Automotive Repair News Today

Braxton Critcher [00:00:05]:
This is automotive repair news today. I'm Braxton Critcher. So many things are changing in the automotive industry, and if you're familiar with AsTE, well, that's changing, too. Asta Expo is happening September 26 through the 28th in Durham, North Carolina. You can visit the link in the description for registration details. All that kind of good stuff, but training is super important. But training changes, too. What doesn't change are people.

Braxton Critcher [00:00:40]:
How you deal with customers, people that come to your shop daily. How do you deal with someone who gets a little bit confused or upset over a price? Those kind of things are important to the industry. And networking, getting to know people who have been through it before you came along the journey, that can share some things with you. That's why training is important, and that's why AStA and the expo, coming up in September, is super, super crucial for you and your shop. So I got Lucas Underwood on the podcast today to talk about that. Lucas, appreciate you hanging out.

Lucas Underwood [00:01:14]:
What's up, Braxton? How you doing, buddy?

Braxton Critcher [00:01:16]:
I'm good, man. I'm good, man. Very good. So, asta. Yeah, I'm outside the industry.

Lucas Underwood [00:01:23]:
Okay.

Braxton Critcher [00:01:23]:
Getting in, learning some things.

Lucas Underwood [00:01:25]:
Yeah, of course.

Braxton Critcher [00:01:25]:
But I knew it as Ast.

Lucas Underwood [00:01:28]:
Yeah, for sure.

Braxton Critcher [00:01:29]:
Now it's changed. Why?

Lucas Underwood [00:01:31]:
It's because there were too many acronyms, really, at the end of the day, that's what it was. And so there were a lot of things associated with ASTA. ASTA stands for the automotive service entire alliance, right. And that came from IgoNC or the independent garage owners, North Carolina and North Carolina Tire Dealer association. So those two associations merged together. Now, both of them had been around since the fifties, right? And you gotta think that was really before you had this networking machine. That is Facebook, that is Instagram, that is the Internet. Right? We didn't have that in the fifties.

Lucas Underwood [00:02:07]:
And so these guys came together as an industry and they networked, and they really use these associations to create this wonderful, wonderful thing that's carried on legacy for years and years and years. Right? And so a couple years ago, right? Because associations, let's be completely honest here, in some way, associations are kind of failing. They're falling back because they don't really fit that purpose they once held. So they have to kind of change or die. Right?

Braxton Critcher [00:02:33]:
What was the purpose?

Lucas Underwood [00:02:34]:
Well, the purpose was to create networking and create an environment where you could learn about your business, right? And now I can get on Google and can search, or I can ask chat, GPT, or I can do any number of things to find out how to run a business very quickly, right. I don't necessarily need that resource like I once did. And so they have to morph, right. They have to become something different. They have to serve a different purpose. And back, I guess, two years ago now I'm on the board for the automotive service and tire lines. At the time, I was on the board for the independent garage owners in North Carolina, and we recognized that there was a true ability to take this association, IGNC, and the association, the North Carolina Tire Dealers association, make something really special, right. And it was because we had this following and we had this group of people who genuinely cared about the industry, and they were putting the work in to make the industry a better place.

Lucas Underwood [00:03:33]:
And so when that happened, we said, hey, we can do something really special with this. We can do something really cool with this. And so it became ASTA when we merged together, the reason for the name change of the show, because it was the automotive service technology expo, and we've changed it to the ASTA Expo. And it was really just to kind of blend those two names together to remove some confusion. I think, if anything, we've probably caused more confusion.

Braxton Critcher [00:04:00]:
Way to go.

Lucas Underwood [00:04:01]:
I was not there for that vote. Okay? If anybody's gonna be thrown under the bus, I wanna say I was in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And if anybody's gonna be thrown under the bus, it's definitely gonna be Mike Allen, I can promise you that. When all this was happening, David and I were actually talking about it, and David literally says on one of our episodes, this is stupid. This whole thing's stupid. Why would you change the name? That's stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I can quote it like I remember it.

Braxton Critcher [00:04:30]:
You know, he would say that with anything, but.

Lucas Underwood [00:04:31]:
Yeah, yeah, good point.

