Free Soft Skills Training for Future Technicians by RockED + WrenchWay

I'm just so excited that we put this thing together because working together has been fantastic and the value that we're bringing to the next generation of technicians I think is just ten-fold.

I'm just so excited that we can roll this out to our students out there that are soon entering the industry.

I really, really appreciate all of you for joining us today.

My name is Jay Gannon and I am the co-founder here at Wrenchway.

We're really excited to partner with Rocket on something that we think can make a real impact in schools and for students across the country.

At Wrenchway, our focus has always been on promoting and improving technician careers.

And part of that means helping the next generation build not just their technical skills, but also the soft skills that are so important for long-term success.

Unfortunately, soft skills often get overlooked in our industry, things like communication, teamwork, problem-solving, and professionalism.

And that's where RockEd comes in.

Together, we've made it possible for schools and students to access RockEd's People Development Platform completely free, giving students more than five hours of world-class soft skills training.

Today, we're going to walk through what the program includes, how it works, and how your students can start using it right away.

We'll also talk about why soft skills are such a critical piece of a technician's success and how this partnership came together.

With that, I'm thrilled to introduce my co-host, Chris Craig, from RockEd.

Chris and his team have done an incredible job building this platform, and he's going to take us through what the program looks like and how to get started.

Chris, thanks for joining us. I'll turn it over to you.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Jay.

I'm honored to be here. I'm very excited to dig into the story behind why we approach soft skills with technicians, how we found that's important,

how Wrenchway and RockEd ended up teaming up to make the magic really happen, and why we feel that this is such a valuable thing to talk to automotive schools about.

I was a student myself. I graduated from the Pennsylvania College of Technology with an associate's and bachelor's degree.

So I've been to automotive school. I've been that student. I've also been a technician in the industry.

So I've really lived this life and getting to the point now where we're talking about these soft skills and how we can help heal this technician shortage that we hear so much about.

It's a very passionate topic for me, Jay. I know you as well. And yeah, I'm just excited to get into it.

So I will pull up my screen. And without further ado, I will get us going.

Okay. So how this whole story started is I create content for RockEd, for the RockEd app.

And our content is short form, learning curriculum, one to three minutes, think of like your TikToks, but in a very more intentional sense.

And I started making content not for just service advisors, but we started including technicians.

So I had to ask myself what type of content on an app would be useful for technicians?

I don't know if it makes sense for me to create a video on how to do an oil change because in my experience, they already know how to do that.

So I really had to ask myself a couple of questions. And what I started landing on was what about soft skills?

And when I say soft skills, I mean like time management, proper documentation, change management, videography for video or video inspections, communication skills, all those different types of things.

I wanted to do some research into this to see, does it make sense for me to take a bunch of time and make soft skill training for technicians? Does it matter?

So every good research project starts with a good problem statement.

So I want to walk you through what was running through my mind when I started research and I started really going down this path.

So what I thought was the modern automotive industry faces a significant challenge in recruiting and retaining technicians.

We hear the numbers. We know that people struggle to find positions and we know that there's lots of positions to fill out there.

So we know that there's a bit of a gap between how many technicians we need and how many technicians we presently have.

We also know that we are in the modern day and age. We're post-COVID. There's technology. There's AI.

Modern technicians have responsibilities beyond just turning the wrench.

Things that we could highlight there is intricate and proper documentation, that high-level time management, adaptability to changes,

even videography as video inspections become more mainstream.

So the thought process here is that if technicians are not trained in these soft skills, it could result in feeling unable or unwilling to remain in the automotive industry.

Now, that's not a truth claim. That's just a hypothesis. That's a problem statement that I set out to try and solve.

Now, I'm asking myself all these questions in my mind.

Are soft skills even important for modern automotive technicians? Could training in these skills impact the technician shortage?

Do technicians know soft skills and how to apply them?

These were running through my mind, but I'm not naive enough to say that I know the answer to any one of these questions.

So when I create content on my social media platforms, I always like to try and add in there, say something in the comment section.

Let's have a discussion because I don't know everything. You don't know everything, but together we might just be able to figure it out.

So I really believe that there's power in numbers. So I said, why don't I do a survey?

Of course, I had to figure out what to ask on my survey and how to position my questions and what the response options should be.

I started out by just open interviewing 11 industry experts. I asked them a bunch of questions.

I got open-ended answers back. These experts ranged from college professors to shop foreman's to shop owners to dealership high-level management to even technicians.

So I got a good diversity and range of professionals there. And I took the responses I got from them and I used that information to create the response options for each question.

And what I mean by that is if I asked two professionals the same question, and in their open-ended paragraphs they sent back to me,

I noticed that something like time management showed up twice. That became a response option for the survey that I ended up sending out to my platform.

That way the response options made sense. All the questions were selected, all that applied. There was about 14 options for each question.

I launched that survey out to my platform on TikTok. I got 804 voluntary responses in just 13 days.

I like to highlight that because that tells me people did it from the goodness of their heart. I didn't offer gift cards.

I didn't offer incentives. I'm just like, hey, guys, I'm just trying to figure out the technician shortage here.

If you could just respond to this, it'd be great. 13 days, nearly 1,000 people responded, and I thought that was pretty cool.

So I want to start out when we get into the data. I want to highlight who took this survey.

Because if it's a bunch of sous chefs and mountain climbers that work in clothing boutiques, this data isn't that relevant to us.

So we have to make sure that the people that actually provided this data are somehow tied to the automotive industry.

So the first question I asked on the survey was to please select the option that describes your place of work.

And those options were dealership service, independent shop, or other.

Dealership service, as you can see, was the bulk of it, 57.1%.

But we also have a really good representation from our independence at 30.8%.

And then a nice 12.1% in the other category.

Now, when you think of the other category, I want you to think of a couple of people put in the chains like Firestones and stuff like that in there.

We actually had some people that named out colleges that they work at or high schools that they work at because they're automotive instructors.

