The Jaded Mechanic Podcast Feb 10, 2026

The Truth About Diag, Flat Rate Pay, and Shop Culture with Josh Whiteman

Annotations will appear as you listen

0:00

95:57

Term

EVAP system

The EVAP system helps keep fuel vapors from polluting the air. It stores these vapors and sends them to the engine to be used as fuel instead of letting them escape into the environment.

Term

case studies

Case studies are examples of car problems that have been studied closely to understand what went wrong and how it was fixed. They help mechanics learn from each other's experiences.

Term

wholesalers

Wholesalers are companies that buy many cars at once, usually to sell them to other car sellers. They focus on selling a lot of cars quickly, even if they don't make much money on each one.

Term

ADAS

ADAS means Advanced Driver Assistance Systems. These are special features in cars that help drivers stay safe, like warning you if you're drifting out of your lane or helping you brake automatically.

Term

Red Seal program

The Red Seal program is a way for skilled workers in Canada to prove they are qualified to do their jobs. It helps them work in different parts of the country without needing to take extra tests.

Term

Ohm's law

Ohm's law is a rule that helps us understand how electricity works. It explains how much electricity flows through a wire based on the voltage and resistance.

Term

pressure transducer

A pressure transducer is a tool that measures how much pressure is in something, like a tire or engine. It sends this information as an electrical signal so that it can be monitored easily.

Term

module

A module in a car is like a small computer that controls different parts of the car. For example, one module might help manage the engine, while another controls the lights.

Term

corrosion

Corrosion is when metal parts get damaged over time because of moisture or chemicals. This can cause problems in how the car works, especially with electrical connections.

Term

diagnostic strategy

A diagnostic strategy is how a mechanic figures out what's wrong with a car. It involves checking different parts and running tests to find the problem.

Term

TSB

A TSB is a notice from a car manufacturer that tells mechanics about common problems with certain models and how to fix them. It's like a guide to help them solve issues more easily.

Term

EVAP light

The EVAP light on your dashboard means there's an issue with the system that keeps fuel vapors from leaking into the air. It's important to fix it to keep your car running cleanly.

Term

code scan

A code scan is when a mechanic checks your car's computer for error messages that can tell them what's wrong with the vehicle. It's like reading a report card for your car's health.

Term

mass airflow sensor

The mass airflow sensor is a part that checks how much air is going into the engine. It helps the car know how much fuel to use for the best performance. If it breaks, the car might not run well.

Term

lean code

A lean code means there's too much air and not enough fuel going into the engine. This can make the car run poorly and cause more pollution. It usually means something needs to be fixed.

Term

fuel trim

Fuel trim is how the car's computer adjusts the amount of fuel going into the engine to make sure it runs well. It helps keep the engine efficient and reduces pollution.

Term

O2 sensor

An O2 sensor checks how much oxygen is in the car's exhaust. This helps the car's computer decide how much fuel to use for the best performance and to reduce pollution.

Term

OBD1

OBD1 is an early car computer system that helps mechanics find problems with the engine and emissions. It gives basic error codes to help diagnose issues.

Term

Mode 6

Mode 6 is a part of the car's diagnostic system that helps mechanics check how well different parts are working. It gives more detailed information than basic error codes.

Term

voltage drop

Voltage drop is when the electrical voltage decreases as it travels through wires. Mechanics check this to find problems in the car's electrical system.

Car

Jeep Wagoneer

The Wagoneer is a large SUV made by Jeep. It's designed for families and off-road adventures, with lots of space and modern features.

Term

OBD2

OBD2 is a newer car computer system that helps mechanics check for problems in real-time. It's more advanced than the older OBD1 system and is found in most cars made after 1996.

Term

Power Probe

Power Probe is a tool that mechanics use to check electrical systems in cars. It helps them find problems with wiring and connections quickly.

Term

12-volt battery

A 12-volt battery is the main battery used in cars. It provides power to start the engine and run things like lights and radio.

Term

auxiliary battery

An auxiliary battery is an extra battery in a car that helps provide power for things like lights and electronics, especially when the main battery isn't enough.

Term

service information

Service information is the technical details and instructions that car makers give to help mechanics fix cars. It includes things like wiring diagrams and repair steps.

Term

pinpoint tests

Pinpoint tests are detailed checks that mechanics use to find specific electrical problems in cars. They help narrow down the cause of an issue step by step.

Term

resistance

Resistance is how much a material slows down electric current. In cars, high resistance can mean there are problems with the wires or connections that need fixing.

Term

corroded battery terminals

Corroded battery terminals are when the connections on a car battery get rusty or dirty. This can make it hard for the car to start or cause electrical problems.

Term

Bureau of Automotive Repair

This is a government office that helps people with car repair issues. If someone feels they were treated unfairly by a repair shop, they can report it to this agency for help.

Part

starter motor

This is a part of the car that helps start the engine. If it doesn't work properly, the car might not start at all.

Term

battery terminal cleaning

This is when you clean the parts of the battery where the cables connect. Keeping them clean helps the car start better and keeps the battery working longer.

Term

flat rate tech

A flat rate tech is someone who gets paid a fixed amount for each repair they do, instead of being paid by the hour. This means they can earn more money if they work quickly.

Part

headlight bulb

A headlight bulb is the light that helps you see when driving at night. Sometimes, changing it can be tricky and may require taking off other parts of the car.

Part

taillight bulb

A taillight bulb is the light at the back of a car that shows when the car is stopping or turning. Changing it can sometimes be complicated depending on the car.

LIVE

And if you do it wrong for 30 years, you're going to learn 5% of what you needed to. Whereas if you spend the time doing the training, reading service information, watching Chuck Engine Chuck— and that's the thing, be on your phone, sure, but instead of watching freaking Lady Gaga or something, shift it towards something that does have some benefit and some value to your life, right?

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back to another exciting episode of the Jaded Mechanic Podcast. It is a snowy cold Sunday morning and I'm sitting here with a new friend of mine, but he's been in the spotlight a lot in the last week or so. He was on my brother Lucas's podcast just a couple days ago and he's going to be going live on Facebook very soon with a kind of a training webinar that everybody should tune into if they can. I don't know if this episode will drop before then, so this is kind of people that hear it and want to go back and find it could certainly listen. But enough of me rambling. Um, Josh Whitman, how are you today, buddy?

I'm good, I'm good. How are you doing?

Very good, man.

Very— a lot warmer than you, honestly.

You're located where now?

Uh, in Southern California, uh, like Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana. It's about an hour and a half east of LA.

So nice, very cool. Yeah, and you're flying out in a couple— a very short period of time to go to Detroit to, uh, to film some content for Garage Gurus and, uh, you know, all that.

Yeah. Yeah.

How long is that flight?

Well, I fly out of Ontario, um, California, not Canada, and so there's a layover. So I gotta lay over in Atlanta, and then I'll fly from Atlanta to Detroit. So I, I leave here at, you know, almost 1 PM, and I land in Detroit at midnight. So it'll take most of the day.

That's a long day, bro.

Yeah, you just lose the time going east, but then You know, it's gonna be a crazy week. I, I teach in Sacramento Thursday night, so I wake up in Detroit Thursday morning and then fly back to Sac to teach there. But I get my time back, so I leave at like 8 AM and land at noon. Yeah, so as long as I don't have any delays or missed flights, I'll be there Thursday night teaching.

I'll keep my fingers crossed for you. That's always what trips me up on the, on the SEMA, um, flight every year. That's how long that is, right? Like, it's because, I mean, flying to North Carolina now is no big deal for me, but flying to Vegas is still like, holy jump, that's a long day in the plane, right? And it's not super, but when you think about like, because I'm losing 2 hours, right, and then I'm gaining 2 hours coming back, that's what it just, you know, you leave there. The one morning I left there and it was like just, you know, early, and then I'm still landing in— I land in Syracuse, New York, and it's like dark. And I'm like, frick. But the whole airplane time, I was only in the air like 6 hours. Yeah, but you missed the whole day, it feels like.

So, oh yeah, for sure. And then if you're flying to Canada, because I've taught in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and Regina— you guys got some crazy names up there, by the way— but, you know, uh, taught up there, and it's like, okay, now it's gonna be 3 flights because you can only fly into certain Canadian airports as an international traveler. So it's like you can fly into Salt Lake, then to Calgary, and then to Saskatoon or whatever.

So yeah, I've never, never been to Saskatoon, but it's on the bucket list. But they're, they're awesome folks there from the people that I've talked to. But they're, you know, it— Canada is so varied, just like the states, in terms of personalities and culture and stuff. It's pretty cool. So Josh, kind of give us, you know, the real synopsis of, um, real short Coles notes of, you know, what you do for Garage Gurus and how long you've been there, and then kind of kick us off what started this little thing that we're going to do together.

Yeah, absolutely. I've been, um, a full-time instructor with Garage Gurus for, again, probably 2 and a half years now, something like that. Yeah. Um, you know, joined the team as a trainer. Um, was lucky enough to meet them through an automotive competition, so kind of already had that relationship and saw them at SEMA— I mean, not SEMA, Vision and the different conferences and stuff. I guess SEMA too, but, you know, started training full-time. Um, our, our goal in terms of class count per year is 105. So 105 classes per year is kind of the, the target.

Um, and then, you know, just the way it works is you're going to typically teach class like Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday night. And so Monday and Friday are kind of designed to be travel days, get to where you're going and get back. And so when you kind of do the math, uh, you know, it turns into 35 to 40 weeks a year of, of teaching, you know. And so the remaining time is kind of spent, or supposed to be spent, you know, kind of fine-tuning your craft and learning more and making content, you know, if you have a case study or something to do like that. So, um, you know, it's different being a full-time instructor. Your job is to learn now, you know. Your job is to learn, no longer fix cars to an extent, right? The more you can keep fixing cars at the forefront of your mind while teaching, the better you'll do. But it's not the same thing anymore because, you know, in the shop, if I fix the car, hell yeah, brother, get that bitch out of here and get the next one in.

That's all that matters, you know. From an instructor standpoint, it's more of the why, why, why. So, you know, why did I fix it? How did I fix it? How does the system operate? You know what I mean? And it's incredible. We've talked about all the time, but It's incredible how much you do learn if you have the extra time to actually rifle through service information even though you've already fixed the car.

It polishes your process too, I think. I think back to some of the cars, the really neat diag that I've done. And I was talking with a guy this morning, he goes, well, you don't even fix cars anymore. And Brian Pawlik and I seem to get that lobbed at us all the time. The bigger your podcast gets, the dumber you must be from a repair standpoint. Not saying that anybody listen. Podcasters are not dumb. I don't want to put that out there.