Braxton Critcher [00:04:32]:
I can see that. I can picture it.

Lucas Underwood [00:04:35]:
You know, this expo is so important to me because I go to a lot of shows, right, all over the country, and there's a lot of really great shows. I'm. I don't want to say anything that takes away from other shows.

Braxton Critcher [00:04:44]:
Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:04:44]:
But this show's special for me personally and for a lot of people. And one of the reasons being is that in around 2018, I was done with the business, right? I was over this. I was fed up. I was frustrated. I was stressed out, and I was doing everything. I was cleaning the toilets, I was cleaning the office, I was writing the service, I was working on the cars, I was managing the clients, I was managing the employees. It was too much, right? Like, it just was not. It wasn't working.

Lucas Underwood [00:05:14]:
And I could get a job and make more money with that job than I would have been able to with. With the shop. And so I told my wife one night, and I said, hey. I said, I think I'm gonna shut down. I think I'm gonna go get a job as a technician. And she said, really? I said, yeah. I said, I'm gonna go get some better training. I'd been training.

Lucas Underwood [00:05:30]:
I'd been doing the scanner danner thing and had really been working some angles like that. And she said, well, that's funny, because this postcard just came in the mail, and it was a postcard for asT. I've actually got a presentation that I do and I give to schools and stuff like that, where I have a picture of the postcard I got. I'll show it to you at some point. And so, long story short, when I went to this show, I walked through the front door and there was a gentleman staying there that, at the time, was the executive director of this show. And he said, you're Lucas Underwood. And I said, yeah, I am. Like, didn't know this guy from Adam.

Braxton Critcher [00:06:04]:
Do you know my name?

Lucas Underwood [00:06:05]:
Right. Had never met him. And at the time, the show was really small. I mean, it was like sub 100 people at this point in time.

Braxton Critcher [00:06:10]:
Yeah, it's not long ago. Six years.

Lucas Underwood [00:06:12]:
Yeah, exactly. And so it was a really small show at the time. And I said, yeah, that's me. And he said, hey, I've got a question. I said, what? He said, well, you're a. You're an owner, but you're taking all these technical classes. Now, I didn't know this, but he had owned repair shops for years, right? Really smart guy. And so he had owned these repair shops.

Lucas Underwood [00:06:31]:
And I think he saw that I was missing something, right? And I don't know how. I don't know if he'd looked up the website. I don't know if he had looked at the facebook. I don't know how he knew that I was missing something. Clearly he knew something I didn't. Right.

Braxton Critcher [00:06:43]:
Your face does give it away sometimes.

Lucas Underwood [00:06:45]:
I know, right? Sorry, I can't help it. I've ruined the news show now. And so, long story short, he said, would you humor me? And I told him, I said, man, I'm shutting down. I don't want to do this anymore. This is too stressful. And he said, would you humor me? Now, we're in the south, right? And what do you do when somebody says, humor me? You humor them, right? Like, what else are you gonna do? You can't say no now. And so he said, would you take some management classes? And so that was where all of this, the podcast, your podcast, jaded mechanic, Jimmy Purdy's gearbox, that's where all of this came from, right? That's where my involvement with AsoG came from, is because I went into that training event. The very first class I sat in was Rick white from 180 biz.

Lucas Underwood [00:07:30]:
And I'll never forget what he said. He said, I know that you are stressed out right now, and I know you feel like you don't have the time to be here. I know that you feel like you need to be at work and doing these things. I know you feel like what I'm going to say won't change anything. But I promise, if you'll just listen to me for ten minutes, I can show you some basic little things that are going to make your life better. And I sat there and I listened. I said, holy cow, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. Right? Like, I genuinely did not know what I was doing.

Lucas Underwood [00:07:58]:
I was really good at fixing cars, but I didn't have a clue how to run a business. And it was right after that I went into Malin Newton's class. Malin's good friend of mine, he's with ESi and Malan. One of the stories he tells, he's talking about Disney, and he's talking about the Disney experience. He's talking about customer service. And he said, oftentimes we think of customer service or client experience, of how we feel about the client. It's not so much of what the client feels about us or how the client sees us. Yeah, right? And he said, he tells a story about when his son gets sick on his shoulder there in Disney, he had too many churros.

