Changing The Industry Podcast

David Roman [00:00:00]:
Ready?

Lucas Underwood [00:00:01]:
Yeah.

David Roman [00:00:06]:
All right.

Lucas Underwood [00:00:06]:
You took my job.

David Roman [00:00:07]:
I know. I'm sorry. I got your camera too. Don't kick the table.

Lucas Underwood [00:00:12]:
I'll do my best. Hey, at least I'm not kicking cameras, right?

David Roman [00:00:17]:
And it wasn't that bad. You know, a lot of. A lot of the instances where I was kicking the table or kicking the camera, I wasn't even in the shot. Like somebody was talking, Somebody else was talking. So.

Lucas Underwood [00:00:29]:
Yeah, so they were the ones that were moving, not you. Ron Paul, introduce yourselves.

Paul Pate [00:00:37]:
Go ahead, Ron.

Ron Shanas [00:00:38]:
Okay. Hey, good to see you guys.

Lucas Underwood [00:00:41]:
Good seeing you.

Ron Shanas [00:00:42]:
Good to see you guys this morning. First day here? Yeah. I'm Ron Shannis and with today's class and I'm our VP of strategic planning. So I have a lot to do with our plans for growth and partnerships, et cetera. And my colleague is Paul Pate.

Paul Pate [00:00:58]:
Hi, I'm Paul Pate, director of Learning, Innovation. And so what I do in our platform is I kind of design the user experience and also the technical content. I've got a team of four other guys that help me with the technical content.

Lucas Underwood [00:01:11]:
Okay.

Paul Pate [00:01:12]:
So we're the one trying to figure out how to help adults learn more effectively in a shorter amount of time.

Lucas Underwood [00:01:18]:
Well, you know, it's really interesting because Jim Kokones is a good friend of mine.

Paul Pate [00:01:21]:
Okay.

Lucas Underwood [00:01:22]:
And until Jim started working with you guys, I had never heard of today's class. And I know there's a lot of listeners who have never heard of it. And they're always asking us, saying, hey, we want to do some training, we want to do some stuff for our team. What is today's class? Tell us a little bit about it.

Ron Shanas [00:01:36]:
Well, a lot of people think we're a startup. And nothing could be further from the truth. The company's been around for, gosh, Paul, what, 20 some odd years?

Paul Pate [00:01:44]:
Just over 20 years, yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:01:46]:
Holy cow, I had no clue.

Ron Shanas [00:01:47]:
Yeah. And originally it was an instructor led group.

Lucas Underwood [00:01:51]:
Okay.

Ron Shanas [00:01:52]:
So we had, oh, I don't know, 75, 80 instructors that were all ATMC aligned and they'd go out under contract and I guess one of our major contracts at the time was ACDelco. And they'd provide instructor led training in our industry for primarily ACDelco. What was it? PSC's professional service centers. And ultimately we served the trade school industry, both secondary schools, and then also Paul. Paul's a former dean of a community college. Okay, so those as well. And then in. What was it, 2019.

Paul Pate [00:02:35]:
In 2019, the President of our company, David Boies, was, you know, he's Asking questions. And that's how I got connected with David. And his questions were to the effect of, you know, I see a lot of training in the industry. How do we know that that training model, not the training itself, there's a lot of great trainers, a lot of great content. How do we know that that training model is the most effective way to help the people in the industry get what they need?

Lucas Underwood [00:03:01]:
Right.

Paul Pate [00:03:02]:
And so we. He had found this mobile learning app, basically, and it's called Adaptive learning.

Lucas Underwood [00:03:11]:
Yeah.

Paul Pate [00:03:11]:
And so adaptive learning, we didn't have the tools to do this 20 years ago, but now with AI in the background, machine learning, those kinds of things, the adaptive learning engine in the background could look at a learner and say, okay, so David, I can see how you're answering some of these questions, and I can quickly determine your weaknesses, your strengths, your confidence level, which, if you want to get into confidence and how that impacts memory. Happy to go there. But now that I know and understand the learner, I say, I, I'm talking about the machine learning in the background. The AI in the background, it can say, I, I know that you need content based in this area. And so now it's sending you content that is specific to your weaknesses or where you have a lack of confidence. It's like going to church and the preacher is talking right to you. Because if all four of us started on our platform today, three days from now, we'd all be getting different content because the machine learning is already starting to figure out, okay, you got a weakness here, let's work on that weakness.