So when I think about some of the stuff that I had that was really cool, but I never got a chance to go back and stage the car again, show my process, screenshots, video of what the scan tool was doing, what the car was doing. And I think back now and it was like, man, the money I would give to have just those cars back, just enough to be able to put some content out just to validate myself, but to show people that it's like, wow, that's something really neat. Because we all see things, but like, these are cars that I still haven't seen come in on other people's platforms with the same exact complaints. Like, there was a Mazda with a shorted wiring to the EVAP system way in the back connector, pass-through, and it was all corroded and everything. And it was, it was like transmission would shift erratic, like, you know, everything. ABS would come on, like, it was just It was mind-blowing what this one little pass-through connector was doing to this whole car. I'd never seen anything like that. And I thought that would have been really neat to share.

But of course, same thing. It was already behind schedule by a couple hours and I had to go. And I was not the place where I could say, listen, this is really cool. Like, I would like to record this and share. Now I'm much more fortunate that I'm at a place where if I needed to, I could put it outside, bring it back in, stage it over again. I'd be so fortunate. You talk about you. Did some mobile diag and repair for a while, and, and that was helping you do some case studies and stuff like that.

And you still do that, do you not?

Yeah, I still do. And so that's kind of how my position has changed a little bit, um, this past year. They, you know, kind of gave me one of those classic, uh, promotions with no raise kind of thing. Just so you know, that does not end in the training world. Just kidding. I'm very fortunate for my job and I appreciate it, but, you know, gotta throw that in there. Um, so I, I was— I do the mobile work, right? I mean, it's— at the end of the day, it's expensive as hell in Southern California. You gotta have something going on both ends, you know? So do— I was doing a lot of the mobile work, and, um, I was still very closely tied to the shop that my, my family sold.

I'd go and visit them, and, you know, because a lot of those people are my family. The front office staff I'd known for, you know, literally, I mean, 20 years. So still go visit and say And, hi. um, and if they ever have been anything interesting, I would grab case studies out of it. Well, I made probably like 25 roughly case studies over the previous year, um, which is obviously quite a bit, you know, ranging everything from simple steering and suspension to your complicated network communication, electrical gremlins, all that kind of thing. And so they, you know, previously it's, it's hard for a training company to acquire these case studies. And, you know, and then we don't always think about that, but I'll tell you, a lot of these training companies are paying for them from some of the bigger names in the industry, and that gets pretty expensive, you know. Um, so the value that I was bringing to the team through the case studies, um, you know, got appreciated.

So now I'm basically half trainer, half content and curriculum development, so making new classes and, you know, continuing with all the the mobile work because for one, it's like I said, good money. But secondly, you know, it allows me to see what's new. I've— my best customers are probably a lot of other mobile guys' worst customers because my best customers are the used car lots and they're the wholesalers. So their business model is a little bit different. They have a physical car lot, but they buy 60 to 70 cars a week as is from the auction. Fix them and then sell them back at the auction with a warranty. So they're just doing high volume, lower margins because, you know, they're selling it back at the auction to the next wholesaler or dealer or whatever, you know. So, you know, some of the cars on their lot, they've been there for over 3 years and had multiple mobile techs look at them, you know.

And any other mobile tech is going to sit there and look at that and say, hell no, you know, because it's already a problem car. Now I've had a couple other guys in with their hands in it who may or may not know what they're doing, you know, and, and what am I going to charge for this, how long it's going to take me, and how much am I going to make. It's never going to be worth it, right?

Yeah. And Check Engine Chuck, he kind of says the same thing. Like, he's finding now that like once he's gotten his reputation out there and people know him, they know how competent he is and his like dogged determination to fix the car, that they've become his best customers, you know what I mean? Like, it's a situation of it's just open, transparent communication. That's the key to everything, right? And saying like, listen, I can get get to the bottom of this, but it's not going to be cheap, and it's not going to be overnight. I think that's the— you see it, Josh, where people, you know, blow up the comments online about how techs couldn't fix this and techs couldn't fix that. And then we talk about sometimes— and I'm not throwing shade— but the mobile guys sometimes, like, that car can be sitting there and it's not owned by anybody except for the lot, right? So you can kind of pick away at it as a, you know, when you get struck with some motivation, you get struck with some inspiration, or, you know, a part comes in, you can go and and pick up where you left off and see it through. Whereas, you know what that's like. You grew up in this.

When the car's sitting in the bay and it's Wednesday and they thought it'd be something simple, a battery, and it's not cranking still by next Wednesday, people start to really get stressed. And I've said that so many times. We're all very much good, I think, at what we do. It's just the different situations play into how we navigate that, right? Yeah.

No, absolutely. Yeah, so luckily those car dealers are doing so much volume that I can go there. I typically go there in the morning, unload the van, and I'm just going to work from sunup till sundown, one car after another, you know. So it's great for me. It doesn't get more efficient than that. I'm not traveling from one location to the next, you know. We're doing ADOS stuff, which— ADOS, if you're not doing ADOS, you know, just start. Just say that right now, just start.

There's not a single there's not a single good reason not to do ADAS. And I, and I teach ADAS classes, and so I asked the guys in all the class, you know, why aren't you doing it? And you could probably guess, right? Space and cost. Well, expense. Yeah, they're both— that's both BS because you can get your, you know, scan tool ADAS subscription for $1,000 and start doing all your dynamic calibrations now with— obviously there's no space required, it's the road. You know?

Yeah.

And space, I mean, half the time you're doing front cameras and radars, you know, Honda, they like 7 meters in front of the camera. That's a lot of space. But most of these vehicles you could pull in right past your 2-post lift, even put up your static targets at the front of the bay and still have enough space to perform these calibrations, you know. So, but it's a great opportunity because it comes in with, you know, lights on the dash. Of a system they're not familiar with. So now it turns into diag. You know, half the time it's going to need a radar or a camera, so that's half the time going to turn into programming. And then they're all going to need the calibration afterwards.

So now that one call, that one job, turns into 3 ticket items. And I'm not going to charge full price for all 3 of those items, but it's going to turn into a nice juicy ticket, you know, and typically nice clean work. So you can't beat that.

You knock out 2 or 3 in a day, you're, you're not laughing, right? You've done well for yourself. That's awesome. So we kind of had a post that kind of led to this discussion that we're having, and somebody was talking about how all these hours that they would have to spend to go in and do some swapgnostics. And you saw some people really take this person to task, and it kind of got a little heated and strong opinions on both sides, as there always is. And you kind of said, well, wait a minute here. This is not a situation of somebody with is with malice. They just don't know. So kind of let me know, let us know, what— how did that tug at you, and why did you feel like this was the first step?

Well, first of all, I was actually out doing mobile work while I was seeing those Facebook comments. I really— I told Lucas, I try not to comment because, you know, I'm trying not— try not to be that guy who, you know, riles the shit up and, and aggravates anybody or is confrontational. Yeah, there's enough of that already. So I try not to say anything, but I was busy and frustrated from the car I was working on, of course. And so I just had less patience and I commented on there basically saying like, you guys are a bunch of trolls, you know, you're being basically mean to no benefit. You're all just trying to measure your own PPs kind of thing. And, you know, it's tough. The Facebook groups and the forums and everything, they're great.

They're absolutely awesome. You know, there's tons of extremely qualified techs in there who are very good at what they do. But it's an echo chamber, you know, it's an echo chamber. And I'm sorry to tell you guys, the industry is probably significantly worse off than you think. And I don't mean to be negative about that, but when you actually start to do work for all these small shops, you know, you start to see kind of how bad it really is. And again, it's not typically because of a lack of effort or a lack of desire to fix the car or do a good job. It's just purely, you know, ignorance is bliss. You don't know what you don't know, right?

100%.

They're all in their small little echo chambers as well, you know. And so, uh, they're learning from the guy next to them who had no formal training or experience, right? You, you guys have the Red Seal program. So when I teach in Canada, yeah, I would say there's definitely a higher baseline knowledge, especially for the, the younger guys and, and, you know, your— and the newer guys, because a lot of them have had at least some 6 months, right, the first year of that training. Yeah, to know what Ohm's law is, right, to, to know your basic stuff, set the groundwork, you know. And then they could, even if they don't continue to the 4-year program, they can get the rest of the hands-on experience and become, you know, pretty competent, you know. Whereas here it's just like Yo, we've got 40 million broken cars in Southern California and we got like 12 guys to fix them. So everybody else show up with a crescent wrench and a shopping cart and that's your toolbox and you're, you know, you're good to go. So it's just, you know, it's just you don't know what you don't know.

And until somebody— it's crazy— shows you, you're never gonna figure that stuff out on your own.

So, and I, I love my program up here, not because it's a fix-all, it doesn't fix it all, not even close, but it's very hard when, when I sit down with a— say I'm coaching an apprentice or, you know, a licensed technician that's younger in the trade or something, they can't really say to me too often, I've never heard of this, or I've never heard of that, because it was part of the curriculum, right? And it was part of their— there was tests, there was questions on the final test, the CFQ, that you had to have been exposed to. So you can't say I've never been, right? It's like Lucas's conversation about how the other night with, you know, compression unions and stuff on brake lines. Like, we all up here, we just know that that's not allowed. It's not okay. You just don't do it because it's, it's literally in our teachings when you go and go through. Whereas, and I hate to say it, you know, everywhere else is the wild, wild west. But it is because if it's like, if you can sit down and say with somebody, okay, a car doesn't crank, what would be your first thing you would do? And somebody would put their hand up and say, oh, I would check the battery out. That's a good answer.

It's a logical, sensible answer. But then we never go further into like, okay, what does that actually look like to test the battery? Are you, you know, are you putting a lab scope? Are you doing like, what are you doing? We just go, great, you're hired. You know, the first step. And then we turn them loose out in the industry, right? It's not working. And that's where I feel like training, everybody says, oh, everybody just needs training. They're right. But what does that look like, especially for people that are trying to train themselves? Where they're working in a place that doesn't have a training budget, is just trying to get better. You know, that's the trick.

Absolutely. You know, and so that's— and it's— it kind of sucks, right, for those of us who are good. And I'm not saying I'm great, that's not my position, but the great technicians, right, your top 1%, the people who are at Vision, the people on this Facebook page, everybody like that. It's unfortunate because You're already there, right? You're already there. So in all reality, if I'm gonna spend weeks, months, however long building a class and designing a class, who should I cater it to? The 1% who's gonna maybe take away 1% of what I've got to say, you know, or the general masses, right, who, who we teach a lot of our field clinics and our classes to? Right. Talk about change and making a change. Yeah. Show the guys who have no business talking about pressure transducers that it exists.

