Super Tech OR Owner: My 15 Year Struggle & How I Fixed It | EP13 | Shop Fix Academy Podcast

0:00You need to put the wrench down. You're going to pick up a calculator and you're going to pick up a pen and you're going to fix everything with that. There's been people that have come and gone through my business without my interference would probably have become better people because I didn't allow them to grow. They wanted to go to training and they went to the best training to try to learn the biggest things, but they were caught in that trap.

0:23Everyone, welcome to the ShopFix Academy podcast. I'm your host, Guy Roberts, with the Bird, Mr. Michael Rosenberger. Good morning, guys. Good morning, sir. How are you? Doing great. Fantastic. Again, with, with this podcast, we want to deliver more value for free than other companies charge for. And today we have an amazing person with us, Mr. Eric Walker from Kentucky. Yes, from Kentucky.

0:50I love it. Yeah. And, um, Y'all may or may not know this. You probably have heard of him because he's famous. He is one of the best trainers in the world, and I would put him up against any trainer out there. Unbelievable. Can teach a class well, knows his stuff technically. I mean, he's just amazing. And, uh, thank you for giving back to the industry.

1:14I'll just start with that. Well, thank you for that. I appreciate it. I, uh, I really love the industry. I've been doing it a long time. You're awesome. So you were a technician first, correct? And then you became a shop owner. Yes, that is true. But that change wasn't easy. No, no, it's a hard road. Yeah. What would you say are the 3 pillars that changed that mindset?

1:34You know, I, I went to technical school and I, I went and did training, and that was my whole life, right? Being a technician was my whole life. You know, it was somewhere, I would say, 12, 15 years ago, it started to become a struggle to work in the bay, run the counter, run all the different parts of an automotive shop. And I started to go, how do I get out of this?

1:56How do I not do this every day? So one of them would be learning that I can't do everything right. I can't handle every part of the business. So coming to that realization that I can't— 2 would be there's other people that know way more of this than me because I don't have all the answers. You know, as a technician, especially as a really good technician, you think you should be able to problem solve everything.

2:16Every answer I can come up with them. But there were just answers or problems on the business side that I couldn't solve. You know, even with my research and everything, I couldn't do it. I would say third would be getting rid of the ego of, you know, I can fix all this and nobody has to help me. I can do this all by myself.

2:33There's no way I need people. That's just not the case. You have to have people to help you along the way. Eric, tell us about kind of going from the super tech, you know, moving into an owner role and kind of what mindset shift you had to do, the things you had to change about how you thought about the business and how important is it to change your mindset?

2:50It's huge because it's, it's a form of paralysis, right? You get stuck in, I have to do this, I have to fix these problems, I have to take care of all this. And then it becomes, I have to take care of all these customers. And then the customer base grows. Like I said, it's a form of paralysis where you can't get out of your technician zone, step out of that and become the person that is in the background making the big decisions and leading people to do better.

3:17I don't know, and I'm sure a lot of technicians out there, maybe they are good leaders, but I would have to say with me, 100%, I would not be considered a leader in the beginning. I was more of a self-motivated, driven person, but not, hey everybody, come follow me. It was more, I'm going to run over you and take over and do it all if you get in my way.

3:37Yeah. And make that happen. And it's huge to be able to go and sit down and go, okay, I'm no longer doing these items, no matter how much pain this brings. I'm going to get trained. I'm going to get education in how to help and lead people and run the business versus just worry about fixing cars and how to fix that end solution, the production side of the business.

4:03And I tell this, I travel all over the country giving classes and stuff, and it's one of the biggest things I always say to owners and technicians in the room. Is if you're thinking about going out, starting your own business, or opening your own shop, step one, get training, get coaching. So first step, you have to, because if not, there's 10 to 15 years of pain of learning it with your ego of going, I got this.

4:27Yeah. And then the 15th year in, you go, man, I need some help. I don't got this. Yeah, I gotta get some help. Yeah, either I'm gonna need a therapist or I need some kind of help, you know? Right, right. What would you say, uh, like leadership in this, in the shop, and maybe some accountability factors and things like that? Walk us through some of those changes.

4:47Yeah, I would say from, you know, really I started my shop in 2004, really it became a brand in 2005. Okay. And I was the micromanager of everything, right? I had to handle every detail. Nobody's best at it. Nobody's work was good enough. Nobody's ideas were good enough. And Um, it didn't meet my expectations. Sure. And being able to step back and realize that people may not do it to my level, they may not have my level of detail, um, where do I hold accountable the shop's expectations versus my personal micromanaging ability to drive that into people and, and not be able to release and say they can do it, they can handle this?

