Stop Calling Them "Just a Tech" | Carm Capriotto

Meet Carm Capriotto, podcast pioneer 0:00

[Steve Shaw] Welcome, everybody, to Fixed Ops Focus with Steve Shaw and Dave Rogers. We are so lucky tonight, Dave. We have, I shouldn't say an old friend, but a good friend of mine from many years. His name is Carm Capriotto, and I'm going to say he's the fixed operations podcast pioneer, right? Carm started this years and years ago. He interviewed me about six years ago. We figured it out: it was in 2020, back in the COVID days. I didn't know what a podcast was. So I want to bring on Carm Capriotto. If I don't say that correctly, he'll kick my butt. Carm, give us a quick word about yourself, and then tell us what's on your mind. How have you been for six years?

Carm Capriotto: You said it right, Steve. And you don't want to know. I could go on for the next two hours, but I'll try to make it short. I'm kind of the OG of the podcast world in automotive, because when I started, podcasting was just a couple of years old. I had to get a podcast coach. Who knows what the hell I was doing. I decided to pop out some episodes, and then I said, I've got to eat. You guys had jobs, and at that moment I didn't. And I wanted to do what we could to improve the industry through storytelling. So I found myself a sponsor. I picked up the phone, called a great friend of mine, drove to Detroit and went into the Federal-Mogul headquarters, and they agreed, and I got a one-minute commercial on one of my shows. And the rest is history.

And thank you so much for coming on back in 2020. Part of what I had in a good timeline was the whole service advisor training thing, Steve, all the stuff you were doing. I remember watching it. You had all these people up on the screen. You were rocking. And I'm hoping you're still doing that today.

Steve Shaw: Well, back then we had about twelve groups, in 2020. Now we've got forty-plus groups and about a thousand stores that have come along along the way. Dave was one of the pioneers with us as well, in the university and so on. So yes, we're doing great. I appreciate that.

Advisor training never ends 2:26

[Carm Capriotto] Well, that's all good news. I'm so glad you're growing. Back in 2020, I think we were just about ready to start the Automotive Repair Podcast Network. I have an accountant, a husband-and-wife marketing team, a communications expert, a technician, which I like to call a technology specialist, and a business coach, all in our network. We created our own app for it, and in two days our new version two is coming out, which I'm so excited about. But I'm not here to talk about that.

I'm here to say that you were probably perfect in the timeline for service advisor coaching. If everyone looks back, they'll probably say you were a pioneer, just like I was in the independent space. Today, service advisor, client advisor, client advocate training is over the top. And it reminds me of all the people in the bays and the perpetual studency they need to have. They need to practice their craft every day. They need to do work to be good. And so do our counter people. I don't think we can train them and forget about them for two years and then give them a refresher. I think this is a perpetual thing they need to go through.

Dave Rogers: Back in 2018 or 2019, whenever I met Steve, times were good. People were making money, right? They were selling seventeen million cars a year. Nobody was thinking about it. And we started chit-chatting about customer pay and growing the business, because this isn't going to last forever. We got on it early, and then two years later, of course, the world came crashing down for a little bit. But you're right. Technicians are always expected to keep their level of training up, and yet the front of the business has been lagging behind for a long time. It's true.

Steve Shaw: I just read this the other day, doing some research. The status of the technician in the consumer's eye has gone up tremendously. The trust factor of technicians has gone up twenty, twenty-five percent over the last five to seven years. Yet the trust in the guy at the counter and the salesperson has eroded by a similar number.

Carm Capriotto: Well, it doesn't help to put a TV show out on Netflix called Tires, a super disgusting TV show where they say, "Did you sell up? Did you sell up?" Or the consumer comes in and says, "Don't sell me up." It was such a black eye on dealerships and independents. Was he making fun? Yes. But sooner or later, when you make fun five times in a row, people think it's real. And then people act like that, and then they get an attitude.