Right. Get them up to speed. It's like bang for your buck, right? It's the same idea. You know, who am I going to put my effort towards? Well, yeah, the 1%, they need training, right? You need to stay on top of your game. But most of what you're going to gain as a 1%er is going to be from struggling, learning yourself, hands-on service information., you know, and your vision classes here and there, right? Yeah. But in reality, it's the guys that don't know that will make the biggest difference to our industry, you know. And so, yeah, you know, to an extent it's not only training, but it's just awareness that all this information exists, right? You know.

Yeah. And I've sat in some pretty advanced classes and seen where— and I'll say this with no, again, no disrespect to anybody. Sometimes when we take on the— you talk about pressure transducer class, A lot of the times, the 1% that's there that doesn't even really— is not going to get much out of it, just maybe a little bit, it can even become an echo chamber or a challenge of, oh, well, you know, it becomes a mismatch. How do I say it? A very heated conversation within the course class about how they do it versus the instructor does it. And there's nothing drives the train off the tracks faster than that, right? Because the person that's sitting in the back that is like, never maybe put a pressure transducer on a car before, all of a sudden is getting completely overwhelmed with these different opinions and different methods. Who, let's be real, the second method and opinion is good input, but it's not the time for it, right? The instructor is up there with their method, their process, their task with teaching it, and that's good. We have the conversation. But man, like, sometimes it's overwhelming for the people.

I sit there sometimes and I look and you can see it. You see them losing it, right? Because it's like, what's happening here? That's where I feel like the echo chamber for the 1% is, is something that we kind of have to rein back in, or, you know, have our church manners, I guess, when we're in some of these classes, because it just drives it right off the track.

You know, that same front, you know, when you build a pressure transducer class, I think it's very easy to assume that since it's such a high-level course, a lot of other people that you're going to be teaching it to I already know what you're talking about, you know. I mean, I teach scope classes, intro to scope, advanced scope, all kinds of classes. And, you know, even now, you know, you, you, every class, every class almost, you'll have somebody in the back, maybe 2 hours in, once they're comfortable enough, will say, hey, what's back probing? You know, and it's like, I mean, it's a valid question, you know. It, I mean, if you've never done it before and you've been again in your echo chamber shop of power probes, power probes and no multimeters. Well, those power probes all come with the piercing wire, so they're not back probing anything. They're sitting there piercing holes and wires, and hopefully more so where I live because there's no corrosion, you know. So it's not— I mean, in all honesty, it really doesn't, um, have any long-term effects if you do open up that circuit, you know, whereas you would be end of the world type stuff. So, you know, that's the type of questions that they're asking.

They just don't know, you know. And, and if you can approach it with a little bit of compassion, right? Instead of calling them stupid or laughing at them or whatever, because then they're shutting down. They're never going to ask another question in their life, right? But if you can pique their interest, guide them— it's not our job as an instructor to really be a motivator, but at the end of the day it is, right? At the end of the day it is, because everything I'm talking about in this class completely depends on how I pitch it to you. If I can— if I pitch it to you like, oh, all this stuff, man, it sucks, it's boring, it's a pain in the ass. They're not going to try any of it, right? But if you present it to them like, hey man, this is the greatest thing since sliced bread, you know, this will absolutely change your life. And a lot of this stuff will absolutely change their lives, you know, and you expose them to it. And I always talk about that stupid, uh, report you get at the end of the week on your time you've spent on your phone, man, that's depressing, you know, because Oh man, yeah, I mean, we'll just say yours is more work stuff, right? But you know, you get 3 hours a day of your— on that report. Okay, start to do the math.

You know, mechanics, technicians typically aren't great at math, right? We're hands-on visual learners. But we could do that math. 3 times 7 is 21 hours a week, times 4, we're up to 80+ hours a week. I tell the guys, you know, how much better would you be if you spent 30 minutes a day, every other day, 30 minutes just reading, watching, learning something, you know, and then, you know, sometimes you'll start to see those bells and those lights go off in their head like, holy shit, you know, and when I was first starting training, you know, I'm younger, of course, when I first started training, I was 29, right? And so I reasonably, I think, had a little bit of fear and nervousness to go in front of some of these classrooms in which, you know, the guys rightfully so can tell me that they've been doing this longer than I've been alive, you know. And I get that there is some to that, but it quickly turned into, I don't give a crap, you've been doing it wrong for 30 years, you know. And if you do it wrong for 30 years, you're going to learn 5% of what you needed to. Whereas if you spend the time doing the training, reading service information, watching Chuck Engine Chuck— I mean, and that's the thing, be on your phone, sure, but instead of watching freaking Lady Gaga or something, shift it towards something that does have some benefit and some value to your life. Right?

I always have, most of the time it's either an automotive-based podcast running or I'll throw on like a Pine Hollow playlist or an Erika Seth Maine, Paul Danner, and it's just playing on loop all the time in my background. Because I'm an osmosis kind of guy, right? I can hear things and I mean, let's be real, most of those three guys, there isn't anything that they've put out that I haven't seen yet. I've been glued to them for so long. But it's so powerful when something just catches your attention and you stop for a second and you go, "What?" And you back up and you grasp that concept right then when it's fresh and you put it in your brain and you go, "Wow, that was really neat." And other things are, "Yeah, he's putting a control arm in or something like that." But when they show a glitch in data or they show a scope capture that all of a sudden sets off a light bulb and you go, "Now I understand." understand this concept. That's why I believe, like, yes, I can't stand to listen to the radio anymore, and it's not because I don't enjoy music— I do— but it's like, you can listen to the same 20 songs every day, or your same playlist every day, or you can choose to have this information that you're using every day around your brain, going in and out all the time, learning by osmosis. I challenge everybody, do that, man. The music will still be there. Put it on when you're driving home, you know, want to unplug.

But if you need something in your— some of us do, right, in our headphones while we're working— put that stuff on, you know. Yeah, that's how you learn.

Absolutely. You know, and yeah, yeah, there's so much to it. I mean, and, and the joy of doing this mobile stuff, you know, knowing what I know, is that you could actually learn from your accidents, right? You know, you, you accidentally do something, and, and I'll just use this as an example. I just had a Tahoe you know, I was chasing down a no communication issue and it was to a single module. And, uh, you know, of course I do my basic checks— check power, ground, right? Check power, ground, and comms. Well, then I'm messing around and, uh, I kind of somewhat accidentally discovered one of my favorite ways to check network and circuit integrity now, which is, you know, short the network wire to ground at the module, you know. And if it does— if you short it to ground, what should happen? The rest of them, the network should lose communication as well, you know. And if it doesn't, well, boom, you just found, you know, in the simplest, easiest, nitty-gritty way, essentially probably an open, right, you know, between your point of testing and the splice pack or the next module, whatever the case may be.

So, you know, that, that's the little nuggets that you kind of pick up along the way, and you get to drop those into a class, you know, and Maybe somebody's heard it, maybe, maybe not, you know. But again, if it can pique their interest and they can now find some motivation to better themselves and become a better technician, it can happen quick, you know. It can happen quick.

Yeah, for me, what was really powerful was when I learned that when I had gone to the point of accessing something, trying to be able to do multiple tests when I'm at that particular point, you know what I mean? If there's, like you said, that little tip that shows me something right when I'm there instead of having to now maybe, oh crap, I'm at the easiest accessible module and yet the splice pack is somewhere over here. So I'm not saying you go to the splice pack first, but we know the known offenders for modules, right? So you might go for a parasitic drain or something. You might go to that one first as an example instead of accessing the splice pack. Or maybe it's already been apart and it's there. You know what I mean? Like you walk to this, right? Do you see this? But if I can learn a couple tests to do before I go on to the next one at that point, for me, that was crucial in speeding up my discoveries sometimes of what I found. And I'll be the first to admit, up here, we talk about how differences in people are taught. You see all the experts and stuff say, "Don't ever unplug something to look at. You might have fixed it." Well, yet up here for me, So much a situation of corrosion and pin fit is another one, but corrosion especially.

There are so many times that I can test right up to that back probe and everything and it looks good, but what I'm needing to turn on still doesn't turn on. And then I just unplug that. It's become a bad habit of mine to unplug and look. And then I do my testing non-intrusively at the front, don't spread the pins and all that. But then I talk to other people and they're like, oh man, as soon as I touched it, everything started to work. Well, if you can slow down and back up and think for a minute what you did, you probably we found your problem, right? But you have to be— I can understand why they teach it that way, but man, I would have missed some Diags in my life if I wasn't taught by the first person that taught me to like unplug and look at it, you know, just the way it is.

Absolutely. That's why we talk about like a diagnostic strategy and a diagnostic process, you know. And I cannot sit here and tell you what yours should be, right? Because you live in a different area, you work on different cars. You know, we here in California don't have no rust. You know, we're doing 5-gas emissions testing all the way back to 1975. Like, you know, we're not working on the same thing. So our strategy and our process shouldn't look different. When I'm going and doing mobile work from the auction, my process is not the same.

Why? Because there's a 50% chance some dickhead ripped a wire out to get a light on the dash to buy it for cheaper or whatever, you know, whatever the case happens. So a visual inspection there is far more valuable than a random customer that comes into your bay. Hey, so whenever I'm teaching these classes, I tell the guys, look, you have your diagnostic process. It could be better, probably, maybe, maybe not, right? The only thing I want you guys to do is to write your process down, right? Because, okay, I have mine, sure, right? You have yours, write yours down, because I guarantee that over time you will inevitably make yours more efficient based off of your mistakes if you have it written down and you can reflect on the mistakes you made and then go adjust your process to to find that mistake or, you know, not skip it next time. So that's, you know, and because you can't approach every single car the same way, there's, you know, you have to leave space for instincts in your diagnostic process. And that's what talking about that connector is, you know, and, and all these different kind of known areas. And, you know, it's like, I, I can't follow a pinpoint test, right? That's too long. It takes too long.

And if a pinpoint test would have found the problem they wouldn't have called me here, right? You know, they would have called— they probably would have figured it out themselves if check and resistance from point A to point B would have found your problem, you know? So yeah, yeah, man, there's a lot to it. We could talk all day, I think.

Now kind of give us, without laying it all out, kind of give me some basic, you know, you can take anywhere, apply anywhere type steps to most processes that a young person should learn. So like, for instance, you say the first thing you should be like, everybody should be talking about is like look for updates, look for TSBs. Like, that's just one. But where, where does it go from there, Josh? What's a good number 2 in the process for young people?