Lucas Underwood [00:08:36]:
It's hot. They rode rides. He didn't feel well. And Malan points out that when he goes into the bathroom to take care of his son, there's an employee in there. And he takes his jacket off, and the employee washes the jacket and cleans the jacket up, and he folds it up and he puts it in a plastic bag. And they've got the medical people there saying, hey, do you need anything? Is there anything we can help with? And he said they bring him another jacket to give him, right? Because they're in California, it's a little chilly. And so they bring over this other jacket, and when he comes back out, it's already cleaned up and the mess is gone. All right.

Lucas Underwood [00:09:06]:
And he said, this is what we're missing in auto repair, they walk through the door and we just say, meh, you want your car fixed? Here's how much it is. Thanks. Bye. Right? We never think about the client experience, and that was a real wake up call to me because I hadn't been thinking about the client experience.

Braxton Critcher [00:09:20]:
Right.

Lucas Underwood [00:09:20]:
I was focused on fixing the car, and I thought fixing the car was the number one thing. But the reality of this business is, and look, I'm going to upset a lot of technicians. Fixing the car properly is very, very important to the successful business. I'm not saying it's not, but it's less than 10% of what the business does. Right. It's a completely different world, especially for these guys who are going out and starting their own shops or they're going mobile. They don't see that, right? And so when we talk about a show like Asta Expo, you're having the opportunity to sit with the best of the best in the nation and hear the war stories and hear about the mistakes that they made and learn from someone else's mistakes. You know, we just went to lunch.

Lucas Underwood [00:10:02]:
What did I say about my parents? That, hey, they really tried to show me these life lessons and imparted me these values and these things that are important because they didn't want me to make the same mistakes they had. Right. It's a lot easier way to live if we can learn from the mistakes of others. Right? We're going to an event like this is a great way to learn from somebody else's mistakes.

Braxton Critcher [00:10:23]:
And I think learning from them, hearing from them is great, but I think it's scary to think about what you might have to do or change, whatever. So for sure, how much effort really was that for you to make those changes and then see results?

Lucas Underwood [00:10:37]:
You know, a good friend of mine, Seth Thorson, owns a giant shop, a giant four or five shops up in Minneapolis. And one of the things that I think is really telling that he always shares with everybody is he says, listen, the first million is the easy million, right? The second million is the hard million. The first changes that you're going to make in your business, the first steps that you're going to take to kind of rectify some of the major issues within your business, to get some comfort and get some, you know, the ability to reduce that stress and be able to go home and actually be a dad again or be a mom or actually be present with your family. That first couple of changes, they're pretty easy, right? Like those changes are basic, very simple, very small things that you can do with your eyes closed. Okay. There are some fears, especially when it comes to pricing and when it comes to charging appropriately.

Braxton Critcher [00:11:34]:
Right.

Lucas Underwood [00:11:34]:
That's one of the biggest issues we see in this industry, Braxton, is people are not charging what they should be charging.

Braxton Critcher [00:11:39]:
That's scary.

Lucas Underwood [00:11:39]:
It is. It is. And. And you as a consumer, right. Because you very much are a consumer of auto repair. Right. Do you want to get your car fixed?

Braxton Critcher [00:11:49]:
Yes.

Lucas Underwood [00:11:49]:
Well, I mean, do you, though? Do you really? Really. Is it like buying a tv? Cause you might want to buy the tv. You might want to buy the vacation, but do you really want to have to buy a set of tires?

Braxton Critcher [00:12:02]:
Well, no.

Lucas Underwood [00:12:03]:
Right. Do you want, when your car breaks, do you want to have to take it to the mechanic and spend $2,000?

Braxton Critcher [00:12:07]:
Of course not.

Lucas Underwood [00:12:08]:
Right. No. It sucks. Right. And so what. What is your number one reaction? My gosh, that's expensive, right? Oh, I coached. Rick coached me. Rick White did for a long time.

