Bring the Classroom to the Shop: Raising the Bar For On-Site Training [RR 1105]

0:01This is the Automotive Repair Podcast Network. Hey everybody, Carm Capriato, Remarkable Results Radio. I am so glad you are here. Look at, a lot's been going on inside the industry. I can't tell you how much is going through my mind. If you're a listener to all the shows on the Automotive Repair Podcast Network, you know the kind of stuff that we're covering.

0:25If your ear is to the ground, you know what's happening out there. And I've got a really hot topic to talk to you about today with Brandon Steckler. So just hang in there for one minute. First of all, I want to just remind everyone about our great app. If you don't have it on your smartphone, you need to get it. Go to arpn.app.

0:46That's the quick URL that gets you to our page where you can click on either the Google or the Android logo or scan the QR codes. It's the ultimate professional automotive repair playlist. You can read show notes, link with our sponsors, get all the shows in our network and have fun with that and continue what I kind of call this think, learn, lead, and repeat.

1:11Thank you so much to our great sponsors. Take your NAPA Autocare Center to the next level with the NAPA Autocare Gold Certified Program. Gold Certified Shops shops, well, they stand out, build trust, and enjoy exclusive benefits designed to drive business growth. Contact your NAPA representative today to get started with Gold Certified. Hey, did you know that NAPA Trax has on-site training plus 6 days a week support?

1:40It all starts when a local representative meets with you to learn about your business and how you run it. After all, it's your shop, so it's your choice. Let us prove to you that Traxx is the single best shop management system in the business. Find NAPA Traxx on the web at napatraxx.com. Okay, I'm back with Brandon Steckler as promised, and we're here to raise the profession one shop, one leader, one conversation at a time.

2:10Right, Brandon? That is 100% spot on, Korm. SWAT Training, as you can see, if you're watching on video, he's got an SWAT Training after his name. What Brandon has done after, you know, your stint with Motor Age and all the training that you've done in the industry, you've decided to do the Brandon thing. Tell us what SWAT Training stands for. Well, that stands for Stackworth's Worldwide Automotive Technical.

2:40Training and Diagnostics. The name says it all. That's what I do. That's what the company's all about. When did it come to you? One night when you got up at 2 in the morning? Something like that. Yeah. I thought about all the times I try to help promote networking in the industry and helping other people out, bettering themselves. I found it was a good way to turn it into a business, something I love to do and something I can get paid to do.

3:05You are good at what you do because every time I'm out there and I, what classes did you go to? I went and saw Brandon. He's really good at it. So you've got a talent. For, uh, in fact, I remember Tracy and I were at a class of yours in Toronto. We just loved your approach. It was great. By the way, I recently wrote in one of my emails, and they eventually end up becoming a blog on my website, remarkableresults.biz, on the blog page, a title of this article called Bring the Classroom to the Shop.

3:35And Brandon and I had chatted and we're, it was kind of ironic that couple of things have all kind of grown together here. And the article starts out with this carmism. Okay. It's a carmism. I'm going to start introducing carmisms. The shortest distance between learning and earning is bringing education to your shop. How about that? I can't believe that. Okay. Can't get much better than that.

4:00I know you can't. So, I mean, it's not like this is brand new. You've done this, Brandon. I mean, let's go back in the annals of time. When people would pick up the phone and say, get out here and teach us something? Yeah, this has been going on for several years now, and the process is almost always being processed and refined. As you know, not any class goes the same because people think differently, different topics of conversation come up, and even me as an instructor, I might stare at one PowerPoint slide, if you will, and present it one way, and the very next class I'm doing it totally different.

4:33Brandon, when you are seeing hands-on going on. Can you sense the electricity between the learning and the brain from your student? 100%, especially for automotive technicians. We just tend to be hands-on kind of people. Me for one, I've done a lot of learning in school and I was fortunate enough growing up. I just always had, I don't wanna say a photographic memory, but I tend to memorize things, remember things pretty well.

5:03So with that, I could pass almost any tests, but the real true litmus test for me was I was ASE master certified, advanced level certified at age 21. I couldn't fix a sandwich. That's the truth. I was horrible in the shop. That happens. Yeah, a lot. And speaking firsthand, but it was only when I started taking what I learned in school and having people show me what the teacher, me, my instructors meant, the words still made sense, but now there's something practical from the trenches to attach it to.