And there are some people that were mobile mechanics.

They didn't feel like they quite fit into the independent shop category.

So I say that all to say everyone that's in that other category is still in some way or fashion tied to the automotive industry.

Now, of course, I'm curious as to what they do because, for example, if you work in a dealership, it doesn't necessarily mean you work in the service department.

So I wanted to make sure I know exactly who took this survey as far as what their profession is.

So the second question I asked was to select the position that best describes yours.

I was delighted to see that the largest, the Pac-Man there, the big blue Pac-Man, was 74.1% technician,

which I was happy to see because this survey is all about technicians.

So we have a very large representation from our technicians.

Maintenance technician is in second place for 7.6%,

which means over three quarters of the people that took this survey are automotive technicians.

And that's across dealerships, independents, and the other category.

But it's not undiverse. There's some diversity here.

We also have service advisors, service managers, and even general managers that took this survey.

So we have some good representation there.

And then the other category is 9.5%.

Again, a lot of our instructors, our automotive instructors fell into that category,

as well as people that run like mobile repair businesses and things like that.

So still people tied to the automotive industry just didn't fit any of these other named categories here.

So I say I'll let it say that the sample that we have here is very deeply tied to the automotive industry,

which makes this data that we're about to cover that much more powerful.

I asked only five questions.

Now, I say five, I actually asked seven because I had to get this data somehow.

But I asked five questions that's going to give us that substantial data.

Question one was what makes a technician successful?

That was a select all that applies question.

So there was about 14 different options and they could choose as many as they want.

They could choose all 14.

They could choose none.

It was totally up to the sample.

Question number two, what areas should a technician work to improve themselves?

Again, that was a select all that apply around 14 options.

Question three, what qualities indicate an entrant technician will succeed?

Again, same, same style of question.

Question number four, how often are entrant technicians missing important attributes?

This question was not a select all that apply.

It was a slider question.

So it was on a scale of one to five from not important to very important.

For example, and there's a bunch of different options from there.

Question five is the same style of question as question four.

How impactful can curriculum and tech school be in certain soft skills?

Now I want to focus in on questions one, two, three and five.

The reason why we're not going to touch on four is because four actually point into a leadership thing.

But that's another topic for another day.

Questions one, two, three and five really dived into the technician takeaways,

the stuff that's died tied directly to our technicians.

Now on this screen here, the questions are no longer there,

but you can see one, two, three and five.

Those are the questions.

What you see there is listed one through five on each one.

Those are the top five responses out of like the 14 options that we got from the sample.

And when I say top five, everything you see on the screen,

anywhere from 70 to 80 to 90 plus percent of the population that took this survey said that

these are definitely the number one answers to answer these questions.

And those questions again are what makes a technician successful?

What area should a technician work to improve?

What qualities indicate an entry technician will succeed?

And how impactful can curriculum and tech schools be in certain soft skills?

Those are the top five options there.

Now we can't just stop here though.

We can see that there's some stuff here that we can work with.

Like we know the willingness to work is important.

We know the attitude is important, proper documentation we can see there is important.

But we have to go a little bit deeper than that.

So the first thing I wanted to do is I wanted to sort through this

and I wanted to find out where I was seeing repeat answers for different questions.

So that's the first thing we're going to do as we just did.

Now everybody always asks me like, is college worth it?

I'm like, have you seen one of my PowerPoints?

Did you see what I just did?

I switched right over just like that.

So I make incredible PowerPoints, I know.

But what I did there is I highlighted a bunch of these responses in purple.

The reason I did that is because those are what we're going to call common themes.

They're common themes because they were rated as incredibly important

as like number one selections for these problems or these questions

but they were also highlighted in other ones.

So they were super important and they could potentially solve

more than one problem simultaneously.

Those common themes that we saw across the board was the willingness to learn,

the willingness to work, attitude, thoroughness and attendance.

This really indicates to us that if we focus on those five things

we can solve a lot of problems simultaneously.

But that's not to say that everything's left in that white color is not important.

They're still important.

They were highlighted as, you know, 80 to 90% of the population said

that they were important to solve a single issue.

So we don't want to put those aside.

We still want to remember that those are popular themes.

And those themes are time management, adaptability to culture,

adaptability to changes, technical knowledge and proper documentation

and professionalism.

But we can't just stop here.

We have to dive a little deeper because my whole intent here

as I said before, I create learning curriculum for Rocket,

which means I want to take this information and I want to create

a dedicated curriculum, maybe even a certification that our learners

on the Rocket app, our technicians can take, watch that content

and learn something from, which means I have to take this information

on screen and turn it into an actual curriculum in a series

of let's say like 33 videos or something like that.

So I wanted to break these down into competencies.

This is exactly what I did next.

Now there's three competencies that I was going off of here.

Attitude, behavior and knowledge.

Attitude you can consider like how you work with other people

in a professional setting.

Behavior would be like how you react to certain situations

in a professional setting and knowledge is how well do you know

your position, your job, your responsibilities

and the things that you have to do.

We'll notice that the common themes are all tied to attitude.

So your willingness to work, your willingness to learn,

that has to do with your attitude.

Obviously attitude has to do with attitude.

Your thoroughness.

So thoroughness is defined as do I double check my work

and make sure I did all my steps and my cutting corners

that has to do with attitude.

And then attendance showing up on time is also attributed

to attitude.

So what we noticed is that the common themes are unilaterally

just all related to attitude as a competency,

which is one of the three competencies that we train

on on the Rocket app.

Now the popular themes had two competencies,

but most primarily they were all tied to behavior.

So behavior competencies are the time management,

the adaptability, the culture and changes,

proper documentation and professionalism.

That's all tied to behavior.

The only one of the popular themes is tied to knowledge.

It's technical knowledge.

So this part of the data translation to me

started to click and make sense because I had already

assumed as you remember when I started out,

I was talking about does it make sense for me

to make content about how to change oil or replace

a CV axle or identify a brake fluid leak

or anything like that.

