Why Auto Repair Specialists Leave Our Industry (And How Shop Owners Can Keep Them) [THA 490]

Why Auto Repair Specialists Leave Our Industry (And How Shop Owners Can Keep Them) [THA 490] Remarkable Results Radio Podcast · Jun 19, 2026

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Car

Chevrolet Trax

The Chevrolet Trax is a small SUV made for regular driving, like commuting and errands. It’s meant to be easy to live with because it’s not too big, but still gives you the SUV-style space and ride height. People mention it when they’re talking about which vehicle is a good fit for everyday needs.

Term

unintended consequences

It means you try to solve one problem, but it can accidentally cause other problems you didn’t expect. In a shop, that could be from a new workflow or a decision that affects how work gets done.

Term

sensory acuity

It means being really good at noticing small clues. In car repair, those clues can be things like unusual noises, smells, or how the car feels while driving.

Concept

one-on-ones

“One-on-ones” are private, 1:1 conversations. In a repair shop, they’re used to get honest feedback and find ways to improve how people work.

LIVE

This is the Automotive Repair Podcast Network.

Hey, it's an afternoon, it's a morning,

it's an evening, good to have you here,

Karm Capriotto, Remarkable Results Radio.

We're starting our 12th year of doing this,

having too much fun.

Actually, more fun than an individual is allowed

to have fun.

We bring on, you name the kind of guests

and the topics that we have actually sitting

behind stage right now is Matt Fonslow, Chris Lawson.

You both know them and we're gonna talk about

not leaving our industry or how to keep people

in our industry and what makes our industry

desirable to people.

And maybe it's something to do with hiring and interviewing

and or the individual finding the place

they wanna have a long-term career at.

So they're both qualified to talk about this

and we thank so much our great, great sponsors

we've had for a long time now.

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Find NapaTrax on the web at NAPATRACS.com.

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Look, we wanna get going here, but first,

don't forget about our app.

I know if you listen on Spotify or Apple,

you can download at this website,

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Read show notes, save apps,

share these podcasts with your friends.

It's really a cool thing.

So, Matt and Chris,

you guys are extremely qualified to discuss this

and I wanna say this that as a listener,

you need to hang in here for every waking breath

that Chris and Matt are gonna take.

Matt Foslow, of course, technical specialist

and shop manager, Riverside Automotive

in Red Wing, Minnesota.

Hello, Matt.

ASC subject matter expert, industry educator,

created Tech Talks at Vision

and I hear you're doing them at ASTA this year.

Yeah, I got a green letter or whatever they called that,

saying that they're gonna let me try it again

and then STX 2026 as well.

And that would be new for you.

I did STX a couple of years ago.

Did you do Tech Talks, huh?

Yeah, this year, I think,

I don't know if Tech Talks is in World Pack

but Pico Scope hands-on classes there twice.

Oh, is that what you're gonna do there?

Okay, all right.

Yeah, with Scott Shaw and then,

I think we're doing a key class with Andrew Sexton.

Nice, good for you.

The podcast diagnosing the aftermarket,

A to Z on the Automotive Repair Podcast Network.

Matthew and Chris Lawson is here,

the CEO of Technician Find.

He's been on a whole bunch of times with us.

Nice to see you, Chris.

Great to be back, always a blast.

What's going on with you?

You got the pulse of hiring and firing?

Oh boy, I just finished those reports

that you sent over and they're amazing.

And A, before I start anything,

I just wanted to congratulate you

on the 27th version of The Rise.

I just finished it and every time I read it,

I get more fired up.

There you go.

It's outstanding.

I'll watch your podcast with Brett Beechler,

Craig Noel and Tom Palermo.

I love to hear how it's being applied.

And that I think is really important

in terms of raising the perspective

and the idea of what it is to fix vehicles

that are so complicated.

And I think that's a big part

of what we wanna get into today is,

how do we improve the perception of the industry?

Well, thanks, Chris, for the shout out for that episode.

And one of my biggest takeaways from that episode

is from Tom Palermo.

And Tom saw me give the speech to ASE Board of Governors

when I had my chef's jacket on.

And then I took it off

and I had this really cool ASE, all the badges on it.

He gave The Rise to his people a while back now.

I want you to read this, I wanna get together.

And the first thing he did to open up his meeting

with his team as they are going to move this language shift

is he said to them,

wanna be a cook or a chef?

And that nailed it for them.

And what I've done in my keynote,

I've added a lot more about the chefing business

and you have to do to qualify

and what a Michelin 3 and a James Beard chef thing

is all about.

And in that industry, it's exalted.

If you're a chef of any level of quality

and where you're working, what your title is.

And that should be no different

than in our industry.

The level of professionalism in our industry needs to rise.

It's big for me.

And the word specialist, I think is the anchor

that will help us get there.

Well, thank you guys.

And Matt, thank you for always saying the word specialist

in your show when you say it.

And I listened to every one of his shows.

Okay, so we have a lot of issues here on the table

and they are of, we don't want people to leave our industry

but what are we doing about it?

And Matt, I know you interview people

and you've seen people come and go in the industry.

What can an owner do in an interviewing environment

to find the kinds of candidates

that want to come to work in the positive culture

looking for long-term career?