5:33In the annals of your experience, who was your first show-me instructor? I would have to say it was Jim Morton. It was Jim Morton, and there's no need for introduction there. Everybody knows Jim. Uh, he's been like an, an uncle to me, a father if you will, for damn near 20 years. He was the first true hands-on, let me show you what we're talking about.

5:54And that's where everything started coming together for me. Anything I've ever learned suddenly made sense, better sense. You know, the irony of life. So Brandon and I had a call to, so that I could better understand where his new venture is going. I write the article called Bring the Classroom to Your Shop. And this morning I get an email from Jim Morton.

6:14It just couldn't be more right, by the way, that we're doing this episode. So you have basically created this company in a twofold, two-tiered service model, I think you call it, right? You have a pay-per-support for any shop who wants to be able to get ahold of you and work through a problem. And then you've got your onsite training, which I call, it's an on-siter.

6:41It really is. And believe it or not, there's several more tiers to this process. As you mentioned, there's paid-for diagnostic support, similar to traditional support, but done a tad bit differently. It really runs with what I call just-in-time training, and that's what it's all about. You get the diagnosis for free, but you're paying for the training. What's happening in here with me gets put on paper and put into a folder, and it's shared with my client.

7:04And we don't hang up the phone till 2 things happen: the vehicle's diagnosed properly with an accurate diagnosis, and the client walks away with something tangible, truly understands what we did. And if not, we spend time And we talk and we talk and there's pictures and annotations and files and things to get my point across again in that just-in-time training session. How does this onsite instructor educator like you deal with an individual who's looking for that?

7:33I need to get ahold of him. I've got an issue. How do you balance that? I'm learning every day. Okay. That's an honest answer. It is very overwhelming to say the least. Fixing cars nowadays is hard enough. Fixing cars through the phone, as my good buddy Josh Parnell says, there's the conversation I'm having with you, Carm, and the one you're having with me.

7:56And then there's the conversation I think I'm having with you, and then the conversation you think you're hearing from me. So it's these 4 different conversations that are going on at all times that make things very, very challenging. Yeah, you're right. It's so much of Our inability to communicate, to listen, to learn, to absorb, again, has to do with that word communications and learning how to sometimes shut up and listen and really be present.

8:26You know, look them in the eye. I discovered that many, many years ago in leadership classes and communication classes, and sometimes We get this ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh moment, Brandon, where I need to say something right away. So I stopped listening to you so I could formulate what I want to tell you because I'm smarter than you in this moment. So it's a conflict.

8:49What I find to be challenging for me is just as you said, it's to bite your tongue and listen because many times people were calling in for this tech support and they want to give you everything they know because they want to help you get a jumpstart. On this plan of attack, this battle plan, if you will. It's almost as if we already knew what was wrong with the car.

9:10We wouldn't need, I mean, we would need that information, but we don't. So I like to start fresh, but you're right, keeping your mouth shut and doing more listening instead of talking sometimes is the key. Craig O'Neill recently did an episode on his podcast on the network, his podcast called Speak Up, and the theme of it was about being a fixer. How many shop owners never get up, leave the bays.

9:35They may physically leave the bays, but they never leave the bays because someone says, hey boss, blankety blank, and they want to rush in and fix it instead of trying to share knowledge and challenge the think. What have you already done? What did you try? They just want to jump in there and fix it and move on. That's difficult. That's the difference between what I do with SWAT.

9:56Training diagnostics versus what other tech support companies do. The technician believes he or she is calling in to help them fix a car that they're stuck on. And that may be true, but just like fixing the cars themselves, if we don't get to the root cause of the problem, the process is going to repeat. So in essence, I'm kind of working myself out of a job as I continue to deal with these techs over and over again, but that's my goal.

10:20I want to empower And I wanna help people grow as a tech with their accuracy and equally as important, their efficiency. 'Cause when you have both, you have confidence. And that's the difference between having a fantastic career and being a miserable bastard for 40 years. So do you ask open-ended questions that obviously you know the answer to because you are the instructor, you're the educator, and try to find where that student is going with this?

