ASE Connects: Building the Technician Workforce Together

As we think about what ASC Connects can do, we're not claiming to solve the problem.

We're not going to solve it.

We'd be lying if we told you we were.

But I think what we can claim to do, or be on the path to doing, is providing the tools

and enabling us, collectively as a community, to go out and do this.

Because that's how it's going to happen, is one shop at a time, one school at a time, one student at a time.

Hello, everyone, and welcome.

I'm Jay Ginenin, co-founder of Wrenchway, and we're glad you're joining us today.

This webinar marks an important moment for our industry.

Today, we're officially introducing ASC Connects, a new initiative designed to help strengthen

the technician workforce across automotive, diesel, and collision.

I'm joined by two people who've been instrumental in bringing this to life, Mark Wilson, my co-founder

and CEO of Wrenchway, and Dave Johnson, president and CEO of ASC.

ASC Connects is all about collaboration, bringing shops, dealerships, schools, educators,

and industry partners together on one platform, backed by real data and shared goals

to help move the industry forward.

Over the next hour, we'll walk through why this program exists, how it works, and what

it means for the industry as a whole.

Before we dive in, I'll just take a moment to cover a few quick housekeeping items.

To kick things off, as always, we'd love for everyone to drop where you're joining

us from in the chat.

Always fun to see the different locations that are represented across the U.S. and

sometimes across the world.

The session is being recorded, and we'll send the recording to all registered attendees

within the next few days.

And lastly, if you'd like to ask a question, please use the Q&A button at the bottom of

your screen.

And if you'd like to add a comment or join the conversation, which we always love, we

always encourage that, feel free to use the chat.

With that being said, how are you guys doing today?

Good.

I'm excited.

Me too.

Can't wait to hear about this, and I'll explain it a little bit.

Well, it's something we've been working on for quite some time now.

It's something we're really, really proud of, and I think this will be a fun

conversation.

I mentioned it in the open, but please make sure that if you're in the comments,

feel free to add to the discussion.

It's always great to see all of those comments.

And with that, Mark, I'll hand it off to you to kind of get things kicked

off here.

Perfect.

I'll lead this through.

We have a handful of slides just to keep us on task here.

I'm probably going to explain more of what things are.

And then Jay and Dave are going to add good quality comments along the way.

But like Jay already said, feel free to chat amongst yourself or use the Q&A.

Jay kind of covered what ASC Connects is.

I'll reiterate some of that, maybe say it a little differently.

Basically, we're building a community to help attack the technician shortage.

We left off a slide talking about the shortage.

I think everybody attending probably is well aware of that.

We need to get more kids into the industry.

We need to do a better job of keeping the technicians we have interested.

There's a lot of efforts out there from other organizations, which are great.

What we're trying to do with ASC Connects is create some new things, but also,

most importantly, in my opinion, create one platform, one community,

that everybody can work together.

We're supplementing other people's efforts and trying to centralize some of it

and make it less confusing for people.

I think there's a lot of great intentions out there.

Just people are busy, and it's kind of difficult to keep track of who's doing what

and where do I go for certain things.

That's a big part of what ASC Connects is.

We're going to dive into more specifics of what it is.

But I do want to make the point of, you can probably guess by the name ASC Connects.

This is an ASC-led initiative, so we're honored, frankly, to be part of this.

ASC has partnered with us, meaning Wrenchway, to build this out, to help manage it.

We've been working together for over a year now on some of the components of this,

but we've taken the stuff we got a little practice in,

the stuff that some stuff worked, some stuff didn't,

took all the good parts, kind of molded it together into this new community

that we're really excited to get moving on.

I'm going to pause on kind of the what it is,

but Dave, maybe you want to talk a little bit about ASC's role

and thoughts on why you guys want to undertake this as well.

Hey, thanks, Mark.

And it has been an interesting journey as

going back a year ago, ASC recognizing that we didn't feel like

we're quite serving the industry that we wanted to,

especially on the education side.

And while we've got a great field force boots on the ground,

Wrenchway, with its platform, had some other elements

that I think of it as the virtual boots on the ground, if you will,

that wouldn't help to enable connecting schools and shops.

And that's the main thrust of it.

And something that

is as I've been sitting in the chair here at ASC

and learning more of the history,

what I discovered was that there are elements that existed

for those of you who remember the AYES days.

And when I came in, I had always heard about AYES

and I was at Ford Motor Company before

and Ford Motor Company was part of supporting that.

I just say those were the glory days

for school support and financially and with people

and the OEMs at that time were leading it.

And this goes back to the 90s and you get to the mid 2000s

and the Great Recession and a lot of things faded away.

And ASC inherited kind of what was left, I'll say.

As I'm going back and looking with the team

at some of those things that were there and in place

in terms of, again, connecting schools

and the businesses, the ability to kind of track

what was happening in those programs,

facilitating accountability both ways between business

and schools and programs, they were just missing.

And the cool thing is that, I'll say,

Wrenchway and that platform had pieces of it,

not all of it and we don't have it all today either.

But what we see as a path to bring back

some very good things from the past that were there

and we wanna facilitate that as we go forward.

And so for me, this is this opportunity to go,

to take what was good from the past,

use the technology and the platforms that we have today

that we did not have back then

and better connect these entities.

And I know I keep saying that, we wanna connect them.

And you might go, well, that's very simplistic, Johnson.

And yeah, I thought the same thing.

Really, is there a need for that?

I mean, is that really what it takes?

I'm telling you over the last year,

I've become convinced that yes, we do need that.

There are those out there who have great connections,

whether you're on the school side connecting

with your local industry or on the industry side

connecting with your local schools,

some of you are great.

It's not a majority of you, I'm just saying.

And it's not anybody's fault necessarily.

It's about that work, effort and the accessibility

to create those connections.

And that's what excites me

about what we're trying to do here

is that is that primary connection.

But then ASC connects is kind of this open-ended thing

to connect more.

