Building Future Technicians with Tom Wood University

How many times we talked about where are these technicians going to come from, and now we have a pool from several high schools that have kids jumping up and down saying, my gosh, I really want to learn the automotive space.

Today we've got a really exciting conversation lined up joining me are Bill Demary and Aaron Blunt from Tom Wood, and we're talking about something big they've just launched, Tom Wood University.

They've officially kicked off a state-funded certified program that brings 18 high school students into their facility five days a week to get hands-on experience in the automotive field.

They even brought on an instructor with 15 years of high school teaching experience and another five years at a tech school to lead the program.

It's dual credit, it's industry-backed, and it's exactly the kind of initiative our industry needs to build the next generation of technicians.

We're going to dive into how they made it happen, what it took to get that state approval, and what they've learned so far from launching this program.

How are you guys doing today?

Good morning. It's great to be here.

Bill, you've been on a few times. Aaron, this is your first time. Do you have any advice, Bill, for Aaron, as we go through this podcast?

You know, it's easy because we're all passionate about what we do, and when you're passionate about something, we're going to have a conversation that's going to end in a little bit, and you're like, oh, my gosh, we just started.

It feels like that every time I talk with you, Bill. So this will be fun to bring Aaron into the equation. Let's get to know you a little bit, Aaron. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I grew up working on coerced, and my parents made me go to college, so I was college to be a teacher, and then when I graduated, it just all came together.

How did that conversation go with your parents? Was this something where you were kind of fighting against them in this decision, or was it like, hey, no, I just know I'm going to college?

Well, it was a bit of a miracle that I had the grades out of high school to build a college, but yeah, I was definitely fighting them about it.

I'm not a bookworm. I'm more blue-collared than that, so it was an uphill battle for sure.

So you went into teaching. Was it going into teaching with the intent of sticking in the automotive world, or were you going a different route?

I'm not sure I had intent, but yeah, I went to school for technology education, so that's pretty broad, and I figured I could teach whatever from there if I had to.

And what was your first teaching job then?

Frankfort High School here in Frankfort, Indiana. So yeah, straight out of college, they had an automotive opening. They ran their own automotive program, and I stepped right in.

Was it intimidating? Like, when you go in, because the way I look at it, and I say, one thing I don't think teachers get enough credit for is just truly standing up in front of students, because I can stand up in front of a crowd of business people and speak no problem.

Put me in front of a group of students, and I get a little nervous because you don't, you know, you have all the side conversations going on. You have, you know, I remember what I was like as a high school student.

I would have not liked to present in front of me. So was it, was it a little intimidating when you get up front for the first time?

Oh, at first, for sure, because I was 21 years old, and some of my students were 18, you know.

Oh my.

Yeah. And, yeah, it's a little intimidating at first.

Is it hard to, like, hold people responsible that are just a few years younger than you? I mean, it's got to be, when you're that young, having that kind of presence in a room, it's got to be a little challenging.

Yeah, luckily, I'm in charge of the grade, so.

It made it a little bit easier then.

Yeah.

Oh, that's cool. So you start off teaching in a high school, eventually end up at a tech school. What led you to that tech school?

I love teaching in high school. Honestly, they just, the school corporation messed up the calendar, and they were going to have me teach automotive classes in 50-minute chunks.

And I told everybody with ears that wasn't no work, and it didn't matter. They changed the schedule anyway, so.

No kidding.

When you go down that road, who are you trying to convince? Is it the school board? Is it like a superintendent? Like, who's trying to change that?

Oh, I started with the principal, and then, yeah, up to the school board. The school board changed it because they were on a funny schedule anyway, but then, you know, automotive programs in high schools like Perkins funded a lot of times.

So they get federal funding, and they saw an opportunity to put more bucks in seats regardless of curriculum and opportunity for kids.

That drives me crazy. We have the same thing happening here locally in Wisconsin where we've gone to a lot more of the block scheduling, and I know just dealing with our local high schools here.

That's provided a bunch of challenges or posed a bunch of challenges for a lot of our educators because what's ultimately end up happening is you've got a bunch of people that aren't even interested in your program showing up because they need an elective class.

And so they're taking the seats of people that actually want to be in your program, and it's just not working at all.

Yeah, that's one of the great things about what we have right now because we have students from all over Hamilton County, which is the suburb county of Indianapolis.

I think we work with six or seven different high schools, and they're great. They send me their students for half a day, and they make it fit their schedule even with the different vacations.

The students are dedicated and show up, so it's been pretty great with what we have now.

I can't wait to hear more about this because what you've put together is phenomenal. Bill, I want to go back to you here and talk through kind of the why.

When you started thinking about this and really putting together something as unique as Tom Wood University, as challenging I think in putting together a program like this, there's a lot that goes into it.

Let's start with the why. What led you to want to do this in the first place?

You know, I've been in this business a long time, you know, like 39 years I think, and I've always heard since like day one there's a shortage in technicians.

And I think we can all set and agree there's a shortage in technicians, but what are you doing about it?

And are we trying to hire the next best guy on deck? And we all have, we're running ads, we're spending a lot of money advertising trying to find somebody across state lines, and we're fishing in different areas.

But we're all doing that. So I don't know, it's probably six, seven years ago, Jeff Wood and I had a very frank conversation about creating this classroom type style and how can we train our own?

How can we have a school? And as I've gone to a couple of 20 groups, I've talked to some buddies that are doing quite that and they're like, yeah, well, Bill, we're doing it.