Dave Rogers: That's been my thing for as long as I can remember. We don't badmouth the other dealers. We don't badmouth the independents. If you badmouth an independent or another dealer, you're badmouthing yourself. Somebody screws up, we all do. Just fix the problem. You don't need to throw anybody under the bus. It's got to be positive. We can't badmouth one part of the business and think it's not going to impact us. And you're right, even though that tire show is pretty funny, there have been some cringeworthy scenes in it where I'm going, eesh, that message is not going to come across well.

The Bear and "Yes, Chef" 6:13

[Carm Capriotto] So here I am, watching this TV show called The Bear. I was almost forced to watch it, guys, by a great friend of mine, Matt Fanslow. He's in our network. He picks up the phone and says, "Carm, you've got to watch The Bear." I say, "I'm so busy, I don't have time. My God, look at how many episodes." I didn't watch The Bear. Finally he said, "We're no longer friends if you don't watch The Bear." So I go watch The Bear, and in the first twenty minutes I put it on pause and went to get a yellow pad and a pen. I'm sitting down saying, this TV show rocked my world.

It's the Berzatto family, and the main character's name is Carmy. By the way, they call him Carmy. Carmy Berzatto. The Beef is the name of the roast beef restaurant in Chicago. It's all fictional. The owner dies, and he wills it to his brother, who is an up-and-coming Michelin-star chef, studying his butt off. You know it, Steve, you're shaking your head. You get it. In the first episode, Carmy walks in in his dress whites. That means he's a chef, baby. He's not a mechanic. He's not dressed in jeans and blues with grease on his face. He's in his dress whites. And that impressed me, I guess, because I wasn't paying attention to the chefs in the real world around me. You rarely see a chef in a great restaurant. They're always behind the scenes, right?

So he turns to one of the guys at the oven and says, "Hey, Chef, will you cook the roast beef for tomorrow?" And the guy was shocked by it, Dave. He looked back over at Carmy and goes, "Yes, Chef, I'll do that." And Carmy goes, "Thank you, Chef," and moved on. That's when I put it on pause, and I wrote down: "Chef. What's our word that gains this kind of respect, this kind of stature?" I kept watching. It was so much fun. I watched the second episode. I tore that sheet off, put it on my desk and said, what am I doing here? What am I thinking about?

Soon after that I go to AAPEX, and I'm in the studio we bring to AAPEX. Matt Fanslow is in the studio interviewing somebody, and I'm kind of a third wheel. They're talking way-up tech stuff, and I'm the business kind of guy. And all they kept saying was the word technology. Technology. So I wrote down "technology," put it in my pocket and brought it home. Now I've got "Chef, what's our word?" and I have this "technology" over here. And then I had an issue, Steve, just like you may have had in life, for a medical reason, and I'm sure you went to a neurologist, didn't you?

Steve Shaw: I just called him a brain surgeon, but he's probably a neurologist, yes.

The rise of the specialist 8:58

[Carm Capriotto] Yeah, he's an -ist of some kind. So I'm done with this particular specialist, and I'm saying, this guy saves lives. This guy is so good at what he does, and he's a perpetual student, because they have to be. And I said, what's wrong with calling the diag guy, the A guy, whatever we call him... Everyone's got their own definition of that, right? Why can't we call him a technology specialist? And why can't we say to the consumer in front of us, "Hey, I know you've got that check engine light, Mrs. Smith. Our technology specialist will take a look at that." Not saying tech, not saying mechanic, not even saying the word technician.

And then, this is a true story, I'm at a brewery with a whole bunch of shop owners, and I had just given my keynote speech on this. A guy comes into the brewery, and his shirt says he's a beer technician. It was on his shirt. And I looked at him and said, "Don't you think the word technician is just a little overused?" And they all looked at the guy and said, "You're a beer specialist," in a facetious, kind of funny way. So I'm not here to sell, but the whole concept of what I'm doing, I call it the Rise of the Specialist.

And one of the things that hit me so hard, Dave: I'm at a friend's place in Chicago, a Euro shop. You've got Euro brands in your group?

Dave Rogers: I've got plenty.