The most obvious thing is to either hire,

collaborate with an entity such as Chris's technician find.

I think there's other ones out there.

In fact, I know what they are.

They are, I'm just not positive with the names

are off the cuff.

I think typically it's word of mouth tool trucks

and indeed those type of entities online,

job finding type apps or websites, companies,

stuff like that.

I would say most shops rely very heavily

on word of mouth and the tool trucks

and the tool truck guys, the salesmen are,

I think hesitant nowadays,

especially with giving names of people

because now their reputation's a little bit at stake

where it's like, oh, hey, Bob over at,

so-and-so's repairs, sick of it and he's looking.

I'll send them right over.

But it'll get out if there are a loose cannon out there.

Yeah, I think the assumption has to be

that there are loose cannons

because everybody and most everybody's probably stretched

but most people do use them.

The most common question they get isn't,

hey, what's on sale or what's new for a product?

It's, you know, any good techs looking for a job

or technical, mechanical specialists looking for a job?

That is the number one question they get

and it isn't even close.

Or do you know who's hiring?

There's the others who run into people, of course,

ask them how things are going

and try to angle conversations a certain way.

And then if we're going like really young

and kind of a grow your own mentality

then you're doing things with the local high school

or advisory board or just the college itself

or technical college or trade school

to try to get the young people.

And I shouldn't even say young anymore.

That's a gross misnomer, it's not.

It's people looking for different careers

and I got a level with you.

I think the quote unquote blue collar jobs,

especially ones like ours is moving up the ladder of

attraction because we do have a certain level of insulation

from primarily automation

but a little bit of artificial intelligence.

And we're a high tech industry, no bones about it.

Well, I think high tech, it's important

but also it's such a wide variety.

If we step back and just look at automotive

or automotive like truck,

then you go from designing, building them

to selling them to maintaining them to crushing them.

The other thing is just in our world of auto repair

so much from maintenance or whatever we would consider

gravy work or low level work

all the way up to the highest levels of diagnostics

and programming or whatever you would like to call that.

Circuit board level repair, I mean,

it just doesn't stop where you could go.

More people find out about that and more attraction

there is to people that would never have considered

working on cars in their life.

Is the individual who's not doing that level of high tech

but they're just master mechanical specialists

close their eyes, do a break job in 20 minutes.

They just know what they got it.

They're kinesthetic learners.

That's what they do.

They work with their hands.

Are they happy doing that stuff

and are we paying attention to their needs?

I stop and think about don't leave our industry

but the people they work for care.

One of the things is are we paying attention to our people

and the world around them and this harmony

that needs to exist

cause it's a tough world out there, man.

I think yes and no.

I think people think they are.

I think we think a lot of things.

I think we do genuinely care

but the amount of investigation we do and do to it

and I'm not implying we have to become like

private investigators but it's usually how are things going?

How are you doing?

And then yeah, going fine.

It's high level quick.

Yeah and then nobody's complaining about anything

or they're just complaining about the same things

and then it largely gets ignored.

I don't know that a ton of effort

is going into what you're talking about

where you do have a mechanical specialist

who is completely happy taking things apart,

putting them back together,

specializing in certain systems on vehicles

but the somewhat of an abused term

just like communication is culture

but it's the word that describes it

is something is not quite right with the culture of the shop

or the culture that they're experiencing.

Therefore, they're looking for a way out

and unfortunately it's rarely going to another repair shop

cause their idea is and it's not necessarily wrong.

It will be a lot of the same but different.

How do I get out?

And oh by the way, I have this skill set

that translates to other skilled professions

really, really well and not too long ago

I think there was a lot of those professions

that paid you better to use a fraction of your skill set.

I don't know if that's quite the same

at least across the board.

There's certainly people that are wildly undercompensated

and that would be a tangent for a whole different.

I gotta ask Chris a question based on

what Matt just ranted about.

Do opportunities for you to find a job

for a specialist Chris come to you

and does that individual say, Chris, I don't want this

but I want that.

Can you help refine the place that I'd like to work

cause I'm not happy here.

This is what's going on here.

And I have some friends that are working

at some really cool places around the country

and this is what I want.

Do you hear a lot of that?

Typically when somebody has a mechanical affinity

or they're just good at it, they know.

They've been doing it forever.

And ultimately, at least the specialist I speak with,

they would really love to stay in the industry

but it's just that it just seems onerous

to create a living doing it.

The big things that I see over and over again

usually fall into three different categories.

One is respect.

They just don't feel like they're getting respect

where they are currently.

And respect has a lot of different faces.

Respect can mean, hey, do you listen to ideas?

And that's actually a great question

if you're a technician or a mechanical specialist,

if you are a technical specialist,

if you go into an environment and you're in an interview,

that's a great question to ask is,

hey, how many one-on-ones do you do?

If I have an idea, does it get implemented?

When a lift breaks, how long does it stay broken?

It's these types of questions that really will point out

what type of environment is.

And the second thing is, are there growth opportunities?

Is there a pathway to growth?

Is it well thought out?

Can you show me if I'm a strong B technician

or a strong B, can you show me how to get to a master?