Lucas Underwood [00:04:08]:
Right. And you know, Jim had been doing some stuff in his past life that was in relation to that, right?

Ron Shanas [00:04:15]:
Yeah. He was a real enthusiast for the application of AI in training and developing team members in our industry.

Lucas Underwood [00:04:22]:
And it's really interesting because like you said, this technology has not been as powerful as it is right now. And so now that we're kind of turning this corner and we're seeing what it's capable of, I mean, it's a perfect use factor for it, Right?

Ron Shanas [00:04:35]:
Sure.

Lucas Underwood [00:04:35]:
And really kind of tailoring because you're, you're right. You talk about confidence. If I'm a technician, and even if I'm an experienced technician and I'm trying to learn something and I already know the subject matter, if I have to go through that subject matter, a believe it or not, they say that it reduces their confidence because they think their employer is not confident in them because they're asking them to do this mediocre training. The other thing Is that a. It verifies, hey, you actually know this content. And it begins to step them through it in a way that they can move into things that they really care about more quickly. I've been doing a lot of research recently, and there's a couple books. There's the talent Code, and then there was a book on motivation that I recently read.

Lucas Underwood [00:05:19]:
And one of the things they talk about is myelin and the way that our brains work and the way that we exercise our brains. And this seems like the perfect way to truly exercise your brain. Where you need to exercise your brain. You said, how does confidence play into this? How do you think confidence plays into this?

Ron Shanas [00:05:37]:
It's interesting because it plays into it a couple of ways.

David Roman [00:05:41]:
So for the.

Ron Shanas [00:05:42]:
For the learner, right?

David Roman [00:05:44]:
Yeah, for the.

Ron Shanas [00:05:45]:
The guy or gal that's doing the training every day, which incidentally, only takes three to five minutes. And that's one of its principal value propositions. You think how busy your shop is.

Lucas Underwood [00:05:54]:
Yeah.

Paul Pate [00:05:54]:
Right.

Ron Shanas [00:05:55]:
Making the time necessary to sit and engage with no matter how good it is.

Lucas Underwood [00:06:01]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:06:01]:
A traditional learning management system, or even knowing who to and when to send somebody out for instructor led training. Pretty expensive, right? I mean, it's very challenging to the business. But, you know, to your question, confidence is an emotion. Now think back, Lucas, you think back too. Think back to your earliest memory in life. You got it. Are you thinking about it? Was it associated with some feeling? Happiness, joy, anger, sadness? I know mine was. Mine was associated with, among other things, a bar, a lava soap in my mouth.

Ron Shanas [00:06:40]:
Okay.

Lucas Underwood [00:06:41]:
It'll do the trick.

Ron Shanas [00:06:42]:
On it. I was 4 years old, and I was sitting on the floor. It was a red linoleum floor. And I was trying to learn how to spell. Cause I wanted to write a letter to Santa Claus. And. And I wanted my. It had to be a good letter because it was going to the man.

Ron Shanas [00:06:57]:
You know, we're coming up around Christmas time. I'm covering all my bases.

Lucas Underwood [00:07:01]:
Yeah, do everything you can.

Ron Shanas [00:07:02]:
Everything I can. You know, And I needed to know how to spell the word look. And mom was busy. She was busy. And I. Mom, how do I spell look? How do I spell look? She didn't listen to me. She didn't respond. And I didn't know a lot of bad language, but I sure knew how to express myself.

Ron Shanas [00:07:20]:
And I guess I walked into that kitchen where she was making dinner, and I g. A piece of my mind. And that's when I learned what lava soap tastes like.

Lucas Underwood [00:07:29]:
Was. Now I gotta ask. Was that when it was still L soap or was this after that?