10:46And, and will you absolutely let them dive into the deep end of the pool wrongly just so that they can get out and dry themselves off and relearn something? So the answer to that question is yes and no. Yes, that we want these learning situations to happen, and I will let them answer, I'll say incorrectly, and then I'll correct them and tell them why.

11:05I won't let them go down that sour path, if you will, because they're calling me for a reason. We've gotta get this vehicle problem solved efficiently. In essence, we get the diagnosis knocked out as swiftly as possible, but We stop and we go back and smell the roses. Then we revisit everything. You know, instead of cutting down a bunch of logs and running away, we go cut 'em down and then we come pick 'em back up again and collect 'em.

11:27So we figure out what's wrong with the car and then we go revisit and we don't leave until there's a true understanding of what's going on. That tech needs to walk away with knowledge. I'm with you on the phone support 100%, because that's why they're calling you. They want quick answers and hopefully there is learning going on, but let's take it onsite.

11:46That same question that I asked you, because you have a chance to pull someone up and out, but you also have other people watching this mentoring and learning going on. And will you wait for someone to say, well, I think I need to do that. And someone chimes up and he says, no. Do you let them help lead or teach the class with your guidance?

12:06You know, it's funny how that happens. We start off beginning class on the first day and Let's just pretend nobody knows anything. And of course we know that's not true, but just for the sake of discussion, as time goes by, that rate of absorption starts to increase. Not only are they learning, but they're learning faster and more because knowledge begets new knowledge.

12:26And a funny thing happens when you break things down to a level of what we like to call basic, which no tech wants to sit in a basic class, but it's the basics that are foundation for the what is perceived as advanced. To me, there's no advanced testing. It's testing that's just more efficient than basic testing. But without the basic knowledge, that advanced stuff doesn't mean crap.

12:48It doesn't help you fix cars. It's fancy. But when you let people dabble with their own level of knowledge and start to mix in what they're learning with you, with what they already know, you watch the attitudes change. And the confidence change, how they sit at their desk in the morning versus how they sit in their desk in the afternoon. I should actually start taking pictures, one before class and one at the end of class, and just show the difference.

13:15I wanted to ask you about, as an instructor in front of the class, be it at a major industry con event, and I've talked to so many of you and saying, you know, we know the ones that are really here to learn. You just said a mouthful. The teams can ultimately end up growing together and working with each other at the end of this onsite event.

13:39That's the truth. In fact, I actually, when I'm having discussions about setting up the event with the hosts, I actually recommend to them that they invite a few local shops. Some of 'em are adamant they wanna keep it in-house only, trade secret, but others are really open to it and most of the time, 3 to 5 other shops around the area join hands.

14:00And I like that because somebody always knows something that you don't. And even my best of friends I network with, thank God they let me, because when I'm at a jam or I've seen something maybe for the first time and I just don't have the experience to say, you know, I expect to see that or I don't, it's those same techs I reach out to for that input and they do the same with me.

14:23So, In an onsite class like that, to be able to have someone to turn to later, a week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, a month, you can call the shop down the street that you are now friends with and they help each other out and it works. And sometimes they share tools and everything. It works out really, really well. I want to lean into that because I know there's people listening and says, bring him in, but only for my people.

14:45And I'm not going to invite anybody around me. You know, they're my competition. And we all know the answer to that. No, they're not your competition. They really aren't. You're your competition. Let's face that fact. Now, with that said, the biggest worry, and I'd love you to help dispel the reason why this should be done and, and some of your costs shared.

15:07Say you got 3 guys and you look at your cost against 3 guys. It could be substantial per unit, but if you can take another 10 in there from the metropolitan area of a 20 or 30 mile radius. What's the big, I mean, off the top of my head, I could figure out why people don't want to do that, but can you dispel some of these crazy rumors?

15:29Yes. So first, obviously what you just mentioned, like trade secrets we don't want to share, that mindset's got to go. There's plenty of work to go around. There's no need to badmouth anybody. There's no need to poach customers. There's plenty of work. There's also enough work to go around where you can help other shops in a jam and don't charge them. You know, help.