Is that, do you help?

Do you pay for training?

Am I going to be on the clock when I train

or do I have to do it at night

and take time away from my family or on the weekends

or do I have to travel?

All of these things are questions that are really important.

And then the third one is,

what does the compensation look like?

And I always put the compensation third

because I've seen folks take cuts in pay

to go to an environment that was better.

And when I say better, I mean, it just fit better.

They offered four, 10-hour shifts.

Wow, this is great.

Three-day weekends, every weekend.

I get to spend time with my family.

They would actually listen to ideas.

They have a situation where if they need to take off early,

they can go to their son's ball game

or their daughter's soccer game.

These are the type of things.

And the cool thing about this is

these are environments where an independent shop

can really shine.

They may not be able to come out

with these huge sign-on bonuses.

They may not be able to come up with these huge salaries,

but they can shine in these other areas

and they can be highly, highly competitive.

Is it all about the money, Matt?

It's never all about anything.

I mean, you got to make enough money to exist, right?

There is a cost of living

for where your people are going to live.

They have to make at least that.

And we can split it up between,

they're married and dual-income, stuff like that.

But the reality is, is there is a number

that they have to be able to make,

to be able to live within a certain radius of the shop.

Game set match, if they can't make that,

they're going elsewhere and it doesn't matter what job.

After that, yeah, now it becomes,

am I working to live or do I live to work?

I think we kind of want to help everyone

be able to work to live and enjoy life outside of the shop.

Now, granted, anybody can spend more money than they make.

That's just the way it is.

And maybe that's part of the perks too,

is some financial counseling.

But we have to get them into a position

to make enough money to live.

And then I think maybe on top of all of it,

it has to be deemed fair.

I think we put a lot, as human beings,

we put a lot of weight into what we deem fair.

I think there's even studies about this.

Kind of like a, almost like a variation

of the marshmallow experiment.

Kind of a variation where there'll be two actors,

two people, and one gets some money.

They both know about this.

And it's a, we'll just say $100.

That first person can decide to give

the other person however much money.

And it turns out, if it's not pretty close to like 40%,

the other person will not take any money.

They'll basically tell them to cram it.

Even though if that other,

the person that got the money offers them like a dollar,

which is a dollar more than they had when they got there,

because it is so wildly unfair, keep it.

You have to keep that in mind.

Not just with your compensation plans,

but the way things operate.

Do people deem it to be fair?

Are there completely fair systems

that people deem to be unfair?

Absolutely.

But it's not as often as the other way around.

That's a brilliant point.

And I think the key to that is transparency.

Because if something is opaque,

then it's just by definition, it's unfair.

Because I don't know if you're screwing me or not.

So I think that at least in the shops

that I've seen that really want to bring everybody in

and show them, hey, look, this is what we did.

This is how the P&L works.

This is your part of it.

And this is why you get this part of it.

And the other part about this is I tell shop owners

and GMs this all the time is, you know what?

You have to really understand your compensation structure.

And you have to explain it in two minutes

so that someone leaving your office

can explain it to their spouse.

If you don't do that, you're going to get ghosted.

I don't care how elaborate the pay plan is.

You have to be able to explain it very concisely.

And you have to be able to show them how to get to that number.

And again, that's transparency.

And that's when people think that it's fair.

I'd like to build on that.

And I don't know.

I'm sure everybody will love this.

But if you look, there's a video going around in Slidget

of Dwayne the Rock Johnson.

Dwayne the Rock Johnson, the professional wrestler

talking about a contract coming up with the WWE

back in the peak of the attitudes era

with Stone Cold Steve Austin and him and The Undertaker.

But his contract was coming up.

And so the owner of the company, Vince McMahon, asks,

you know, what are you looking at?

And well, how much does Stone Cold make?

I guaranteed a million a year.

And then, you know, they have different things for merch

and stuff bonuses.

He's like, I need, I think I need 3 million.

And Vince, instead of going, giving them just this hard no,

goes, tell you what?

I want you to spend a month in the front office

with my people.

I want you to learn how everything works.

I want you to see what makes this company go

and how we make money in all the things.

What it costs to run this company and stuff like that.

So the Rock's like, yeah, I want my 3 million.

I'm going to do it.

Two weeks later, he holds a meeting with Vince

and says, I'll take a million dollars.

Because he got to figure out how things really were.

That transparency, just like Chris brought up,

changed his attitude about everything.

So I think there is a lot to transparency.

I think there is a lot to everyone learning a little bit

about what makes a business run.

What it costs to do it, what it takes to do it.

Financially, managerial, economically, all of the things.

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You know, most shop owners feel trapped

spending on ads while half their first time customers

never come back.

It's frustrating, it's exhausting and it's not your fault.

The industry average is 54% and one and done.

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When people get a chance to look at a profit and loss

statement that they've never seen in their entire life

and you spend a little time actually taking the P&L

and putting your highest expense in the expense area

down to the lowest and they start seeing

what it costs to really run a business.

Okay, hey, let's just say there's 20% on the bottom line

which is what the coaches are really striving for

for all the top shops.

20% you do a million bucks, there's 200,000

in the bottom line.