But I'll tell you what I think it's not.

It's not a job board.

It's not a recruiting initiative

in terms of establishing one-on-one recruiting for everyone.

That's not it.

There are all kinds of entities out there

and opportunities for you to do that elsewhere.

This really is focused on those fundamentals

of reading this community and connecting us.

And that's what ASC, that's the role ASC wants

to play in the industry

as establishing those connections

and having that community.

So I'm excited about what the potential is here.

So thanks, Mark, for the opportunity.

Well said, and Jay, I'll go to you in a second.

I wanted to add one point of not recruiting.

I mean, Wrenchway, we got our start on the recruiting side.

We haven't actually maybe some listening

don't even realize,

haven't done recruiting for a couple of years.

We do have a job board that'll be phasing out.

There'll be more information, existing clients.

We're not gonna leave you stranded or anything.

We'll fulfill our end,

but we are phasing some of what we do out

because we're all in on this ASC Connects project.

We are very honored, like I said earlier,

to be part of it at the ground floor,

building it out with the help of the community.

But one of the reasons we were willing

to kind of put our chips in the middle

and go all in on this

is it does have some ASC backing

and Dave leading the charge there.

And Jay, maybe you can comment on ASC

being kind of in all three areas

and why we felt when we were like,

man, do we really want to essentially

kind of risk our company on this?

And we believe in it so much.

A big part of it was believing in ASC

is the perfect group to lead this effort.

Yeah, and I think to kind of echo off everything

that both of you have said,

that's the power of ASC as well.

It goes across the industry

and really touches every part of our industry.

And it's not some silo that's just in one area

or one subsector of our industry.

So obviously ASC with the brand that it's had

for several decades now is really, really strong.

And I've said to Dave from the start

that I do think ASC should be the one leading

a lot of these efforts,

even some of the stuff that we were doing at Wrenchway.

So to me as a person that grew up in this industry,

I think it's so important that ASC continues

to be a strong brand, continues to grow

as Dave commonly says, blowing the dust off the brand.

This is another element to that.

And I think when I look at this,

I refer to this a lot

as to somebody that grew up in a small shop

in Wisconsin that when I grew up in the shop,

it was a cardinal sin to take a technician

from your neighboring shop and you just didn't do it.

There were unwritten rules about doing that.

And those rules went out the window

when everybody got desperate, right?

And so I think really looking at this

as a more holistic view of how do we fix this thing

at its core and not just do some type of duct tape

solution that's going to work today

and then you'll be kind of chasing your tail

three months or six months down the road again.

I think it is looking at it from taking a step back

looking at it from that 30,000 foot view

and just saying how do we actually fix this thing

and how do we actually do some things

rather than just talk about it, right?

I think a lot of publications

and a lot of different people will talk about this

because it's been an area of heartburn for a long time.

So being able to take real steps

to try and fix this at its core,

I think is really, really important

for the health of our industry.

Yeah, well said.

And so doing that, taking it from idea

to something tangible, one of the steps

and we're gonna speak a lot about this here coming up is

we have a lofty goal to get every school

in the country involved in this in some way.

And that is a very big undertaking.

We're gonna go through what we mean by that.

And then we also want the best shops and dealers

to be part of it as well.

Getting everyone on one platform

makes everybody's lives easier.

We don't play favorites or anything like that.

But just kind of organizing,

that's the role we wanna be to start with

is build a tool where everybody can be in one place.

So when you have that limited amount of time,

you know where to go and you can help out.

In order to build this,

schools are already pushed for budget

and too many programs across the country are getting cut.

So we don't wanna be charging schools anything.

Shops do pay a small fee.

It's a few hundred bucks a year.

So it's not breaking anyone's budget there.

But we feel strongly that not only are the shops

helping the industry by participating,

but they get direct value for their shops and dealers.

And we'll go through what some of that means.

And then of course there's industry partners,

people that maybe don't directly hire technicians,

but they see the importance of this in their business

benefits by getting more kids involved.

There's a role for them as well.

We're gonna talk about three main areas.

Helping schools is the main one.

Getting better data,

I think anyone in this industry,

anyone attending this webinar knows

that it's sorely needed.

And then some resources that schools and shops

get that join some members only,

content best practices, trends, things like that.

Those are the three areas we're gonna break this down to.

I would say the school's piece

of this next 40 minutes we got left

will take up probably half of that time.

So let's jump right into what that means

on the school side.

So first, like I said, every school in the country,

every high school, whether they have a program or not,

and then every post-secondary that does have a program,

it doesn't probably make sense for us to work with colleges

that don't have any programs in our field,

but high schools that don't have an official program

or even don't have an individual class

in auto or diesel or collision,

there's still kids there that can be great technicians.

Jay and I always talk about how we grew up

in small towns of Wisconsin,

10 miles apart from each other,

farm communities, lots of students,

lots of classmates of ours ended up in this industry,

but we were too small to have official program

and there's a lot of what we do for that,

but it's not just those,

it's also the accredited programs.

So in doing this, first step number one

is just identifying all the schools.

I've been to a couple of ASC board meetings,

inevitably a question comes up,

how many programs are there?

And there hasn't been a great source of truth for that.

And then that's where I challenged Dave

a couple of meetings ago to say,

let's become that source of truth.

So it takes them rolling up the sleeves.

Our team has been working on state by state,

identifying how many schools there are.

There's about 27,000 high schools in the country.

We're going state by state, getting them listed out,

getting websites for all of them,

finding contact people, figuring out,

do they have a program, do they not have a program?

If they do, is it ASC accredited?

If not, how do we help them become ASC accredited?

Even if they don't have a program,

do they teach a couple of classes?

Even if they don't have that,

which is a lot of them, especially in the rural areas,

we wanna make sure we get them some online resources

for the students or we get them connected

to shops and dealers in their area.

We'll go through that,

step number one is just figure out what we're dealing with

and lay out the total population,

the kind of addressable market.