Carm Capriotto: Then you're going to relate to this. I'm standing at the counter, the guy walks in and says, "Hey, I'm Mr. Smith. I heard about you guys. I've got the check engine light on in my Mercedes." And they said something that blew me away, but it didn't register, because it was two years before my whole thing. He says, "Our Mercedes specialist will be all over that." So I asked, "You obviously have an Audi specialist, you have a BMW specialist?" And he says, "Yes, these guys are platform specific," no different than in your dealerships.

But then I started to think: why have independents, and even dealerships, not said, "I have a tire specialist, I have an alignment specialist"? I don't have an alignment mechanic. I don't have an alignment guy or girl or person. I have an alignment specialist. And then one of the big high-definition technology moments happens to me. I'm at MACS, the Mobile Air Climate Systems group, at their conference in Orlando, and I'm watching a friend do a training seminar on what I thought was air conditioning on an EV. I'm sitting there drooling, my mouth is open, and I'm watching this guy talk about heat pumps, cooling the battery, heating the battery, all this stuff. And all he could talk about was thermal management. And I said, we don't have an air conditioning guy anymore. We have a thermal management specialist. Why not?

And wait, we just did an alignment, and we need to worry about the angle of all our cameras and our lidars and our radars. And you know what we tell the customer, Dave? "We've got to do an ADAS on that car now, and you'll be fine, trust me." Why aren't we calling this person the calibration specialist, who puts your vehicle back to OE specs? Why aren't we saying that? Why? We're lazy, I think.

Dave Rogers: Well, we're lazy. And I'm old enough to remember when we were called mechanics, right? When I first started, I was an apprentice mechanic, and then a C-rate mechanic. I think we're lazy, and I don't think we take the time to sell our business and sell ourselves. It's funny, it wasn't that long ago that we started changing from mechanic to technician.

Carm Capriotto: I think it was about twenty years.

Dave Rogers: And I remember we had a transmission specialist. When I was in a GM shop, when I first started, we had our two transmission specialists. We did have that. It's an interesting point. Changing the word does matter, I think, and we have to train people and get them going, because we are lazy. People take the path of least resistance, and it's going to take a little time. I think specialist is a great term, but why do you think the one word is going to matter? What do you think it's going to do to elevate the position?

Carm Capriotto: Listen, I've got guys all over the country doing this, with new business cards. And in this document that people can get if they want it...

Steve Shaw: I can link it in our show notes, yes.

Carm Capriotto: That would be great. We have a fundamentals page. A whole bunch of shop owners and I wrote this, and we were saying we needed a kind of creed to explain it. The most important reason for the language shift is the client. Say sixty percent. The other forty is a higher level of pride for the people who work for us, where they say, "You know what? I think they're right. I'm a specialist." I want to call the person who just does mechanical work a mechanical specialist, not a mechanic, and no longer a tech. He can close his eyes, and in twenty minutes he does the best brake job in the entire world, because he's so good, hand and eye. He knows exactly which tool he needs and how to move his body and how to lift. Why shouldn't he be a mechanical specialist? And why shouldn't our tire guy be a tire specialist? We've taught him so much about what he has to do. Tires aren't easy anymore. Think about it. It's getting to be so specialized.

"Diag," "labor" and "just an oil change" 15:13

[Steve Shaw] Well, you're right with the alignments and so on. And I think that goes to a fundamental point. You can make the argument that our technicians are specialists. They have trained and learned, and they know how to do an alignment and do the radar and the lidar, and our tire guy knows how to do that. Even our oil change guy is a specialist in his own right, right? I did read your document. And the message has to come from the counter. I've spent my life, since I left the dealership and before that, trying to get our advisors to change their words. I always say change your words, change your life.

This is what happens in a dealership: "My tech is going to do a diag, and it's $150," right? That's about as good as it gets from a service advisor. "We're going to throw your car on the rack and diag your vehicle." And it has nothing to do with the specialists, the expertise, all of the things our specialists, our technicians, are going to do. And again, I think that's where the technician's value has gone up and the service counter person's value has gone down.

Carm Capriotto: I don't disagree with you. And thank God you said "we're going to do a diag." It doesn't mean anything to our customer.

Dave Rogers: Means nothing. You're right.