Lucas Underwood [00:12:20]:
And he said, has it ever occurred to you that they're just, like, having this emotional response, that they're just saying what's on their mind, and they. They just didn't filter out what they were saying? And I said, what do you mean? He said, well, you're always complaining that clients are always telling you you're too expensive. And he said, lucas, you realize if you told him it was $0.50, they would probably have the same reaction. Right. Like, sometimes we don't want.

Braxton Critcher [00:12:43]:
A lot of times it's unplanned expenses.

Lucas Underwood [00:12:44]:
Right. Exactly. We didn't. We didn't have the money to pay for it. Right. And so navigating that is a very important pathway for the success of an auto repair shop. And so that's probably the scariest thing that you'll go through. I'm gonna lose all my clients.

Lucas Underwood [00:13:00]:
Well, it's not gonna matter if you can't take care of them because you went broke and you had to shut the shop down. It's not gonna make a difference anyway. So you might as well just go ahead and raise your price and get it over with. Right?

Braxton Critcher [00:13:11]:
I think it's also like educating mindset, like, for me, and I think you've helped me with this, but I've had this mindset for a while where I understand that at some point, my shoes are gonna wear out.

Lucas Underwood [00:13:24]:
Yeah.

Braxton Critcher [00:13:25]:
And I know that. That there's a number of factors in that. Age and mileage is the number one. But if I don't actually take care of my shoes, if I you know, run through the mud all the time. If I'm, you know, you're taking tennis shoes to go hiking, they're gonna wear out faster.

Lucas Underwood [00:13:44]:
Right.

Braxton Critcher [00:13:45]:
And so I think it's similar in automotive repair where if you don't take care of your car, if you don't use it properly, if you don't actually spend a little money on repairs, the repair is going to be more in the future. And so I think I understand that I need to make minor repairs, whereas maybe some, most people don't. I don't know the numbers.

Lucas Underwood [00:14:07]:
Oh, yeah.

Braxton Critcher [00:14:08]:
But I think that's true for a lot of folks. And so I think I understand that it is important to keep your vehicle in good shape so that later down the road, it doesn't really.

Lucas Underwood [00:14:20]:
Well, the cost of maintaining it is much lower than the cost of repairing it.

Braxton Critcher [00:14:24]:
Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. But I think it's still hard for customer to say, I'm gonna do, you know, preventative maintenance on my car and spend $2,000, you know, prevent something down the road.

Lucas Underwood [00:14:35]:
There's two sides to that. And I think, I don't want to go down a political path, but I'll share this, and I'm gonna upset Dutch and David and everybody else when I say this. In some ways, I believe that there are giant corporations that have somewhat funneled the money out of the american middle class. Right. And the american lower class into their pockets. I watched this great documentary the other day. It was about these coal truckers, and I don't know how in the world I found this documentary, right? But they were talking about how the, the coal plants and the coal producer of the coal mine kept going to these truck drivers, and they said, yeah, but somebody will do it for cheaper, and we're going to use them. And they did that over and over and over again to the point that in the eighties, the coal trucking business in west Virginia and Kentucky, they were caught constantly breaking the law and people were getting killed.

Lucas Underwood [00:15:21]:
And it was all these things. And they said, yeah, but this is what we have to do to survive. Right? And so I think in some ways, the american consumer is very much in that place right now, because you look at a Walmart. What does a Walmart do? It pays their employees 720, 514, 15, $16 an hour. It's not really a career. The majority of their employees, they're not reinvesting that money back into the economy locally. And then you add on top of that, if we take into account, hey, guess what? They got this giant tax break for building a Walmart here. They got this giant tax break for building this factory over here.

Lucas Underwood [00:15:54]:
Well, they're not reinvesting in the local economy, so they're taking these profits. And maybe it's crony capitalism, whatever you want to call it, but they're stuffing the coffers full of the cash that should have been going back to that community right? Now, don't get me wrong. As a business owner, I understand, like, capitalism is the way to go. I'm not saying it's not, but I am saying that. That the american consumer has been squeezed. Right. Some of it is buying things that we don't need. Right.