If they're not being paid anything

but really low level wage, it's a very difficult thing to do

but if you're paying your people really well market value

even maybe above the respect of saving money,

not overspending things, waste, it all comes out.

Especially if your people are engaged

in some form of bonus.

Now it could be on profit, it could be on gross margin,

it could be on effective labor rate.

There's a lot of things that we can build

into the engagement and maybe that's the word

we're looking for.

Why do people wanna leave?

Cause they're not engaged.

There they may be engaged in the bay in their job

but they're not engaged in the business.

They are a spoke of that wheel

and yet we don't care to tighten them and put them in play.

Absolutely, one of the big things that a lot of folks

in the industry talk about now is the younger generation.

I love to pick on the younger generation

but being a Gen Xer, I have my opinions

but it's really interesting

because what everybody, regardless of what generation

you're a member of is you wanna be part of something bigger

and being part of something bigger

is really what a leader's job is, is to set that vision

and to keep reminding people what the vision is

and to bring everybody on board

and just to keep pointing that direction

and every good leader throughout time

has said basically the same thing that Steve Jobs is

is my job is to come in and point to the horizon

and make sure everybody is headed in the same direction

and he says, I will do that a thousand times

because people forget, every day people forget.

So that's a big part of what's going on

in terms of being a leader and when you can create that

then you get people contributing ideas.

You get people taking ownership.

A couple of years back I was talking to a shop owner

that was talking about the difference that it made

once they finally started sharing the numbers

with everybody and then doing a gross profit bonus.

And now all of a sudden the shop supplies

stopped being lost or misplaced or given away.

All of a sudden everybody's watching every clip

and everything that goes on and that's what happens

when people understand what's going on

they take ownership and it just changes the game.

Yeah, understanding the system, it's economics,

it's ecological, you have an ecosystem

that's what a business is, it's an organism,

it's a bunch of separate or seemingly separate

symbiotic systems working together.

The human body is to stay alive in general

and for a business it should be to profit ethically

and in our case generally fix cars

or repair, maintain vehicles.

And I think when people understand how that system works

and they trust and that's the other thing.

I think that if I had a big rant

and I know I've said it multiple times

so that fear of being a broken record

that if there could be just this understanding

between ownership management and employees

will just say or producers,

however you wanna label them generically

and across the board is that as management, as an owner,

I am going to try to take care of you.

I'm going to try to pay you as much as I possibly can

or compensate you as best I can

or as best the business can.

I'm going to equip you to do the things we need to do.

The stuff we say and advertise we're going to do,

I am going to put you in the best position possible

to do that as well as you can as productively

and as efficiently and as safely as possible.

On the flip side, as the other end of that

as being a producer, if you will,

I'm going to do everything I can

within the aim of this organizations,

whatever we're saying we're doing,

in this case probably maintaining and servicing vehicles

to generate you as much ethical profit as I can.

Making stuff up, I'm not lying,

I'm not saying this is leaking when it's not

or I'm not making a leak for it so that we can win work.

I'm going to ethically generate you

as much profit as possible.

And if we could trust each other to do that and do that,

a lot of these problems start subsiding.

I agree 100%.

The other thing that this brings up in my memory

is how frequently it is that I'll be talking

with a mechanical specialist or a technical specialist

and they'll post on Facebook.

It's just funny watching them just tear apart

my posts on Facebook.

And there's a couple of things I could say about that

but one of them is just the misconceptions

about what it's like to be an owner.

And there are a lot of them that just think,

well, you're charging this, this is your door rates

so why don't I get half of it?

It's that kind of thinking

and they don't understand what goes into it.

So having transparency eliminates all that.

It's like, yeah, here's what I have to pay.

Here's everything that it costs to keep the doors open

and insurance and this and that and everything else.

And the other really interesting thing

is when I see posts, a lot of people will post

and they'll say they're going to rant,

the mechanical specialist, technical specialist

will come in and they'll go on a rant.

And then somebody else will say,

yeah, that's why I'm a plumber now.

Or yeah, that's why I'm this now.

And to Karm's point about, hey,

are people talking each other out of the industry?

That's a big part of what I see as well

is because they've had an experience

that was a bad experience and then they left

and then now they're talking to,

one of the things is I don't know why

they're looking at these posts

if they're in another industry

and they're doing something else.

There's something about that.

They're gluttons for punishment

because they're just looking for all these posts

so they can go in there and needle these guys

that are still in the industry.

And I don't know why that,

what they would want to do that,

but it still happens.

And these are things that they can be overcome

if you're just running the right industry.

And I want to say, what are running the right shop?

And I want to say one more thing about that.

And that is, I started a school community

called Independent Wrench Jobs

after having a conversation with a shop owner

that I worked with down here in Southern California

and he really inspired me.

He said, you know what, we don't do flat rate.

He says, what we do is I came up as a mechanic,

I came up as a technician.

What I wanted to do is create a shop

where we could really make sure

that we took care of everybody equitably.

And my goal is to provide a view

of what it's like to work in an independent shop.

And he said, most people coming up,

and I was the same way

because he was a dealer tech for like 20 years.

And he said, you know what,

my view of an independent shop owner

was a fat guy with a pot belly

and a Stogie sticking out of his mouth

and an oily rag in his back pocket.