Carm Capriotto: So not only do I have a listing of job title changes, I have a listing of changes for what we call the things we do. A DVI, digital vehicle inspection, would be a vehicle performance and safety inspection. Let's just say what it is. Let's make it sound classy, and give the clients some confidence in what we're going to do. And I believe the word labor should go away. How about that, guys? What is it we really do? We service your car. We don't labor your car. And labor has this heavy weight to it: "You mean I've got to pay for labor?"

Steve Shaw: From my mechanic.

Dave Rogers: It's funny you say that, because how many times have you heard a service advisor, or somebody who answers the phone, when the customer says, "I want to get an oil change"? "Just an oil change? Sure, bring it in." Just an oil change. We've been diminishing the oil service for years, right? It's been driving me crazy. No, it's not just an oil change. It's a vehicle service, and we're happy to do that for you. But we do this all the time. You're right. The words are so important. I agree with you a hundred percent.

Making the language stick 17:51

[Carm Capriotto] Because we're lazy, Dave. We're lazy. Here's a funny little story. I'm sitting in a room with a whole bunch of shop owners, and they know Carm's the specialist guy, and yet they still get lazy and say tech or technician. If you were ever in Toastmasters, they would count your ums and ahs, and at the end of the meeting they'd critique your speech and tell you how well you did. So I go up and say, "All right. Thirty-two times you guys said either tech or technician." And in my mind I counted the extra half second it would take to say specialist. "So obviously you don't believe in this, or you don't have the stones to get in front of your people and say, 'Read this document. We're going to do this.'"

A great friend of mine is such an advocate for this, and I said, "Tom, how did you get this to stick?" He said, "Number one, Carm, I believed in this thing and that it was going to work in our company. And I got in front of my people after they read it. It was a Friday morning at eight o'clock, and I said, 'On Monday we're going to make a big change. And here's what I want to ask you all. Do you want to be cooks, or do you want to be chefs?'"

Dave Rogers: Easy enough, right?

Carm Capriotto: And that was the impetus to talk about what cooks are and what chefs are. When I go out and do my keynote, I wear a chef's jacket for the first ten minutes. I want people to see that I'm making a visual impression, because everything I'm about to do for the next forty minutes is all about words.

Steve Shaw: That's great. Well, we have what we call the recommend swear jar, right? On our channel you can swear and cuss. But in the real world, if you cuss, we charge somebody a dollar every time you say the F-word or whatever. So we started charging people a buck if they said the word recommend. I think we have to play games with our people to coach them and train them out of those bad words. I call it the bad R-word. We have to have some sort of fun way of teaching that. And I love the chef's jacket, because it's a visual, and it's a very eye-opening way of looking at it.

Carm Capriotto: Chefs have to go through so much to become good at what they do, and it never stops. Like in our business, where technology continues to move at lightning pace, in the chef world they're always creating new dishes, new spices, new everything, and they have to stay on it. I've done a lot of research on the number of titles in the chef world. The sous chef is number two, the executive chef is number one, and there's pastry, and it goes on and on. And they're perpetual students. They can't get where they are without apprenticing, without mentoring. Does that sound familiar? So if they've got this elevated title that means so much, why wouldn't we add the word specialist, since we talk about doctoring so much and the parallels with our industry?

I remember going to a keynote. It was Marcus Lemonis, who spoke at Vision, I think it was last year. He gets up in front and says, "Listen, I grew up in the dealership business." I think he came over from Cuba or something like that. And he says, "All you service advisors here, you're the nurses. You're taking some of the vitals, and you're helping the doctor in the back room." And I'm thinking, yes, Marcus, thank you for this. Because basically the people in the back have specialties. We're not going to give this high-tech check engine light noise issue, with an uncomfortable, unhappy customer, to someone who doesn't have the credentials. And we're going to give out those titles based on their credentials and their continuing studency.

Steve Shaw: How do you see getting that message out there? I know you're on your own personal crusade right now. But in the industry, how do we make that change? Because there's that 1%, like you talked about, the guy who says, "It's my store, this is how we're going to do business." And then there's everybody else. And everybody else is still saying mechanic right now, and still saying diag and all the nonsense we say. So how do we create that change?