So I flew down to North Carolina, looked at the Capital Group, I watched what they were doing and saw the classroom that they had prepared.

And three, four years ago is the Warren Henry Group down in Miami. They have an awesome class there and I'm like, why can they figure it out? I can't.

So we started going down that path, you know, probably four years ago and we stumbled.

I mean, we try to build our own thing and kind of get our own certifications and stuff.

And to where we are today, we're very fortunate, we teamed up with Pursuit Indiana to help us on the state certification.

And it was probably a year and a half ago when we met and started like getting really serious, like we have to do this.

And Pursuit was fantastic on kind of helping us through all the legalities and the paperwork and, you know, signing this.

And it honestly came down to the wire. Like, I had to find an errand and I didn't have one.

We talked about some of our senior techs that are looking for, you know, slow down and like, this is great.

I had one and he finally told me, he says, I don't want to teach kids. That's kind of last minute.

And so, you know, it was just fortunate that timing I was introduced to Aaron.

I think we hit it off from a passion standpoint of what we're trying to accomplish.

And like, you know, do you want to join me in making something just really great and awesome for our group?

And he was all in really quick and Jeff Wood, I just can't say his name enough.

He supports this and it starts with him. And he's allowing us to do what we want to do.

And if you think about how many times we talked about where are these technicians going to come from?

And now we have a pool from several high schools that have kids jumping up and down saying, my gosh,

I really want to learn the automotive space. I really want to be in that space.

So now I feel like we've become the career center for them. And now they can come to us and we're training them.

I feel the right way and hands on in the store and I'm paying them.

So that's the other thing is if you've been in high school and you're in our program at Tom Wood,

we're paying you to come to this classroom and we're giving incentives and tools and uniforms

and all kinds of fun stuff to really grow this program.

We started with 17. We're up to 20 right now.

I said 18 to start. I was wrong.

Well, it grew and the word started getting out. We actually had a student for two weeks that wasn't supposed to be with us.

But he's ahead. My buddy's in the program. I'm going to go and it took a while for the school to realize where's this kid at?

So it's it's I'm telling you, I'm on cloud nine that we have finally been able to launch this and then have something really special putting together.

I want to take a minute. You were talking about the importance of ownership buy-in to something like this.

And I don't want to skim over that because I think that's a really, really important piece.

It can be really easy. And I think a lot of our industry is guilty of this of looking for that really immediate short term ROI of like, hey, I just need text.

I just need text. But similar to what you were saying, I think if if most dealers or shops in general were honest with themselves and they look back over the last 10 to 20 years and said, OK, how often are we looking for text?

We're constantly looking for text like we're constantly struggling with this and putting together a program like this.

You don't get that immediate ROI. You don't get that immediate satisfaction that you would with a, you know, hey, I got an A level tech that came in and they're knocking out work like crazy.

But what you're creating is something that in my eyes is very sustainable for the future and you're building a foundation that is healthy and it's not just relying on poaching people from other groups or other other shops.

It's truly bringing people up with your values. We've talked before on prior podcasts about your values and how important, you know, the right people are to you.

Now you get a chance foundationally to mold these folks from from a young age into into those values. Right. So talk to me a little bit about looking or maybe maybe I'll rephrase that a little bit.

I want to ask you about is this always been in your eyes a long term play and how do you get around that immediate ROI conversation?

It is a long a long term play, but it's an investment. And again, if you if you look at the financial burden of paying a significant amount of hiring bonuses and you're trying to move somebody here from a different state,

or you're continuing that battle of the market. What is the cost of that? If you can defer that cost and then bring somebody from high school and teach them your core values, teach them the automotive space.

And let's let's be real. They might not all want to be technicians. Maybe they want to sell cars. Maybe they want to go into it. Maybe they want to go into HR. Maybe they want to go into sales.

All these other opportunities that we have within our organization that we can fill. We have 1184 current employees as a group.

So 20, you know, technicians that are, you know, I just had a meeting this morning with one of our stores technicians and he asked how soon will these kids be ready to go?

I have a need and you know, I tell them to breathe. They're so in high school.

But I said, look at this year, we're going to have 17 of them starting in May, ready to be in shops in May, because they've finished the first year of all the classroom stuff.

And then then it's hands on and they're going to be, you know, out of the base, we have three seniors currently that's in the class.

So they're in the shops. They're going to graduate. And when they graduate, we're very hopeful one of us identified Porsche brand.

You know, I think the other two right now at Ford, is there a brand that, you know, connects with them?

So you're starting to fill in these pieces of the future. And when you have an owner that gets that, I mean, think about the days are long, the years are short.

It's going to come before we know it. We're going to be like, oh my gosh, we're going to place 17.

So I also understand that we're going to be supporting the market, not just Tom Wood, right?

So these individuals, not all of them are going to land at Tom Wood, not all of them, you know, maybe want to stay in the space.

And some of them might go to some of our competition, but we're creating a marketplace for technicians within the Tom Wood group that we are going to teach them our core values, teach them right from wrong,

and why it's important to do certain things. So as a senior in high school, I think they're going to be more developed than graduating from some of the local automotive colleges that we have.

And a big part of it is these students find out what they don't like. You know, they think they want to turn wrenches, and then they come be a technician with me and at a shop for a while.

And if they find out they don't like that in high school, that's great on both people's ends. You know, Tom Wood isn't hiring them as technicians that don't want to be technicians.

And then the students find out while it's free in high school class that they don't like it.

What a good point. I mean, that right there, I think one says that you care about people, not just the bottom line, right?