Ron Shanas [00:07:33]:
No, I think it was after lie because I didn't blister. Nonetheless, it didn't taste very good and it was gritty. Okay. Right. You know, my dad was in the business, so he'd come home every evening and even though he'd wash up at work. Right. He'd wash up with a lot of soap to get the rest of whatever was on his hands off before he sat down to dinner with us.

Lucas Underwood [00:07:50]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:07:50]:
And I remember that. So emotion serves a purpose, right?

Lucas Underwood [00:07:57]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:07:57]:
It helps you to retain.

Lucas Underwood [00:07:59]:
For sure.

Ron Shanas [00:07:59]:
Here's the thing you think about with a car park that's 12.1 years in span.

Lucas Underwood [00:08:05]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:08:05]:
Even in core concepts for the systems that those vehicles operate under, that's a lot of information to be retained and have at hand to apply in the bay. For sure, isn't it? For sure. So if you associate an emotion and someone's emotionally invested in getting it right on that adaptive learning interaction, on that question, and they get four to six of those a day and they get it right.

Lucas Underwood [00:08:34]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:08:35]:
There's an emotion that's associated with it if they get it wrong.

Lucas Underwood [00:08:40]:
Exactly.

Ron Shanas [00:08:40]:
There's that little twinge. Right. They got it wrong. They're going to see it again. They're more likely to remember because it.

Lucas Underwood [00:08:48]:
Did create that little bit of.

Ron Shanas [00:08:50]:
Now you're the owner operator, right?

Lucas Underwood [00:08:51]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:08:52]:
So on the back end you're going to be able to see how come this guy told me he's the, he's the Lord's gift to H Vac, yet every time he tries to convert a 134 to 1234 YF and pass a little bit of gas, I have to rework the job.

Lucas Underwood [00:09:08]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:09:08]:
That's a case of unconscious incompetence. He thinks he knows it, but he doesn't. Right. The other end of that continuum is someone, and I'm sure you had people like this that work for you or with you. They know it. You know they know it. They know they know it.

Lucas Underwood [00:09:24]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:09:25]:
But they're second guessing themselves all the time in the bay, right?

Lucas Underwood [00:09:28]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:09:29]:
So they lack confidence, they're less productive, they're going to have a higher rework ratio. So that's part of the role of gauging confidence. Right?

Lucas Underwood [00:09:40]:
Right.

Ron Shanas [00:09:40]:
With every one of these interactions and a lot of people say, well, you're just testing them, but we're not. Because if you think about it, when was the last time you revisited algebra?

Lucas Underwood [00:09:53]:
That was what, last week?

Paul Pate [00:09:54]:
Right.

Lucas Underwood [00:09:54]:
David?

Ron Shanas [00:09:55]:
I put a, I put a bunch of X's And Y's and squares in front of you guys right now, we're going to be able to solve that problem.

Lucas Underwood [00:10:00]:
No, I mean, I know I can.

Ron Shanas [00:10:02]:
Right. I'm going to be struggling. It's the same thing, right. You don't revisit it. We don't assume they're going to remember this stuff. So based on your organization's priorities for that tech and their role, whether they're an A tech, B tech, master tech, however you categorize them, we're very focused on where training and development intersects your business goals. Yeah, it's going to turn around, tap Paul on the shoulder and say you still got voltage dropped down, you still understand that. And Paul's either going to understand it or not.

Ron Shanas [00:10:35]:
If he doesn't. Yeah, it's going to re up that training for him until bringing back in place.

Paul Pate [00:10:42]:
I'll take confidence in a slightly different track. So I was recently preparing our company for ASC accreditation. You know, as a training company you can become AS accredited. And when I was preparing that document, you know, one of the questions it was asking was how do we know what we're doing is the right thing to do? So I did a little research and I was easily able to find three scientific studies. And the scientific studies directly tied confidence to work performance.

Lucas Underwood [00:11:11]:
Yeah.