15:49This is my opinion, but I scratch your back, you scratch mine. There's gonna be a time when you need a hand. I've helped enough people to realize that most of the time when I reach out for something, people are happy to drop, not only help me, but drop what they're doing. Absolutely. I'm gonna stop what I'm doing. I'm gonna help you. I don't want you to do that, you know, at your convenience, help me.

16:07But the other myth I think, Carm, is that The quality of training tends to go down as classroom attendance grows. And at a point, yes, I agree 100%, but I've had as many as 50, 5-0, 50 people in one onsite class. And it went phenomenal when you were equipped right and you have the camera right. And you've got things like I've invested in wireless HDMI interfaces and a big switching tool where I can go from camera 1 to camera 2.

16:40Uh, seamlessly at a push of a button. When you start doing things like that, you can take that experience that would normally be negative with a classroom attended size of 50 and make it easily doable. I mean, let's face it, when you're a technician sitting in a diagnostic class like I'm describing, there's no doubt in my mind these technicians know how to access a circuit and connect their tools to this circuit.

17:05And even if not, I have a camera right over me pointing down at where I'm testing. But if they can still sit in their seat and absorb the stuff they need to absorb, that's what really counts. And we can do that with a considerably large class size as long as the instructor's equipped to do so. Do you break 'em into groups at all?

17:21Currently, no, unless the group is big enough and I have a helper with me. Frequently when I teach at some of these events, there's a hands-on aspect to training some of the events like Vision. I will go onsite along with my fellow instructors. I'm there as a friend just to help out. We'll break off into groups because it makes it easier. This is where these good questions are asked and you can really get hands-on.

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20:43What's the ideal class? Ideal 3, 4, or 5? Is an ideal class that you travel to onsite training a dozen to 20? I guess I won't use the word ideal, but I use the word average. The average class size I'd say is about 20. For me, I see about 20. I've seen as little as 2, and the shop owner was adamant. He just wanted him and his lead tech.

21:07You said the word earlier, poaching customers, and let me reveal the big worry for shop owners that want to get together and do things, and that would be poaching their talent, their people. And I don't want to send them down to Charlie's place and let my guys see Charlie's place, meet Charlie, and have Charlie think about wanting to hire them. And to me, that's the biggest detriment to wanting to do this or participate in this.

21:38Well, Carm, if you recall, just recently I spent a short time, maybe 6 months, in a leadership position, more like a shop owner who didn't own the shop. I had some big decisions to make. So I now take that perspective into account when I'm answering your question now. If you have something to worry about, your techs being poached, the problem's in-house. Fix it.

22:00If it's money and you're not paying enough, of course that technician's want to go somewhere where He or she's getting more money. If the tools aren't there and the other prospective shop has the tools, there's your answer. You have something to worry about if you're not willing to invest in the shop and your technicians. So if I owned a shop, Carm, I can assure you I have no fear of my technicians leaving my shop because of something I'm not doing.

22:24They're gonna be paid appropriately. Things are gonna be fair. Their feelings and emotions are gonna be taken into account in decisions I make. Because I am not the shop. I am part of a team and I'm no more important than my team members. I'm not above them. They carry a lot more weight than I do, believe it or not. So it's very important for me as a would-be shop owner to take care of my technicians, my entire team, not just my technicians, but when it comes to tech training, now I'm not scared of them going off to take training hosted at another shop of them being poached, because if they are capable of being poached,

22:58there's a problem in-house and I need to fix that. Let that sink in, everyone. That's why I'm sitting here in a pause moment. It was just well said. All right. Thank you for that. Now, you know, education isn't simply about becoming smart. It's about becoming more productive. What kind of feedback are you getting from the owners that you work with? It's funny you mentioned that.

23:20I'm currently building a website as we speak, and I'm not going to reveal a thing till it's done because I want it to be perfect. And my webmaster's, he's amazing. One of the things he's including is not only a list of testimonials from around the world, but some soundbites my clients have actually shared with me on Facebook Messenger, you know, an audio recording.