And I think when you look at that, there's been times throughout my career where I think we've all seen that kid that comes into the industry buys that $10,000 box, buys a bunch of tools,

and goes to school, pays a boatload to go to school, and then is in the industry for a year and says, this isn't for me.

I always feel terrible about that because then, like to me, that could have been prevented. And just like you said, Aaron, if you put them through the paces and they find out that this isn't the right career field for them,

you're doing them a huge favor for their life in general. And the same goes for maybe that other student that does love this industry and it gives them the ability to get in, get hands on, get some education

earlier than maybe they could have otherwise and get a really quality education of applicable stuff that they're going to see once they do get in the shop.

I tell you what, what you just said there, Aaron, about the early age impact is so big and I think it's the right thing to do.

Yeah, and it saves the dealerships that are hiring technicians because they're not hiring technicians that don't know if they like it or not. So it's two in both ways.

Well, and Bill, the one thing I'll pick out of what you said there too is that I think you're realistic enough to know that every student that goes through this isn't going to be a technician, right?

Like, I think that's really honest, good thinking because it's realistic and it's not, you know, it's not, hey, everybody, every single one of these are better work for us.

And if they don't, they're not worthy. I think having that mindset of the greater good ultimately does pay off for Tom Wood at the end, right?

Because you are putting more technicians and say, hey, if one of them goes to that competitor, it's less likely that they're coming and trying to take another tech from us too, right?

Like it's just, I think a healthier foundational way to approach this in a more macro level view of this entire thing than a lot of people have.

And so just give you a lot of credit for that piece right there.

Well, and I think that, and we have to be prepared for that as well. So, you know, I'm going to say version two coming soon is we're working on some interlevel service advisor training classes.

A within RockEd. We just launched. We're really excited actually launched today. The new Tom Wood onboarding platform through RockEd.

It's all, it's filmed here. It's our process. And next stage is service advisor process that's going to go on RockEd.

So you take that training, you bring it in through even this classroom, and they're in dealerships. So they see the guys behind the desk.

Listen, I was a technician for all of about 30 days. And I saw the guys up behind the desk. I want to do that. And there's going to be that.

And if we're not prepared for that, they're going to go somewhere else or they're going to stumble across everybody or this and that.

So we want to be prepared for that as well and offer the old gamut of opportunity in this automotive space that we have.

That's a big part of it too, because they're in the dealership learning. So they see the service advisors, they see all the other roles.

They're not just in a, you know, tech school classroom learning about fuel delivery, you know, they see the whole, the whole scope of the, of everything.

So I think that takes away some of the intimidation of coming into a dealership too. Right. And I've talked a lot with people about that in the past.

Bill, I think you and I have talked about that in the past. I remember going off to tech school and I would drive by a big dealership group here in Wisconsin and their clients of ours now.

And I tell them about this all the time about, I used to drive by and like dream about working there, but I never would step foot in there because they were terrifying to walk into huge, beautiful facilities.

And here I am, you know, 18 years old, driving past like, I'm not going in there. So like the fact that you can get them in, get them familiar with the culture, make it less intimidating, I think is a huge advantage.

Oh, just the other day I had students, they were, they were doing something and they needed a specialty tool. So they went and asked one of the techs to take and borrow it.

The tech looked at them and just said, tool truck comes on Friday, you know, just give them a hard time. So yeah, they're already used to that stuff. It's, it's pretty good.

Yeah, just the shop atmosphere as a whole. It is real and not doesn't always go according to like, if you're at a tech school, there's a little bit of a different, a different feel there, for sure.

Did you know that Wrenchway has partnered with ASE to grow school assist? It's a free solution designed to help auto diesel and tech ed programs connect with local shops and dealerships.

Thousands of schools across the country have used school assist to get resources and support, including tool and equipment donations, advisory committee members, shop tours, guest speakers and much more.

With school assist, Wrenchway and ASE are making it easier to bring education and industry together to promote and improve technician careers in automotive and diesel.

School assist will always be free to schools to help them connect students with the industry and get the resources they need.

To learn more and sign up, visit wrenchway.com slash school dash assist.

Link is also in the show notes.

Now I want to talk going back to kind of the initial stage of this.

When you're putting this together, what was important to you to have in curriculum and really to try.

I'm guessing a lot of these students are coming from different backgrounds and might have different levels of exposure to anything mechanical.

How do you, how do you kick off a curriculum for something like this? That seems like a big job.

Yeah, you have to start from the bottom for sure.

And it's kind of tedious for the kids, you know, hobbyist, tournament business fellows.

When I show them the difference between a metric and a standard bolt, you know, they kind of roll their eyes, but some kids need to know that.

And it's, yeah, so we start from the ground up very basics.

Have you had, I've heard this from multiple high school teachers right now that they were having to teach some of their, some of their kids, the difference between like a Phillips and flat head screwdriver, like that, that elementary.

And, you know, I think when you hear those kinds of things, it gives you even more appreciation to what you're doing and bringing these people in because it is, I mean, you're maybe starting from scratch.

With a lot of them.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of that stuff works, works itself out.

You know, we, we do a lot of hands on stuff.

And, you know, they work in groups.

One kid says, hand me a 19 millimeter, you know, socket on her ratchet.

And if he hands me a wrench, you know, the kids kind of get into their hard time.

But yeah, they kind of learn on the fly.

A lot of those basics.

What?

Aaron's done a nice job of writing the curriculum as well.

And I've been really impressed with the material that he's putting out to get in front of them and teach them at a higher level.