Paul Pate [00:11:12]:
And so it's like, let's not guess, let's not do gut level opinion, let's not do this, because I think so. Let's look at the scientific research. If it's a legit scientific study. And these were. And I'm sorry, I'm not going to recite the year.

Lucas Underwood [00:11:26]:
Yeah, for sure, for sure.

Paul Pate [00:11:27]:
But if it's a legit study, all these studies tie. The confident worker is more productive and they make less mistakes.

Lucas Underwood [00:11:38]:
I completely agree. And one really cool thing about this platform is this book about practice and it's called the Talent Code. And one of the things he talks about is that musicians, the absolute cream of the crop, musicians tend to practice in a very, very specific way that led them to being exceptional musicians. And it was that they didn't put the whole presentation together, they did not put the whole performance together. They would work on a section and they would get this section right and they would do that section over and over again. Now it did not sound like music when they were working on this section. It was, oh, I'm going to work on this chord. I'm going to get this chord right.

Lucas Underwood [00:12:17]:
And once I get through this chord now I'm going to move to this and I'm going to make sure it sounds like I want it to. And eventually they go through this so many times, and even though it can be a painstaking process, they go back through the part that doesn't sound like they want it to sound, and they work that part over and over and over again. And that they could find that the true difference between exceptional musicians that went a really long way versus those who didn't. And they were talking about Jimi Hendrix and they said, hey, listen, one of the things that they've seen videos of him and, you know, real grainy, old school video, was that he would sit there and he would practice that one tiny part over and over and over to the point people were complaining, saying, this is awful. I can't listen to this one thing one more time. Yeah, but he was going to perfect that one thing.

Paul Pate [00:13:05]:
He was perfecting what he knew he was weak in.

Lucas Underwood [00:13:07]:
Exactly.

Paul Pate [00:13:08]:
And he's making a conscious choice. You know, I kind of liken it. And when you look at what causes a technician to fail in a diagnostic operation.

Lucas Underwood [00:13:17]:
Yeah.

Paul Pate [00:13:18]:
What do you think that is?

Lucas Underwood [00:13:20]:
From my perspective, the thing that I see the most is I see the thing that Jim Kokonis taught me was the thought process behind the diagnostics. Right. Is that they don't think about, I'm going to plan, do, act and then retest. Right. And so that's the thing that I see the most. And that changed my life when I saw it, even with my business. Because now all of a sudden, I'm looking at this in a different light. That didn't work.

Lucas Underwood [00:13:46]:
Now what?

Paul Pate [00:13:47]:
Right, let's take it a step further. I'll give you another analogy that might work for you. When you look at what a technician is trying to do during the diagnostic process and you look at where they struggled, at some point they went wrong. It could be that they were missing a foundational piece. Well, think of it this way. How many letters in the Alphabet?

Lucas Underwood [00:14:08]:
I have no clue, never counts one.

Paul Pate [00:14:10]:
Of these six, 26 letters in the Alphabet. If I knew 21 of the 26 letters in the Alphabet, could I spell most of the words that I need? Could I function on a daily basis pretty well? But what happens when I need those five that are missing? So when you start to look at our platform, we're going to teach the Alphabet first. Because if I can't determine that, you know, all 26 letters in the Alphabet, there are going to be words that you cannot spell.

Lucas Underwood [00:14:42]:
Yeah, for sure.

Paul Pate [00:14:43]:
And if you can't spell the words, then you can't Put them into a sentence. And if you can't make a sentence, you can't make a paragraph, you can't make a paragraph, you can't make a book. And so when you look at confidence again, where you need to become confident that they know all of the foundational information because that carries through. It's not some big bizarre concept they're missing, it's. They don't understand the foundation of how things work.

Lucas Underwood [00:15:09]:
It's really neat. Especially the fact that you're talking about these are small little tidbits. We're not, we're not trying to over feed them, if you will.

Ron Shanas [00:15:19]:
Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:15:19]:
One of the things I've heard a lot of dealership tech say is, man, this, this educational stuff is a full day or it's four hours, six hours sitting at a computer, your eyes begin to glaze over. You can't even retain the knowledge.