5:29And I, I really think that stems from my obsession with being the best technician. Yeah, with, with knowing every angle. I couldn't allow them to run on their own without micromanaging them. Sure. Yeah, went to technical school, become a BMW Master Certified Technician very early in my career, um, graduated top of my class. Nothing would hold me back. I had to do it to the best of my level.

5:56When I worked at the dealer, 80 to 90 hours per week was my average. Wow. Every award, every— and so I think when I went into the owner position, that didn't change. It's like, I'm just going to do this. I'm going to handle it all. But as you know, with growth, when you get to a certain level, it becomes a huge burden to carry all of that as your car count goes up and things you don't— at the— I didn't know what car count was back then.

6:21I was just like, fix the product, next car, you know? And as you learn those things, you start to realize that you can't carry all that burden. You know, maybe I'm a super tech, but I can't carry all that. How do you make space for that? That like for— and now you've got employees, right? And maybe they're not executing on things at the level that you feel like they should be.

6:39How do you wrap your brain around that as an owner to allow your employees to shine in the areas that they're, you know, they're supposed to be handling? And I think this is one of the biggest struggles because that took years. It was probably somewhere around 2015, 2016, 10 years in. Wow. I took that burden for that long against my family and against everyone around me because I had to handle it.

7:02And I did well at it. I mean, we were growing 20% per year, and I was still handling— I would handle 20% more and 20% more, and I would keep handling. You're the one pulling this. I'm pulling all the weight. And I'm high— you have to consider, I'm in a town in Kentucky, population of 1,500 people. Okay. It was the mindset of, well, I'll put a shop in my hometown, but it not from a demographic standpoint, it would be a really bad idea to put a shop there.

7:29Like, a Starbucks can't even exist there because there's not enough volume. So I put that there. So then I was trapped in the point of hiring just the people in the town to be my people. But here's an industry expert in a town of no technicians having to hire people locally to work for me. So I had to carry all the weight.

7:52Sure. Yep. As far as the skill level goes. Yeah. But it took some time to build a culture of people and change my mindset to go, how do I attract people, um, like-minded that can do the work without me having to carry that with me? To come here to this town, right, and do the work? Yeah. Hour away from everything practically. I mean, right now I have no employees that live in my town.

8:17They all drive 30 to 40 minutes Some 50 minutes to get to me. Wow. Yeah. And we're up to 13 now. Wow. At my one location. 13 employees. Wow. Well, 13 total. I'm included in that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. So how does training play into that? Like, so obviously you've got people coming in and you've got to raise them to the level that you expect your shop to perform at.

8:40So how does that play in? Yeah, I was always an advocate for training. I guess that's how it got me into being an automotive trainer is because I would go to all the classes and eventually I never sought that out. People sought me out. Just, it's always been that way for me. We were always going to classes. I was always trying to teach these people that really weren't skilled in my town to bring them up to the level.

9:01And I did many of them. I've got people who've been with me over 10 years in my business, and, you know, some of them were entry-level when they started, and now they're my top people. Wow. Training was always a big part of it, and now it really is. Now we have Technician Tuesdays, which is technician meeting, and then Thursdays is the entire team.

9:18We have very regimented training processes in place that do not waver. It's every week, whether doing And they're doing a training today as we are here. So, and is that something that you mostly front that training or do you have outside training that you put your employees through? Yes. So we do use the Tech Fix program to implement to all of our technicians and the other like Shop Fix and the other programs for all the different levels of our training.

9:46But for our technicians, I do classes for them. Yeah. And my shop foreman also does classes for them. But every week they are required now Uh, to get 40 hours per year in training to keep their current levels and their incentive programs and everything. Would you say you have a culture of training within your shop then? Oh, 100%. Yeah. And lunch buying.

10:07Yeah. And lunch buying. Yeah, absolutely. But that didn't happen overnight like that. That took time to plant the seeds. Many years. And just— yeah, this is our 22nd year. And, you know, the first 10 to 14 was me carrying the load. And then it, you know, around '15, '16, 2015, 2016, things started to change. I started to go, all right, how do I get out of this trap of carrying low-skilled people and not properly getting them up to speed, or hiring better people that can help me make me reach my goals, right?

10:39Yeah. So going from the super tech mindset to now the, the owner mindset, yep, what are some practical steps that you would give somebody out there, a shop owner that's, that's in that mindset right now? What would you give them practical steps to taking? You have to make some personal decisions, right? You have to, you have to set boundaries within yourself to go, here's what I'm going to do.