Carm Capriotto: It's the heaviest lift I could ever imagine, Steve. And it has to come from the leadership of each individual business. I remember presenting to a hundred shop owners in Cleveland, and they fell in love with it. They came up to me at the end. But I can count on one hand how many of those hundred people bought in and decided to do it. They loved it, but it takes some stones, it takes some time, it takes pressure. Ultimately it takes a high degree of leadership and ownership: "This is my place, and this is what we're doing from now on." And by the way, service advisors, you're the key, because this whole language shift is about, and I'm going to give you two cool words put together, sophisticated professionalism.

Dave Rogers: Imagine that.

Steve Shaw: How about that?

Carm Capriotto: Imagine that. I came up with it about a month ago, and I keep using it. Take it and run with it, because that's what our industry needs. The way the technology is rolling, the EVs are here, how could we not embrace sophisticated professionalism and a language shift right now? Why not? Because we're lazy. We have too many other things to do. And the guy goes, "What do you mean? Are you kidding me? I'm a mechanic." I mean, look at how we look. Do we look professional most of the time? Not necessarily. And that could be part of the heavy lift. "That person's a specialist? Look at how they look."

Dave Rogers: Well, that guy's a cheeseburger. But I love the mission you're on, and I think podcasting and this kind of medium is a great way to get the message out. Obviously you speak in person, and it's going to be one shop at a time, one area at a time. And you sent us your little booklet. It didn't even look little. It looked pretty thick, I should say.

Carm Capriotto: It's ten pages, that's all it is.

Dave Rogers: See, that's good. So we'll read through it, and I'm on board. I think it's a great idea. We've got to do everything we can to build up the business. I'm thinking to myself, all right, what does this look like in ten years, when this gets adopted, Carm? Tell me how that looks.

Carm Capriotto: Oh my God. Okay. By the way, Steve, I'll answer you in a minute. This is the how-to, numbers one to eight. Number seven: create a language jar.

Dave Rogers: I like it.

Steve Shaw: That's exactly right.

Carm Capriotto: See, Steve? The dollars go in, and it says, "Use the funds for charity, team lunches or gift cards." Come on. I love when you said that, because we're so much aligned. What was your question? In ten years. I've always envisioned this having fifty percent or more traction, and people looking back and saying, "Carm had a great idea. We kind of ignored him for a while, but you know what? He was really looking down the road," because I'm a visionary. I don't think I would have started this podcast thing and felt so much about it otherwise: how we can change people's lives by having them listen to learn just one thing, which is my theme, and then implement it. Just one thing from anyone's podcast, and do something with it. But you have to listen to the whole show to find the thing that's going to move you. My daughter Tracy is my number two. She's my executive producer, content manager and developer, and she's won a whole bunch of really neat awards in the industry. And every once in a while I say to her, "Do me a favor. When this thing really takes off, come to my grave and tell me."

Steve Shaw: I'm going to call you a language alchemist.

Carm Capriotto: I love that. Alchemy, baby. I'm with you. When I have a chance to explain this to people in person, they read it and go, "Okay, this is kind of a neat, cool thing. What's it really about? Do I have time to do this?" They don't show it to their people, they don't show it to their partners or their wives, they don't show it to anybody. They read it and like it, but they don't do anything with it.

Dave Rogers: You've got to share it.

What the words are worth 27:10

[Steve Shaw] I'm going to ask you one more question. How do you monetize it? And I don't mean how do you, Carm, monetize it. I mean, that's what people care about, money. So how do I as a shop owner monetize this? Because in my head, that's what's going to make it change.

Carm Capriotto: I don't get that question, Steve. Let's stop for a moment and talk about the biggest argument I get: "Carm, I can't place an ad for a specialist." And indeed, you can't. I said, "I know that." Part of my presentation is that I want you to place an ad for your technician, and then never mention the word technician in the body of the ad. Because technician is the SEO, they're going to look for that word. But then when they read about this person, this specialist you're looking to hire to do these kinds of jobs, with this kind of continuous education and this specialty, you want them to read the ad, pick up the phone and say, "You got me, man. I'm curious. I've got to come in and talk to you. I need to know what this specialist thing is all about."