And I thought to myself maybe not because I worked

in dealerships and I was a technician.

I was a service advisor and I know that our technicians

know how to do this stuff.

And what we're seeing here is that knowledge

is not something that we're really worried about.

Our technicians know what they're doing.

They know how to fix cars and they have this

figured out.

So knowledge only appears one time as technical knowledge.

So it wasn't a theme here as far as like what's

deficient and what's needed.

What we did find as themes is stuff in the attitude

and the behavior competencies,

which is stuff that we don't traditionally

train our technicians on.

I've been through four different dealerships

I've worked in.

I've been around the industry for around 10 years.

I've been through automotive school myself.

We didn't really talk about time management

or professionalism.

We didn't really cover proper documentation

to the extent that we need to for like

a warranty ticket and a dealership for example.

And technicians need to work on those things.

One I'd like to call out and I'll talk about later

on his video inspections.

And you know, hey Mr. Technician,

go ahead and take this phone and make a video real quick.

Well, that requires videography skills,

customer service skills, communication skills,

all things that technicians can certainly do,

but they're not traditionally trained on.

So what I want to do with this information

that you see on screen is I wanted to create

a robust curriculum, a certification

for our learner technicians to take

and hopefully kind of catch up on some of the things

that 804 automotive professionals sort of agreed

that we're deficient in.

And of course, all of that content

will end up on the Rocket app,

which brings us into the next segment here.

And what I want to talk about is who is Rocket?

What do we do?

And why do we do it?

Rocket is an app-based mobile learning platform.

We create micro learning content.

So I want you to think of again

those one to three minute videos.

Think of your TikToks, your Instagram reels.

Think of your YouTube shorts.

This is how people are consuming content nowadays.

They're watching one to three minute videos

and flipping on to the next.

You try to get somebody to watch a 10 to 15 minute video anymore

and it just doesn't go over that well.

They kind of lose track about like two minutes into that thing

and they're trying to find something else to do.

So we have that micro learning style,

but it's super intentional, right?

It's like master class style content.

It's not like we just turn on the phone

and just create content today.

We sit down with subject matter experts

across the industry.

We really think about our outlines.

We really get dedicated into our scripting.

And we take around 60 to 90 days sometimes

to create just the scripts and everything

and all the things that are going to go with this

and get with our learning specialists

and things of that nature to make sure

that this is a super robust collection

and certification for our learners.

We also have the gamified aspects

like you might find Peloton or Duolingo.

So when you complete a video on RockEd,

you get points.

There's a leaderboard.

You can compete with your coworkers.

And there's things like that to keep you wanting to come back

and keep you engaged in the learning

because the training isn't going to not help you.

No matter what, you're going to find some sort of a benefit

with that training.

Can I add something right there?

100%.

I just want to speak to the quality of the platform itself.

I was able to go through some of the onboarding

that we're talking about today

as well as record some videos,

the videos that I recorded were along the lines

of helping ASC test prep.

And it was a really, really well-written out

script.

I think the quality of video

that RockEd is able to produce

makes it really easy to follow along.

So as you're talking through this,

I just wanted to add a little plug for you guys

because I've been very, very impressed with the platform itself,

the professionalism throughout the entire platform

and just how much good knowledge there is to be had out there.

Yeah, I really appreciate that.

We do take a lot of time and effort

into putting these things together

and, of course, shameless pug.

Stay tuned for ASC test prep

starring Jay Gonen in here soon on the RockEd app.

Had a lot of fun putting that content together with Jay.

So, of course, I got to market it, right?

Okay, so RockEd is more than just content, right?

It's really an aggregate of all these different

learning facilities, all these different topics,

all these different partners, if you will.

So top left of your screen, you'll see RockEd core content.

It's really the world that I've existed in

as a content creator on the RockEd platform.

We have content for the sales department,

for FNI, for the leaders, for service,

and when we say service, think of your advisors,

not your technicians, your advisors,

your managers, and so forth.

And then we have a cohort of technician content,

which I am spearheading and creating as we speak.

That's that brand agnostic stuff,

like what is a break pad?

What's the product knowledge?

Why do I need the maintenance

and how do I sell and overcome objections?

We have that for breaks, for tires, for batteries,

for all those different things.

Also some things about like what is gross profit?

What is effective labor rate?

All these different things that are just brand agnostic,

not tied to any particular brand,

any particular business model, anything like that,

just stuff that anyone can generally benefit from.

And that's our core DNA content.

But that's not all.

We also have some OEMs that have partnered with us,

so Audi, Stalantis, BMW, parts of Subaru,

and parts of Toyota, saw the value in that.

And we've partnered with those organizations

and we actually have some custom content pertaining

to those brands in the Rocket app

for those two that it applies to.

Same thing with dealer groups,

so like a Rustaro, Acasa, Tom Wood,

for example, maybe Alithia,

we've partnered with those brands as well.

And they said, hey, we already have learners in the app.

Why not put some custom content tied to them?

Maybe it's some HR compliance content

or specific onboarding content

that you can actually peruse

if you're part of one of those dealer groups.

And of course we have dealer partners

like Wrenchway, for example,

JD Power, the JMNA Group, Dealer Tire.

If you're working in a dealership, for example,

that has Dealer Tire,

you could possibly have access

to some Dealer Tire custom training.

Now, all of this OEM content, dealer partner content,

dealer group content and core content is still

in that same micro-learning

one to three-minute format

to keep people engaged,

learn one or two actionable lessons a day.

We only ask for about six minutes of your time.

I worked in dealerships for a lot of years.

I really didn't have time to sit down

and watch like a 15-minute video,

but I did have my lunch break

or something like that

to where I could just dedicate six minutes of my time

instead of scrolling TikTok,

which hurts me as a content creator on TikTok,

but I'm okay to take the one

on the chin for the team here

and get on RockEd and spend six minutes of your time,

learn two good lessons and they're actionable.