And so we're well on our way of doing that.

We have every state charted out now

for high schools and post-secondary.

We have just over 30,000 total.

Again, the vast majority are high schools

that we're targeting

because we wanna get everyone in the country,

but there's over 3,000 post-secondary programs

we've identified and there's more of those

that we still need to uncover,

community colleges, things like that.

But we're breaking those down

and we have teams assigned for every state,

like I'm in Wisconsin,

I know there's 563 high schools

and I know exactly how many already

are fully using Wrenchway

and how many we have work to do.

That's the step one of this undertaking.

We'll be asking for help for that too.

So we'll have almost like newsletters

you can sign up for, for in your state

to follow our progress, contribute to it.

We wanna crowdsource some of these things.

I nerd out over this stuff.

I think it's kind of a fun project to do this.

It's not just categorizing them.

Once we have them,

we gotta make sure we have contact people.

Each school year we gotta make sure

we still have the right contact people.

Did someone retire?

It does no good if this becomes stale after a year

and someone has to completely start over.

So that by itself is a huge undertaking

in what we're using a lot of resources

to just get the ball rolling on this.

I have two other bullet points

that I'm gonna bring you Jay and David,

but after, or not after, currently with that,

the schools that we've already identified

and we get them interested in this,

we wanna make sure that they get resources

they need from industry.

Those of you that are on this

that have worked with Wrenchway in the past

know that we've had a program called School Assist

for a couple of years now.

That's kind of the foundation

of everything we're doing with ASE Connects.

It's someone I was talking to on the phone the other day

said it's kind of like what you're done before,

but now on steroids

are now significantly more resources.

That's true.

So when we get all these schools identified

and onto our platform,

we wanna find out what they need help with.

So we get them to not just give us information

about their enrollment numbers and things like that,

but also what do you need help with?

Shop tours,

come in, speak to, have speakers come in,

tool donations, part-time work for the kids,

scholarships, all kinds of things that you have on here.

Advisory boards is a huge one.

So that's central platform we're talking about.

We have three, currently right now,

2,000 openings or open requests from schools

asking for help from their local shops and dealers

for the simple things that I'm talking about.

Some of them are a little bigger,

like maybe a donated car, things like that,

but that's the minority.

Most of them are pretty easy things

that we're getting the instructors,

the administrators to post what they're looking for.

So then those busy shop owners,

those busy service managers at dealerships

when they have some time, not every day,

but every so often they can scroll through

and see where they can help out with.

That's point number one of connecting with schools,

but then also a new thing coming out

will be working directly with students

to help find them if they want a job after graduation

or if they want part-time work while they are working

or even if they want a job shadow.

I was surprised going into this in some areas

how hard it is for kids to find a shop

to go to or a job shadow,

especially those schools that don't have official programs.

So we make it very easy for them

to just answer a few questions, post that,

I'm a junior in high school, here's what I'm looking for.

I just want to see if this is for me,

is there a shop I can tour?

We'll get that posted and then shops in the area

can raise their hand and see if they want to help out.

And then the last thing,

and keep in mind one more comments

from Jay and Dave on this,

but we want to track everything.

I'm a big numbers guy,

so first we want to get enrollment numbers

from the schools that we're adding on here,

but then we want to be surveying the instructors,

surveying the students.

ASC already does a great job of this

for the accredited schools.

I think we can build on that

and get it for all schools

or the majority of schools about graduation rate,

about after they graduate,

do they actually end up taking a job in the industry?

Hopefully the ones that do,

we can keep getting information from them

three months, six months, a year in,

to track the progress,

show stats on earning potential

when your ASC entry level certified versus not

or accredited schools.

It's just all the data we can get

without being too burdensome

on the instructors and the students filling that out.

But if we're going to go through all this effort

of getting schools all onto one platform,

we also want to ask them a few questions along the way.

So together, we as a community

can make improvements and start making change.

All right, I'm going to take a breath.

I got rolling there a little bit.

Sorry, thanks for bearing with me,

but I'm sure Jay and Dave have some stuff

that either I missed or that they want to add on to for this.

Dave, it's up to you if you want to go next.

That's hard to follow.

There's a lot there.

Well, it is.

And there is a lot there.

And I want you to soak on that.

I'll just assure some random thoughts,

which is the dangerous thing when it comes to me

because who knows what's going to come out of my mouth.

But it made me think back to that AYES comment I made.

I'll bet you there's some of you out there in the audience

that were like me, you look at it like,

well, yeah, that's what AYES used to do.

That's what AYES used to do.

And we got into this conversation.

Mark and Jay had come to us with,

I don't think they knew all of that about AYES

back in the day.

It may have been more of an ASC insider thing

for those that were, as we integrated AYES into ASC.

But my folks that keep saying,

well, yeah, we used to have that.

Oh, we used to have that.

And that was what turned on the lights for me.

I'm like, oh my goodness,

there are these foundational elements

and I can see why maybe they faded away

because you can probably see this isn't easy to do.

This takes work, effort, labor,

which I guess that's why Mark's saying

that you can't exactly do it for free.

But when I look at what provides real lasting value,

these are the kind of things that do.

Let me elaborate on that a little bit.

Takes back to a conversation we were just having yesterday

as we were talking through this

and getting excited about it.

When you think about what Jay said earlier about,

there was always the unwritten rule about poaching

and some of that goes out of the window

when you get desperate, right?

And that's what's happened to some degree.

And not everybody does it

and it's not the end of the world

but it's a symptom of something is what the reality is.

And to me, it's a symptom of,

I go back to the scarcity mentality

versus the abundance mentality.

And some of you may know,

there's always the old example of the pie

and the pie is a certain size.

If I have scarcity mentality,

the pie can get no bigger,

it's a certain size and therefore I gotta get mine now.

And that's what it's all about.