Paul Pate [00:15:30]:
So they can retain it.

Ron Shanas [00:15:31]:
Yeah, there's no way. And that's, that's a problem. Right. I mean, you know, that's why they, they say practice makes perfect. The other thing too is they, they get, they get trained well in advance of new technology that they're actually going to begin to see in the workshop. And they got trained some time ago. That stuff ain't there.

Lucas Underwood [00:15:56]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:15:57]:
It's not reinforced it. Paul will tell you. I mean he's a learning theory expert. I mean, you know, he's an expert in adult learning. People just can't retain every morsel that's for all intents and purposes fire hosed at them.

Lucas Underwood [00:16:14]:
Yeah, for sure.

Ron Shanas [00:16:14]:
In that environment, I don't care how good they are.

Paul Pate [00:16:18]:
Our, our platform. If you think of irrigation, it's a drip feeder.

Lucas Underwood [00:16:22]:
Okay.

Paul Pate [00:16:22]:
It's not a firehose.

Lucas Underwood [00:16:23]:
Right.

Paul Pate [00:16:24]:
And it's by design that we do that.

Lucas Underwood [00:16:26]:
Okay.

Paul Pate [00:16:26]:
I've got to feed it to you a little bit at a time. But the other thing is I can't give you information and expect that three months later you're just going to retain it. There's a thing called the forgetting curve, Dr. Ebinghaus, if you're not familiar with him, I don't know if you.

Lucas Underwood [00:16:40]:
I'm not, I'm not.

Paul Pate [00:16:41]:
Okay. So the forgetting curve is a German scientist by the name of Ebinghaus and he did this work, this research back at the turn of the century, but he had proven that you will forget 90 something percent of what you've learned within 24 hours if you don't do a few things. We do those few things.

Lucas Underwood [00:17:01]:
Yeah.

David Roman [00:17:01]:
Right.

Lucas Underwood [00:17:01]:
To try to cement it In.

Paul Pate [00:17:03]:
Yes.

Lucas Underwood [00:17:03]:
Glue it in.

Paul Pate [00:17:03]:
Yeah. So here's an analogy that you can use as well if you wanted to get. Do you play golf?

Lucas Underwood [00:17:09]:
No, I don't.

Paul Pate [00:17:09]:
I don't either because it's really slow and boring.

Lucas Underwood [00:17:11]:
I can't take it. I can't take it.

Paul Pate [00:17:13]:
But let's just say you did play golf or you did see some type of a sport.

Lucas Underwood [00:17:17]:
Right.

Paul Pate [00:17:17]:
Would you get better at that sport if you went once every three months and you spent three hours doing it, or if you did a little bit every single day for three months? It's pretty obvious.

Lucas Underwood [00:17:28]:
Yeah. You'd have substantial progress with the. Every day with minimal progress every three months.

Paul Pate [00:17:34]:
So think of the training model that we've been using for four to five decades in this country for our technicians, right? We send them to a class. The class is somewhere between three and eight hours. We fire hose them with information. We expect them to retain it. We gave them a book. You should be able to look that up. Right. And that's kind of our attitude.

Paul Pate [00:17:55]:
The trainer is an excellent person. The content is typically pretty excellent.

Lucas Underwood [00:17:59]:
Right.

Paul Pate [00:17:59]:
What was the problem? Why is it and how we learn? In my former position and when I started talking to today's class, initially I was noticing this, that I would send out trainers I was with, and I won't name names, but I was with the national OE on their aftermarket division and I had a team of trainers that went out across the country. I would see, because I would observe their classes a lot and I'd go and I'd see that we taught a class on TPMS in this exact location last year. We come the next year, we teach the same class or a revised version of the class, somewhat updated. It's the same people, but I'm observing what does the knowledge in the room seem to be. Yeah, it wasn't any better, right?

Lucas Underwood [00:18:42]:
Yeah, for sure.

Paul Pate [00:18:43]:
Because they use it or lose it, you know, it's kind of that thing.

Lucas Underwood [00:18:48]:
Absolutely.