They drill right into it

and you can take it right back to work

right after your lunch break, for example,

and start using those skills right away.

So the tech school approach, right?

Why do we want to potentially put the app

in the hands of automotive students?

So at NADA, I actually, that data

that I just kind of covered there,

I spoke at NADA in January in New Orleans

for those of us that were able to make it

through the winter storm.

First time in New Orleans

is like 10 inches of snow on the ground.

It was pretty crazy, but anyways,

while I was there,

I actually got to interview Jay at the RockEd booth

and we kind of talked a little bit afterward there

and I was thinking to myself

when I'm creating this content for technicians,

I'm like, this would be useful

for like an automotive student.

Like imagine getting some soft skill training

before you entered the industry.

Like that would probably be valuable.

And I was kind of just talking with Jay about that

and Jay had mentioned to me

that Wrenchway is pretty involved in automotive schools

and we started to feel the synergy right there

and we started having conversations after

and really the whole idea is

is that we're already creating this content

for our dealer partners.

Why not open it up to automotive schools?

And that's essentially what we did.

We partnered with Wrenchway

and through that partnership,

we've been able to facilitate

over five hours of this content

to include our soft skill certification.

So that data that we covered,

we have a certification called Technician Onboarding

that covers all of those topics.

We call it soft skills

and we have that certification available

for our dealer partner technicians.

But through our partnership with Wrenchway,

we've been able to facilitate that content

totally free to any automotive school.

That's high school, post-secondary,

in the United States.

They can download RockEd right now.

Student, administrator,

or instructor, they can download this content

and they can start consuming it today.

And that's through our partnership with Wrenchway.

I'm so excited about that, by the way,

because to be able to offer that

that much value to a student for free,

something they can put on their resume,

something they can build alongside of their,

what they're learning in school,

I think it's just really,

it's just a good value add for any student.

Yeah, I agree with you there, Chris, too.

It's been a really good partnership in general

and I think true to our

core mission of promoting

and improving technician careers on top of that,

just being able to bring additional resources

to the schools that are out there, right?

And I think one thing we wanted to make sure

that we clarified, too,

is that this is for high schools as well.

If you have an automotive program,

even a diesel program,

like if you've got a program out there

that you see the need

for soft skills for your technician students,

this is amazing, amazing content

available to you for free.

And it's going to help that student out

as they make that kind of, at times,

awkward transition from student to full-time employee.

We know through a lot of data,

especially some of the data that comes from ASC,

that there's a pretty large attrition rate

of young technicians entering our industry.

And so why not arm these students with more information

and more training to make them a better professional

when they're able to get out into industry?

So when we looked at this partnership,

Chris has been great, Jeff,

all of the team at RockEd have been absolutely fantastic

to work with.

But more importantly, their content is rock solid,

and it gives you something to offer these students

that I truly think will help them out in their careers.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

I'm just so excited that we put this thing together

because working together has been fantastic.

And the value that we're bringing

to the next generation of technicians,

I think, is just tenfold.

I'm just so excited that we can roll this out

to our students out there

that are soon entering the industry.

And you're right, Jay.

We have a pretty large attrition rate

of automotive technicians,

and what we're seeing is that's commonly happening

in that first six to 12 months of employment.

So we have these highly qualified,

trained and ready people entering the industry,

and then for reasons potentially unknown,

maybe tied to soft skills or not,

we're losing them in that first six to 12 months,

which means that center gap where like those

semi-tenured people,

that's where we're not having people,

because there's no one getting to that senior position.

So we have a good cohort of people

that are kind of getting ready to be an operational

turnover and getting out of the industry,

but we don't really have those people lined up

to replace them just yet.

And that's sort of the gap that we want to try to fill

in there because this is an incredible career,

like fixing cars and keeping America on the road,

I think is an incredible career,

and I want to see more people experience that.

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.

So that brings us to the content.

Like, what exactly are we rolling out

to our automotive schools, right?

So this is just a curriculum overview.

There's three categories here, obviously.

Available now, I'll queue you in on that.

You'll see there 153 guides.

Now, on RockEd, we call a guide a video.

So when I say the word guide,

just think one of those one-to-three-minute videos.

We just call it a guide.

There's 153 of those currently available

on the RockEd app.

Courtesy of Wrenchway, totally free to any automotive program,

automotive school in the United States.

And again, that's high school, that's post-secondary.

All are welcome to download RockEd

and consume that content right now.

That equals out to about five,

a little over five hours of content.

And when you think about like a one-to-three-minute video

with some interactions and stuff like that,

that's a lot of content, right?

Like five hours when you break it apart

into one-to-three minutes each segment.

And that's totally free available now to any school.

And then in 2025, we are in the thick of that right now.

We're adding 315 more guides,

over 10 hours of content.

And then in and throughout 2026,

another 154 guides,

a little over five hours of content

to round out the curriculum.

Now, math has never been,

and I was a service advisor,

math has never been my thing,

but that comes out to like over 600 guides

and over 20 hours of content.

Anybody can check me on that math.

I'm not good at mental math at all.

I'm a writer.

I'm definitely not a calculator at all.

But anyways, you got to know your weaknesses.

Jumping into the content here.

So as far as available now,

this is the stuff right here.

These are four different collections.

A collection is like a total topic.

Like I'll bring your attention to technician onboarding,

which is free for all schools.

That's that certification I was talking about

that's tied to the data that we covered here earlier.

That is about two hours of content,

just under two hours of content,

and it's five journeys.

Now a journey is like decoding the dealership,

shop culture, preparation for success.

We consider that a journey,

and then underneath that journey,

which is a subtopic to the collection,

the collection being technician onboarding,

is a string of videos or guides.

I'll draw your attention to the technician onboarding

because that's the certification

that any student right now,

any automotive instructor can earn for free,

put in their resume,

post their certificate to LinkedIn,

super robust collection,

really tied to that data that we covered earlier.