And he said, that's not at all

what a lot of these independent shops are all about.

So it's perception and it's changing that perception.

And Karm, I love what you're doing about

changing that perception.

And there's also, what does it look like

when you have this interview?

What kind of questions are you asking?

Are you hiring for culture fit?

Are you just checking boxes on skills and experience?

These are all things that are, they're clues.

They're little clues of,

hey, how am I gonna be treated over here?

What's it gonna be like on a day to day basis?

And quite frankly, they're watching you.

Do we have enough questions?

There's a sheet.

We have all these questions and I'm an owner.

And I'm asking generic old level,

old class questions about this.

So how long you been there and, you know,

how many tools do you have and where'd you go to school

and blah, blah, blah.

Instead of getting into the culture side.

Hey, tell me about a great experience you had

just three or four weeks ago at work.

What's going on at home?

Positive things, you know, kids play sports.

That opens up a conversation to find out

if an individual can be a fit,

because I believe we can teach him the competency

if we find the right individual.

And if you're building a stronger level of culture

and a team that wants to come to work every day

and you don't ask those types and kinds of questions,

what's going on with time off for life?

How do you treat that?

How much do you need?

And then you start hearing this stuff coming in, Matt.

I can't imagine you trying to zero in on the people

that come to work for Riverside,

but you're such a great judge of character

that you would probably within 10 minutes

figure if you got the right person

just by how they sit and how they talk

and maybe their first question.

Yes and no.

I wish I was really, really good at it.

I think the younger they are,

the less questions they know to even ask.

And the older they are,

the more galvanized they are anyways.

So it's really, really difficult to put people at ease.

The young person, because they don't know what to ask

and the older one who's got every guard up

and even if they like what they hear,

they're going to be hesitant to move just because of a change.

The fear of change is real.

I guess I feel like the best recruiters we have,

the best interviewers, if you will,

we have are the people that work here,

that I guess when you're pitching this to us,

you want something called talking points

and I don't know what those are,

but when we're talking about this subject,

something came to mind.

And if we take a little bit of a tangent down the road,

that's tangents.

You're known for that, go.

I think I have a reputation building.

And if you didn't bring a tangent to me,

I would be really pissed.

We'd have to start over.

So if we talk a little bit about game theory

and very specifically something called behavioral game theory,

which is kind of the current evolution of it.

And game theory just quickly is a study of interactions

more than anything, it got started in actual games,

namely poker and chess and stuff like that,

but it's translated quite well to economics and behavior,

stuff like that.

They use game theory to track how

or predict how birds fly together as a flock, okay?

That's where it goes to.

And for the sake of this conversation,

there's two things in game theory.

One is known as the official game.

That's kind of the game.

That's kind of the culture, if you will,

that as an owner or manager, you think you're running.

You think I take really good care of my people.

I empower them to do what they need to do.

I create a comfortable working environment

and I want stuff fixed the right way

and I have all these systems in place

and all of these plans in place to perpetuate that,

to cultivate that culture.

That's the official game.

That's what you think it is.

That's what you tell everyone it is.

That's what's in the employee handbook.

It's all over the place.

It's on posters on the wall.

But then there's something called the shadow game.

And that's the things that you don't know

you're incentivizing.

Those are the things you don't know are going on

as a repercussion of these ideas,

these really not bad ideas, of these plans,

of these procedures, of these rules, of these incentives.

You don't know that they're having this other effect.

You probably can't even see it.

The ones that can are the ones working in it.

So that's why I think it's really, really important

that if you're an interviewee,

that you're going in to be interviewed,

that you get to talk to people that work there

and get them off to the side a little bit

and say, give it to me straight.

How is it working here?

How long have you been here?

What do you really like about it?

What would you change or stuff like that?

What don't you like?

What's the owner really like?

What are the managers really like?

How do things really go?

They're telling me I can make all this money if I do this.

Is that even realistic?

On the flip side, as an owner or manager,

or the one doing the interviews,

if you believe that your official game and shadow game

are very close to one another,

you try to get that person you're interviewing

to talk to the people that work for you

and ask them questions just like that.

You hope they do it.

As this quick side note, Chris, how many do that?

How many owners do that?

Not many that I know of, but I wanted to unpack a little bit

because Matt said just a wealth of,

just at least a wealth of wisdom, I should say.

There's a lot of things here.

One is the unintended consequences.

No matter what you do, there's always gonna be other things

that kind of scored out the side that you didn't expect.

So you have to be aware of those.

And then there's a term in neurolinguistic programming

that's called sensory acuity.

So you have to be aware of what's going on.

And how do you become aware of what's going on?

Well, some owners just have a sixth sense.

They can kind of feel it.

But I like to take a more systematic approach to that.

And this, again, goes back to one-on-ones.

It goes back to asking them,

I worked with a shop owner and what she did was

she asked everybody, if you were in my shoes,

what would you change first?

Think about how that question is structured.

If you were in my shoes, so it changes the perspective.

And then what would you change first?

Because if you just ask, if you stop, what would you change?

And they go, oh, nothing, everything's fine,

because they're trying to please, they're people pleasers.