How, how do you do that, Aaron?

I mean, like how do you take what you want the ultimate, you want them to ultimately be once they're in the shop.

And you're starting, we just talked about what you're starting with.

Like how do you write a curriculum to get them from here to there?

Part of it, we have some milestones we have to hit through our university dual credit agreement.

So I have, I have some guidelines there, but I ask a lot of the advisors and I ask a lot of the managers, you know, what, what do you guys see the technicians, the new technicians, what do they need to know?

So yeah, we spent three weeks testing voltage drops just because it's, it's not in the repair manuals very much and the new tanks don't really know how to do it.

So yeah, I, I ask around, I see what, what new technicians need to know a lot.

How do you land home voltage drop?

I feel like a lot of people would love to know that.

That might be the secret to developing technicians.

Well, we're doing practicals today, so I'll let you know.

It is cool though, because just being able to go and talk to your other teammates within Tom Wood to say, you know, what are we lacking on?

What are we, what are we missing on?

You're able to do that in a way that isn't just at an advisory committee meeting at like a tech school, right?

Like you're, you're able to get that real time feedback of, hey, we're struggling in this area.

We need some help here.

I have to, I have to believe that's a huge benefit to doing what you're doing.

Oh, huge.

I don't have to sit around and wait on an email to come back from some faceless person.

I ask, you know, I can, I just walk into the dealership and ask.

So it's, it's fantastic.

So where is this at?

Is this a set, like give me an idea, like maybe geographically, physically, like give me an idea of what Tom Wood University is.

So I'll tell you where it is today and what my vision is for the future.

So today we're housing it in our Ford store.

Our Ford store has 54 bays.

And so there's a lot of space there.

We have Express.

We have large trucks, big truck shop as well, and a good amount of volume.

And upstairs, the sales BDC center that's never been used, by the way, we took it over and we set it up as a really awesome classroom.

And it's upstairs.

It's kind of out of the way, but the lab's right downstairs.

So we allocate a bay for them to use and they can come downstairs and we can fit the amount of students in the current space.

But we already are seeing a waiting list for next year for our program.

So the schools are already saying there's a lot of interest.

We believe upwards of 50 students on debt for next year.

Not sure how to handle that yet.

Aaron, I got to talk and figure it out.

But I did ask for a commitment from our fearless owner, Jeff Wood.

I said, if we can do what I want to do with this, will you build me a school?

And I want a school not just for technicians, but service advisors, sales, FNI leadership, and start thinking about all of the areas of opportunity within our organization.

If we can build a school by an old building or something to build a land that's into a very close proximity, I think it's going to benefit us in the long run.

Well, and as you guys are talking about this, I mean, as you expand your relationships with these high schools and you expand the awareness that you have a program in the first place,

I have to imagine the sky's the limit in terms of what you could get for enrollment, right?

I don't know what your goals are in terms of enrollment, but it feels like you guys are on to something that could be really, really big.

Jeff.

Yeah, I went to a career fair at a local high school just last weekend.

I heard word that one of the other big automotive dealers in town is going to copy what we're doing.

So after they talk to me at the career fair.

So now it's going to be a competition to get into the high schools and get those affiliations as well.

It's almost like college football.

You know what?

At the end of the day, I think there's plenty to go around.

I can do it.

And I think that's great.

If our competitors want to try to do what we're doing, it took us years to develop it.

We made a ton of mistakes early on to learn from it.

But here's what we're at today.

So, you know, if they can come and support it, it's needed.

The industry is needed.

Well, and I think this might be even more outside thinking.

And I'm sure you've already had these thoughts, but it does provide another career path for technicians within your organization as well.

Right?

If you've got maybe that technician that does have a desire to train others and wants to be involved in the education side.

Hey, look, here all of a sudden is another route that you could go.

It feels like that's a really nice additional benefit to having a program like this.

We were just, I was just approached this morning by a younger, one of our younger technicians at one of our stores.

He's been with us probably eight to 10 years.

He's a master tech and he has such a desire to teach others.

And he's always asking, how's this university?

How are the kids doing?

How's the spot for me down the road two to three years?

You know, can I be a teacher?

So, you know, there is a lot of interest and it's not for everybody.

And, you know, as we have some of our aging techs, I'm fine.

They don't want to deal with the younger generations, but they're so smart.

You know, the talent that's in their brain, if we can, you know, get as much of that out of them as we can for the younger generations.

You know, we feel like it starts with Aaron and then it's going to cascade down to different levels of, you know, think about electrical.

You think about EVs.

You think about, you know, steering suspension have specialty, you know, courses that we're teaching.

And it could be even our own current technicians.

Hey, let's have a certification, a Talmud certification through Rocket, through your class.

And we have a certified program for suspension.

And then we have some money teaching that class.

And it could be, you know, one of our part time technicians.

You just hit on something there.

I was just at a tech school advisory committee last week.

And one of the things that came up were, you know, the different technologies that are coming and evolving.

And for those tech schools that are out there, I feel bad for them in this sense that you're trying to squeeze so much into two years and you're trying to, you know, you're trying to either get rid of classes that are no longer relevant,

but then squeeze something like ADOS and where ADOS could be its own program for probably multiple years, right?

Because there's so much complexity there.

And so you're trying to fit this into, you know, this, you know, this very specialty thing with a lot of technology into a very short period of time to the point to where their conversation really surrounded.

We're just going to do an intro class to this.

We're not going to teach any specialty in it.