That's what leads to those symptoms

that we're talking about of just kind of jumping out

and going like, well, I gotta get somebody somewhere or so

because they aren't growing any more of them.

And yet as an industry,

when I'm guilty of it too,

I was guilty of it when I was at Ford

trying to get more technicians,

we would all talk about the other side of this

which would be the abundance mentality

which is, hey, we can grow the pie

or more correctly, more accurately,

we need to grow the pie.

And that is a fundamental truth

and I think we all recognize it.

The hard part is actually doing it.

And so when you step back from all this,

like, well, okay, well, so how do you grow that pie?

Well, guess where it starts?

It starts with those programs

that are out there exposing students to these opportunities

and starting them down this path

that actually grows the technician pie,

the service professional pie.

And as I thought about it,

I thought, you know what, we've talked to talk

but we've not walked the talk as an industry.

I know there are by many of you on this call

but there are people out there,

they've done this right, guess what?

They don't have a technician shortage.

They don't because they're already living

by these principles, if you will,

they're out there growing the pie, at least locally

and they don't have a problem.

So for the rest of us, that's what really hit home

for me with this is on one hand I go,

well, this is kind of motherhood and apple pie.

And yet when I think about it more,

I'm like, no, it's not just that,

it is foundational to enabling us,

more of us to go out and grow that pie.

Because as we've said, speaking of growing,

we keep saying, you can't just go pick these guys

off the trees, you gotta grow your own.

And we all know that's true, that is just a fact.

And so what I love about what we're trying to do here,

it's not perfect, it's not going to be perfect,

but you can see where we're going

and I'm confident that we will get there.

We are putting the tools in place, if you will,

or that foundation in place,

that's going to enable everyone to help grow that pie,

get away from that scarcity mentality

in terms of the way we all can collectively behave at times

and focus on more of that abundance mentality of,

this pie is as big as we want to make it.

And that doesn't just mean on bringing new people in,

an area that I see us getting into later

and Mark may talk about this,

is what are we collectively doing to retain what we have?

Let's face it in year one and two,

year one we're losing about 50%

based on some data I've seen,

year two you're losing another 50% of what's left.

And you think about those numbers, it's pretty staggering.

And so as we think about what ASE Connects can do,

we think we can help to facilitate that.

We're not claiming to solve the problem.

We're not going to solve it.

We'd be lying if we told you we were.

But I think what we can claim to do

or be on the path to doing

is providing the tools and enabling us

collectively as a community to go out and do this.

Cause that's how it's gonna happen is one shop at a time,

one school at a time, one student at a time.

Sorry Jay.

No, I think that that was great.

And I think it's important to point out

that it's ASE Connects for a reason, right?

We're trying to bring all of these different silos together

because there are so many great people

that are trying to attack this.

And as Dave mentioned,

this isn't going to be solved overnight.

It's not a quick fix.

This is definitely more of the long game approach.

And I think being able to pull people

from all areas of our industry is really, really vital.

We need everybody working together

to make these programs stronger.

And I think in my eyes, a lot of times

we're so focused on that individual student

coming out of a program

and filling that one open role that we've got

that maybe we don't pay enough attention

to the programs themselves

and making sure that they're strong enough

to continually pull people into our shops, right?

And really maybe more in a sustainable way.

And so as I was going through

and listening to Mark talk

about these three different bullet points,

one that stuck out right away

was that national directory of every school.

And it might sound really easy to do.

You might say, hey, you know what?

Why don't you just hop on chat, GBT,

pull up, you have that pull a list.

Believe me, we tried it.

We tried everything to find good data.

And there just was no good data around this.

So our team, a huge credit to our team.

We've got a bunch of them that are listening here today.

Huge credit to all of you

because they've all been putting in a ton of work

and really building these lists out.

And they have a passion for digging into this.

And it's really, really cool to see this.

And I think foundational to so much

of what we're doing moving forward.

There's so much value in that

but it doesn't come overnight

and it takes time to really good information

on that directory.

And the same thing with some of the data and outcomes.

Like this isn't an overnight type of thing

but we desperately need new data.

We need better data.

We need accurate data

because a lot of times that educator

might be talking to a student or their parents

about this industry

and looking at maybe the BLS,

the Bureau of Labor Statistics data

and then looking at all the other elements

and roadblocks that we have in our industry

like buying tools upfront.

And they might look at that initial investment

to get into our industry and say,

oh wait, if that's all you can make,

like why are we doing this, right?

And so just being able to supply these schools

with accurate information is hugely important.

I know we'll dive more into the data side later

but I do think that part is really, really important.

And then I saw a comment as I was listening to everybody

that Francisco had written,

we have an internship program

with local high school auto shop classes for graduates.

Interest is unfortunately slipping.

To me, that's where we need to rally as an industry

around something like Francisco's program

and say, hey, listen,

we've got this program out there right now

and interest is really falling off from what it was.

How do we rally the troops to get involved

and get these kids and students into these shops

and really kind of see what it's all about.

And I think we have to come to the realization at times

that just because a kid shows interest in our industry

doesn't necessarily mean our industry is the best fit

for them and they might think it's cool

but once they get in the shop doors,

maybe they're like, oh,

this is different than what I thought.

That's to me very, very important as well

because then from the shop's perspective,

you're not going to spend years training that person

and really kind of helping them develop

when they might not have that future in the industry.

So it's not just important to get the right,

like a student interested,

it's important to get the right students interested.

And so, you know, Francisco,

I see that post and that kind of tears

at my heart a little bit because I'm like,

what do we do to just dive all in, right?

What do we do to get the dealerships in your area,

the independent shops, the fleets,

everybody to attack that

so that you don't have that problem?

And I think there's a lot of potential

with all of this to do that, to help those programs.

And that's something that I really, really think

we need to focus on.

Yeah, well said both of you.

And I have a couple of comments to add.

One, I don't want to get too specific

on things we can all do

because we'll end up talking for three days here.

But that internship program,

someone comments about getting parents involved with students.