Lucas Underwood [00:16:20]:
Like maybe we go on a vacation that we shouldn't be going on. Maybe we've purchased this thing that we shouldn't have purchased. Maybe we've bought this car that we really can't afford because this advertisement was so cunning and was so capable of making us make a emotional decision. Right. Because if we make emotional purchase decisions, what happens? Usually they're the bad decision, they're the wrong decision.

Braxton Critcher [00:16:40]:
You're gonna be emotional later.

Lucas Underwood [00:16:42]:
Exactly. We spent money we shouldn't have spent. Right.

Braxton Critcher [00:16:44]:
Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:16:45]:
The other side of this is that as an industry, we have a responsibility to be advocates for our clients, and that's what we've missed. That that is, if there was one mistake in the automotive industry that I wish we hadn't made, that I realized that we did make, that's what it was, is because we were technicians fixing cars right now. The dealerships had their service advisors. They were paid commission. And everything about everything they did was about getting you to pay them. Right. The technicians were paid flat rate. And so what did they have to do? They had to work faster, they had to work harder, they had to sell more work, and they had to sell the easy work.

Lucas Underwood [00:17:20]:
And so that is a combination that is absolutely, what is it they say? Recipe for disaster.

Braxton Critcher [00:17:25]:
Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:17:26]:
Because everybody's paid commission. Everybody's focused on making the money right there again, that capitalism thing, that crony capitalism, because the big man up top in this dealership is making way more money than everybody down below, and he's trying to figure out, how do I make more money from this. Right. I'm sure there's good operators and all that. Please don't, please don't get me wrong. Right. But the point is, is that you had the dealerships who had those service advisors, and then you had the independent shops and you had the chain stores. What did you have with chain stores? Well, with chain stores, you had a service advisor.

Lucas Underwood [00:17:58]:
And he wasn't really a truly professional service advisor. His job was to get you to buy tires. Right. Because chain stores recognize there's certain things that have tons of gross profit per hour that really focused on those things. They focused on where they can make the most money. They were ran by corporations that knew how to make money, and they focused on making money the same thing as the dealership. And then you had the independent. Now, the independent wasn't charging what he should have been charging, so he couldn't afford a service advisor, and he didn't understand how to communicate to the consumer.

Lucas Underwood [00:18:29]:
Now, the dealerships, in a lot of ways, and I'm going to hurt feelings when I say that, but the chain stores as well, they, they weren't focused on being advocates. In fact, I think they disliked it when people became advocates for the clients because they began to inform them and help them become more knowledgeable when the Internet came into play. I will never forget there was a post years ago from a dealership service advisor. He said, I wish they couldn't get on Google and ask these questions because it makes it so much harder to lie to them. Do what he said. Yeah, dude said in an open post, right? Like, holy cow.

Braxton Critcher [00:19:03]:
Well, there was a problem.

Lucas Underwood [00:19:05]:
Never thought about it like that. You know, I'm saying it never even crossed my mind. I was just trying to fix the car. Enjoyed fixing the car. Right. So if we don't act as advocates for our consumers, and if we aren't trying to do what's best for them, and we don't set policies, procedures, and, and operational workflows in place that say, hey, number one desired outcome is a happy client that's well taken care of. There's a lot of shops who every day deal with clients who just do not trust them. They've got emotional baggage.

Lucas Underwood [00:19:37]:
They drag in the door with them and they're so upset. And they're so upset because of the things that have happened to them, that at other places they were lied to, they thought they were lied to, they weren't communicated with properly, and so they felt taken advantage of. And so that's the kind of thing, you know, when we talk about business ownership and the classes that you'll see at ASta Expo, that's what it's about, Braxton, that's exactly what it's about, is learning how to navigate that and communicate with that client to make sure that doesn't happen to you. And how do I navigate it once it's already happened? On top of that, we want our technicians to be the best technicians they can be. How am I going to do that? I'm going to make sure that they get training. Right. And so I'm going to send them to technical training. I send my guys to advisor training.

Lucas Underwood [00:20:20]:
Why? Because I want them to understand what the person on the front counter is going through. Right, right. And ASta is probably one of the few places in this country that you have the opportunity to do that.

Braxton Critcher [00:20:30]:
Do you do both? There's technician training, advisor training, technician advisor.