So if we sell it the right way... And a lot of times they're in there for a couple of days, looking to see if they like the place, and everyone they'd end up working with is a specialist. Just think about what it is we do. We're no longer technicians. The Zamboni guy, I'm from Buffalo, with the Sabres, they call him the Zamboni ice technician. What tool is he using? What brain power is he using to solve a problem? He's driving a Zamboni, and they call him a technician. So to my point, it's way overused.

Steve Shaw: I never thought about how overused the word technician was. I did think about the devaluation of it, but I never really thought about how everybody is a tech.

Carm Capriotto: And I'm going to guess that twenty years ago is when this really hit a peak, and we loved it. "This is fabulous." Well, the rest of the world looked at it and said, "How could they own that puppy? That's a great term. My plumber? He's a pipe technician."

Dave Rogers: I like the nail technician. Getting your nails done, right? The women go see a technician.

Carm Capriotto: A nail technician. They're a damn nail tech.

Dave Rogers: You're right. But twenty years ago it was a step up, not calling them grease monkeys, not calling them mechanics, moving them up a level, which we all tried to do, right? And now it's outdated. It's useless. It's funny.

Carm Capriotto: It was a great move, you're right. God, okay. Then I won't say what I want to say next.

Dave Rogers: No domestics. We're good. Listen, we can make fun of Ford too. We think Farley and all them guys are a bunch of idiots.

Carm Capriotto: No. What I want to say is that I gave my language shift to Ford Service Engineering.

Dave Rogers: Did you? Wow.

Steve Shaw: Well, the only question people ask me is, "If I hire you, how much more money am I going to make?" That's all any dealership cares about. What we specialize in is RO improvement, right? How do you improve your repair order? And I can tell you that from a dollar value. I'm building value by saying specialist versus tech. Even "my alignment technician" sounds better than "my tech," but what if I said "my alignment specialist"? I have a Grand Wagoneer. I have to get that in on every show. And aligning the Grand Wagoneer, like any other new vehicle nowadays, is a specialty all in itself, with the radar, the lidar, the 360 camera and this and that. Not every guy in the world can do that alignment.

So if I did want to charge $500, or whatever that number is anymore, for those types of alignments, then I probably should have an alignment specialist working on my car, versus a maintenance alignment where you can just set the toe and let it go. So by making those slight adjustments, there's the monetization of those words for the owners. That's where the owner of a dealer or a repair shop, or the manager of a dealership, can say, "What if I did a little bit of culture change?" We kind of poo-poo the word culture a lot, because it's lost a lot of value as well. But if we could start building that value back into our people, then we can. And then again, it goes back to our advisors.

Dave Rogers: That's the challenge. It starts with the advisors. It really does.

Carm Capriotto: It starts with the ownership, and it starts with the team. But the owner of the language on a daily basis is at our counter. And since we're recording calls and listening to calls and evaluating calls, it shouldn't be too difficult for an owner who wants to knock this thing out of the park to look for that word, specialist, and when they don't hear it, you don't get a good score that day, I guess.

Steve Shaw: I was going to say, I can grade it.

Dave Rogers: The AI can grade it.

Carm Capriotto: AI, absolutely. My God, thank you for that. How come I'm just thinking of that right now?

Dave Rogers: We actually have Numa, and there's another one, AutoEngage, that records the conversations, and you can program that any which way you want. You could red-flag it as a lower-quality phone call if they say the word technician. You can definitely do that.

Carm Capriotto: And then you're hanging out with your friends and you say, "Yeah, I took my car to the dealer this week." "That's too bad. Did one of their mechanics work on it?" "No, one of their specialists." "What? Wait. What's a specialist at the dealer?"

Steve Shaw: How'd you get him? That's awesome.

Dave Rogers: How'd you get him? You know a guy, right?

Carm Capriotto: "Are you kidding me? These people have these great people working for them. They're kind of like doctors."

A, B, C and a real career path 33:52

[Dave Rogers] Now, would you get rid of A, B and C? Would you reclassify? How would you do that?