I mean, some of this is getting industry to,

we've had instructors ask people from industry

to go to the fifth grade class with them

and show cool cars and get them interested

at the younger level.

It takes all of that approach.

And Georgia, the ASC always talks

about local solutions to a national problem.

We want to build the national directory

and be the place that people can ask for help.

But it does take those local people and local solutions.

ASC can't be going into every classroom or things like that,

but that's where industry can help.

And then one other comment,

I wasn't planning on taking it this way.

So sorry, Jay and Dave,

but we brought up the AYES

and we don't need to rehash the past.

I don't know what happened, why it fell apart.

My guess is some of it is things always come down

to funding and when we built this out,

we do want to include the AYES

and we are working to find a place for them

and get some funding from them,

but we don't want to rely on them

in case someone changes their mind, CEOs change,

economy, tariff, whatever you want to say,

Dave knows that better than me,

but that's where when we're building this community,

we also varied much as I said before,

don't want to ask schools for more money.

And so we want to build a large community

of shops and dealers.

And instead of someone paying a huge amount,

if we can get everybody to pay,

it's gonna be 550 bucks if a shop wanted to sign up today.

That's for the whole year of this.

And you can see it grow with us

and we'll get into the value you get,

but even just helping the industry

if everyone can do their small part.

I'm trying to build this

with the help of Dave and Jay and everyone else,

but also look to the future of like,

I need to figure out what did go wrong before

and make sure we don't make those mistakes again.

I think if we can spread out the risk

that is a big part and Dave,

you probably have more to add to that.

Yeah, no, well, I was just gonna say,

you nailed it, Mark.

And it's one of those things that's 2029 site.

Going back in history, and I'll just tell you

real briefly, started with Jack Smith at GM.

He saw what Germany,

how Germany was structured with their apprenticeship programs.

He saw this stuff.

This is the 90s and he gave a speech at an NADA conference

and the funny yet very sad part is,

is if you watch that video today,

you go, it's the same, nothing changed.

Nothing changed in terms of what the issues were,

the symptoms, what they're trying to deal with.

The good news was at the time,

he was able to, I'll just say, cajole

the other large automakers

into putting up a good chunk of money

to make some things happen and it worked.

To Mark's point, that was also the flaw,

was that they tried to go do it on their own.

Auto companies no different than any of our businesses, right?

When things get tight, you're trying to keep the lights on

and some of your short-term objectives change,

and then you lose the momentum

that you built over this time

was something that was really good,

but you couldn't keep it going

because you did not have that broad base.

So that's another thing that I love about

this community approach and ASC,

playing that connection role,

because speaking of ASC,

that's one of the things I love about ASC.

I'll be honest, I was not that exposed to ASC

during my other career at Ford.

I was doing other things and so I wasn't thinking

about it that much,

but as I have now had a lots of opportunity to research,

to look at the history,

and it's always good to look at history

because it tells you a lot about the future.

Understanding that ASC was literally created

by the industry.

It wasn't some dudes in a corner that went and said,

hey, let's go create this credentialing organization.

It was literally, yes, the big three

at the time of the automaker side.

They had NADA,

they had a couple of the large

aftermarket service chains at the time.

That was kind of the nucleus of getting the ball rolling

with this thing and it was to, yes,

frankly help avoid the federal government

getting involved in licensing of service professionals.

So I think we'd all say thank you for that

because that's typically not helpful,

but understanding where that came from

and that literally it was founded by the industry

and that's its role.

ASC itself, I think, lost a little bit of its focus

or maybe became too focused on one aspect

of well, we just credential people.

That's what we do, right?

And everybody come to us and you get your credentials.

I think not that that isn't an important aspect

but that's not all that it should be.

And so that's what we're trying to do

is fill that role more completely

that we think it should have.

And here's the thing that really has resonated with me

as we've looked at this.

ASC, again, if it serves the industry,

I mean, it shouldn't be out there trying to compete

with the industry or compete

with individual entities in the industry.

And I'm sure there's some crossover here

and there that happens, right?

But that shouldn't be our focus.

And so this is how why ASC

can actually resonated with me

because as I see it,

I look at all of the partners

that we partner with today

whether it be associations, nonprofits,

for-profit companies, you name it.

This allows everyone to participate

and it's not intended to compete with them.

And so anyway, we have some great partners

and I think about NC3s out there.

We have Techforce, yes, NADA on the OEM side

because again, remember, we play with everybody

and trust me, that's good for everybody that we do that.

Auto Care Association, obviously.

North America Fleet Administrators,

AED on the agriculture equipment side.

All of these, and it just goes on and on and on, right?

And all the for-profit companies

that we work closely with.

That's what I love about this is I feel that it is really

back to that foundational thing

that everybody can get their arms around and say,

oh yeah, I could actually use that

or maybe I can help with it.

And it also helps me in whatever my charter is,

my initiative, my profit motive.

And so that's what I love about where this can go

and the way that we're positioning it to,

back to what ASC, we say generally is,

hey, we work with everybody.

We love everybody and we do.

And to me, this fits within that ideal.

Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, Dave.

Without sharing too much, but we are working with a lot

of all of the entities you mentioned.

And it makes no sense if they would also go out

and get a list of all the schools

and get the schools to sign up.

Like why reinvent the wheel?

So we do wanna share this with those other associations

and work together to grow this community.

So you said that very well.

And frankly, the instructors wouldn't wanna have

20 different places to go.

So the more we can work with all these groups,

the better it is.

And that's kind of going back to the beginning

of why I feel ASC is a perfect group to lead this

for all the reasons you said.

So I'm glad you dove into that a little bit as well.

Cause I tend to focus at the presentation

so far on schools and shops,

but those other groups are a key part of it too,

going forward for sure.

Every shop, dealership and business in our industry

depends on great technicians.

Between the technician shortage,

disconnected school relationships

and lack of trustworthy workforce data,

it makes it difficult for shops to plan higher and grow.