So it's really research backed,

and I'm very proud of it.

Shop culture is one I like to call out there.

What we noticed in our research and our conversations

is there's a really big difference

between the classroom culture

and then the actual shop culture.

And we know there's a difference

because that's when we see the attrition rates occur.

I mean, you're telling me the students

sat through college and passed all of their classes

and got their certificates or even their degree

so they're dedicated and then they hit the industry

and what happens?

There's a bit of a culture shock there.

They climbed that knowledge hierarchy,

but now there's an experience hierarchy.

You know, when I was in automotive tech school

at Pennsylvania College of Technology,

I was tearing down transmissions

and putting them back together and engines

and I was digging into EVs

and diagnosing complex concerns in my diagnostic class

and learning all about how sensors work

and potentiometers and hall effects

and thermistors and all these things.

And I had one of my final questions

is I had to draw a blower motor circuit from memory

and I could do that for you right now.

So I've done all those things,

but I climbed that knowledge hierarchy,

but then when you get into the shop, you're changing oil

and then you're changing oil

and you're changing some more oil

and maybe one day you'll get to do a set of breaks

or something like that

and you kind of feel a little underused.

And it's not to say that you are or aren't.

The point is that you got to build that experience

and get that little bit of trust

because at the end of the day,

there's car seats in the back of these cars

and we have to get you up to speed

to where we know that you're going to torque the lug nuts

and things like that.

I'm not saying any students not going to do those things,

but we just have to get the point across

that you got to get that little bit of trust

and experience in there

and change that oil for a little while and stick with it

so that you're able to grow in your career.

So the whole point of that shop culture piece

is to not get discouraged

and to really kind of get through that first 6 to 12 months

to see your career truly blossom.

We also talk about in that collection

the preparation for success.

That's when we really get into those soft skills.

We're going to talk about time management.

What is it definitionally

and how can you apply it as a technician?

We'll talk about change management.

Change management is what we consider

like you see it happen all the time, right?

You're working on this one car

and then the advisor comes in and says,

hey, we got a problem.

You got to work on this car instead.

Change management is like how quickly can I get off this car

onto that car like mentally shipped over

and continue going with efficiency in mind.

So that's like change management.

You can be better at that or worse at that.

That's why it's important to call it out

and work on that.

Proper documentation is another soft skill

that we cover there.

It's super important what you document as a technician

because that's what appears in the service history.

So you're going to be using that next time that car comes in

because you're going to look at that history.

It's also what appears on the customer's invoice.

And I've been a service advisor.

I've seen the price tag in some of these invoices

and when you got a pretty poor write up, right?

Like a bad story written without punctuation and stuff.

It's like, well, how much am I paying for this again?

So it's important to make sure that we have

that proper documentation

because those are historic records

for that vehicle's maintenance and service and repairs.

So we want to make sure

that proper documentation is in place

and efficiency in mind, right?

And when you're on your flat rate,

you can't flag time for documenting.

So we want to make sure that not only we're documenting

accurately, but we're being efficient about it as we do.

So we dive into those sorts of things.

So that's technician onboarding.

I will mention becoming an efficient technician.

We get a little tactical there.

We talk about toolbox setup, your tool cart setup.

We talk about keeping your bay clean

because you're more efficient when your bay is clean.

So we talk about things like that.

We also talk about trying to make less trips

to the service lane to your advisor,

maybe stack up three repair orders,

making sure you at least keep promise times in mind,

but try to stack up three repair orders,

get up there, talk to three of your advisors,

hit the parts department on the way back,

grab a set of keys out to the lot and back to your bay

instead of making so many trips.

It's important to exercise and get those steps in,

but when you're on flat rate, you want to be in the bay.

Chris, one thing I would add to that there

is regardless if you're on the education side

or the shop side, a lot of times with a student,

sometimes it's just effective that you're hearing

some of this from a different person as well, right?

When you look at this from a training standpoint,

you teachers out there have probably talked

about some of this stuff in your class

or maybe have touched on it,

but maybe not have gone into the level of detail

that might be out there in these classes.

What I would say there is even if you've had

some of these conversations with your students,

it's nice to have a different voice,

maybe telling them what they should be doing

once they're in a dealership in a shop

and being able to kind of get some of these

best practices out in a way where it is

really comprehensible from that student that's out there

and really I think just an effective way

to maybe get a message across to some of your students

that you're trying to, and at times it can be tough

because if they're hearing the same voice

over and over and over again,

maybe you try to dive into one of these details

and you're not able to get there

or land home a point that you're trying to.

This is a really, really effective way to do that.

Yeah, absolutely.

And that's a thing is whoever you see on the screen,

on the Rocket app, sometimes it's me,

sometimes it's Jay,

and sometimes it's others across the industry.

Those are what we call industry talent.

Those are people that have worked in the industry

are currently working in the industry.

I'll call out, for example, Technician Onboarding.

I partnered with two friends of mine, Chris and Chuck,

who are automotive influencers,

but they also, one runs his own mobile repair company,

the other one's a certified master technician

at a Ford dealership, works on diesel.

So those are the type of people that we partner with

and that's who you see on the screen.

So it's real people and it's what's cool about that

is you wouldn't get any kind of time

with a professional like that

unless you live locally to them otherwise.

So we really do just pull in all this talent

from across the industry

and aggregate them into this one spot

and then you get those different perspectives

from those different people

and it is helpful to hear it from another voice

and it helps kind of like send it home

and it's like, okay, this person thinks that too.

Like maybe this is a little bit important to me.

So absolutely.

So that's Technician Onboarding.

We also have other content available

for free on the Rocket app.

Bottom left is the technician and service advisor dynamic.

That content is there to really call out

the technician position, the advisor position,

the hardships between the two,

why the relationship is so important,

different strain points and things like that,

difficulties there

and what we can do to overcome them.

For a student that's going to be a technician one day,

it's super important to know

what that advisor position is and does

and why that partnership is so important.