Yeah, well, I think first and foremost, you got to do the test drive, right? And, and again, if you ask in a class who test drives the vehicle every time before they, you know, pull it in, every single person says, yeah, yeah, me too. Yeah. It's like, okay, my ass, right? I've been there at 4 p.m. You know, shop closes at 5 and it's an EVAP light. Eh, screw it, it'll be fine. You know what I mean? It's not gonna be drivability concern. Yeah, right. But then what happens when you fix the EVAP leak and then you go finally test drive and now there's a clunk or a rattle or something weird? Was that there? Is it something that I caused? Right.

So test drive first and foremost. I think obviously we're going to pull it in, do a code scan, you know. And then again, at this point, kind of depends on your experience a little bit, right? You know, if you don't have a lot of experience, do the code scan, go jump over to the computer and research, you know, set criteria. I don't even care. Go on Identi-Guess, right? Just kidding. Go on Identi-Guess and see what the confirmed and common fixes are. It doesn't mean we just shotgun the top 2 recommended repairs, right? Right. But it's a tool.

That's information of 1,000 other guys saying that that ground strap on the back of that cylinder head comes loose and causes this problem. You know, how long would it take me to find that the other way? So there's no problem with Identifix. Research everything, look for the TSBs, right? Then come back with some sort of game plan to look at live data to really find a relationship in the live data toward— to point you towards a single pinpoint test. Now, if you have experience, you know, and it's another lean code or a mass airflow sensor code or whatever, I don't know, I'm personally not going to go jump over to service information right away. Right? I'm going to pull the codes, I'm going to look at whatever it is, freeze frame if it's not acting up right now, you know, um, Mode 6. Mode 6 is another huge and valuable tool, right? And it hits a little closer to home over here because we have emissions. So it's like, dude, it's in— it's invaluable, right? But Mode 6 is amazing. Then look at your live data, you know, high-level indicators, and see if you you can, know, pick out a you relationship, know.

And I always use just a lean code as an example because we see it all the time. Right? I'd get fired from the family shop and go work in a chain store, and I would be getting all these diag thrown my way. I already said I wasn't qualified to do them. I was doing the best I could and just struggling along. So I'd get a lean code, you know, and I had enough background to where I know what can cause a lean you code, know, weak fuel pump, vacuum leaks, pressure regulators, mass airflow sensor, you know, whatever, right? And so I would get the code and then go straight to under the hood and start testing whatever one was easy to do and get to first, right? So I you always, know, make the joke I had a, you know, a holster of mass airflow sensor cleaner because every damn lean code and every drivability concern, I'm just cleaning the mass airflow sensor hoping that that fixes it because it's easy to do. And I didn't want to do a vacuum, you know, a smoke test or a fuel pressure test, right?

Yeah.

Well, with some knowledge and experience and training, ultimately, you know, you start to look at your fuel trim at idle versus load and determine, okay, it's lean at idle, not at load, you know, vacuum leak, or it's only really late under acceleration and load, probably fuel delivery, right? So that's the type of thing where you can't say one diagnostic process is going to fit all. You can't, you know.

And I can still remember— this is so funny— I can still remember the first kind of fuel pump problem that led me down that path of using, you know, data to confirm it without having to hook a pressure gauge up or anything like that, because it was a— it was an early '90s OBD1 GM that had been in the shop the week before for just a run rough complaint. That was it. No codes, no nothing. And the, the senior guy had chucked the tune-up parts at it, right? And they didn't fix it. So now they're coming back, and they had warned her, hey, you could be into a $300 mass air. And they give it to me, and I like— I'm sitting there, and it's like— and I'm not very good on the older block learn type stuff, right? 'Cause I mean, it's older than me. So from my experience level, so I'm sitting there and I'm like watching the oxygen sensor under wide open throttle and it's like dropping to 0.5. And I'm like, oh, that's weird.

That shouldn't do that, right? And I mean, and immediately come back and then just do the pressure test in the bay to show that like, hey, it's there when I crank it up and start it. But as soon as I try to throttle, that pressure goes away. Everybody in the shop was like, well, it can't be a fuel pump. She's never had a no-start complaint.

Yeah.

And I remember that was the light bulb moment for me that went, wait a minute here, you can never assume and say it can't be this because of that. And that was so empowering for me to just— one basic data PID was enough to, to condemn a car inside of 30 minutes that a senior technician that had 30 years more experience than me got tripped up on.

That should be his bread and butter. Come on, GM fuel pumps, OBD1, come on, man.

You know, yeah, but you know, it's one of those where's our strengths lie, where's our motivation lie. That was what that was for me, right, was, you know. So what, um, so you talk about Mode 6, and again, that's a lot that like I still feel like it's not addressed and talked taught enough to the younger people coming in because I've seen so many cases of where a car's not doing it right now, you're chasing intermits, but it's the key to unlocking it. What else for the young people do— because I tell everybody as an example, I look at Freeze Frame and I look at the code and I look at comments and stuff and then I go, obviously I drive the car. But I mean, it's one of them things where it's principles in my DIAG that I've been taught have been like that freeze frame. Another one is like loaded circuit checks. It's always for me is a loaded circuit check. Always, always, always.

It doesn't mean anything unless it's been proven that method. What's some other things like that that you see them when you have a young person or inexperienced in your classes? Where are some of the things that they seem to be missing?

Well, I think a huge one is voltage drop, right? And it's kind of on the same topic of, you know, loading a circuit. Right. But voltage drop is massive. And it's not— again, it's not even necessarily technicians' fault. Right. Whose fault is it? Well, we'll just blame the manufacturers because it's easier that way. Right. They're not here to defend themselves.

Well, the damn pinpoint tests for the past 50 years have been checking for resistance. So you have a younger guy who is motivated and trying his best and reading material from the OE, doing it exactly how the OE says, which is to check for resistance. And obviously, you know, there's a million different flaws with checking for resistance. You know, is there a time and a place? Sure, absolutely, right? But it's flawed, right? And so luckily, I was just starting to do some actual, um, some videos and, um, whatnot on a brand new Wagoneer, and, um, Yeah, as long as I don't got to own it or work on it, it's a phenomenal rental car, right? Uh, you know, but we were— we had the new PP Draw, which is again Power Probe, you know, figure it out, right? Figure it out, right? Pick a different name. Okay, PP Draw, kidding me? I gotta talk about PP Draw in class and tell them how good it is? Yeah, thanks for that. So, you know, but I'm trying to do this, use this tool on this brand new Wagoneer to showcase the tool and then showing an example. And, you know, you connect the tool to the OBD2 port and then you disconnect the 12-volt battery, and my draw is at 0 milliamps. And it's like, okay, wait a minute, that's too good to be true, right? There's a problem here.

Well, real. that's The auxiliary battery is still supplying all the load to the, to the, to the necessary loads, right? But it wasn't until I went into service information, I'm just looking at everything, looking through everything. And I finally actually found Chrysler is using voltage drop testing now. So they're talking about checking from, you know, battery voltage to, uh, the little splice for the auxiliary battery and whatnot, and checking to make sure that it's 0.2 volts or less, or, you know, whatever their spec was. I think it was 0.2, but, you know, regardless. Yeah, you know, it's starting to shift towards voltage drop and scope testing at the OE level, which is awesome because that will ultimately improve the industry, right? Because how many guys have at least started at the dealer, they went to UTI, they went to the dealer for a couple of years, maybe got some early training there and then left, right? Or if you're using the pinpoint test and you're exposed to that, but voltage drop is huge. I mean, I can't speak on it enough. I always tell everybody, remove your opinion.

Shops don't pay me for my opinion. I mean, they kind of do, right? But I try to keep my opinion out of it. Right. Same with your customers. You talk about not wanting to pay diagnostic fees and this whole dilemma that we're talking about and the cost of repairs and getting turned down and all this. It's the perceived value. It's not the dollar amount. It's the perceived value.

Right. And remove my opinion from the matter. In other words, this car comes in and I'm doing an inspection on it for an oil change and the battery terminals are corroded. That's bad, man. And that's my opinion. And I'm absolutely right. That is bad. Right.

But what happens when the customer declines the service and goes back home? And I always use the example of the crackhead uncle because everybody has one. Half the time we are that uncle in this industry, right? They go to their family gathering, talk to their brothers, mother, sister, and they say, oh my gosh, $29, they are trying to rip you off. Come over here and I'll pour a can of Coke on it and we'll be good to go. Right. And that customer, rightfully so, because somebody they trust and somebody that cares about them told them that I was ripping them off. So they come back at the next service or before the next service and try to cause a storm and, you know, start shit and say, you know, well, you told me something I didn't need. You're just trying to rip me off. As opposed to, yeah, ma'am, you know, you got 0.25 volts of voltage drop from post to terminal.

It's failed that test and we need to clean your battery. Right. First of all, it sounds 10 times better. Secondly, if they do decline it and go somewhere else and then come back, no, no, no, no, this isn't my opinion. This is the fact of the matter. This is the test I performed. Right. And it's even worse here in California.

We have the Bureau of Automotive Repair. So if a customer is upset, you know, they go home, whatever. There's a government agency specifically for auto repair in which they can complain to. And then a dude with a suit and tie shows up at our shop asking for the last 3 weeks of invoices and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, it's even worse if you're a AAA shop. If you're a AAA shop, you sign a 100% satisfaction agreement, meaning you can fix the car perfect, no problems, first try, signed estimates, everything. They pick their car up, leave, complained to AAA, we got to give them their money back. It doesn't happen often by any means, right? But it is that extreme.

And so same thing with that bar agent or that rep comes up, it's no longer, hey, why did you do this? Well, needed it, man. It is bad, right? No, it's here's my testing. And luckily, most of the time, the testing that you did is going to be, you know, 10 feet above their head. So they're not even going to know what you're doing anyways. And so they're not going to have any questions to ask, right? But, you know, that's, that's the type of thing that doing this testing and diagnostics properly can absolutely benefit us, you know.

And that's, that's the beauty of documentation through the photos, right? Even on our DVIs, whatever, like that. Because it's like, you know, not to say that it's wrong, but like, if you tell somebody there's a volt drop, 1 volt, between your battery and your starter, you know, and I've done this whole thing, but it's still cranking to them Maybe they don't even notice it's cranky but slow. But if you have a picture on the top of the battery of it all looks like a science project that you're growing mold on, you know, and corrosion and everything like that, they don't really care about the math number. They just go, well, that probably shouldn't look like that. Now here's where I, you know, struggle with so many people and I talk to, because unfortunately I talk to a lot of people that are not in the industry through the comment threads on whatnot, as you do too. And, you know, So we've made all them aware of all these things that we've seen on DVIs going forward. And all of a sudden, then something shows up on the car and they go, the first 3 things that we tried to sell them last time is what they want to do first. So they come in and they go, I don't want diag.