Lucas Underwood [00:20:35]:
There's management and owner training at ASta. There's networking opportunities. There's all kinds of things there, right, that you can do. There's, there's parties, there's dinners. Anything you could ever want to do in the automotive industry is available at Asta Expo. The other thing is, is that while those classes are great, the networking is really where it happens.

Braxton Critcher [00:20:56]:
Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:20:56]:
Being able to sit around the bar and sit and chat and, you know, there's a lot of shows that we go to, and I love all of them. They all have this real kind of neat niche that they each fit. But this show is very different because it has this down home southern feel to it where everybody's your friend and everybody's introducing themselves and talking to you and becoming part of your network. Right. And so you go and you sit around the bar and you get out there at 910 o'clock at night, there's 200, 5300 people in that lobby just sitting there talking shop. And you'll hear somebody say, man, this happened to me. And then somebody across the room says, oh, that happened to me too. Let me tell you how to fix it.

Lucas Underwood [00:21:36]:
Right?

Braxton Critcher [00:21:36]:
Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:21:37]:
And it's, you know, there's a jocko Wilnick talks about in the military that they take their badges and their rank off when they have a problem, right? They rip the badges and the rank off and they throw them on the table and they sit around a table and say, okay, that did not work. And it doesn't matter whose fault it is, let's fix it. ASTA affords you that opportunity. It's not about blame anymore. It's about fixing the problem.

Braxton Critcher [00:22:02]:
Other than it changing names, what else is new this year?

Lucas Underwood [00:22:05]:
Gosh, there is so much high level training. The last couple of years I've been highly involved with class selection. This year, everything that happened to my mom and her health and all that stuff going on, I wasn't able to be involved. But somebody really special to this industry selected the majority of the classes, and that was Jim Kokonis and so Jim was able to go through and select high level classes. Jim was a curriculum developer for one of the largest training institutes in the automotive space. And so he went through and he worked with each instructor to make sure that we got the best class that fit all types, all walks of life, all levels of skill at this event. So I think that's probably the biggest and coolest thing coming.

Braxton Critcher [00:22:45]:
Okay, um, what else?

Lucas Underwood [00:22:49]:
What else is, I hear that jaded mechanic is going to be doing a panel.

Braxton Critcher [00:22:54]:
Okay.

Lucas Underwood [00:22:55]:
First one ever.

Braxton Critcher [00:22:56]:
Okay.

Lucas Underwood [00:22:56]:
And so we started talking about it the other day, and he said on a stage? Yeah. He said, whoa, whoa, whoa. I never thought about all these aspects of it. I told him, I said, hey, you have to be prepared for the active listening conversation. He said, what's active listening? I said, well, you have to make sure you coach your guest on actually listening and not just preparing a response to what somebody else said. Jeff said, oh, my goodness, what have I gotten myself into? I was just planning on sitting up there talking. I said, braxton edits your podcast, so he knows all about it. Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:23:26]:
So, you know, unfortunately, Jimmy Purdy won't be there from the gearbox, but I think everybody else will be there, David and I'll be there recording, and lots of really cool stuff happening. I hear that there may be a little bit of a tire track from one of the tire vendors. I don't know for sure just yet, but it seems like there's going to be a lot of really specialized tire training that's going to be happening during the event. So I'm excited about that as well.

Braxton Critcher [00:23:49]:
Okay, one more thing. So what do you think the theme would be as far as the training goes? So I know there's so much technology being added into cars these days. I know there will be classes on that, some trainers on that. But would that be like the main theme, or would you say there's a different main theme?

Lucas Underwood [00:24:09]:
You know, I think the primary theme for this show is always going to be networking. Right. And coming together and learning from one another and the real world experiences. Because at the end of the day, the instructor can teach you whatever they want to teach you and they can pick the thing that they think is most valuable to teach you. But the reality of it is, is they are not necessarily in that bay every single day, and they don't have the challenges that you do. They don't necessarily know what it feels like. And so I think that's probably the primary theme of Asta Expo, is the networking and the family building, if you will. When it comes to technology, right? That's always a tough, a tough road because one of the things that we see is that we know that we're going to have advanced driver awareness systems and automobile or assistance systems.