I've been an advisor.

I've been a technician.

I've seen what happens when that relationship is strained

and I've seen what happens

when that relationship is strong

and it's definitely more beneficial for both positions

when they work better together

and unison for the customer

instead of an opposition of each other.

It's not supposed to be a competition.

It's supposed to be a partnership

and that's what we want to call out there.

To round the stuff out,

we also have the power of winning mindset

to give a different flavor,

show off some different sides of the Rocket app.

So that's some mindset stuff

like getting your mind right,

how to achieve goals, how to win things like that

and then some technology piece in there

for EV features and technology.

We don't get deep into the details there.

This is not something that you would be covering

like in a lab somewhere

and an actual campus of an automotive school.

Really what we do here

is we call out technology from an ICE,

like a regular automatic transmission,

whatever speed it is,

and then we compare it to the type of transmission

you'll see in an EV

and then we'll compare like emissions from one to the other,

which is obviously very different,

but then we talk about features like the acceleration

that you'll get in an EV compared to an ICE

and then we also call out the differences between the tires

because you need special tires for an EV

because they see a lot more weight,

a lot more torque, a lot more everything

and they also have technology for sound reduction

whereas the ICE tires, they don't need that much.

So we really just kind of take what's familiar in an ICE

and compare it to the EV

just to kind of bridge that gap over there

so that students and automotive technicians

can kind of feel comfortable about that shift

over into that technology.

And that covers everything that's currently free

on the Rocket app for any student,

any instructor in the United States.

This next slide is October 2025,

which we're in the thick of.

The first thing I want to call out,

and I won't go line by line

because there's a ton of stuff here,

but I will call out leveraging video inspections

to gain trust, which you'll see top left there.

That will also be free for all students.

That is in partnership with TrueVideo.

It's content endorsed by them

and they're helping us facilitate that being free.

That content is launching within the next week or two

and will be available free to all students.

That is also a certification.

I should say that anytime you see that asterisk

next to the title, like leveraging video inspections,

basic tools for technicians,

those are certification programs,

meaning you'll watch all of that content

and at the end there's an assessment you can take.

If you pass that assessment,

you'll earn an actual industry recognized certification,

which is super great for automotive students.

The leveraging video inspections to gain trust,

I won't dive too deep into it

and I've called it out a couple of times.

When you talk about video inspections and technicians,

like what does that require?

Well, it doesn't require me turning wrenches

or anything like that.

I have to know how to turn wrenches,

but I got to be able to have good videography skills.

I've gotten video inspections and dealerships myself before

and sometimes I can't even see what they're talking about.

The lighting's not good,

like I just don't know what's going on

and maybe their ringer's on and it keeps texting

and it keeps buzzing and I don't hear what they're saying.

So videography skills are obviously very important.

Communication skills,

you're communicating through a video

that's a whole different vibe, a whole different thing.

Like your customer has to know what you're saying

and why it's important.

So you got to kind of clean out that technical jargon,

make it make sense to the customer, that sort of thing.

And then customer service skills,

because we are putting technicians

in a more of a customer service role

by not putting them in front of customers,

but we sort of are

because we're essentially giving them a camera

and saying, hey, talk directly to the customer.

So we want to talk about those customer service skills

and then we'll dive into some optimal VMPI procedures.

Of course, always follow your shop's policy if you have one,

but if you don't, this is what we recommend

and that's in partnership with your video.

They're endorsing that

and allowing us and facilitating our ability

to provide that certification

to any automotive student or instructor for totally free.

The other content coming out in October 2025,

I'll call out two of them.

The first one is basic tools for technicians.

I'm also on the advisory board at PCT

and one of the things I've heard from not just them,

but other people in the industry

is that students that show up to school nowadays

are kind of different than my generation

and they don't really have a full grasp

on a Phillips head screwdriver, a flat head screwdriver,

standard or metric or what different wrenches are

or what these different tools are,

what is an impact wrench, these sorts of things.

And they're kind of having to kind of catch these students up.

So we wanted to put together a nice robust certification

just to cover those basic hand tools,

those pneumatic tools

and think about your air ratchets

and your power tools and all those sorts of things

especially tools like torque wrenches and snap ring pliers

and ball joint presses and things of that nature.

Just a basic overview of what these tools are.

And the other one I'll call out of course is ASC test prep

which Jay and I put together

and we were just recently in New York to do that shoot.

I got to call it out again because you're right here Jay.

That content is all about who is ASC?

Where is their origin from?

Why are they beneficial to you?

Which tests are most beneficial to an automotive technician?

Which tests get you a master certification?

How long do these certifications last?

How do I schedule my tests?

We cover all of that stuff

and we also give them some general test taking tips

along with studying tips.

So think of things like getting a quiet space

actually scheduling your study time,

using resources from ASC

and then test taking tips for a multiple choice test.

If you run into a hard question, save it for later.

That sort of thing.

Test anxiety, reduction tips and things of that nature.

The other things we cover,

multi-point inspection, brakes, tires,

diagnostic repair, maintenance, batteries and wipers

all of that kind of stuff

and they're mostly all of them are certification courses.

That brings us into 2026.

Again, I won't call everything out,

but automotive equipment overview and safety,

not every automotive program at school

has access to every piece of equipment.

So we just want to cover all those things

and how to be safe around them.

It's a confidence thing, right?

As a technician, once I get into a real shop

and I see a brake lathe over there,

a non-car brake lathe,

I've never seen it or worked with it before

because my automotive school just didn't have one of those.

At least now I know what it is

and I communicate about it.

It's just a confidence thing.

Same thing for your tire machines, road force balancers,

two-post lift, four-post lift,

in-ground lift, all those different things.

And then we're going to be doing another piece

on the technician and service advisor dynamic

but really diving into the solutions,

like how do we work better together

as a service advisor and technician?

We'll also cover leadership for those

those entrant technicians that aspire

to be Foreman's managers and shop owners one day.