11:02Because if not, it's a slippery slope. You go, here, I'm no longer diagnosing cars and working on cars. I will stand back and give ideas of what's wrong. I'll stand back and give my opinion of what is wrong. But there's a slippery slope of the micromanager to want to jump in and just handle that. Yeah. So to stand back and go, all right, here's my internal boundaries.

11:24I'm no longer jumping in and fixing cars. That's good. It has to go backwards before it can go forwards. And the backwards part's going to be me stepping back going, I'm not doing that anymore, and waiting because it's going to get better. Because instead of going, I'm going to jump in and fix that, how about I go, I'm going to go train myself to do other things that will improve the business?

11:45Sure. So if you don't make the decisions early, this will be stretched out for a long period of time. Yeah. And it's what happened to me. And the reason I'm talking about that is because others need to know that if they don't make the decisions early, it will be a long event for that to happen. You basically said, I'm going to be an owner, and that owner is not going to answer and be the hero to every car problem that comes through here.

12:10Yes. What is— so you imagined your life as an owner and what that would look like, and then you said, okay, now I've got to stop answering and being the hero on every single problem that comes up and fixing the car every single time? Correct. Did you let employees struggle a little bit? To like find the issues with cars and diagnosis and things like that while you were walking through that transition?

12:31I kept sliding back in, right? That was the problem with me. And that's why I tell everybody that they need training and coaching, is because I would slip back in and like, well, they can't figure this out, I'll just have to do it for them. And as I learned that that doesn't work because I keep getting pulled back in, I finally would go, no, here's what I think you should do.

12:50I would give them the advice And I would disappear quietly into the background and I would let them struggle. Love it. Their struggle become the reduction in my struggle, right? Because their struggles started to happen and they would panic and it would affect their overall performance. And we would have conversations about this, but my struggles would get less. Sure. But then their struggles would start to get less because they were relying on theirself at this point instead of me, because I was, again, with me, me having my skill set, being in the shop, everybody wanted my answers for things because I had the quick answer and it could logically come up with the answers for

13:32them. Yeah. Yeah. Would you say that you were almost in their way of improving their skill set? 100%. There's, there's no doubt about that. There's been people that have come and gone through my business that I believe without my interference would probably have become better people. Because I didn't allow them to grow because I was handling the big problems for them. And that's a painful process to watch somebody struggle through what I always called it, going on safaris on a car.

14:03Like, yeah, you know, jungle safaris for days. Yeah. You know, and you're like, oh man, it's right there. They could— they can figure this out on their own. But like, they had to just take that safari to learn all the things. Sure. And they have to. Yeah. And we have to. But it makes everybody better. And, and I tell my people all the time, I love that you're here.

14:21I love you work for me, but what you learn here, I need you to be able to take it with you if you had to leave. Maybe you got to move out of the area, maybe something happens, and you can apply that somewhere else because now you have grown and you're spreading something bigger than just helping my shop make more money or make more hours.

14:41I love it. It's very cool. And I feel like when you're going through that moment where they're struggling, you're struggling as well, rewiring your own brain to be the shop owner now running the business. You're kind of feeding that learner in you. Like, what made you a great technician was the curiosity. And I love learning, I love being better at this. And now you shifted that to business.

15:03Rather than fixing a car, it's fixing a business. Yep. And so that fed that, and you had to struggle over there while they struggled over here. Yep. Yeah, we were all struggling. Yeah, struggle bus, no doubt. So one of your mentors, Aaron Stokes— yep— he had a phrase from stage. Can you tell everybody what that was and what impact that had on you.

15:22I was at the winter conference and we were right at the end. It was right at closing and conference had went good, you know, and I, the business was doing good, but, you know, even 22 years in, still had struggled with being completely owner mindset. And, and that conference, for some reason, and I, I don't know why, you know, we know Aaron, sometimes he just pivot.

15:48But everything— we're getting ready to close the arguments, and, and he's like, he's looking through the light, and he calls me out, and he's like, Eric, I don't know what's bringing me back around to you, but I gotta say this, whatever it is. And he said, you're a super smart guy, which everybody knows that, you know that. And I'm like— and he said, but something's telling me that you need to put the wrench down and put down your technician's side of what you do And you're going to pick up a calculator and you're going to pick up a pen and you're going to fix everything with that, and you're going to grow using that moving

16:30forward versus using your technical skills. Um, and something with that just resonated with me that moment, because at that moment, doing a lot of technical stuff, right? I'm doing technical writing content and developing technical stuff, but At that time, and since that point, my mindset changed from— one of the final draw points of mindset was, okay, moving forward, I'm going to fix everything with a pencil, paper, calculator versus jumping in and solving problems.