Lucas Underwood [00:24:57]:
Dutch is going to kill Ados to say Oddos. No, Dutch is going to kill me for that, too. He says. I say ados. Funny ados. You know, at least you get it. You're from the mountains, too, so it.

Braxton Critcher [00:25:08]:
Works out, you know, but one of.

Lucas Underwood [00:25:10]:
The things that stands out is that we understand that we're going to have to train on that technology. We understand we're going to have to implement that technology at some point. But right now, the ROI on that technology is pretty horrible. Right? And there's a lot of people who are really concerned about it. Ev, right? We all know that we need to be training on EV and alternate fuels, right? Let's not stop at EV. We need to be thinking about alternate fuels. But when we talk about emerging technologies, training for emerging technologies is very difficult because we don't necessarily know where we're going to be. Right.

Lucas Underwood [00:25:42]:
There's a, Ken Robinson did a lecture one time on education, and he said, how do you train a workforce on the 22nd, 23rd, 24th century when we don't even know what the 21st century going to look like in two years, right? Like, how do you train them for something that you don't know? And so that's a, that's a challenge, and I think it's something that we have to navigate. We've worked really hard to make sure that the training that comes to the show is well balanced. It's quality training that fits all aspects. So in other words, these, these techniques and these tools and this information that we're providing is going to help you whether we're working on EV's or whether we're working on hybrids or whether we're working on, say, hydrogen vehicles. Right? It is the same technology, and so there are aspects of it that's very different. And we may have to shift and train on a particular aspect. But at the end of the day, Braxton, the base functions of the automobile is really focused on an ASTA. We're making sure that we get that base data and that base information to our technicians.

Lucas Underwood [00:26:45]:
And look, at the end of the day, the human being never changes. And so we're focused on, a, making sure that we've got a good learning environment, and then b, we're making sure that we're teaching, especially service advisors, owners and managers, how to communicate and work with the public, how to communicate and work with each other, how to be better leaders. And so that's really where that comes from. I'm super excited for next year. Right? And folks are going to have to forgive us a little bit because we're in this transition period. And so when I say transition period, we filled up the space that we were in and then we moved, and we didn't expect it to grow as fast as it did. We filled up that space, too.

Braxton Critcher [00:27:23]:
Wow.

Lucas Underwood [00:27:24]:
And so one of the things that a lot of people want is they wanted tables and they wanted to be able to put their notebooks and their pens and their paper. And we figured out that if we did that, we'd have to cut the capacity in half to be able to fit all of those tables in. So next year, 2025, ASta is moving to a convention center that will afford us tremendous, tremendous growth opportunities, the likes of which the show never thought it would reach. And so really excited to. To be a part of that.

Braxton Critcher [00:27:53]:
And just when you thought you were listening to this podcast to hear about 2024, yeah, you get a little sneak preview of next year.

Lucas Underwood [00:27:59]:
That's exactly right. Wow. That's exactly right.

Braxton Critcher [00:28:01]:
I'm excited.

Lucas Underwood [00:28:02]:
Yes, sir.

Braxton Critcher [00:28:03]:
I've never been to it, so this is my first time.

Lucas Underwood [00:28:05]:
Be your first time. And so folks can come over and get on the auto Repair news today podcast.

Braxton Critcher [00:28:09]:
That'd be great.

Lucas Underwood [00:28:10]:
And talk about good news and auto repair. We can start digging in and. And talk about some cool stuff.

Braxton Critcher [00:28:14]:
Yeah. Thank you, man.

Lucas Underwood [00:28:15]:
Thank you.

Braxton Critcher [00:28:20]:
Hey, if you're still here, thank you so much for listening to this episode of Automotive Repair News today. If you enjoyed the show, please take a moment. Like share, subscribe to the podcast. That'll help us out a big deal and help grow the show. And you know what? While you're at it, slap on a review, too. If you feel like this content is helpful for the industry, don't forget to follow us on all your favorite social media platforms. We're on Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn. Stay connected and be the first to know about new episodes, behind the scene content and more.

Braxton Critcher [00:28:53]:
And until next time, let's make the industry better together.