Carm Capriotto: Thank you, Dave, for bringing that up. So many people in the industry know how I feel about A, B, C. If I asked a hundred shop owners and dealers in a room to write down their definition of A, B and C, I would get a hundred and fifty different ones back. So I'm trying to stay away from that. But some of my great friends in the industry said, "Carm, you can't get rid of A, B, C." I said, "I know. So let's numerize it and define it." I may print some of these in another version. I don't want a lot of argument with it, but what I would love to do is come up with one, two or three different versions of the levels within each job category.

People are sending me stuff: "Carm, here's a draft." I'm still working on it with my people. We're trying to come up with a universal ranking, a definition of level one, two and three, with one being the first. So you could be a technology specialist level three, and we have it specifically designed. And listen, not everyone can buy into "technology specialist." Some of them are calling them diagnostic specialists. And you know what? I'm great with that. I'm fine with that. But get the word specialist in there, because that's the sophisticated lift. That's the professional lift in the eye of the consumer. We're doing this so the customer loves us, and partly we're doing it with a language shift.

Steve Shaw: We interviewed Josh Taylor from Wrench Turners. He's in Canada, and he talked a lot about levels of experience based on years of qualification, right? Your schooling and then your years, I don't remember exactly what he said, and that gives you a certain level in the Canadian world. That's the part I remember.

Dave Rogers: I think that's a great thing. I wrote up my definitions and my suggestions when I was running some union stores and trying to establish the union A, B and C, and they didn't want any part of that. They didn't want anything in writing, they didn't want anything nailed down. There was no way they were going to agree to any of that stuff. But it was very similar to what you're saying. It was level one, level two, level three, based on whether someone was proficient at diagnosing, repairing, cleaning an RO and everything else. And it was so funny, because the union guys wanted to know how their tech goes from C to B to A. I said, "Well, here's a handbook for you. Here's the whole thing." It wasn't that long. And they were like, "Well, we're not going to sign this. We're not going to agree to that." I'm like, "Well, then you don't want to go from C to B to A."

Carm Capriotto: Here's what you've got to do, here's how you have to be certified, here's the education you need, here are the courses you need, and you just keep working yourself up. It's a career path. We don't have that. And it could come with a certain level of pay and/or bonus. It should.

Dave Rogers: It should. If you're going to raise the bar on the terminology, and you're going to be a highly trained technology specialist... Listen, I'm good with diagnostic specialist. I think there's a triage case to be made in a lot of stores and a lot of brands where you do have a diagnostic specialist. And if somebody meets those criteria, they deserve a little more money, if they maintain that level of education and training. It's not just a term. You've got to live up to it. But I think it would raise the bar for some of these technicians, and it would probably help hire some people too. Johnny and Sally, who are seventeen years old, maybe their parents will let them get into the car business if they can become a trained specialist at some point instead of a tech.

Carm Capriotto: Are you ready for this? Thank you, Dave. You are landing so many things in my lap. Look at this. Can you see that? "High-tech automotive careers happen here." Look at the titles on the bottom. This is on my website to download and print, and all I tell people is go get a Plexiglas holder for the counter and put it there.

Dave Rogers: There you go. I love it.

Carm Capriotto: For a million reasons, you want it there, because you want mom or dad or aunt or uncle or grandma and grandpa or a friend to go, "Wow, what's that? I happen to have a grandson. He's sixteen. He's looking for something to do. Maybe we talk to him about a skilled career in automotive." Not the trade school, but the skilled career center, right? Get rid of the word trade, because in my mind the word trade means blue collar. And that's why I love technology specialist, Dave. When we talk about 150 million lines of code in a Ford F-150, and twenty computers talking to each other, yes, it's diagnostic, I get that. But what they're working on is technology. It's a computer with four wheels.

Steve Shaw: And I'm happy to pay a hundred dollars an hour for you to work on my computer. I'm just not happy as a consumer to pay a hundred dollars an hour for you to work on my car. There's a disconnect in the value of that.