We want to dive into that leadership piece

and that's also for our managers out there

and everybody that wants to become better leaders.

We have to remember that our attrition rate

is in that first six to 12 months

and that tells me that as leaders

we could probably do something a little more

to retain those people.

So we want to make sure we cover that leadership content,

facilitate that ability

and grow future leaders in our industry

because this thing has to keep going.

And that's everything that's coming out in 2026.

That brings us to this.

Our mission here is just to let everyone know

that we have over five hours of content free

for any automotive program.

Instructor, admin, student, it's completely free.

How you access RockEd is what you see on screen here.

You can download it with the QR code.

Otherwise you can go to your App Store,

your Google Play Store, Find RockEd.

All you have to do is download it, create your account,

select your tech school program.

If you don't see your tech school program,

you can type it in, enter your email.

You'll get a one-time passcode in your email.

Six digits long, you enter that one-time passcode

and you have access to RockEd.

It takes like two minutes to download it

and access that content.

We encourage everybody just to check it out.

Again, it's totally free, courtesy of our partnership

with Frenchway.

We just want to provide this value add to your students,

to your instructors, to your schools

to use however you see fit.

It's like a Netflix account, right?

You can use it as much as you want or as little as you want.

We encourage as much as you want.

But again, this is something that we're just offering

totally for free for any automotive student,

any instructor, again, any automotive program

at the high school or post-secondary level.

We just love to see you get in there,

assume some of that content.

And we're definitely looking for feedback at this phase.

All great stuff.

Now, Chris, are you ready for maybe a couple of questions?

Yeah, we can shift right into that.

All right.

So I'll start with Molly and she asks,

I see that technician onboarding is marked

as a certification program.

What certification is that?

Yeah.

So that what we call it is our technician onboarding

certification.

On the Rocket app, we have onboarding certification.

So we have a service advisor onboarding certification,

a sales associate onboarding certification,

and our technician onboarding certification.

It's designed for if I hire a technician,

this is like the first content I would want them

to go through on the Rocket app because it's onboarding.

So it's basically orienting them,

like for example, we have some dealership content in there.

So what are the different departments in the dealership?

What are the different roles that are played in there,

like a parts manager, a fixed ops director,

a service manager, a shop foreman,

who are these people?

What do they do?

Orientation.

And then we dive into like shop culture because we're

envisioning like a student, right?

Who's leaving school to hop into the industry

and work in a shop.

So what we're doing is we're trying to get those

entrant technicians up to speed as fast as possible.

It's called their technician onboarding certification,

but it's really a soft skills certification.

So it's basically certifying those test takers

in those soft skills like time management,

for documentation, change management and all of the above.

Yeah.

And we hear a lot of shops that get frustrated with that

side of it, right?

With a entry level technician and maybe some rough edges

that they have to smooth out once they're in a shop.

And I think these are all really, really helpful

to kind of help with that transition.

Now, as we're getting to some more questions here,

if you do have a question, we will have some time

to answer your questions here.

So please feel free to submit them.

Do have a couple others that are in the queue right now.

First being, can you send your presentation out to the group?

And then I see actually below, Val said, yes,

the recordings and slides will be sent out to all registrants.

So already answered that question,

made that one very easy on you, Chris.

Thank you.

Laura Lockhart asks, what IRC is available to test into

at the end of the curriculum?

What's an IRC would be my question there.

Also, Laura, yes, could you clarify that?

Because I also was wondering the same thing there.

We have another question here.

How are tech school programs using this as part

of their broader curriculum?

That's a wonderful question.

So when we initially brought this out to automotive schools,

how we envisioned it was a value add, right?

Provide this to your students and let them use the content

as they see fit.

If they'd like to earn an additional certification or two

before they enter the actual industry,

they can put it on a resume.

It's a value add alongside the curriculum.

We're not aiming to change anybody's curriculum.

We know how much work that goes into this.

We know how it's accredited.

We understand all that.

We're not trying to change any of it.

So really, we see it as a value add.

Your students can peruse this content alongside.

Now, we have seen in these early days,

we're about two months into this right now,

we've seen some instructors actually take

some of our content on the Rocket app

and make it a graded portion of their curriculum

as early as this semester.

So they actually assigned a journey off of Rocket,

so a string of like nine videos.

They told the students, hey, watch these nine videos

and write a report on it at the end of the week.

We are by no means saying that that's what you have to do,

but I've seen a few instructors do that.

I've also seen other instructors offer up Rocket

and say, hey, here's a couple of bonus points.

If you want to do this additional content,

maybe earn the certification or complete this journey

or et cetera.

So like I said, we see it as use it as you see fit.

Some instructors just say, here it is.

It's a value add.

Go ahead and use it as you'd like to if you want to,

if you want to expand your knowledge as a student

and other instructors have actually made it

a dedicated portion, a graded portion of this semester.

Laura responded with what the acronym IRC stands for.

And I don't know why I wasn't thinking this

when she put it out there,

but it's industry recognized credential.

And as soon as I read it, I'm like, oh, yes, absolutely.

And Laura also says I may have misunderstood IRC

for certification.

Okay.

That makes a little bit more sense.

Laura, we can talk to you more about that offline

also if maybe you want to dive into that

maybe a little bit more, we can definitely do that.

Would be interested in learning more myself.

Chris, I don't know if you have anything to add to that.

Yeah, absolutely.

I don't know if that answers the question,

but we do have a lot of partnership certifications on there.

So like the true video, for example,

that's a true video endorsed certification.

So it's industry recognized through the partnership

with true video and things of that nature.

And then all of our dealer partners recognize our

certifications.

I don't know if that's exactly answering the question,

but I'm absolutely, I would love to learn more for sure.

All right.

We do have another question.

Have you received any feedback from instructors

on their experience?

What about the students?

Yeah, we have actually a few instructors.

I will say for the most part,

I would say for like 99% and I'm not trying,

I'm not even, this is not a lot.