Those 3 things that you were telling me about, I just want that done now. That's where we tie the noose for ourselves is because we just go, okay, yes. And we do it because we're scared to sell the diag, right? Because it's like, yes, we're not arguing that corrosion is an issue here. We're not. But like, I can hear that starter and know that the Bendix is shot, right? Or I can hear it or I can smell it. You know, corrosion is not going to fix it. That burnt smell in the starter motor area is going to be the fix. You know, that's where we get into— we trip ourselves up.

Josh, how do you navigate that?

Well, first and foremost, you can't let the customer run your shop, right? And that's a tough lesson. Yeah, it's a tough lesson to do, right? But it starts so much earlier than you, the technician or the service advisor or the shop owner, even know. So as I said in the previous podcast with Lucas, you know, we had a— our shop was pretty damn good, right? You know, um, sounded great. So, you know, it starts when the customer calls, you know. And just, just as one example right? Your customer calls and you make them that appointment. Hell yeah, you've got it locked in, right? Okay, well, what's your next question? Did you have a ride or did you need a ride? Right? Because what are my options now? Dropping it off, right? Dropping it off and having my own ride to pick me up, or letting us know that you're going to need a ride home, right? And that's just, again, just one example, right? Because we don't— we can't have waiters. And because now by the time we pull it in, do the inspection, write up an estimate, it's already been 45 minutes and they're expecting you to walk up and tell them that it's ready and time to go home as opposed to, hey, yeah, spend $3,000 on this car right now. Right.

Whereas when they're already home, oh yeah, just take care of it while it's there. And there's so many tiny, tiny little nuances like that that it's just time and it's processes and it's writing it down. You know, doing every single thing the same way every time. Right. So answering the phone, you know, I'm in the shop, but if that phone rings 3 times, I am sprinting to the phone to pick it up. Right. And Enrique next to me, if that phone rings 4 times, he's sprinting to the phone to pick that up. You know, because, oh, it's one missed phone call.

No big deal. Whatever. They're never going to call back ever. Never ever gonna call you back looking for a quote a second time, right? So you just probably lost that job. Well, what if you win that customer over? You know, how many— how much money do these customers spend over the life of their vehicle and at your shop? You know, that one missed phone call now can turn into $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 of lost opportunity, right? You know, no referrals. And then same thing on that, um, whole starter situation. You know, it's, all right, Miss Customer, look, I'm going to work with you. I know we talked about that battery terminal cleaning.

You know, it is very important. It does have to get done. But I'm much more concerned about the way your starter is acting. Let's diagnose this starter, right? Let's make sure that your vehicle is going to continue to get you to work and back for the next whatever, 2, 3 years that you need it. And you know what? I'll take care of that battery terminal cleaning for you today.

Yes, right?

That's not a discount, that's increasing perceived value, right? Same idea with all your stupid headlights and wiper blades. You know, look, I'm a flat rate tech, I've always been a flat rate tech, but I've got no problem at all if you ask— as long as, granted, the headlight doesn't have to come out completely or a bumper doesn't have to come off, right? But I've got no problem whatsoever changing a headlight for free if that means we're going to improve the relationship with our customer, and it's going to ultimately turn into more approved flagged hours for me on that vehicle, right?

Yeah.

So yeah, there's— again, there's, there's so much to it.

I mean, yeah, I always liken the, the wiper blade and the headlight bulb conversation, or a taillight bulb or anything like that. If I was already working on the car, it wasn't a big deal, you know what I mean? Like It was, you know, it was when the advisors, to avoid, you know, a bottleneck, would just send them to the back with no labor.

Yeah, yeah.

And say, I need these. That was never good with me, right? Or, you know, I mean, people joke, it's like, oh, it should only be about $15 to change those headlight bulbs. And I'm looking at it going, do you see some of the— what you have to remove sometimes to get at, you know, some of the Dodges, the trucks, you pull the inner fender, like there's a hole you go through, or, you know, like how many times up here, I'm not going to lay in the snow and crawl underneath your bumper to change your fog light bulb. Like, I'm gonna— if it's a place for an oil change and you want it jabbed in, no problem. But I'm not by itself. Like, if I'm gonna rack it and have to do it because I'm not going to lay in the snow or lay in the wet floor, I— that's worth some time there. I'm You know, sorry. sure.

And.

I can't grasp that. To me, it's like, you got to remember, if it was so freaking easy to do in the driveway, they'd have already done it in the driveway. You know, so don't be afraid to charge a little bit. Don't charge a crazy time. You know, if you can do it in 20 minutes, don't dang them for an hour. But be reasonable. Show some value. You know, that's— yeah.

And all this, it all comes down to, you know, trickle-down effect. Is the owner there? What's the owner doing? And what are the standards he's setting? You know, because unfortunately, humans are going to take the path of least resistance. You know, when we take our— when I teach our service advisor classes, which are more so just designed to teach a service advisor about vehicle systems so they're more knowledgeable about what they are selling. But I've taken a lot of service advisor training, so I kind of go off the script a little bit and try to push some of this other stuff and some of these other ideas, you know. But whether you're on, you know, just that headlight, taillight is an example. Well, screw that. Your front office should know better than to try to bring a customer to the back just to stop you what you're doing to change a headlight bulb for free, you know, unless. Right.

There's always, you know, exceptions. What if the car was just here yesterday? Right. And, you know, we missed that bulb that was out or whatever. So it takes give and take from both techs and the front office, you know, but it all, it all flows downhill. So if that's acceptable to bring a car around the back and ask a technician to stop what he's doing and do a headlight bulb, That's, that's a shop problem, right? Same with all your conversations of flat rate. Oh my gosh, I feel like we need to have a convention and just get the flat rate conversation out and over with once and for all, right? Flat rate is perfectly fine if the shop is doing what they're supposed to do. If the shop is on top of marketing and is on top of bumping up labor hours and getting you those labor hours and everything. Flat rate is phenomenal, right? If it's used as a crutch to lower costs when you're not busy, of course that's terrible.

But here's the solution. Pay me whatever's more, my hourly or my flag time.

Yeah.

Conversation done, right? Conversation done.

Yeah.

So, you know, I worked flat rate my whole life. You know, that's just, you know, kind of my experience, you know, and I don't have no problem with it. You know, I even at our shop was the Diag Tech getting paid flat rate, right? And so I would diagnose everything that came in, keep all the other techs' mouths fed, and once everything was diagnosed and emissions tests were performed and all that kind of thing, you know, then I would start actually R&Ring components and flagging the hours that way, right? And I think the last year I was there, there was 2 weeks across the entire year in which my hourly 40 hours was more than my flag time, you know. And it just comes down to efficiency, you know. I'm building a class right now, Mastering Undercar Systems, and we're talking about, you know, diagnosing some steering, suspension, brake stuff, vibration, right? But it's just talking about even just doing the inspection. You're, you know, you're pulling that car in, you know. In our shop, everybody knows when a car is getting pulled in, right? Why? Well, because when he is pulling that vehicle in, there needs to be somebody there checking lights as he's pulling it in, right? Headlights, taillights, fogs, turn signals, all of it. Right.

Because that's going to take an extra 5 seconds, whatever, as I'm pulling the vehicle in, as opposed to me trying to do it by myself. It's going to take 5 minutes of pedal depressors and walking back and forth and in and out of the car, you know. So, so I get it if you don't have a team, you know, environment, yeah, flat rate's gonna suck a lot worse too. If you don't have a front office that's educated and can sell efficiently and well, yeah, flat rate's gonna suck. You know, if you don't have owners that are putting time and resources into marketing, flat rate's gonna suck, right? But if it's all working as it should, doesn't matter what the pay is, right? And I'm not sure, I haven't unfortunately been able to watch enough of your podcast. I'm not sure if you're like the business owner or what your work life.

Looks like, but I'm not, I'm not a business owner.

But you understand the idea, right? A shop can only pay so much to a technician to stay in business, right? It doesn't matter how I go about paying you that amount as long as you're making what you need to survive and live comfortably, you know.

Yeah, and you see the conversation come up all the time, Josh, and it's like, you know, it's always based on hours. And it's like I've said for years, like, if you pay me $50 an hour and I only produce 30 hours, right, like, from my eyes, that might be really good money, right? Now, from my owner, it might be crap because they're expecting $40, right? But I've always said, like, it's— we technicians think in like, this is the amount that I need to get paid in order to live the lifestyle that I have. I'm living, feed my kids, whatever, pay the alimony. You know, I'm not advocating and say technicians are great money management. We're not. But you know, it always comes down to hours. Oh, I, I gotta flag 100, I gotta flag 100, I gotta flag 100. Well, what does 100 look like? What's the number? And then it's like, or now they're talking end of year, I got, I gotta hit 6 figures, like I gotta hit 150, I gotta hit 180, like, yeah, you know.

And Ryan always reminds me, like, we're talking all over the You know, I'm in Canada, uh, they're talking all over the states. California cost of living is way different than, you know, um, Alabama, Utah, you.

Know what I mean?

Alabama or Georgia or something like that. So it's like, it's, it's not relevant to me when somebody talks about hours. It's like, so what's your— what do you want to get paid per week, per year, whatever? And then, because your hours is just a situation of like, okay, because then the production is a conversation between me and my service writer and my manager, right? Like, what's production look like? Are you running a labor matrix? Are you doing free diag? And by free, I mean like you're not crediting the tech. Are you, are you doing free DVIs all day long? It's all just— I'd rather talk about money than, than the, the hour thing because I'm not a shop owner. But through Lucas's mentorship, I'm— I understand a big part of what goes into it to make it work. And, you know, it's like Sherwood from Royalty talks about, you know, Or the, we used to get 50% of the labor rate. That doesn't work anymore and it can't work anymore and it's entirely impossible. And there's so many people that blow up my feeds.

It's like, I'm not coming back until I do. Well, then you're not coming back because it's just, there's so much more costs to run the business now that if we were all of a sudden say, okay, we're going to pay you what you think you need, which some of them think they need $100 an hour. Like, we'd have to charge $400 an hour door rate to, to be able to pay them that. And then they would be mad because that's only 25% and not 50%, even though they feel like they're making more money than they ever have in their lives. It's— they get fixated on that 50% number. It's, it's a ridiculous conversation. I'm not against flat rate, man. I worked it for years.

I did really well on it, but it was like I had to hustle because of the dayag guy. That's— which I was and am— I had to hustle so much harder to hit that number at the end of the week because we all just like— you get your license, you're paid, you know, $25 an hour, doesn't matter what. And I'd be like, whoa, like I'm doing a lot of diag for 0.6.

Yeah.

And, you know, and he's doing a lot of brake jobs for 1.5.

Exactly.