17:01So since that point, my whole idea of the business is I'll hire someone to do that. And that's what I've done. Um, you know, I have hired managers, new advisors, all the people that I have put in place since that point, which has been, you know, about 6 months ago, um, has completely changed the business dynamic, but mainly my mindset of I will solve this on paper now versus jumping in to make that happen.

17:28Because the interesting part about where I got to 6 months before that is my manager writer had passed away last July. Up until that point, it was a lot of me having to jump back in and out of the business to make things happen. Um, and I had a lot of struggles between July and that January conference. But since that point, since the first of this year, I have been able to put people in place with calculations and formulas and figuring it out and coaching and, and people helping me.

18:04Yeah. To be able to solve my shop issue that happened almost a year ago to have 13 people on the team working, rowing in the same direction and performing very well as I'm not even there today. What a mindset shift. Yeah, I love to hear that story. Yeah. Owners are looking at, I just need to hire up, hire up. But training is important and you're a TechFix trainer, right?

18:33So what does that training look like in your shop? So for our Tech Fix program, my technicians, it's, it's a couple of different things. One, every Tuesday we meet at least 2 times a month. We watch Tech Fix videos as a lunch and learn. The rest of it is they are required to watch up to 40 hours per year of videos and go to in-person training at other types of events.

18:56But I have a program in place now because it's hard to tell technicians you need to train, right? You need to train. Yep. And then there's nothing backing that. So for me, um, we have spreadsheets that they can fill out. And if let's say they run out of cars 3 o'clock in the afternoon because they are flat rate technicians and they watch some videos or they implement some training, they can turn in a sheet and we will pay them to do that training so they can be incentivized to do that.

19:21Yes, we constantly train them on site. We do some hands-on classes, inspection training. So we train them on a couple of different areas. We do technical and we do process training constantly. So they're always in the loop of we expect. And also technically they're learning in their own fashion and how they want to learn, because every technician learns differently for sure. I think with where I was going was just to give value to shop owners on getting out of that trap of he's not good enough, I need to hire somebody better.

19:49Yep. Growth. Pour into these people that you have. If you're not pouring into them on a consistent, constant basis, um, you know, you could have some gems. And if you may have some stories of people that you poured into that, you know, you mentioned a little bit that there were probably C-techs, pretty low level that are some of your best techs now?

20:05Oh, 100%. My longest-standing technician started with me right out of high school. He, um, he did go to Lincoln Tech, um, but never had really worked on cars. Um, he has been with me, it'll be 11 years this, uh, this upcoming August, and he knew nothing. I remember when he first started, you know, it was like, uh, what do you do when a bolt breaks off?

20:30What do you do when the oil filter won't come off? Those kind of questions. And now he leads my entire team with the training we've provided. Even he'll tell you this, with the training we provided and the years of mentorship and pouring into him, he now gives all the direction at the shop. You know, it used to be me giving the direction, right?

20:49I was caught in that trap of, you know, I have to be the guy with all the answers. I'm the answer guy and everybody comes to me. Well, they don't come to me anymore. Uh, they go, they go to him, and he, uh, he has become an extremely good technician from a production standpoint. And he also likes to mentor other technicians now, so he likes to pass that on.

21:09I think it's important that that twofold— you're always looking for talent, but pour into your people too. Oh, you have to. Well, we know 100% that tomorrow you— especially in my area, I know there's some markets that it's easier to attract people, but in my market, I cannot pick up the phone and hire a technician that is ready to go. Oh yeah.

21:30Today. There's a lot of shops out there. Oh yeah, 100%. You have to grow people and you may get lucky along the way to be able to hire that person in. Yeah. But if you aren't training people, there's a couple of things. One, you're not growing your team. And 2, you're really doing society an injustice by not making human capital better. Yes.

21:51Yeah, absolutely. I know you would agree. You're, you're one of our Tech Fix trainers and you're a fantastic trainer. What would you say to owners out there who are struggling like you were? I need a team around me. How do I grow my team? You have to realize that there has to be a training program in place. Cars are constantly changing. The technologies, the systems we use, the management systems and the softwares that we use change daily.

22:15If you're not training your people, you're essentially moving backwards daily. Wow. Daily you are moving backwards, and you take that one day at a time. 365 days, you've moved backwards 365 steps. You must put a training program in place for your team. You can't just hire guys and say, well, I'll just hire more. Or you can't just hire people and say that, well, this guy's great, because if he's great today, where's he going to be in 365 days from now?

22:44And we've got great trainers like Eric Walker to help your technicians grow every day on a consistent, constant level. It's got to be done. Guy, what is the Tech Fix training program? Tech Fix training program is an online training program. It is a community of technicians and trainers. It is a program meant to be plugged into your shop and kept in there in perpetuity.