But if you say, what will you please first,

you're expecting an answer.

What would you change first?

Now all of a sudden, and that's kind of another

little NLP thing that the way that that question is phrased.

And now all of a sudden you get the inside scoop

on what's going on.

And it's so important to have that inside track

because I've also worked with shops

that have a horrible reputation in the area

among technicians, among tool truck drivers,

and the owner doesn't know it.

And when we go out and we do an exhaustive search,

an exhaustive reputation search,

and we turn up all this stuff,

and you show it to the owner, they're like,

oh my God, I didn't realize it.

And that's a tremendous headwind for trying to hire,

trying to bring on talent.

And it's also a tremendous headwind from trying to get

everybody to march forward in the same,

be part of the same page and building your business.

Are owners in denial or they just don't know?

They don't know.

Most of the time I find that they don't know.

They're just so busy.

They've got so many things going on.

It's like the old saying, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Well, if none of your wheels are squeaking

because they don't want to offend the boss,

then no grease is applied.

So I think you have to really be proactive.

And again, I don't see a lot of shops

that are that proactive in sitting down,

doing one-on-ones, asking questions.

I mean, I work with another shop every Thursday.

They have a lunch.

They buy a lunch and it's not just a BS session.

What they do is they go around the table and they say,

hey, what would make your life easier here?

Everybody has to say something.

You can't pass.

You can't say, oh no, I'm good.

You can't do that.

Everybody has to say something.

And the best ideas come out of that.

And then here's the most important part.

The most important part is the, everybody votes,

the very best idea gets implemented next week.

You don't say, oh yeah, that's nice and pat them on the back

and then go away and just go back to business as normal.

Because what you're training is you're training people

that their ideas are respected.

And when you train people that their ideas are respected

and they're going to be implemented,

then they respond over and over again.

And it's just like training.

It's just like Pavlov's dogs

and of course your employees are not like dogs.

But everybody gets trained the same way.

You're getting positive reinforcement.

Then that behavior, that behavior

that's being reinforced positively

will occur in the future.

I just see it as positivity, improvements, caring.

I just don't know how an individual who has a career

and that's what, it's not a job.

It's really a career in this industry.

Why would you want to leave such a high tech industry?

Why would you want to leave it?

Well, you're not happy with something.

And that's what I think we need to find out.

And again, some owners may be pretty hit upside the head

when they find out that it's how the business runs.

It's their particular attitude.

It's their non-caring, forget about the money.

Let's just put the money somewhere else, Matt, right?

And let's just talk about everything else

that takes the burdens that we live in life from home

that we have to bring to work

because it's very difficult to escape it

and how that integrates into, it's not great right now.

It's not great here.

We're missing stuff.

We got comebacks.

We're not happy.

It goes back to your great article

that you wrote for Napa Insights Q2 and 2026.

If you're a Napa, open your Napa Insights magazine,

look for Carm's Corner and find Matt's article.

Your shop might need marriage counseling.

It's a slap upside the head about the crazy parts of life

and how we do and don't do the right things

to make this environment congeal.

Yeah, I mean, definitely want to have a safe environment

for people to be able to come to you with problems,

particularly feelings, but let's be honest,

most of us in this profession, we're not good at that.

We'll come to you with problems

and we won't probably assign a feeling to it,

but it's the same general idea

because you want people to feel safe doing so.

And the other thing I was thinking

is that it's not a Western thought.

Like in the Western world, we don't think this way,

but it's very important to somebody

by the name of Dr. W. Edwards Deming

in his 14 points of management.

One of them was that you want to give people the ability

to take joy and work.

That's a really powerful mindset

because it isn't motivating them.

You're not out there motivating them.

You're not out there just dangling the carrot

to produce more to make more money.

It's what can I allow you to do what you already,

you took this job presumably

because you love to do whatever it is,

whether it is work on vehicles or solve puzzles,

whatever that motivating factor is internally.

What is it that I can do to remove the obstacles

from you growing that, cultivating that,

maintaining that over decades?

Instead of what we kind of do,

kind of like our education system does

to kids wanting to learn,

we kind of do that to our people wanting to work.

What am I doing by taking away that internal drive,

that whatever that is, an internal motivation?

And that's a hard question to ask yourself

and it's a hard question to try to find the answer to

because it's probably gonna involve

eating a healthy dose of crow or whatnot, ego.

But it's a big deal.

It's a really, really important thing to do,

not only for hiring, but keeping good people, right?

That's what we want.

We want to hire a staff that eventually ends up

all good people and good for our business

and good in and out of the business

and we want to keep them as long as we reasonably can.

Absolutely, you said so much there.

I want to pack a little bit of that too

because you're just spot on and damning.

I mean, the architect of the Japanese miracle,

I mean, they sent him over there

and he just like completely transformed everything,

just a tremendous genius.

And removing obstacles, I think is a big part of this.

When I was talking about leadership before,

a big part of being a leader is removing obstacles

for your team.

You can't have these obstacles in the way.

And I think when I see shops that really work well,

it's because they're thinking about removing obstacles

not only in the shop, but outside the shop.