We're going to kind of lay out why it's important and what it is and all of that fun stuff and then allow the shops to be able to take whatever training from there on.

So as you're talking about this, I do see in the future where there's going to be a forced need for specialization, even more than we have today, right?

Where you do have that truly ADOS specialist and the more you can kind of get to them at a younger age and teach them that, that feels like another great opportunity.

Another career path for technicians as well.

And that's a big thing we do when we develop curriculum.

I'm trying to give them the knowledge and skills that they can build on.

I can't teach them everything.

You know, they're only with me for half a day for a year.

But if I teach them how the systems work, if I teach them the basic principles of, you know, electrical and basic principles about engines work, then when they get in the field, you know, technicians do continuous training all the time.

Then they have the skills to build on.

Because yeah, I'd be realistic.

I can't teach them everything.

I don't know everything.

Well, I think that's a nice segue into kind of the mentorship part then, right?

And how do you take them?

ASC's got a stat that I think roughly 42% of techs leave within the first couple of years out of tech school, right?

Because, you know, maybe they're lacking that mentorship or that onboarding.

Those early days of getting into the shop and getting confident and getting comfortable.

How do you take this, that you're piecing together on the university side and be able to ensure that it's a smooth transition into the shop?

Yeah.

So their second year, their senior year with us, they do an internship and they have freedom.

They can pick which dealership, which brand they want to go to if they're not having a good time.

With this one, they can go with a different technician or two different dealership and work.

But the internship piece of it's big for that.

That keeps them tone.

Keeps them not just interested, but gives them a good feel for how things can be different from place to place.

It's funny that you say that because I remember early days in a shop for me and even just in my career in general,

you would find these people that you'd get comfortable with, right?

Like where they had been in this world for several years, if not several decades.

And for whatever reason, your personality would happen to just mesh with something like maybe somebody that doesn't even make sense as to why it would mesh.

But it did.

I've got a pretty good story.

Like when I had first started, there was an older technician that worked with me and he did not like me right from the start.

And so I kept chipping away at him.

I'd walk by his toolbox and then he was kind of by a break room where there were steps up to.

And then it got to the point to where my goal was just to make him crack a smile because I was like, he doesn't like me yet,

but he's going to like me eventually.

So then I started saying, I'll call him out Dave.

I would start going up the steps a little bit more each day and say, hey, Dave, hey, Dave.

And then I finally was getting like so obnoxiously up the steps that he finally had to crack a smile.

And then from then on, it was like he was awesome, right?

I think there are a lot of opportunities for that.

If maybe a young tech isn't fitting with the shop to be able to go try another shop and see if there might be that personality that just meshes with them.

Because I think for a young person, when you come into any business, that initial intimidation or just kind of just awkwardness,

like if you can find somebody that can make you feel a little comfortable,

that can mean night and day.

That could mean you staying in the industry versus you not staying in the industry.

Yeah, I'm sure a lot of young technicians leave the industry because they're in the wrong spot, not their own role.

Yeah, and I think having our own instructor on board that's bouncing in and out of stores,

especially as we progress down this, it's a comfort zone.

It's somebody, they're having a tough day or they're having a tough problem.

They've got somebody to reach out to a mentor within our organization that they can relate to.

I've watched Aaron going to our Audi store recently and it was an ex-student from his prior job that jumped up down with his son.

I'm like, oh my gosh, what are you doing in my shop?

And didn't know he worked for us at the time.

So that's great.

Those relationships are just going to help, again, that retention, I think, of a comfort zone for these guys.

They might tell them something, they're not going to tell their boss.

Hey, I'm not comfortable with this or that.

Can you help me?

Bill, how do you manage expectations?

You just talked about how you've already got some of your service leaders in different stores saying, hey, how fast can you get me these young people to fill our roles?

But I have to imagine there's a little bit of a challenge in setting the expectation of capabilities when they're coming in, right?

I think that's one of the things in our industry that is a little unhealthy is that even out of trade school, you'll get a service manager thinking that you're going to get this advanced level tech coming into your shop.

But in reality, they've got the basics.

They have an understanding of things, but it's going to be a bit before they're a truly productive tech.

How do you manage that?

I can tell you how I hope to manage it.

My goals are next year we have these 17 seniors.

17 seniors are in lab, means they're in our stores.

The hope is that we can spread them around to brands that maybe they think they might want to look at.

While they're there, I'm hopeful that we can get them engaged in the OEM training.

So if they're at Subaru, let's get a level one Subaru training going and let's just start taking some of those courses and understanding the brand.

That way, so they've got a little bit of hands on.

They've got still what Aaron's given them.

They've got the OEM side of it.

So we're starting to get a little excited about Express.

We're working really extremely hard to mimic the Express Center that we have specifically at our Subaru store.

Subaru, in my opinion, has by far right now the best process of any Express.

We're documenting that currently and we're training that and starting to sprinkle it around some of our other stores.

So by the time these students are done, they're going to go and hit that type of Express.

And then we have all of our stores.

How do I go from Express level one to make it to Express level two to make it to the main shop to make it to all these certifications?

How do I become a master tech?

There's a timeline and there's a pay structure and there's certainly things, expectations that we have that you have to obtain to get from bucket to bucket.

So by doing that, I think the expectation of them coming out of this program might be a little higher than somebody coming out of, say, a local trade school.

Because you don't know what you have.

You don't know what they've trained in or they still rebuilding heads and carlers.

But I know when they come out of Aaron's class, we have a pretty good idea.

Not to mention we're paying them for that senior year.