And I, I would pull the diag and the brake job in at the same time and they would roll out at the same time. Now which one's got more value? Gee, not hard to figure out, right? And that's not even on me or the pay system. It's how the shop is setting it up. So it's not— I'm not over the flat rate conversation, but there's so many more layers to it that just people are not having that conversation. And I don't tell young people anymore, don't work it..

But like, just know what you're getting.

Into if you are going to work. And where does your strengths lie? Like, if you're a, you know, if you're a really top-notch diag tech, you can have to negotiate really well with whoever's going to hire you and have a conversation about like, I might just be 100% efficient, you know, at the end of the week. I get a bunch of diags done and I, and I, I'm here 40 hours and you're able to bill 40 hours. 'But I want this amount of money.' And then the other guy is going to be like, 'I really struggle. I'm just a nuts and bolts kind of guy, and I'm going to produce 60.' Well, should the diag tech be paid less than that 60-hour tech?

No.

In my opinion, no. But I can understand from some shop owners when they say yes, they should. It just depends on what you're trying to do with your business.

Well, if your answer is yes, they should, well then, okay. You're not taking diag in then, right? You need to find your lane and do the steering and suspension maintenance items which don't require a diagnostic tech, you know? Yeah. And you just need to know that and understand that. But yeah, I mean, absolutely comes down to money. We used to, you know, so we were paid flat rate, but on top of that we would get cash bonuses. I don't know if the IRS is listening. Never mind, it's checked. Just kidding.

You know, we get cash bonuses and our first milestone was $30,000 in sales. For the week. So what does that equate to? Well, in a 3-bay shop, that equates to $2,000 per bay per day. Estimated, approved, work completed, car washed, test-driven, parked, and picked up. You know, when you start to think about it like that, you're kind of like, holy shit, $2,000 per bay is a lot. Yeah, we all need to be working with a little bit of, you know, motivation and, uh, you know, some pep in our step and get going, you know, because that was just the beginning, you know. It would get up— I mean, there's some of these weeks we're getting $400 or $500 cash bonuses, you know, because everybody's working together and busting their ass. And, you know, if I got to stay an hour or 2 hours late— I mean, especially time, no kids, no wife, and it's all gravy work lined up— yeah, you bet your ass I'm gonna do that.

Because guess what? Tomorrow morning I'm gonna have to spend some time diagnosing. You know, so it's just, I always was, you know, by the mindset of, yeah, pay me a flat rate. Let me get in there, bust my ass and be done and go home. Right. I don't like to sit here and do nothing, you know, because it's starting to switch, you know, I think flat rate's technically illegal here, at least in California. So they're doing it like minimum wage hourly, and then you'll get whatever, 10, $20, $15 a flag hour after that. So, you know, I work some of the shitty chain stores I was telling you. We'll be sitting there in the off time, slow.

It's like, dude, it's not worth it for me to sit here and make minimum wage. I'd rather just go home, you know. Call me when you got cars here, I'll come in, bust my ass, stay late, whatever I got to do, and make the money then. But again, it doesn't work for everybody, and I understand that, you know, everybody's got their specific situation. But that's the difference.

So when you see a young person in one of your, um, one of your classes— or it doesn't have to be a young person, it could be a new person maybe into that side of the industry. What's some of the things that when you see them right away, do you know that they've got it?

Uh, man, you can just talk to somebody, can't you? Can't you just talk to somebody and tell there's lights on inside versus just a blank stare and going back and asking you the first question you said, you know? So is it— for me, it's— and I kind of talked on this briefly with Lucas, but, you know, we were, uh, our repair shop was a gas It's station. a gas station with 3 bays, and we had cashiers, you know, 18, 19, 20-year-old cashiers. And, uh, one of the guys over there, his name's Enrique, great kid, you know, but fresh out of high school, you know, as whatever— what are we up to, Gen X now or something? You know, as, as Gen X as it gets, you know. And he's sitting there on his phone during a shift trying to buy cryptocurrency and then sell it 10 minutes later and make 40 cents per transaction or whatever the hell he's trying to talk to me about. I didn't pay attention to any of it, you know. Well, we had sprinklers and the sprinklers were broken, and I can tell him how to do the sprinklers, and he would shut up and listen. He would shut up, listen to what I said. If he did have a question, he would ask, but for the most part, he just shut up and listen.

I'm gonna explain it thoroughly enough, and he wasn't afraid to just go over there dig a hole, get dirty, and get the job done. No fuss, right?

Right.

So in reality, that's kind of, you know, all that's needed, right? And it's— a lot of it comes— I just saw a comment, and I think it was actually your buddy Brian Pollock, so don't tell him I said this, and hopefully he doesn't actually watch your podcast. But I saw him comment saying, oh, this and that, the younger generation isn't motivated, motivated by money. BS. BS. Yeah, I felt that way when I thought it was impossible to make enough money to buy a house and have a living, right? Yeah. I'm not motivated by money is my excuse of saying, holy shit, I'm never going to make that much money, so I should shift my focus to life experience, right? You know, but if you give them that clear path and show them, look, this is not hypothetical, this is not made up. You do this and this and this, and you get good at this, and you will be able to make enough to have a living, have a family, have a house, right? That's ultimately, I think, what everybody wants is just a nice life with their own place to live and no drama and, you know, healthy living environment, the possibility of having a family someday. You know, I think these basic human, you know, desires are pretty apparent across all generations, you know, right now.

Yeah, like, they're young, they don't think that they're gonna make enough money, so screw it, I'd rather go to festivals and work a minimum wage job since I'm never going to make any money anyways. Who gives a shit, right?

Get a bunch of tattoos, you know, like, yeah, really, yeah, be a content creator.

Yeah, you know, I was talking about in my passion, you know, you're not passionate about this shit until you're good at right? You know, and that's where my generation was taught that for sure. Oh, just find what you're passionate about and then you'll never work a day in your life. Okay, that may be true, but it's going to be a lot of work to find what you are passionate about. You're not going to think about what you're passionate about just sitting there chilling at your house playing video games, right? Get good at something and you'll be passionate about it.

And there's still situations that come along and suck the passion out. You know what I mean? We've all heard the people say, like, man, I loved fixing cars, but I hated dealing with customers. Or I loved fixing cars, but it frustrates me to deal with service writers. Or I love fixing cars, but I hate this brand of car. That's me, right? I just want to stay away from that whole side. It's not that the passion goes away, it's just the real-life ideal is that some days it's not going to be all passion. It's going to have to be a grind. It's just the way God intended for all of us.

It's what makes you better. It's how you forged in fire, as I guess you would say. And it's not a bad thing. It doesn't mean we lose our passion. If you're situated somewhere where all in all, in all, it's taking your passion away, get out of it. Go away from it. Pivot and move. But if you have one rough day, don't dwell on that.

That's the Do you focus on the cars that you didn't fix? I mean, they teach you lessons, but you don't, you don't get beat up by it, right?

It— And take that's a hard skill to learn. I mean, because especially when you're getting started, you know, when it rains it pours. You know, you have 3 months of whatever, no comebacks, perfect diag, you're living in fairy la-la land. Well, there's going to be a week you're going to show up on Monday morning and you're going to get given your diag or whatever the case may be, and 2 of them immediately are going to be a pain in the ass. Or you think two of them are straightforward and you recommend parts and whatever, and it doesn't fix it. And guess what's going to happen the rest of that week? It's going to be one bullshit car after the next, you know, and you can't let it get to you. And that's where some of these younger guys struggle. And I had mentioned that, you know, this Enrique guy, he'd make a mistake, he'd do something, and he'd be in his own head about it, mad at himself for the rest of the day.

It's like, dude, You gotta let it go. You gotta let it go. You're doing oil changes right now, brother. You're gonna murder yourself when it comes time to start actually diagnosing headache cars and trouble cars, you know. And you got to just— you have to just rely and fall back on your process when it's not going right, right? You can't change everything. You can't lose your confidence, otherwise it's going to spiral worse.

If, if you encounter somebody, Josh, that's got a little bit of an ego, do you think that that's an obstacle for them, or do you kind of see that as like it can be an advantage?

Uh, no, I don't, I don't like it.

I don't— you don't like it?

I don't like it. I mean, well, it depends if it's justified or not, right? If they're actually good, then sure, have your ego. I'll even play into it and tell you I can't believe you fixed that car, whatever the case may be, right? But if it's not justified, then give it a week, give it 2 weeks, and then I'll slowly see you start walking over to me with the work order in your hand You know, humbling yourself on the way, right? You know, so yeah, I mean, it's hard because it's hard to find good techs, right? It's hard to find good techs. And so when you have a good tech come in, you feel like you're handcuffed by them being there. Then you got to do whatever they want to keep them there. In reality, that should be the easiest tech to get rid of and let go because one bad tech who is selfish and isn't a team player, and whatever the case may be, you've experienced these techs. They're drunk half the time, they're not showing up half the time, right? They have 3 baby mamas and 4 kids, whatever, right? That's the tech that's going to ruin your entire shop chemistry, and it's gonna cause more harm than him flagging 100 hours a week will ever help, you know? Yeah. And, and it's unfortunate, and we've seen.

That so We've seen that so much recently in the conversations that pop up. I've seen so many people say, I used to have that tech. He strolled in half an hour late, maybe every day right after payday. He was a no-show because he was hammered, hungover. But he was like, he could outwork and out-hustle everybody when he was here. And it took me 5 years, 10 years, whatever to get rid of them. And you say, I haven't seen one yet where somebody said once they were gone that the whole shop collectively didn't come up. Like a lot of them said, we never even noticed he was gone after because the production just came up to that level.

Because it's, it's like that. You remove that toxic thing and all of a sudden everybody breathes easier, everybody's stress level comes down, everybody feels more inclined to help their guy. Like you said, they open the bay door for us to drive in and they check the lights. Like we, when we pull into that team thinking Everybody lifts everybody. Then it becomes a situation. I worked with a guy, I joked, that everybody hated him and he was put in a role where he thought he was supposed to be the cop of the shop. And now when he finally got fired from that shop because management changed and they realized what a toxic he was, I can still remember seeing him at another shop. I drove by and he was trying to push a truck in by himself.

Because nobody would help him. And he'd only been there one week and he'd already alienated everybody so bad, right? It— you'd have to know the guy. Like, and this was a shop that didn't have bad culture. They would stop, break, and drink break together, like coffee, and, and they even cooked pancakes together. Like, somewhere he had only been there a week and had already alienated himself at such a level where they were enjoying his struggle.

That sucks.

When you have somebody like that that works the game, plays the numbers, and wants to be that cancer, there's no justification for keeping them. Zero. Zero. Zero. No matter how pissed I got with my management, I always was the type that would never watch somebody next to me struggle. You know what I mean? Like, there was just people I didn't talk to.