What I see a trend happening now is hiring life coaches

and getting those things so they don't bring those things in

because, I mean, again, I mentioned I'm a Gen Xer

and when I started working, it's like,

you leave your stuff at home.

Once you go through that door, you're here to work

and you leave your stuff at home,

but that's just not the way things are these days.

People bring their stuff to work.

And I wanted to say one other thing

about that tool truck relationship

that we're talking about in the beginning of the conversation.

The tool guys are getting beat up by everybody.

And the strategy of saying,

hey, if you ever hear of a technician that's looking,

tell me, that doesn't work so much.

It gets them in hot water.

But what does work is if you have a great relationship

with them and I worked with a shop and she told me,

she said, you know what, Chris?

I was talking with the tool guy

and he told me that one of my ATEX was leaving.

He said he was applying at other places.

And she said, that notification, that heads up,

gave me enough time to go back in,

have the conversations I should have been having

like we're talking about right now about,

hey, how can I remove obstacles for you?

Hey, why are you looking?

What's going on here?

And it gave her the opportunity to save that relationship.

So again, it's that sensory acuity

and knowing what's going on

and having your ear to the ground

so that these things don't blindside you.

Don't wait until it's too late.

Put that up above the board, the door in your office.

Don't wait until it's too late.

Go out, be engaged, ask some questions,

reevaluate, pay attention.

I've been writing tons of blogs about all this stuff lately

that we need to reboot or reinvent ourselves

unless not wait till the first cue of 2027.

You start doing it now.

And some of the best to, I think both of your points

is the stuff we're going to find out,

it's going to come from our ranks.

Very much so.

If you listen and ask the right questions.

Yep.

Well, we can go on for another two or three hours.

My God, you both could do deming for me.

Should do a deming.

I didn't realize I was going to run into a kindred spirit.

Yes, I know.

Great stuff.

Before we turn the mics on,

Chris is reading this incredible,

I think it's a book almost, Matt, that you've written.

It's close.

What is it, 90 pages now?

87 pages?

I've had this bright idea of taking some ideas

that I've mentioned here and there in different episodes

on my podcast and on Karm's podcast and I think others.

And I don't know, I see this convergence of different ideas

like game theory and economics

and it's particularly behavioral game theory,

which gets into some psychology and then just deming.

Like deming kind of had the answer long time ago.

We've had these answers for a long time

and just how, I don't know, I just see this big convergence.

And so I just thought I'd write an article

maybe for a trade magazine and then maybe it could be a series

and now I don't know what it is.

It's a book, a book.

It's turning into a book.

It's heavy, it's great, it's strong.

I've not read the entire,

Chris, you haven't read the entire one either,

but every time I think I'm getting done,

Matt says, there's another 20 pages.

I don't know where you find the energy to sit down and do that,

but the man's so smart, but it's just poor out of you, Matt.

I think about it a while.

And then I have separate documents going with these ideas

and then when they kind of get together,

I'll try to find a place to put them.

And a couple of times, Chris Clodier had to call me up

or message me like, this doesn't make any sense.

Oh, gotta move this.

I remember.

I think I may have seen that conversation

somewhere along the line.

You have to stop, be careful where you insert anything.

And our Craig O'Neill, he did a really nice job of commenting.

He had not editing, but he had comments about,

and that helped immensely.

Well, Chris, I know you're doing a great thing

by helping owners and specialists get together

and try to find them some gainful employment

or people that come to work there.

But I just worry that the industry says,

I need to find somebody, Chris, find me somebody.

That's the conversation.

And that somebody is more of a butt in a seat

than it is a part and partial.

I need someone to come inside and work in our business.

Yeah, absolutely.

I use the story of what I don't like

and the hardest shops we work with

are the ones that say, Chris, go find me talent.

And then they sit back in their chair

and they fold their arms

and they wait for that unicorn to come in

with 25 years of experience and $60,000 worth of tools

and all the ASE certifications and all this stuff.

And it's like, go find them for me.

And they don't realize that this is a partnership.

And the partnership is you've gotta do your part.

Yes, we can find you folks.

And yes, we can find you that person.

If you were gonna wait for a long enough,

we can find you that exact person.

But on your end, there are things that have to happen.

And here's a great story.

I was talking with a good friend of mine.

He actually owns a diesel shop in Iowa.

And we were talking and I said,

what was the strangest story that ever happened

when you're trying to hire a mechanic for your shop?

And he said, you know, I had this guy pull in.

And he said, I was standing in the front office

and I was looking out the window

and I saw him pull in with his truck

and he pulled into the lot

and then he parked and he sat there for about two minutes

and then he backed up and he drove out.

And he said, I couldn't figure it out.

So I gave the guy a call and I said,

hey, we're supposed to have an interview.

What's going on?

The guy goes, you know, I drove into your lot

and I looked around and it was just a bunch of junk or cars.

And I said, you know, this isn't a place for an ATEC.

And he said, that was a gut check.

He said, wow, I've never had anybody tell me that before.

And he said, that day I realized that I don't own a business

that will attract top talent.

What can I do to fix it?

And he did, you know?

He said, took me about 12 years, but I fixed it.

Now I can attract top talent because I did the work.

And that's what I would say to you, Karma.