So it's a paid internship while they're in high school.

They're getting paid and it gives them the opportunity to raise their hand and say, I want to work part time outside of school for Saturdays, evenings or whatever.

And then you start seeing the guys that are really wanting to get engaged in it.

And then by the time they graduate, I think we can have them a pretty solid level one express way.

And I don't even know.

I don't think I told Bill this, but I've already had got my students doing that Subaru Express process.

So that's how well you know, Bill, you just you read his mind and you started doing it.

Aaron kind of in the same, I guess, area or same same topic.

What advice do you have for for maybe your service managers?

And this might not just be a Tom Wood thing in general, right?

This could be any service manager that's out there.

What advice would you give them about managing a young person coming into their into their group?

Yeah, that is a little different because their skillsets going to be the same as an entry level technician.

You know, their knowledge is going to be the same.

But they are young, you know, 17, 18 year old kids.

So it's different navigating that.

And unfortunately, it's different navigating their parents too because their parents are still pretty involved in their life.

So are you having them come into the interview with them?

Or how does that work?

Yeah, when we select our new students, we're going to meet the parents too.

And we did this time as well.

And it was really great to have the support of the parents.

We brought them all in for an open house at the Ford store, showed them the location, kind of talked a lot about the history of Tom Wood and, you know, what we have to offer.

You know, we are putting together a tool program.

We have a uniform program put together.

So our goal is they can graduate high school with a paid internship with no debt, with actual hands-on skilled training.

And we will provide their entry level tools.

And as they continue growing, we're going to add on to these things.

And so my goal is they can look behind and not have the debt, not have the stress of all that behind them and allow us to take care of all of that and get that away.

And that's just focused on your education and your career and help you grow through it.

Again, with the support of Jeff Wood, I can do these things.

Yeah, special shout out to Jeff Wood because without him, none of this happened.

So Jeff, a lot of credit to you and everything that you're doing within the organization.

You mentioned tools to walk me through that a little bit.

So we have teamed up with a couple of different tool suppliers and we have some sets that we're using right now that are working really well.

What we want to create is a rolling cabinet with a level one toolkit.

The level one kit is the kit they use while they're in the university.

And then when they graduate as a senior, we double that tool.

So we will double the box.

So it's everything they need to work in one of our stores.

And then my goal is a timeline.

You know, every year, every two years, there's an add on.

There's, you know, dollars available for them to continue adding more tools.

What I don't want, and it's just my preference, I don't want to see the big white tool truck pull up out front and they get addicted to a weekly payment of these massive tool.

We have tool boxes in every dealership already.

So you don't need to buy a big roll around box.

We have them.

So if we can supply the rest of the tools that we just acquired a parts distribution company, Mighty Auto Parts last month.

I didn't know that.

I don't think congrats.

Thank you.

We just closed out a month ago.

We have now access to buying tools direct through that program, which we're working with Aaron right now on all the tools he needs to teach that class.

We can supply ourselves.

I think that is another area where you could have a huge impact on young people in just that financial education.

You talked about not getting addicted to that monthly payment and having that tool truck.

I always kind of joke around that some of those tool trucks I believe are just rolling AR machines, right?

Like they just kind of keep rolling around to collect on their money.

Being able to give that financial guidance and education early could really, I mean, you talk about impacting somebody's life.

If you save them from spending tens of thousands of dollars on stuff that they don't need.

Don't need it.

Oh, I mean.

And so the tool brands that we are using do not have a truck.

They do have lifetime warranty.

And they are a brand that, you know, if it breaks, you just order another one online.

It comes back to you.

So I'm very purposeful on that to keep them hopefully keep them out of those trucks.

And that brand is already in one of our stores.

It is.

So.

Are you OK to say the brand?

It is Sonic Tools.

I kind of figured that's where you're going.

I know Scott Saxon.

Well, a good, good group.

We've been working with Sonic.

When we started the university prior that we failed.

So we were kind of reclaiming, you know, those tools and we're working hard with them to try to come up with something that works, you know, long, long term.

We have other tool providers that, you know, understand now that we have a university that want to, you know, they want to get involved as well.

So.

Obviously having mighty now, we have an opportunity to go through our own brand.

So we, we haven't landed on one particular, but Sonic's been fantastic.

They've been a great partner for us.

And I have a meeting with them, I think next week to continue the conversation.

That's great.

Aaron, going back to kind of the conversation about them being young people, I do always.

I'm curious in how best to manage young people, right?

And, and, you know, you're working with them every day.

And I do see those generational gaps.

I think it was funny.

I was at a conference once and they, the speaker, the keynote speaker had a big time magazine cover up on the big board behind her.

And so it listed off all of the complaints that the prior generation had about this generation.

And it was entitled, it was all of this stuff that, you know, that we commonly hear about Gen Z years, even millennials still to this point.

What was funny is when they pulled off the date on the cover, it was the generation prior to the baby boomers talking about baby boomers.

So this is not a new thing, right?

It's been happening probably since the beginning of existence.

But how do you maybe bridge some of those generational gaps so there is more understanding?

Honestly, the best part is that we have a common interest, you know, we can circle everything back to working on cars.

We can circle everything back to the industry.

And that really helps relate, you know, because I'm old and they're young.

We're all turning reaches, you know, we're all learning the same things.

We're all working on the same stuff.

So it's, yeah, leaning on that is a big part of it.

That's good advice and very true.

I think if they have a passion for cars, that's a common purpose, common passion that makes it easier to have conversations.