23:08It's, it's meant to feed what you're talking about And I love how you put that, Eric. If they're not learning consistently every week, every month, every year, they're going backwards and they're degrading. So that's what it is. It is a community. It is a resource. It's, it's something that you can plug into your shop and utilize and feed those technicians that want to grow for sure.

23:32Yeah. What are my techs going to learn in those programs? It's a little bit different than a lot of your training. It's a huge, vast pool of technical training. We're going to go from very advanced training all the way down to very foundational training, right, that most of us need. You know, even for myself and other of your top, you know, technicians, foundations is huge because you forget things, right?

23:56As time goes on, you start to build this identity of, I know that. Oh, I know that. Well, imagine going on years of that. Well, I know that. I know that. But then some job gets you in a situation where you get burned or you lose time on it and you find out it was a foundational thing. So I call it the circle of training where you are constantly revolving around your foundations, around your advanced training, and also the struggles that you go through as a technician.

24:25We think about technical all the time because we think about that's what fixes and repairs cars. But you have to think about, well, what's going on at home? Yeah. And what's going on in your personal life? And what, what are these type of issues that cause pain for technicians out there? The Tech Fix training program covers all of that. It's a full circle training program that makes sure that we're not just thinking about their technical side, but also their mindset side.

24:52Absolutely. Time management, how to, how to manage cars, workflow management. Correct. I know my technicians picked up 7 minutes on an inspection on the tips that we're taught in that program and just making them more efficient with their time and getting their mindset shifted a little bit towards production and some of the shortcuts you can take. And, um, and definitely the technical training, like they love the air conditioning training that's on there and some of the other electrical trainings and, uh, you know, all the advanced stuff, lab scope.

25:24Oh yeah, I mean, you think about what we expect of technicians every day. We expect them to go in, do their job, do the work, Do it right. Do it right the first time. There's a— it's a very high demanding job. But are we also giving them training to take stress off of them, which is, here's how we do this, here's how we inspect a car, here's how we perform certain parts of what we need to do.

25:47And if, if we're not giving them that and they're starting to fail, whose fault is that? Correct. That's the foundation of the Tech Fix program is funneling every technician through that. To help them. Because from a GS up to a master tech, they're all dealing with those same things. Yes, at different levels, and they all need to go through that. And so we have our programs set up so that they all go through that.

26:09That's awesome. Let's talk about the owner who was a technician and he's— he still feels that technician identity and it's hard for him to get into that owner's chair fully. Talk about that. I've been traveling around the country for the last 8 years, and most the classes I'd taught, the interesting part were I would say 60 to 70% of the people in that class were owners.

26:28They were your small mom-and-pop shops that they were the main guy, right? I was seeing a reflection of me in them because they were the guy that figured out all the problems and they wanted to go to training and they went to the best training to try to learn the biggest things. But they were caught in that trap, the trap of I'm the guy, right?

26:48I'm the guy. Yeah. And you could hear a little bit of ego in their voice because they're like, I'm the guy, I can't hire anybody. And they had those same It was very common across the statements of, you can't get anybody to do what I do. Uh, you can't hire people to do this. And there was all this years of abuse for them, what they had to live through, their pain.

27:10Seeing that made me realize that there is help, guys. There, there is a way out. And the way out is through seeking out people that have the same problems as you, the same pain. And getting their assistance. Stop taking all the burden on yourself, carrying it on your shoulders, walking around with it and complaining that you can't fix it. If you find the right group of people and ask for their assistance, they'll help you and they'll get you beyond that point.

27:43And it has to— you have to realize that you can't do it all if you're going to grow your business, which so many of them have got up in age, unfortunately, right there. They've been doing this 30 years. Yeah. And, you know, they're— they still haven't figured it out. And it's because they didn't reach out early enough to find a training program or coaching or other friends in the industry or another shop down the road.

28:08They always felt like they were the lone man standing, that nobody else knew this. And they, they never took the step. They never took the leap of faith to jump out there and put themselves on the line. To be able to move past that point, and they're stuck in that cycle over and over again. And to all the shop owners out there, you're not alone.

28:29There are a ton of people just like you, and the community that I think that we have in ShopFix and, and in the Lite program and the Pro program and the TechFix program, that community and the SalesFix program, those communities are so powerful And they will put hope back into your bucket faster than you can drain it. Yep. And that's what I love about the community.

28:53Eric, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. Yeah, thank you for pouring back into the industry, for changing it, for growing technicians. You are definitely making waves of impact in this industry, and thank you so much. No problem. Thank you guys. All of that. Yeah, it was great.