That's where ASC Connects comes in.

Created in partnership with Wrenchway,

ASC Connects is a membership design

specifically for shops like yours

to help you build a stronger technician pipeline

by connecting with schools,

empowering you with tools and data

to improve your recruiting, retention and performance.

With ASC Connects,

you can connect with local schools through school assist,

start building relationships

and support the programs

that educate our future technicians.

You can also access verified data on technician pay,

benefits and labor rates

through the industry data exchange

so you know how your shop compares locally and nationally.

Lastly, you can get proven strategies for leadership,

employee development and shop management

through members only guides, templates and events.

Join ASC Connects to strengthen your workforce

and build a stronger, smarter shop.

Learn more at wrenchway.com slash solutions slash shops

or follow the link in the show notes.

I wanna switch a little where at 40,

we are gonna save some time for questions.

So keep those coming in.

I see the chat is active, which is awesome.

Keep the questions coming in, we will save time.

If you remember, there was three parts we wanted to talk about.

I did say schools would be the one we talked the most about.

We're gonna talk about data a little bit.

I would guess maybe like 10 minutes at most

and then save a couple minutes for the third one

and then the rest of the time for questions.

On the data side,

so we've had school assist for a while

and built that up.

We have about 3,500 active schools now, like I mentioned.

We're adding a lot more to it.

I went through all that.

This piece, though, the industry data exchange

is mostly new.

At wrenchway, we've done some things.

We introduced the technician pay tool a bit ago.

We do our voice of technician,

which I saw first draft of it today.

Awesome, again, look forward to releasing that

in I think a month.

But on the data side, we figured, all right,

if we're gathering all this data from schools

and we're getting shops and dealerships in one place

and ASC is independent,

like ASC is not stealing anybody's tax

or anything like that,

can we also get better data?

Dave, Jay and some other ASC folks and I were on a call

with the Bureau of Labor Statistics

and we questioned where they get their data from

because a lot of parents, a lot of kids look at that

and the numbers in my opinion, and I think it's fact,

just aren't accurate for what technicians make

with a little bit of experience.

I think it's like $46,000 and some do make that,

but a lot make significantly more.

So another thing I challenged Dave on is saying,

they're not gonna change their numbers

or how they collect data, let's us,

meaning ASC be the ones to pull in better data,

verifiable stuff.

So with this shops, if they wanna participate,

but don't have to, can submit some data,

we're not making this, again, not overly cumbersome for you,

it takes a few minutes, but we'll get from shops

what their technicians make,

what levels of experience they have.

You don't have to provide names or anything like that,

but we, meaning ASC, will keep that data anonymous

but then present it to the audience

in a way that protects the identity of the shops

that send it, and there's no trust me,

I'm a nerd at this stuff.

There's no way to back your way into figuring it all out.

We've spent a ton of time with a lot of smart people on it,

but it'll show, okay, I can run filters in my area

for domestic dealerships or for independent shops

or diesel shops.

What do technicians typically make?

What's the experience levels?

What benefits do shops offer?

And how that changes over time.

Tool allowance might've been pretty non-existent

five years ago, it's definitely picking up steam now.

We give you insights into all of that.

Again, all of this is starting now.

So we're not gonna have perfect data,

we have a good head start,

but we need the community to supply this

and then we'll supply the tools

and keep everything private to show this.

So the screenshot on the screen here

is kind of an image of the tools

that you'll have to use this if you want to.

Again, it takes a few minutes as a shop

to put the information in and tons of filters.

There's a lot of good stuff coming.

We will be asking the community,

what other things should we be asking?

Maybe there's some sentiment of like,

how service managers feel quarter to quarter,

I'm just making stuff up.

But we started with technician pay,

benefits at the shop level,

and then labor rates as the things that we're looking at.

That is not a finished product though.

Like we want this to be a community

that we provide good information to.

Again, we have, I'd say about three or four minutes

on this section, I'm gonna let Jay and Dave talk.

If you go a little over that's fine,

just be cognizant of time a little bit on the data part.

Yeah, just for me, it's vitally important

we get this right.

And I think being able to use accurate data

to educate not only our industry,

but the outsiders as well, super important.

I mentioned something about that earlier.

And I think we're doing it in such a way

that makes it easy to read and comprehend the data.

It's not overly confusing.

There's not hundreds of pages of data

to kind of filter through.

It's a really, really nice tool.

And I think the more obviously data we get

the more effective it is.

And I do call on a lot of our industry friends

to be able to help us out here

because I think this is something that

is a vital tool for everybody moving forward.

So not a lot to add to what you're saying

other than that I truly think this is hugely important

for again, the future of our industry

and really just the future of educators

of technicians of managers, whoever it is

it's really, really helpful.

Yeah, I'll just add, I think this is,

I keep talking about these fundamental foundational things

which I really like.

So I feel like if that's right,

everything else goes well from there.

We can't have the industry or the profession

that we all want to see without this.

And the fundamental reason is,

I think it was market transparency.

You gotta have, the more transparent a market is,

frankly, the healthier it is.

Doesn't mean it doesn't bring its own challenges

but if you don't know, you don't understand,

again, back to that growing the pie mentality,

how do you grow the pie?

If you don't have good data to work with

and understand what makes up that pie.

And this is an important piece of it

for what brings people in in the first place,

what keeps them there, what keeps shops healthy.

All of those things that we bounce around today

but it's hard to get at.

And so look, this is aspirational, I get it.

But I don't, I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone

that would say, this is a dumb idea

that we don't need this.

Cause we do, cause frankly, as Mark said,

you've got people using the BLS numbers

so on 46, $47,000 annually like that is not right.

That is not the mean and we know it's not.

And we had a conversation with BLS

and we understand why and statistics or statistics.

Frankly, when we say how people are using that,

well, we didn't intend for it to be used that way.

It's like, well, okay, but that's the problem.