And I think younger people are then just more genuinely curious to learn maybe what that more experienced person has done.

And they have a passion for really dumb cars, honestly, but that's fine.

How do you, how does your relationship with the schools work?

Are you talking with their administration?

Are you talking with their teachers?

Like, give me a little bit of an idea of Tom Wood University in partnership with these schools.

How does that look?

Yeah, so the Pursuit Institute is the career center for Hamilton County, the county that we service.

And I talk through them to talk to their schools, but, but I have, yeah, I have access.

I can talk to their guidance counselors.

I even had a student's guidance counselor reach out to me a couple of weeks ago, kind of explained the situation.

So, yeah, I'm just like a teacher in the class.

I can, yeah, I can talk to the principals and guidance counselors.

I can call their parents.

Ian has a yardstick.

Do you see opportunities that could go beyond Hamilton County?

Yeah, I think so.

I think we could, I think the expansion is as big as we want to make it because there's a need and there's buy-in.

There's interest.

And we have, we are teamed up through Vincenzo University for the, for the core curriculum.

And they are really excited and anxious.

They wanted to be in this space for a long time and it just hadn't had the opportunity.

So it's a good partnership with us.

We're still working on some fine tuning, you know, of that relationship, but we're getting close to kind of locking that down and being done.

We also just, we notified last week that West Lane University has a, has a, an interest in what we're doing.

And it's not necessarily from a high school standpoint, but just a student standpoint of, you know, is there some, some relationship there that we can partner up with West Lane University?

So, I mean, the words getting out of what we're doing, it's extremely gratifying and fun to see it come to life.

There's, there's a few things in my career that I'm really proud of and this is one of them.

And if we can, if we can lock arms with others and we can lock arms with other universities and take their brilliance and, you know, Aaron's brilliance and bring it all together and make something really special, not just for the high school.

But as I mentioned, I've asked Jeff Wood for a school and I mean it and he does do if we can, if we can grow something bigger and grander and you find this 23 year old lost soul that's been in college and didn't like it.

I don't know what I want to do, but he's really good with customers. He's really good, you know, in IT or, you know, marketing, whatever.

If we could find a platform to bring them through at no cost to them and we invest in that individual in this community, what can we possibly do?

You know, what, what else can we do, you know, to, to make Tom Wood the absolute best place to work and here's why.

So the worst getting out that we're doing it and it's kind of cool.

And as you're talking through that, I'm like, what a natural progression for a lot of folks and I think of like our friends at Northwood University as well, right?

Like that might be a great, you know, a great segue into something like that for one of those students that doesn't necessarily want to become technician, right?

I think any of these students are so lucky because they're getting that base level of technical knowledge that they're going to be able to apply in whatever way they want to.

And I don't know that I've ever met anybody in a dealership that got that technical education that it hasn't helped them down their career, right?

Like once you get that base level, that is always going to be something that's going to help you out.

You know, it's interesting. You mentioned Northwood. I hadn't thought of that. That is a great, that's a school I've not made it up to yet.

I, I watch it, I listen to, you know, what they're doing, a little bit of what they're doing.

But that might be another good.

The great program.

The great, great program serves our industry really, really well.

Good.

Interesting. I, you know, as, as you're looking through this and then you had mentioned earlier to expanding that to include service advisors,

include salespeople, I want to talk about the service advisor piece and maybe the vision there because, you know, as we talk about making technicians lives better,

a good service advisor can make or break a technician, right?

And so being able to, to actually adequately give them some education is hugely important because how often do we hear in our industry that that advisor is oftentimes the one that gets ignored, right?

Like they, they don't get the education. They're honestly in my eyes kind of taken for granted a lot of times throughout our industry.

Having a path to where that you can give them adequate training and it's not just shoving them out there and saying good luck talking to customers.

You know, there's something there.

So, yes, 100% and we have fully documented service advisor training plan.

And we've been working on this for about embarrassing, I'll say three to four years of really documenting what's the life of a service advisor.

And then we took the curriculum.

I kind of laugh about it because I actually wrote and published a book years ago, like a long time ago.

And it was getting back to the basics of being the service advisor.

How do you, if people would ask me, how did you become a service advisor?

And so I started documenting all this stuff and I published a book, like I said a long time ago.

And it was, I remember the title that automotive service survival kit was my name.

And so I've, I've pulled all of the curriculum from that book.

And obviously a lot of updated stuff because we don't have beepers anymore.

So I used to get my customers a beeper and I would pay you what I needed to talk to you.

So there's stuff like that that's a little different.

But we've taken the curriculum from that.

And I've taken curriculum that I've gathered over the years from some great, you know, mentors of mine.

And we've combined all of that and we have written the Tom Wood process for service advisors.

So I have shared that already with Rocket.

They have access to it.

And we're going to start pinching out a curriculum that we can put on Rocket for our service advisors.

And then I have Andrew, which was a 19 year service advisor at Audi ranked number one in the country like three times loves training.

So Andrew, I brought on my team six months ago as a service advisor coach.

Andrew is now responsible for this process, which I gave it to him said, I want you to chew it up, spit it out, make it your way.

But as long as it matches the framework of Tom Wood, he has been tasked now to start working on his coaching abilities and teaching abilities to be prepared.

In 2026, we're going to start holding classes once a month for our entry level service advisors and training coaching them them up.

So every week him and I meet at an Elton meeting.

I have a scorecard for him.

He knows precisely which advisors are struggling and who he goes and spends time to we want to develop that bigger and bigger and bigger.