Yeah.

But they all knew that if they came up to me and said, I'm really stuck here, I would help them. They might get a little gruff and, you know, yeah, sarcasm, but they would get the help. When somebody won't even— you're— it's already, it's already over. Just get them gone, you know? Start tomorrow. Yeah, a new foot. Yeah. What, um, kind of can you share with us a little bit, give us a little teaser about what this course that you're going to put on is going to come?

Yeah, absolutely. So, um, you know, as you could imagine, it's going to be pretty much based off pressure transducer testing. Um, you know, we do, uh, I do obviously do bring up like the pulse sensors and delta sensors, whatever you want to, whatever you want to call them, but most of the testing is, um, using an actual transducer. So I mean, it's honestly meant to be pretty be, you know, all-inclusive, so to speak. So we start off, you know, with the tooling options. Of course, kind of can't, you know, not address that, but we talk about different tooling options. Um, and then, you know, I'll go over some engine mechanical stuff because again, here in the States, a lot of people haven't gone to any formal training, right? So they're fixing misfires because you could swap a coil, you can do whatever you need to do, but they haven't had that formal training on engine mechanical cycle. You know, I mean, a lot of guys may not even know the 4-stroke cycle, or they— if they do, they do the whole whatever, push, bang, you know, I don't even know it.

But you know, that's what they rely on, and they don't even know which stroke is which, you know. So we definitely spent some time going over engine mechanical. I spent some time going over some kind of exceptions to the rule in terms of engine mechanical, because we're typically referring to the Otto cycle, but we'll go over the Atkinson cycle and some different stuff there. Got a couple, you know, little bonus fun sections in there that, you know, are going to be really interesting, I believe. And then I'm going to, as clear as I can, lay out how to perform each test, right? Because connecting a transducer to the intake manifold or in cylinder and cranking or starting the vehicle is easy. But performing the test in the conditions that are going to prevent all these issues, as clean, as clear as possible, is a whole different story. And I am spending an emphasis on this because, I mean, I took pressure transducer classes and either I wasn't paying attention or the instructor didn't emphasize it enough, but I, you know, was kind of ignorant to some of the conditions, you know, throttle blade open versus throttle blade closed, just as an example, right? So try to lay out how to perform all these tests and then, you know, some of the pitfalls to watch out for. Again, mistakes that I've learned.

I've got no shame in it. I make mistakes all the time, right? But if I can convey some of those mistakes and lessons that I've learned, then that's a win in my opinion, right? So same idea. And a lot of it comes down to the efficiency, right? We want to be and try to be as efficient as we can. Well, that relative compression test and that cranking vacuum test unfortunately just aren't are really the same ideal conditions, you know. So, um, you're gonna— we address all that and we address, you know, a lot of good stuff there. And then we look at some actual case studies, right? Some, some live case studies. And again, the case studies aren't necessarily, you know, so insanely difficult in nature. I mean, let's be real, when we talk engine mechanical, I mean, are you really rebuilding engines in-house? Anymore? No.

I mean, 99% of the time, no, right? So, you know, exactly right. At the end of the day, is it— not to oversimplify it, but it either needs the coil plug injector that you've already done, otherwise it's maybe timing change, or it needs an engine, right? So yeah, all these diag, and, and I think that be the case for most of these pressure transducer classes, honestly, you know, is, is, yeah, I mean, we don't necessarily have to use this testing technique to fix the car because at the end of the day it needs an engine, you know. Now the pressure transducer stuff is absolutely phenomenal in narrowing down how and what has failed in that engine in terms of intake, exhaust valve, whatever the case may be, right? You're able to prove your diagnostic, but more than anything, I try to use these case studies so that we can see the effect on problems to pressure, right? Because again, getting my samples, one thing, even if I do it in the correct conditions, getting the waveform on the screen is step— only step one. But looking at that waveform and being able to tie that to a mechanical failure or a part failure of some sort, or a recommendation, is a whole nother skill. And Again, it's easy to sit through a case study in a class and say, yeah, I get that. That makes sense. Yeah. But would it if I wasn't here framing this data in this waveform a specific way and guiding you towards this conclusion? Right.

So, you know, I, I just try to make it, uh, you know, that relationship between the failure and how it affects pressure. That's my focus, so to speak. So it's great for the new guys who haven't had any experience with this testing. It's designed again to lay the framework, get them up to speed as quick as they possibly can so that they can actually go and start taking some of these real-world measurements, right? I laid everything out in the, in the book, especially when we talk about each test, to where you can kind of use that as a manual when you— because let's be real, you're going to forget half everything I say, you know, if this is new to you, of course, right, you're going to forget half of it by the time you go buy tools and try to do it. So that's set up pretty nice. And I also spend some time talking about just low-cost options to start doing this. So, you know, again, I teach all over and it's probably better where you're from, but I ask a lot of guys, you know, okay, who uses a scope or, you know, who uses a scope like, let's say, once a week in the shop? And in a normal field clinic, you know, you'll get 10-15% of your hands coming up and you ask, okay, well, for those of you guys who aren't, why not? You know, no judgment, but just why not? And a lot of the answers are, I don't have one. And say, okay, well, how many of you guys have a Snap-on scan tool in the shop? And then every hand goes up.

All right. How many of you guys have looked in the top of it and seen all those different colored holes? Oh yeah. Right? Okay, you've got a scope, so you've got a scope, you're ready to go right now. Um, I just bought the pressure transducer and pulse sensors and stuff from Rocky. Phenomenal for the price. Are you kidding me? It's like $89 plus tax and whatever else for a gasoline pressure transducer. You can get a diesel pressure transducer which is up to 1,400 or 1,500 PSI for another like $120, right? All your different fittings, adapters. And I, I, look, I prefer the PicoScope, just not only for ease, but when it comes time to make a case study, it is 10 times easier to do with PicoScope because I can get the capture, come back, you know.

But I spend the time of using it on the Snap-on and taking all the same, for the most part, all the same measurements we do on the PicoScope, but so that these guys can actually put what they use in practice, you know, or into practice, instead of just saying, oh yeah, that's cool. Well, I'm never going to spend, you know, $11,000 for the Pico Master Kit or the ATS Master Kit. Yeah, well, not right now, and I wouldn't expect you to. But if you're telling me that you can start doing this pressure transducing testing for literally like less than $200, that's pretty damn enticing to me, right? That's— I don't want— I don't want the technicians to have to spend their own money in a class, right? My goal in the class is not to get you to spend money, but I know I would have been all over this if you're telling me for $200 I can start doing all this stuff you're talking about right now. Sign me up for that.

Well, think just from from that, this conversation that kind of spearheaded all this, we were talking about— he was talking, the young man was talking about Pentastar, and he was talking about a misfire on them. And, you know, we know what the known offenders are on that particular platform. I drive one, right? And it's been very good to me. So I try not to do it myself, but I mean, he's talking about, well, in the time frame I would have had to do this, this, and this and play the swap diagnostics. And let's think about that for a minute from the shop owner standpoint. And you say, well, I can't afford to send my guys on training, or I can't afford to buy a Pico and some pressure transducers and have them use it. If we go and we put 3 coils underneath the intake on one side of the engine because it's got misfires over there and, and it doesn't fix the car and we write the customer a check back or whatever, you can't tell me that that labor and coils doesn't cover the cost of the 2 pressure transducers. And then if you look at like a uScope, scope.

Yeah, for, you know, there's lots of sub-$500 scopes out there on the market now that will do everything that you're trying to teach. Like, we can't make the excuses anymore. And listen, I'm not a scope guy. I'm not. I have not had to pull one out in a very long time. I do it occasionally for a couple tests and that's about it. And it isn't because I think it's a bad tool, it's just by Where my background was, it never became part of my process. You know, I was a, I was a dealer tech.

We didn't have one.

Yeah, no, I get it.

So, you know, so these— the, the argument from what that young man was saying in that post on, you know, ASOG or wherever it was changing the industry, it wasn't that he was ignorant. He was just— nobody had shown him a different way. And that's what Josh is talking about here, is that like, think about how much more efficient he could be. If he hooks up the pressure transducer and goes, yep, they must have a flat rocker, you know, camshaft lobe right there because that valve didn't open, or certainly didn't open as far as it should have. Well, he's done. He didn't pull an intake off. He didn't— like, we're crazy to think that, you know, everybody should just be born knowing how to do this stuff, or that everybody is out there all night long looking at these advanced people teaching things online for free. Now, I get really frustrated with our industry when the young people say it's not available to me, training money won't send me.

There's so much stuff that's out there for free right now that I, I have a really hard time with that excuse. But for the shop owners that are listening, because again, I'm always picking on you guys it seems, um, if they don't want to do it for themselves at home, okay, But don't just accept that, that they're not going to train. Then you have to provide them opportunities. If you want for the betterment of your business, you have to provide them the opportunities. If you're not going to, then you're stuck with what you have. Unfortunately, I hate to say that. It sucks.

It's not for you know? You everybody, know, I mean, let's be real. The shop still absolutely needs parts you changers, know, and the guys hanging and banging the parts. And if they're given the opportunity, and exposed to this training and again given the opportunity to become better and become a diagnostician and they don't want it, there's absolutely nothing wrong with them, you know, specializing in steering, suspension, brakes, leaks, whatever they want to do from there, right? You need those guys in your shop. In reality, and there may be people online who disagree with me, you cannot afford to have all A-TECs in your shop. You can't be afford— you can't afford to pay your— I mean, considering you're assuming you're paying them correctly, you can't afford to pay your A-tech to do brake jobs and tie rod ends all day, you know? Yeah. At the end of the day, it is what it is, right? So we need everybody. But, and again, I don't even— I don't know this guy's name. I don't know if he's going to be on this video or not, but the the, you know, the response and the— and to his naivete, right, was not appropriate.

Educate him with compassion and kindness, and if he doesn't respond or doesn't want it, not my problem, right? Yeah, that's— he can do what he wants after that. I don't care. Yeah, he may not even be there. I don't— I really don't know. Um, but let's hope— yeah, no, absolutely. You know, I mean, it made a huge difference in my life, right, when I was again You know, working in the family shop, I was good, right? I mean, I was fixing these cars without really any headaches. You know, you get your own— again, your own little vacuum chamber where, yeah, all the other shops in our direct proximity would bring us cars when they couldn't figure it out, right? So yeah, what's my ego gonna— what am I gonna think about myself? I'm the— I'm badass, you know, I'm awesome, right? Then you go and take some of these other trainings, you're like, holy shit, I don't know anything, right? You know, so— but being exposed to it's all that matters. I mean, I went to Vision for the very first time, I think, uh, probably 3 years ago, you know, 3 years ago.