And then on the other hand, you have certain CEOs

saying, hey, I have thousands of $100,000 plus jobs

to fill, is that maybe a little overdoing it a bit?

I'd say it is, it's not representing what the reality is.

You gotta have that transparency.

And that's just one more example

of why this kind of thing's important.

Well, and I'll add to that right there,

just a real quick mark, and then I'll hand it back to you.

Like transparency around pay,

where you're at in your career is so important.

And we hear from especially graduating tech school students

that come out and say,

boy, they kind of promised me

that I was gonna make a hundred grand a year

right off the bat.

And you're like, no, that's not true.

And we can't promote that.

Like we need to be transparent with them

and that just like any other job,

the more you get into this and the better you get at it,

the more opportunities you're going to have,

the better you're going to be paid.

And there are really high paying jobs in this profession.

But the transparency of pay is so vital

because it helps somebody understand

what the true market is.

And it's not guaranteeing that you're gonna make

six figures right out of school,

but it's also being truthful in that

there are some really good employers

and there are some really, really good paying jobs.

But you do need to go through the steps.

You do need to learn how to be a good technician

in order to get there.

Yep, definitely.

I mean, I'll just add one, you're right.

It's a balance.

And you can make that amount of money

for sure in this industry,

but to think you're gonna come out of school

and make on day one is a little foolish.

And that's why it's not just the raw numbers.

It's, you can kind of see it's a little blurry on the chart,

but it's plotting it out based on experience levels too.

And then we can break it down by pay plan types.

It's just a fun project to be part of.

And we're in the early stages

and I look forward to seeing how it grows.

I did make comments from the shop perspective.

And I think shops and dealers and industry folks

will get the most value out of it.

But we also have tools for schools

not to get too rimey there,

but I get so annoyed when I see those stats

on the school websites and I don't blame them

because that's the only place they have to put data,

but we are encouraging them

and building little widget, one line of code

to put on their website.

Here's more accurate information

and that's yet another reason

why it's good for ASC to lead this project

because ASC is a strong national brand

and we're verifying that data

and we're testing it

and I think if that was a wrench way only tool,

you know, it probably wouldn't carry as much weight

but this is a tool built for shops

but also I think it's really important

that we get schools to start sharing this information

with prospective students and parents as well.

Moving on, the last one will be super quick

and then it'll be questions.

The other kind of bullet,

there's a lot of other benefits

we don't have time for to get into

but one category I think is worth mentioning

for a minute or two is just throughout the year

if you join this as a shop or as a school,

we will continue to be transparent

and we talk to tons of people,

we pull in lots of data so we can create,

one, we can do webinars like this on focus topics.

I see in the chat there's talking about onboarding

and things like that.

We've done those in the past,

we'll continue to do those.

Share best practices, share guides, share checklist,

share career plan outlines, stuff like that.

You can't just pull one off the shelf

and make it work perfectly in your shop.

You gotta customize some things with it

but growing this community gives an opportunity

to do more of that too.

Stuff that busy shop owners,

busy service management or excuse me,

dealership management probably wants to spend more time on

doesn't have the time.

We can be a resource for all of those things

and just like everything else, it's never done.

We're always gonna be adding to that, updating it.

I saw some comments earlier about kids under the age of 18.

We've helped a lot of shops and dealers

get over that hurdle and realize that excuse.

Jay always shares this story

when he was running a dealership group service department.

Someone just told them,

well, we can't do that for insurance reasons

and he never questioned it.

So it never got changed

and since then we've helped a lot of groups.

You can change your insurance and maybe some can't

but a lot can get over those

or some people said I could never do a four day work week

as an option and we've done webinars on that

and provided materials.

Again, it's not for everybody

but we've had a lot of feedback of saying,

I listened to your three dealer people

that talked about how that was in transitioning

and all the mistakes they made

and the lessons they learned

and now we offer that.

Those things I think help just as much as everything else

on retaining technicians

and improving this as a profession.

We do have a couple of minutes

we only need I think five minutes for questions.

So if Dave or Jay you have any comments on

just things that we wanna talk

we'll keep our eye on industry topics

and try to, it won't be us three presenting.

We do a lot of webinars to hear from people

that are doing it the right way.

It'll be a lot of stuff like that.

Yeah, no, I don't know if I have anything to add to that.

I wanna just go back real quick

and say I'm flat on when Mark talks about ASC

being a strong national brand.

It's not about ASC and if ASC has a strong national brand

I'd like it to be stronger.

It's not because of ASC.

It's not about us, us as the employees at ASC.

It's not about that.

It's about what it reflects and represents.

It represents the industry

and not because ASC declared it

because the industry created the thing, right?

I'm not saying we always do the best

we should be doing at it

and we're striving to get better at it.

But the other important aspect of why ASC is important

is it's a reflection of the individuals

who ultimately become certified professionals.

And it's not to flatter ASC

that you wear that insignia on your sleeve.

It's to reflect, we're meant to flatter you, if you will

to amplify you and who you are

that there's something different about that

that we are professional, all of those things.

So when I think about the brand

I don't think about ASC, I think about you guys

and are we reflecting you in an appropriate way?

And along those lines as you think about community

and one thing that dawned on us just in the past few months

and you may think it's silly, but it's true.

ASC has always been focused on well certification

that was our charter and it is true

but what we failed to recognize maybe was that

it's really more than that.

It's about all technicians, all service

not just technicians, all service professionals

whether you're service advisors, arts people

whatever the case may be.

And so what you're gonna see us out there pushing on,

hey, I don't care.

I mean, I do, but at the end of the day

I don't care if you don't want an ASC certification

or don't care about that.

That's okay.

We'd like you to have an ASC ID.

We'd like you to be associated in that way

with the community that you still have an ASC ID

it does something for you.

Hopefully it means something to you

even if you never get a certification.