Into pulling a server from a hope from a, you know, a hotel or a restaurant that I really liked and me hand that person over him now make him an advisor make him whatever.

And we have the process in place to do it.

So we're close.

And I'm excited to start launching that program next year.

I do want to give.

Oh, sorry, Erin, go ahead.

Andrew's getting practice right now.

So we've had we've had Andrew watch his class, even when when Aaron was on vacation, Andrew ran the class.

I put him through the great boss workshop, which is an EOS workshop.

Barry does an amazing job.

We put all of our leaders through the great boss workshop recently.

And Andrew's reached out to Barry and asked for some some guidance on, you know, better coaching styles and stuff.

So he's preparing himself and invested himself to hopefully pull this off in 2026.

Man, I did want to just give a special shout out to rock add rock adds a partner of both of ours.

And they, I don't know if they're getting desperate for on on on air talent, but they just had me out to New York to shoot some of these, these, these courses.

So I was able to get on and record what I'll say about them very, very professionally done.

It was a they laid out the red carpet for me to do it.

The amount of prep work they did in putting together the courses that they put out there.

Super impressed.

Just a great, great company.

I've been fortunate enough to team up with them on the rocket booster.

We've been working on that program for almost six months.

We, we test piloted two stores.

I just signed up all of our locations on rocket booster.

So they're hoping to go live market.

I think the late first quarter of next year.

But what again, if you have an advisor coach like, you know, we do, Andrew gets the copy of that every week.

And we can see where we're focused struggling on whatever selling tires, batters, bricks, and then he can go in and work with them on the training of rocket.

So it's, it's pretty sick.

Last thing I'll mention, Aaron, do you have a beeper by chance?

Like he was talking about a beeper.

I was alive.

He doesn't know what a beeper is.

I almost said no age jokes here, Aaron.

No age jokes at all.

I worked.

Yeah. The beeper worked.

I also, I need to get a copy of this book somehow.

I don't know if I can get an autograph copy or not.

Or if they're, they're still around, but I want one of these books.

I'll see if I can find one.

All right.

If you have a briefcase up in my attic that I forgot the combination years ago, and I think it has some of them in it.

And have your picture in like the, uh, all right.

On the back.

Yes.

All right.

I have a different color here.

I can't say anything.

I'm through.

I'm going through that process as we speak right now.

No, I, I, um, as we get closer to the end of this, I just want to say how excited I am to see where this leads to.

How cool it is to see the progress that, that, that you guys have really, uh, that you've had so far.

I mean, you, you had said a couple of times, well, you've been working on this for three or four years.

And I think the, the big piece of this is it doesn't happen overnight.

What you've put together is something that has, it takes intentionality.

It takes really understanding that you're not going to flip a switch and get the ROI on it immediately.

But if you do this right, you are set up for years to come.

And I just appreciate Bill.

I've told you this in the past, you're, I think different mindset and mentality to a lot of our industry in general.

And this is a prime example of that, right?

You're doing things that are setting the foundation for a healthier industry moving forward.

I'm still a student of the business as old as I am.

I just turned beepers into cell phones.

It's fine in robots.

And we did, I sent you a podcast that we did with Dave Anderson, the author Dave Anderson, right?

And Dave always has something really nice to say about you.

I've now really, I think we text back and forth all the time because he helps the Wisconsin Badger basketball senior.

So he's always checking in on that.

And I think he was helping Indiana for a while.

That great, great guy.

We gave you a shout out on the podcast we did together.

And that's been a cool relationship as well.

He is a gem of a guy.

And if you're not listening to his podcast, you're missing out.

He's one of my super heroes in life.

I think he saved my life.

And I let him know that he's just one of those guys that, you know, he's a student in the business.

And he's a guy I'm lucky enough to call a friend.

Yeah, he's one of the best.

As are you, Aaron, we appreciate you taking time to join us today.

Hopefully we can do another one of these in a year or so and kind of just track the progress.

And to me, it would be really cool to look back in five or 10 years and kind of re-listen to these episodes.

It'd be cool to kind of just get a progress meter each year of like, hey, this is this is how we're doing.

But great work to you.

And pretty awesome to see what you've put together here.

When we open up to school, you should come and do a live podcast of the ribbon cutter of our new school.

I like that idea. I like that idea.

And I will say I was down there for your, what do you call this, like an awards banquet?

Yes.

Fixed stops banquet.

And was that spring?

Yeah, we had one in spring and one in fall.

We just had our fall last week.

100% blown away.

You had the robot delivering prizes out to people, money all over the place.

It was just such a cool, cool experience.

I was really happy that you invited me down to it.

That was a blast.

And yeah, if we get an opportunity, once we cut that ribbon to be down there and do a podcast, that'd be pretty darn cool.

Yeah, it would be fun.

All right. Well, thank you guys.

Hope to have you back on again sometime soon.

And best of luck with everything with this school.

Yeah. Thanks for having us on.

Thanks, Jay.

That wraps up another episode of Beyond the Wrench.

If you liked this episode, please show your support by rating and following the podcast.

You can also watch the video interviews on Wrenchway's YouTube channel.

Speaking of Wrenchway, did you know Beyond the Wrench is managed and produced by the Wrenchway team?

Wrenchway is an online community dedicated to promoting and improving automotive and diesel careers.

We help technicians find the best shops to work at.

And we also help auto diesel and CTE instructors get more support from local industry.

You can learn more by visiting wrenchway.com.

Wrenchway.com

Chevrolet Express

Master Tech

About this episode

Original notes