn't work for us. But, you know, I've been to Vision a couple times.

Braxton Critcher [00:18:59]:
ASTA in Raleigh, Apex in Las Vegas. And every time I go, of course, I'm not a shop owner or technician or work in the industry in that capacity. I do podcasts, but my knowledge of the industry has grown in the little classes that I've been a part of. But also, what you said, Tom, that I love the most is that networking. People talk about the networking online. You'll see it. They talk about it on these podcasts. Lucas and David, Jeff, Tom.

Braxton Critcher [00:19:29]:
You're actually a guest on Jeff's podcast this week, too. You're everywhere this week. You're like the spokesperson. Brett's taking a break, I guess. But the networking is so great. The people you get to meet the relationships you make. And Bret told a story just last week about he had an issue at his shop with the vehicle. And because he knew of Brian Pollock in the industry he had networked, he was able to call Brian, ask a question, solve the problem, and without those relationships, you don't have those solutions.

Braxton Critcher [00:20:08]:
And there's countless other reasons as to why networking is, is important. But there is something about once you've gone to one or two of these events and you see some of the same people who have gone, you create those relationships and you look forward to seeing and catching up with them again. So the networking is always a huge piece of this, beyond the training that you learn from these classes. But you know, I, I, I believe that the cost associated with going, when you factor all of it in, it's well worth it because the takeaways are so much more, it's so much more tangible than just a dollar sign beside it. So I encourage you to go. If you have not signed up for Tools, do that today. I mean, it's coming up, it's coming up in a couple weeks. So make sure you get your team, you know, able to go to Tools this year.

Braxton Critcher [00:21:11]:
Well, Tom, I appreciate it, man.

Tom Schearer [00:21:14]:
Well, thanks for having me on. I appreciate being here.

Braxton Critcher [00:21:17]:
Absolutely. Hope it goes well. Talk to you soon.

Tom Schearer [00:21:19]:
Take care.

Braxton Critcher [00:21:24]:
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