So the reason I shared that I was just trying to help

understand our mindset around the abundance mindset

of, hey, it's not about a closed off club.

It's about trying to enable everyone

and that's where we're trying to go.

So thanks, Mark.

I, as you're saying that I pointed to that earlier

in the conversation, the importance of the connects

part of ASC connects a very, very key piece of this.

And as we were talking, I got a text message

from our friend, George Aaron's right from ASC.

He said, remember a national concern

with a local solution.

If you're not involved with your local program

you're part of the problem.

I can actually hear George's voice saying that in my head

but he's absolutely right.

And what I view this as is a rallying cry

to the industry to say, let's get together.

Let's try to figure out ways to make this industry

very sustainable, successful and successful.

When I say that for everybody involved

this isn't a closed off club as Dave alluded to.

This is something that we want everybody involved in

and really kind of take all this passion

that all of you that are listening to this today

and really bottle that up

and be able to make effective changes

and not just talk about it, right?

Now is not the time to talk about it.

It's time to move.

It's time to get some stuff done.

And that's what we're trying to do here.

So I saw a comment that talked about that

and I couldn't agree more such an important piece

and something that I hope everybody leaves with.

Yeah, perfect.

Before we do have a couple of questions again

put them in if you have some

but this is something we're signing up for people now.

A lot of the school assist stuff

has been up and running for a couple of years.

We're just adding to it.

So it's not like you gotta wait to get signed up.

If you're a shopper dealer go to our website.

ASC has a link on their website as well.

I'll cherry pick one of the questions.

Jay, you can go through those in a minute

but one was on price for shops and dealers.

If you sign up today or through the end of the month

it's $550 a year.

So again, that's not, I don't mean to diminish it

it's real money but it's also not breaking the bank

and I think it helps the industry as a whole

and we'll show you how you get value

for your shop as well.

For schools, it's free same thing on our site.

There's a school section.

If you're an instructor, if you're an administrator

you wanna get started on that, you can.

Dave mentioned my ASC there'll be more

hopefully coming on that as well for individuals

but then I did see something in the chat

or maybe it was one of the questions about

for not shops or dealers, just industry partners.

I saw Mark from AutoNet TV was active chatting.

I appreciate that.

We have a place for partners as well.

Some of it is associations we already mentioned.

Others might be just hearts companies

or like AutoNet TV is now we haven't announced it

but I guess I am right now an official partner as well.

We're thrilled to have them involved.

You can email me directly.

There's a place for everybody on this.

We don't wanna box anybody out

or just wanna make sure you get

into the appropriate place.

So whoever you are, if you wanna learn more

you can reach out to me directly

but shops and dealers or shops dealers in schools

you're probably gonna save some time.

I'll be a bottleneck if you go to me directly too much

on that there's a dedicated path on our site for those.

So Jay, I don't know if we have questions.

Just one last question here.

How would we gain more technicians

without all the challenges?

I'm actually gonna take one crack at this

and I'll get handed off to the two of you

but I don't think you're going to gain more technicians

without some challenge, right?

We're at such a deficit of technicians

that you are going to have to go through some things

to really do this in a sustainable way moving forward.

So I wish there was that easy switch.

I wish there was that really easy thing

to point to in making this thing right

but it's gonna take some work.

It's gonna take some time

and it's going to take kind of that collective effort

of everybody in the industry to really get together

and really work together to figure this thing out.

So great question, Jesse.

Yeah, the only thing I'd add to that

is similar to what you said, Jay,

but there's no easy button

but it is easier if more people are working together.

Dave mentioned some shops and dealers do a great job,

not enough do.

Those ones that do a great job can't do it all

as much as they want to

and as much as they would probably

have to hire everybody.

It's just not possible

and as cheesy as it might sound,

it does take a community for this

and it takes some giving back

for frankly, more people need to get involved

than are so far.

And that's what I like about what we're trying to do here

and I'm just being brutally honest.

I think that this is not,

what we're doing here is not the easy button.

It isn't, maybe I'll say it's the easier button

and this is going back to talking versus walking and doing.

This in and of itself does not solve the problem

as I said earlier and as we've alluded to

and I love being transparent about that

but I think you also can see

back to that effort and the work that's required.

I think it'd be hard to deny that,

hey, this is a tool,

this is something that enables us,

this is something that helps us,

I'll say it'll lead the horse to the water,

can't force him to drink

but it gives him more opportunities to do that

versus everyone talking,

some out there doing some things,

some continuing to talk

and some just being frustrated and going,

I quit, I give up

and then just going out on the street

and trying to pick whoever they can grab.

I feel like if we can do this and we can do it together,

it facilitates, it enables.

Again, it doesn't accomplish a task by itself.

That's why, that's what I love about it actually

is it still requires the whole industry

and all the very smart and capable people,

organizations, companies that are out there

doing this and doing their own piece.

This is just another one of those,

it's one of those tools

that I think at the very foundational level

is gonna help us all.

Jay, take some.

Just wanna say thank you to everybody for your support

during this kind of transition for us

in the building of this program.

The conversations that we've had with partners

alongside ASC has been incredible.

The feedback has been amazing.

I think so many people see the greater vision

of what we're trying to do here

and getting our industry into a better place

and just can't thank everybody enough

for all the support

and really, really just appreciate all of you.

Thanks for joining us today.

That wraps up another episode of Beyond the Wrench.

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please show your support by rating

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You can also watch the video interviews

on Wrenchway's YouTube channel.

Speaking of Wrenchway,

Beyond the Wrench is managed and produced

by the Wrenchway team.

Wrenchway is dedicated to promoting

and improving careers in the automotive,

diesel and collision industries.

In partnership with ASC,

we run the ASC Connects community

which empowers shops and dealerships

with reliable data, school connections

and industry insights

while helping grow the future technician workforce.

You can learn more by visiting wrenchway.com.

Thank you so much for listening.

We'll see you next week.

ASE Connects: Building the Technician Workforce Together

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