And I had done other online training, of course, right? But you go to Vision and you get your mind blown because you got people like Adam Robertson talking about, you know, network communication, serial decoding, and all this different stuff. And I purposefully took these classes and I sat through that 8-hour class and I probably understood 20 minutes for an hour or 2 of it, whatever, right? But what did that do? Now when I'm home I've got something to go and research and study and learn and, you know, pour my time and energy into. And then literally last year I was teaching at Vision. So this doesn't have to be a long and arduous and crappy process of learning and becoming better, right? It could really take, you know, as fast as you want it to, given that you're putting in the time and energy learning it and then putting in the time and energy to practice it on lunch or after work or whatever as well. So.

Yeah, I, I tell everybody, don't come at this with a hero complex, right? Don't— whether it's a shop owner or technician, always be humble in the sense that there's still always more to learn, you know? And I get it, like, it feels good when you take the car that every other shop failed at and, and you fix it. It feels great, man. But by God, like, if it doesn't justify from a financial standpoint, then don't punish your people because it didn't. Own it and say, you know, that's just part of it. And, and, you know, occasionally we have to do that to, to bring us back into the reality, to show us where our weaknesses are. But if you choose to bring it on, bring it on and make know, make it, you it work. My friend Tommy Markham says he's going into and, and, 2026, you know, all my friends, and if they can't win they're not interested. And by what people go, well, what do you mean by win? It's not about getting something over on the customer.

It's just the job has to have a certain value. And if the value is not there for the job, I'm not doing the job. It doesn't mean that like, you know, F them. It doesn't mean, oh, too bad on you. It just means that it has to be what it has to be because we would no more back down our price on tires or brakes or something in order to sell the job all the time. We shouldn't be. But yet in diag, we always see like, oh, I better, because like, I'm not going to get it at all. It's okay, you know, you don't have to be the hero.

And that's exactly it. You know, I think there's the saying you win some, you lose some in our industry far too often from a shop standpoint, right? From a— no, it can't be that way. This is business. This is a business. It needs to be here for the next 50 years. We need to make money to pay all our employees, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It cannot be you win some, you lose some. Are you going to lose some? Yeah, accidentally, you know, not expected, that kind of thing.

Yeah, absolutely. But it depends on what you want, right? If you want to be the local hero and bring in all this work and all these jobs and make no money on it, and that brings you satisfaction and you can still pay bills, and then that's how you want to run your thing, go for it. Absolutely right. But if you want to run it like a business and you want to It's be got to be less headaches, more profit. It's got to be a win or somebody else can do it.

And your customers will respect you more if when they come to you with a problem and you're honest and upfront and say, "I'm not your guy for that," and you say, "I can't help you and maybe this person can or whatever." They will respect you more than if you bumble through it and charge them something, even if it was 1/10 of whatever you needed to get out of it and you just lost your your butt, but you charge them something. They don't even— sometimes they don't even— your reputation is damaged if you spend all kinds of time on it and still don't get through it. It's better to know and say, I— this is above you, than it is to 100% just prove that you weren't their shop for that. So, um, Josh, is this going to be an ongoing— like, can we see a series now coming from you for.

This, um, in terms of training?

Or yeah, like these kind of free webinar kind of things, you know, that's.

Above my pay grade. I already gotta, you know, thank my boss enough for letting me, um, you know, present this class for free. It's, you know, it's a little touchy, and I'm, you know, wouldn't be surprised if there's other instructors that are, you know, somewhat salty about me doing a free training event because it takes the value out of their class. And I understand, and I apologize, but that's not what this purpose is. It's just simply trying to get some exposure out there to some of this training stuff. You know, I, I personally, yeah, I would absolutely love to maybe have this be a, I don't know, quarterly or a twice a year type of free training offering. Um, you know, who's to say that we can't have some of these other training providers step in and do the next one and we kind of rotate this thing around, you know what I mean? I, I don't know, maybe that's a possibility. It'd be up to a lot more bosses, right? Um, yeah, so simple answer is hopefully, and you already got the long answer.

I like it. So just to recap, when, when is this going to happen and how do people tune in?

So I, uh, it's going to be this coming Tuesday, um, at 6 PM Eastern time. Um, we're going to open up the Zoom, um, doors at 5:45, so give us 15 minutes to kind of get in and network and say hi and talk crap to each other, you know, and it'll go for anywhere from 3 to 4 hours. It's probably going to be closer to 4 hours if we try to get through everything. Um, and then there's some time for some Q&A after as well. Um, it is going to be, as I said, in our studio in Detroit. Um, so we are going to have like, you know, some pretty damn nice equipment and, and the production quality should be pretty good. So that's cool. Um, there would even be a possibility in the future of doing like live hands-on demonstrations and stuff because we have all the filming for that.

Um, so we can kind of play that by ear, but the post is already up in the Changing the Industry Podcast Facebook group. Post is there and that's where the Zoom link is posted as well. So again, we're not getting— there's no signups, right? There's no form to put your name and your email address or your Social Security or what your shop address is. I mean, you know, in reality, I don't even think it would be unfair to ask for some of your personal information to provide free training like this. Um, but that's not what we're doing. We're not asking for any of that. So it's just, uh, something for— let's.

Uh, let's everybody try and get on Tuesday night, this coming Tuesday, February the 10th. You know, they just told you the time, and log in, and let's try and everybody, you know, if you can't stay the full 4 hours, drop in, say hello. Pick up something, get some little nugget out of it, and then remember and appreciate what Josh is actually doing and what Garage Gurus is doing. And this is all a very organic, spur-of-the-moment type of thing to try and address a problem. And that's all it is. And it's not a case of, you know, people are waving a flag. It's a situation of, you know, somebody saw a problem and decided to step up and do something about it. And Josh, I want to thank you for that.

I don't want to keep you any more of your time. You got to jump on a plane here pretty soon to head to Detroit. So Thank you for coming here and sharing this with us and having this conversation. I think we need to have a lot more of this kind of open and frank talks about where we have a responsibility in this industry. It's one thing, it's just easy to say everybody needs more training, but Josh is bringing it to us and providing it for us. So I think everybody, give him some thanks when you see him, if you bump into him at one of these events Just say thank you and do what you can to make yourself better. I keep saying it's 1% more every day, guys. That's all it takes is just strive for that 1% and think about at the end of the year how much better you would be.

And when you have the knowledge, share it with somebody else. It is not hard to do. Don't run each other down. Show them the path that they need to take. And, uh, if they follow you, great. If they don't, that's okay too. You know, we're all different. We're all just trying to survive in here.

So any last words, Josh?

No, no. I look forward to seeing everybody again. If you're new, great class for you. If you're more experienced, this is still going to be a great class. It's going to be a fun time. Come in, hang out. You have your own experiences or stuff you've, you know, you know, ran into, you know, something that I forgot to mention or bring up, you know, by all means put it in the chat. Just to make this training as valuable as possible for everybody.

But again, other than that, I appreciate the opportunity to be here with you and getting to meet you. You know, seen and heard a lot about you, so it's nice to be here. Hopefully again sometime in the future we can jump on another call and complain about something else.

Yeah, I would love that for sure. I think you got a really cool story to share with other people. I mean, you kind of shared it with Lucas and David, but we talked before we got on here about how I think you got a lot to offer from perspective-wise for for, you know, not just the training side but the technician side. And, and I think that that's going forward, we'll definitely have to highlight you and share that. So everybody, as always, thank you for taking the time to hear what I have to say and my guests have to say. And, you know, uh, keep all the feedback coming. That's only how we make it better. And, you know, um, my haters, I love you too.

So, you know, I love everybody. It's the way it's going to be. If you don't like it, yeah, It's okay. I get it. You know, some of us are very salty. So, Josh, thank you for joining me. Safe travels this afternoon, and we look forward to seeing you Tuesday night. Everybody tune in on Tuesday night, look for the Zoom link, and I hope to see you all there.

Thank you, guys. Hey, if you could do me a favor real quick and like, comment on, and share this episode, I'd really appreciate it. And please, most importantly, set the podcast to automatically download every Tuesday morning. As always, I'd like to thank our amazing guests for their perspectives and expertise, and I hope that you'll please join us again next week on this journey of change. Thank you to my partners in the ASAR Group and to the Changing the Industry podcast. Remember what I always say: in this industry, you get what you pay for. Here's hoping everyone finds their missing 10mm, and we'll see you all again next time.

About this episode

Josh Whiteman, a full-time instructor with Garage Gurus, shares insights on the importance of continuous learning in the automotive industry. He discusses the challenges of flat-rate pay, the evolving shop culture, and the value of hands-on experience in diagnostics. With a focus on mobile diagnostics and the creation of case studies, Josh emphasizes the need for technicians to adapt and grow. The conversation also touches on the significance of effective communication with customers and the impact of social media on perceptions of automotive professionals.

12 volt battery ADAS auxiliary battery battery terminal cleaning Bureau of Automotive Repair case studies code scan corroded battery terminals corrosion diagnostic strategy

Jeep Wagoneer

Original notes

Like the show? Show your support by using our sponsors.
Promotive can help you find your dream job. Touch HERE to see open jobs.

Need to update your shop systems and software? Try Tekmetric HERE

In this episode, Jeff is joined by Josh Whiteman to discuss his role as an instructor with Garage Gurus which offers automotive training. Josh talks about the importance of ongoing education and adapting diagnostic processes to real-world conditions. They also speak on industry challenges, from technician pay structures to fostering a culture of compassion and mentorship within workshops.

Timestamps:
00:00 Life as a Full-Time Instructor

10:30 "Importance of Transparent Auto Repair"

15:43 "Skill Gaps and Training Challenges"

16:51 Trade Education Builds Knowledge

24:59 "Learning Through Osmosis Everywhere"

27:55 "Efficient Module Testing Insights"

33:15 "Diagnostic Tools and Strategies"

38:41 Resistance Testing Flaws and Tools

45:37 Managing Customer Expectations

52:13 "Flat Rate Tech Efficiency"

55:39 "Pay Over Hours: A Debate"

01:01:36 "Listening vs Distraction at Work"

01:07:29 "Dealing with Difficult Techs"

01:14:32 Engine Diagnostics and Pressure Analysis

01:16:09 "Practical Testing and Tools Guide"

01:22:00 "A-Techs vs. Specialists: Shop Roles"

01:28:16 "Free Training Event Explanation"

Follow/Subscribe to the show on social media!
TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@jeffcompton7
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@TheJadedMechanic
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100091347564232

The Jaded Mechanic Podcast

Jeff Compton

View classic page →

0:00

95:57