23:37And I uploaded it to him. He's like, this is perfect. We're going to use this. A friend of mine from Australia. One of the biggest takeaways he had in this, he said he was actually getting emotional as he's making this recording because he's owned these tools for a while and has never used them in the fashion that we did on this particular case.

23:54And he said the amount of confidence he feels now after interacting with me on this case was a game changer for him. And that meant the world to me, Carl. I couldn't ask for anything better because you could hear it in his voice. I don't want to say he was going to cry, but you can hear the excitement in his voice. His voice was a little bit cracking and, you know, he had to take a moment to regroup before he spoke.

24:15But that means the world to me. It's fixing the cars to me is fun, but Really getting down to that root cause issue, empowering people to be better and showing them the path, you know, being a leader to them is what I always try to do. Lead by example. And, you know, Brandon, education changes lives. It really does. And it doesn't matter if you went to an 8-hour class, you walked away with an hour worth of life-changing, gotta do this now.

24:44I am motivated. I am sincere. I'm a different person again. Oh, I can go to YouTube and figure this out. Let's stumble with that. Let's try this. Let's ask Google or AI today. Are you finding that those are going to get in the way of what it is that you want to do? No. And here's why. First of all, I love YouTube.

25:06There's some really, really good content out there. I caution anybody to check your sources, but there's plenty of reputable sources that all of us know and we interact with even in social media. And those men and women are happy to give input and advice, and they do so very well. I mess around with AI for some certain things, assistance for me, if you will.

25:25I will never let AI ever write a class for me, ever, ever, never, not once. It's because to me, I need to write this class. So there are some good aspects to it, in my opinion, but it's still, I think it perpetually, it's going to be in a phase of learning forever and it's going to get better in time, but I can never say I would fully trust AI.

25:44I just don't. That's just my opinion. I got this wild idea. Wild idea. You found a solution to a very difficult diagnostic problem, and then you said, ooh, I can make a case study out of this. I'll add it to one of my classes. Would you ever, or have you ever gone to AI, typed in the exact problem and have them tell you exactly what it is that you discovered?

26:12I personally have not, but I've witnessed other people do it to demonstrate how many different wild goose chases it can send you on. If it's designed to learn, you know, garbage in, garbage out. We've got it right, stuff. By the time you got to the solution that yet you discovered, you swam upstream a lot to get there, right? For sure. I still do.

26:38I love that term. It just hit me. Okay, class, we're going to be swimming upstream for the next hour and hopefully break your stride when we transferred all this knowledge to you. That's what it takes if we've got to be better though. A really good friend of mine, I'm sure you've spoken with him plenty of times, good friend of Tracy's as well, Brian Pollack.

26:56I can't remember the words he used, but he says the first 40 hours is what you go to work for to pay your bills. The second 40 hours is how you grow and be better. And Man, I can't tell you how many hours I've spent, as you said, swimming upstream. He's exactly right, by the way. I mean, if you're in it to win it, 40 hours doesn't cut it.

27:16It's right. It's not something people want to hear because it isn't easy trying to be the best at what you do. If it was, everyone would do it. So here I am reacting to what I think our listener just heard. About having to work 80 hours. Now, that's not true. I do believe I used to do a good 60 in the early days.

27:39And then there's a certain point where for everyone, you want to have a life. Well, how do you do it in 40? You become a perpetual student. It doesn't matter if it's finance and leadership, or if it's diagnostics and technology, you become a perpetual student. You constantly are learning, which makes those hours shorten on the scale, doesn't it? It sure does. And you know what, to clarify, when I say you're working 80 hours, you know, you could be on the toilet reading something.

28:07You could be drinking coffee in the morning when everyone's asleep and reading or watching a video. That's learning. You don't have to be at work getting dirty. You're in the deep end of the pool. I love that time, but you're all drenched in all the things that make your living real. It's that continuing education piece. And when you learn something, usually people that are, you know, at that level, they love to share.

28:32It's true. I see the same group of men and women all across the country. The same, I'd say probably hundreds, several hundred people, but they're always working together. I mean, you know, Carm, you leave the events, we're done learning for the day, but then the night starts and all the good conversations, the fireside chats. There's a whole other set of learning taking place after class is over, and it's the people that are happy to share 'cause they're also happy to receive as well.