I would say, you know, there's work on both ends.

Me and my team and my staff, we're gonna work hard for you.

But there's work on your end too.

When we get somebody in front of you,

you have to be able to talk about your opportunity.

You have to talk about your value proposition.

And you have to talk about why that tech should go with you

instead of the other two shops that he's talking to

or she's talking to down the street.

And a lot of owners and GMs, they can't answer that question.

Wow, you know, Chris, and again, I'm going long here,

but what about a grading system for the owner?

He says, listen, this is not for me.

This is for you.

Just listen, sit down with yourself, you know, spend an hour.

I got a grading thing, one through five ABC

of all these really key components,

including what's the place look like from the outside.

You know, where's the appeal of not only the client,

but the employee.

Maybe it gets a person a chance to do soul searching.

I'm ready to fix and change my business

and I want to hire all these great people,

but I'm not attractive to them.

Maybe at the end of this survey,

there's a why statement there, why you're not, maybe.

Anyway, just my crazy think,

because I love to speak to people in the industry

to get my juices flowing.

Matt, thank you so much.

Appreciate time out of your busy day.

Anytime.

Matt Fonzlo, diagnosing the aftermarket A to Z

on the auto and repair podcast network,

and Chris Lawson from technicianfind.com.

Always a pleasure.

Guys, I hope the industry can have fun

and learn something from this.

And don't forget, listen to learn just one thing

by the key is to implement it.

Thanks.

Thanks for being on board to listen and learn

from the Premier Automotive Repair Business podcast,

Remarkable Results Radio.

Get your episodic education on the ARPN listening app

at automotiverepairpodcastnetwork.com.

Also enjoy the podcast

on our Carm Capriato YouTube channel.

Carm is all for advancing

the professional automotive service industry.

Until next time.

About this episode

Specialists leave auto repair when the job feels hard to make a living from, when respect and working conditions fall short, and when shops communicate unclearly. The hosts walk through practical hiring and retention moves: ask pointed questions (like lift downtime), protect internal motivation, and make compensation transparent. They also discuss shop culture “shadow games,” reputation headwinds, and how structured one-on-ones and idea voting can improve day-to-day life. Along the way, they promote shop-management and training tools like NapaTrax and Kukui.

one-on-ones sensory acuity unintended consequences

Chevrolet Trax

Original notes

Thanks to our Partners, NAPA TRACS, Today's Class, KUKUI, and Pit Crew Loyalty Watch Full Video Episode

Why do talented automotive technicians leave the automotive industry, and what can shop owners do to keep them?

Host Carm Capriotto is joined by Technical Specialist Matt Fanslow and Technician Find CEO Chris Lawson to explore what it takes to attract, hire, and retain top talent in today's automotive repair industry. The conversation examines industry professionalism, workplace culture, compensation, employee engagement, and proactive recruiting strategies that help shops become destinations for exceptional technicians.

What You'll Learn

Why elevating the image of automotive professionals is critical to attracting the next generation of talent
The three primary reasons technicians leave shops: lack of respect, limited growth opportunities, and compensation concerns
How financial transparency can build trust, ownership, and a stronger team culture
The difference between a shop's "official game" and its "shadow game," and why understanding both matters
Practical ways to gather meaningful employee feedback and turn ideas into action
How leaders can remove obstacles that prevent technicians from finding joy and fulfillment in their work
Why relationships with tool truck drivers can become a valuable recruiting resource
How a shop's appearance and reputation can influence whether top candidates choose to work there

Finding and keeping great technicians requires more than competitive pay. Shops that create a culture of respect, provide clear growth opportunities, communicate openly, and actively remove workplace frustrations are far more likely to attract and retain top performers. The most successful shop owners don't wait for talent to find them, they intentionally build workplaces where skilled professionals want to stay and grow. Matt Fanslow, Riverside Automotive, Red Wing, MN, Diagnosing the Aftermarket A to Z Podcast: https://mattfanslow.captivate.fm/ Chris Lawson, TechnicianFind.Com. Listen to Chris' other episodes HERE Love your shop? Stay, but stay ready. Auto techs join to level up, find good shops, and keep tabs on top indie jobs nationwide. Techs only. No BS. Independent Wrench Jobs: https://www.skool.com/independentwrenchjobs Thanks to our Partner, NAPA TRACS NAPA TRACS will move your shop into the SMS fast lane with onsite training and six days a week of support and local representation. Find NAPA TRACS on the Web at http://napatracs.com/ Thanks to our Partner, Today's Class Optimize training with Today's Class: In just 5 minutes daily, boost knowledge retention and improve team performance. Find Today's Class on the web at https://www.todaysclass.com/ Thanks to our Partner, KUKUI Stop juggling multiple marketing tools. KUKUI’s integrated platform delivers 4x better website conversions, automated follow-up, and real-time ROI tracking. Get industry-leading customer support with KUKUI at https://www.kukui.com/ Thanks to our Partner, Pit Crew Loyalty You’re probably tired of chasing new customers who never return. We understand. Pit Crew Loyalty ends the one-and-done cycle, turning first visits into lasting, reliable revenue at https://www.pitcrewloyalty.com/ Connect with the Podcast:

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