Carm Capriotto: Yes. Oh my God. By the way, I'm a rambling guy with a million thoughts. A friend of mine wrote a book on objections for service advisors, and in it he had this line I fell in love with. He says you've got to tell the customer, "The vehicle told us it needs this." It just stopped me for a moment. "Based on the inspections and all the data we pulled, here's what the vehicle said it needs." I thought about that for a while, and I said, is that a little dishonest? No, because you couldn't have discovered anything if you didn't go look for it, and you found it because it said, "Hey, look at me, I'm worn out."

Dave Rogers: Some vehicles have been talking since the early eighties, when you put the little paper clip in there and it started flashing the light at you. It was telling you then what it needed, right? I still remember code 44, lean condition, code 45, rich condition. I still remember these things. It was telling you right there and then.

Carm Capriotto: Oh my God. Paper clip, baby. I love that.

Where to find Carm, and the GM tip 40:51

[Steve Shaw] Hey, Carm, we're going to have to wrap this up here in a second. I know we could talk for hours, but where can people find you and find out about all this amazing information?

Carm Capriotto: Remarkable Results is the name of the podcast, and it's a very simple URL: remarkableresults.biz. I couldn't get .com back in the day, so it's remarkableresults.biz. I've got a downloads page and all my episodes. It's a simple website, but it's chock-full of stuff. The downloads page gets you the Rise of the Specialist, and it gets you the Careers Happen Here sheet. And I just recently put up a paper I call Principled Thinking on Life Skills. There's a list of about twenty-five different life skills that we know many of the young people coming into the industry just don't have. We used to call them soft skills. I want to call them life skills. And it basically says, guess who's responsible for this? You. The boss, the owner, the leader.

Steve Shaw: Ooh, I like that.

Carm Capriotto: You're responsible for this. They're not going to go out and look for it. They're not going to find it in the doom-scroll world they live in. And one of the life skills is go outdoors. Dave, you can relate to that. Get some sun, baby.

Dave Rogers: Get some sun, man. That's right. I'm all on board with that.

Steve Shaw: So last thing, Carm. Dave does the GM tip of the day, and I'm going to give it to you for a second, and then Dave's going to wrap us up. You're talking to all the general managers in the car business right now. What would you say to a general manager about your mission?

Carm Capriotto: About my mission of changing the language: really do a very deep dive. Read the Rise of the Specialist. Get it from my website, remarkableresults.biz. Go to the downloads page. It's the first one there. Read it. Mark it up. Highlight it. Share it with some friends. Ask them objectively, "What do you think of this? Is this crazy, or is this real? Is it going to help the image of a client looking in at us? And is it going to lift the professionalism, the sophisticated professionalism, of how we relate to our clients?"

Steve Shaw: That's awesome. Dave, you want to wrap us up?

Dave Rogers: Carm said it pretty well there. The tip of the day is words do matter, right? Let's build our people up, let's build the business up, and let's tell everybody all the positive stuff. There's nothing wrong with calling your technicians and your people in the back specialists, just like you probably have some fancy names for your sales consultants, right? They're not salespeople anymore. Or your F&I people have their own term. I think for the last twenty-five years or so, since the publics have been around, they've been making the franchise dealerships shiny, new and professional. I think they've really helped the industry, and so have some of the big-box retailers and the independents. They're cleaning up, they're trying to change the reputation. I think this is the next logical step. Let's get some positive words to describe our associates, and figure out a way to elevate the business one customer at a time.

Carm Capriotto: Can I have thirty seconds? I love what you just said, and it reminded me of a huge language shift in a job title from many years ago. I used to go to Dunkin' Donuts, I used to go to Starbucks, and the coffee maker made me coffee. Today it's a barista. So why can't we have specialists? A technology specialist, a thermal management specialist, an alignment specialist? We have baristas. Duh.

Steve Shaw: I wanted to know what you were going to call the guy who made the donut.

Dave Rogers: Time to make the donuts. All right. Well, listen, I appreciate it.

Steve Shaw: Carm, hang out with us for a few minutes. But like everybody said, guys, change your words, change your life. We appreciate you being on our show, Carm. It's been great to catch up. Great to see you. And let's not wait six more years.

Carm Capriotto: All right, man.

Dave Rogers: Great meeting you.