They've loved it so far as far as what they've used it for.

The instructors have found it very valuable.

Some of the things I've heard from some of the instructors

I've worked with is that they've been trying

to like unravel this mystery.

How do we fit soft skills into our curriculum?

As I said earlier,

like people are experiencing these students showing up

and they don't even know what sockets are

and stuff like that.

And that's totally fine,

but that means we have to like train stuff

that we took for granted

and then we're trying to add soft skills.

And then our curriculum still the same amount

because all of it's relevant.

We're also adding new technology in there

and it's hard to like pack so much

into that short period of time.

So this is really just like how it is

for our dealer partners.

This is a time solution, right?

It's micro learning.

You can spend six minutes a day.

We know how busy people are

in the automotive industry.

So it's a time-saving solution

to learn skills alongside the skills

that you're learning like in your classroom, for example.

So that's essentially like how we see that.

And as far as the feedback goes,

that's on the instructor side,

but we've also heard from students,

a lot of the people that have accessed the app

are followers of mine on social media.

So I get the DMs and the emails

and it's been pretty positive so far.

And we actually got,

and I can send this out.

We got a video testimonial

from one of the students down in Florida

who told us that he's about a week and a half

at the time, a week and a half

into watching content on the app.

He told us that he really enjoyed it,

but his call out was that he really,

and Jay, you've probably experienced a few of these.

He really liked the interactions

that take place after certain videos.

So every now and again,

when you finish a video,

there'll be a little interaction

where you have to like,

I'll take the basic tools, for example,

when that launches,

there's gonna be like a picture of like needle nose pliers,

vice grips and straight jaw pliers.

And you have to match them

to what that tool is called, for example.

So we add those little interactions in there

as a way to kind of like expand the learning

and make it a little more sticky in the brain.

By not just asking a multiple choice question,

those are there.

We also have these little like extra lessons

in the form of an interaction.

And that student was really happy to see those.

Yeah, and I think something like that is really,

we talked about the need of this

for both high schools and tech schools.

I've heard from more and more high school teachers

that they're starting off with truly a blank canvas

with a lot of students, right?

Where they're maybe,

I've heard on more than one occasion

from teachers that have to teach their students

what a Phillips head screwdriver is, right?

So like we're really,

when we talk about an elementary level

of what we're starting with in the high schools,

like anything we can do to help them comprehend

and learn, I think a lot of these students

might learn differently than we did growing up,

just because they are so used to going on social media,

going to TikTok, watching Chris on TikTok.

It is one of those things where

the way a person learns now has changed a lot.

And we've seen it even with the more experienced texts

in shops, right?

Where even somebody like me

who is definitely using social media all the time,

it is something where it has changed my,

the way that I think,

or maybe the way that I learn.

And I think being able to use a technology like this

helps kind of adapt

and maybe serve up some of this really,

really needed training in a really digestible format.

Maybe that makes a little bit more sense.

Yeah, though the digestible format's right on

because you watch a 15 minute video

and how much of that do you actually retain?

You know what I mean?

When I'm at minute five and minute 10 and minute 15,

do I really remember what they said

at the beginning of the video?

Whereas micro learning,

if I watch a one to three minute video,

I'm going to remember most of what was said there.

And then tomorrow I'm going to watch another one.

I'll remember what's said there

and it's just incremental over time.

You know, you take a week or two to complete a topic

and it really sticks.

That way is what we found with this micro learning,

which is very synonymous with how people learn things

on social media.

I think we might have one more question

and then we'll kind of conclude as an instructor.

Can I see which students in class are watching the video?

So that's actually a really good question.

Yes.

So as of right now,

the way that you can see that is in the rocket app.

So as an instructor,

you would also have to access the rocket app

and you'd be able to see this.

There is a leaderboard.

So whenever your student watches content,

they will gather stars, which are points.

And then you can actually see from top to bottom

who is the most engaged with the rocket app

and who is the least.

So you can say,

if like three students haven't done anything with it

and you would like to see them do that,

you can say, hey, student one, two and three.

I've noticed you haven't watched any content.

Can you please hop in?

I recommend you watch XYZ, that sort of thing.

So you can track it with the leaderboard.

For our dealer partners,

we do have dashboards available to where you can like

really dive into detail of who's watching what.

That is not presently available for tech schools

and automotive schools just yet,

but it's definitely something that we could work in

in the future as we grow this platform.

But to answer the question right now today,

it would be leveraging that leaderboard

that's present in the rocket app.

That's great information, Chris.

This has been a lot of really, really great information.

I just want to take a second,

and I'll let you kind of close up shop here,

but I do want to say thank you to all of you

that sat through this webinar today.

I see a number of familiar faces in the attendees list,

including Josh Simons.

Good to see you on here. Good to see you, buddy.

A lot of good information.

And I hope, I know it takes a lot for,

especially instructors to take time out of their busy days

to attend a webinar like this.

So I appreciate all of you that did take the time.

Hoping that you learned something,

hoping that you take advantage of what RockEd

is offering out there for all of you.

And Chris, just appreciate everything that you and

RockEd are doing in general for the industry,

for these schools, and for service leaders

across the nation.

Yeah, thank you, Jay.

And I want to echo that.

Thank you to everybody that took the time

and spent an hour with us today.

Time's a precious resource.

I can't give it back to you, and you gave it to me,

and I'm very grateful for that.

So thank you for being here today.

Thank you for the questions, Jay.

Thank you for having me and to the Wrenchway team.

Thank you for putting together this logistical masterpiece

of scheduling this and putting it all together

and just letting me hop on here and talk.

I got the easy part today.

So thank you, everybody.

Sometimes with those talking heads,

it's like herding cats.

So that's a, that's a...

No, thanks again, everybody.

Make sure you go check out RockEd

and reach out if you have any questions.

We hope you all have a great day.

Thank you, everybody.

You can learn more by visiting wrenchway.com.

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