28:57Okay, let's get into the nitty-gritty on this onsite thing. I just recently did an episode with Matt Lockowitzer who holds a summit at his place. He's got 10 shops. You ever been to Matt's place? Several times, and I'm scheduled to go back in just a couple of weeks. I love Matt. Perfect. Okay. And on an episode I recently did with him on letting a toxic employee go, we got a little bit into his summit.

29:24And Matt closes during the weekdays. He says, my people are so important to me. I want to educate 'em, but I also want 'em to be home with their families and I want to be home at night. That's a gutsy move to close your shop for 3 days during the week. It is. And I'll tell you what, I want to give Matt some credit here and I don't want to embarrass him.

29:44He's probably gonna be embarrassed. I've watched Matt get emotional with his team and his son. I watched tears roll down his face as guys, as the team was thanking him for such a great event. That man's the real deal. And yes, when he says that, that's not a show-off move. That's not, uh, looking for attention. He loves his team like family and he treats them like family and he's all in with them.

30:09He's a great guy. I mean, he's got a lot of businesses going on in his world. Is that 13, I think, right? 13 different types of shops. He's got 2 Mack trucks on the road. I mean, he's a real entrepreneur and a people person, and he's gotten to the point where, you know, he practices EOS. You know, he's the visionary of the company and he's got a lot of great implementers and leaders.

30:33He's done a lot of smart things over the years, but yet Brandon Steckler can go there and do onsite training for him on diagnostic stuff. And they all benefit from it. So why would we as an industry just look the other way and say, this isn't for me? That's the part I don't get. No matter how big the shop is, no matter how many people you know, I don't understand why we are not doing enough on the educational piece in our industry.

31:03I just, I'll ask you this question. You go to Vision, you're up front. It's the same people in the class. It's the same people. Why is it the same people when there's another 400,000 to train? It's true. And it's not very easy to get people to see that benefit when they've never been to training yet. So they don't know what they're missing.

31:21And then to convince them they've got to close the shop, pay for staff to fly out, pay them to be there. And of course, hotel and, and just cost. It's a lot of money. It's worth it, but it's a lot of money. It's worth it. Absolutely. When I talk to people and we've been doing interviews with shop owners at Vision about the value that they get from their money, and we, we basically say, so you closed for how many days?

31:48Well, we shut down for Thursday and Friday, and of course we're here the weekend and we had to travel on Thursday, blah, blah, blah. I says, what about your revenue? He says, we had no problem. We made it up the next month. Isn't it great how that works? It's amazing. It's almost like, you know, Bewitched, twitch your nose and boom, there's the numbers.

32:06It's the spirit of the team. It's the knowledge that happens. It's the productivity gains. It's the confidence that we're better than we ever were before just yesterday. That return on investment is there and other people wouldn't be going to this training if it wasn't. So this is a trend that I'm feeling, I'm seeing. This is why I wrote this blog article. And Brandon, you know, it's great to see that you made this huge leap in your life.

32:36Thank you. And I know you're busier than I said. Are you busy? He goes, I can't handle it right now. Well, that's great. He says, I may have to put more people on. Oh my God. There's another great thing. Yeah. I'm looking forward to growth. It's a big part of my, the next phase of my plan in putting the right people in place as part of my team.

32:54So I pick up the phone and I'm, I'm all in on this. So what would be the next steps that anybody, how do they get ahold of you if somebody want— is interested? As of right now, you simply call my cell phone number and I'll be the one picking up right here from the office in the chair I'm sitting in now. You just call.

33:10You can reach me on Facebook Messenger. You can reach me on WhatsApp, or you can reach me on my cell phone. I'm currently building a website where this can be self-implemented, where you can simply Build a profile. That profile is always yours and you can add vehicles to it. You can check the status of any vehicle you have in play. And we go from there.

33:27We have a phone conversation. We talk about it just like you would at the counter with your own personal clients. And, uh, I gather the same information you do. We build a battle plan. Pay per use for tech support, on-site training. And what else are you working on? So believe it or not, the tech support is to solve the attitude problem. We've got a car that we're stuck on and we need fixed.

33:51I identify lapses in the technician's either performance, whether it's lack of know-how, lack of tooling, or lack of service information. And rather than continuing to fill a bucket with water that has a hole in it, I first try and plug the hole and then fill the bucket up. So that just makes sense. Then I'll identify opportunities for virtual training. So I can customize training for that particular technician.

34:13At the level he or she needs on any subject they wish to cover for as long or as short of a duration as they want, anywhere from 1 hour to 8 hours or more. I'm trying to identify a way that I can get into shop and perform a 2-day event where we really set the foundation for learning in the future. So it does 2 things.

34:32One, it accomplishes the goal of building confidence and efficiency for the technicians or all the attendees. That are there to see the class. But for the same reason the military has a boot camp, they establish procedures and ways of doing things, breaking old habits. Now, any training I do for them in the future is now optimized. I don't have to come down for 2 days at a time.

34:54I can handle this online, right? I can show them how to learn online. We can do virtual content. I'm happy to come back out and I'd love to, but that's not always convenient for everybody. So being a technician, a wannabe shop owner, I realized the importance of continuing to work. So I make my training available to them day, night, weekends, holidays, whatever they want.

35:16I work with them at their convenience. Wow. SWAT training, ER, emergency room. That's just what I heard. 24/7. So I call you up and I want to do this. I want to do onsite. Do you interview me and say, well, who picks the topic or the area of instruction? So I offer an entire range of topics and classes that I can do, and I offer to them, but I always propose what I have recommended, and that is a ported and polished class that's based on a 2-day event on-site, a combination of deep theory and physics, as well as easy-to-digest things to help connect the two.

35:55So we're not memorizing, and then practical application over the next day where we get involved with vehicles, individual components, the tools used to evaluate the performance of these components on the circuits they reside in, as well as tackle any live challenges they have in the shop. I'm willing, more than willing to do that. Like, let's put our money where our mouth is.

36:15Where's a car you've been struggling with? And we just did that recently, actually, at a friend's shop in, in the Connecticut area. Do you ever do any heavy diag classes? Absolutely. The purpose of this baseline class, if you will, this online 2-day event is to establish a foundation to grow on. Okay. Onsite. Yep. It's an onsite 2-day event and it establishes a baseline for technicians to grow on.

36:40It provides all the good habits. Again, much like the military hosts basic training, we need that training to build good habits so we can optimize anything we do in the future. It makes it more applicable and more effective. Basic training. Don't get me to remember when I went through basic training and I was a college grad, got drafted. It was in the last draft.

37:02And I just thought it was such an incredible session that I went through, you know, the 16 weeks of advanced training and basic. You know, I still believe today everyone, every young person should go through basic training. I really do. I could see how it could benefit everybody. Absolutely. You learn disciplines and rules, and I don't think we have much of that anymore today, but that's just my opinion and I could be wrong.

37:30You know, typically it's old guys that say that, Carm, but I'm right there with you. I'm starting to see it too. I've got some gripes of my own. Did you call me old? No, I called us old. Okay. Okay. Hey, this was great. Now you said call my cell phone. Where do we put that cell phone in the show notes? One, uh, if somebody wants to look this up.

37:47Absolutely. I'll mention it now. 484-824-4621. And again, that website will be going live soon. I'll, I'll certainly make announcement on social media. If it comes out, let us know. We'll put it into the show notes on this episode so people can get it. Did you see how cleverly I got him to give us his cell phone number? Huh? Just Brandon Stoeckler, thank you for being here.

38:11Former Motor Age editor. Industry educator with his new company, Stechler's Worldwide Automotive Technical Training and Diagnostics, SWAT, who is really doing some heavy, heavy work on onsite training, which we both believe is the future and it's going to bring tons of value to our industry as we strive so hard to be so much more professional. Brandon, thanks for being here. My absolute pleasure.

38:37Thanks for having me, Corn. Thanks for being on board to listen and learn from the premier automotive repair business podcast, Remarkable Results Radio. Get your episodic education on the ARPN listening app at automotiverepairpodcastnetwork.com. Also enjoy the podcast on our Carm Capriato YouTube channel. Carm is all for advancing the professional automotive service industry. Until next time.