Paul Pate [00:18:48]:
If they're not using it, they're going to forget it. This is not their fault. It's not the teacher's fault. It's. It's really a fault of the model that we're using to deliver the content.

Ron Shanas [00:18:57]:
Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:18:58]:
I really look up to Mark that runs Apex for a lot of reasons. Right. Very smart man and he's. He's very much outside of our industry in a lot of ways, but he's very, very smart. And one of the things that we've had talks about is like the training that we're doing here. This year is very different than it's ever been before. And Mark has said to me in the past, like, hey, we have to do some hands on training, because the guys are not retaining this. They're not taking anything away from it.

Ron Shanas [00:19:22]:
Now.

Lucas Underwood [00:19:22]:
Hands on training conventionally, in, you know, my role with asta, for instance, is really tough to do hands on training because you can only fit so many people in the classroom. It's expensive. It takes a bigger classroom. It's a lot of work to pull this off. And as an association putting on a trade show, it's expensive for them to put that on. Absolutely right. And so it means that in some ways they have to raise their prices, they have to bring additional dollars to it. And, you know, I think that, that it's so easy for us to overlook.

Lucas Underwood [00:19:53]:
There's a man named Ken Robinson, he's dead now, but he did a TED Talk and he wrote a bunch of books on education and how we learn. And one of the things he said is, he said, you expect these kids to sit in a classroom for six, eight hours a day and learn in the most enlightening time in the entire world. Right. We are absolutely stimulated and extremely high level, nonstop cell phones, video games, tv, all of these things. And you expect to put them in a classroom and they're going to listen to somebody super boring for six hours a day. And you expect that to be a positive outcome. No, we just call that ADHD now. Right.

Lucas Underwood [00:20:28]:
Like we're just gonna put a system name to it.

Ron Shanas [00:20:31]:
Exactly.

Lucas Underwood [00:20:31]:
Instead of fixing the problem.

Ron Shanas [00:20:32]:
Well, and that way of teaching has been around since the 1700s. The English used to call it blab schools. Schoolmarm would get up in front of the class and she'd recite something, whether it was Dickens or Chaucer or whatever.

Lucas Underwood [00:20:42]:
Right.

Ron Shanas [00:20:43]:
And they would blab it back at her. And really, fundamentally, it's been the same. That's why we deal in knowledge competence in the present. So we speak of knowledge as baseline knowledge. That's what you or I or Paul bring to the table. Right. Initially. And then we speak of current competency.

Ron Shanas [00:21:04]:
So you go to a class, great information, you absorb enough, you regurgitate it on a post test. You pass the post test, you get your certificate, you're a graduate of that class. How much of that are you really going to retain?

Paul Pate [00:21:19]:
It's called short term memory.

Lucas Underwood [00:21:20]:
Yeah, okay, exactly.

Ron Shanas [00:21:22]:
So where's your current competency? Where's that knowledge when you need to apply it? Okay, now you'll note we're selling knowledge we are, we. Let me differentiate. There's a difference between knowledge and skill.

Lucas Underwood [00:21:35]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:21:35]:
Skill is knowledge actualized. This is a tactile industry. Someone has to help make the connection between what we impart and put between folks ears so that they can access it and their fingertips so they can apply it regardless of their role. We teach service advisors great communication skills and things of that nature as well. But that connection still has to be made. Bottom line is if you've got a mechanism like we do to keep it top of mind, then you're dealing in current knowledge competency and that's our stock and trade.

Lucas Underwood [00:22:11]:
You know, I think a lot about David because when David sits down to learn a new task. Right. What does he do? He learns himself. He teaches himself how this works and what this does and he goes down the pathway that he wants to go down. Right. He would not fare well in a class where they're trying to teach him something because he would say, well, I don't care about that and I don't care about this and I don't care about this, but I care about that. And they're not talking about that. So I'm going to get up and I'm going to walk out.

Lucas Underwood [00:22:36]:
Right. That's just how he rolls. Whereas something like this, especially if, if he's going through the process and it's asking questions or he's showing it his knowledge currently, it's going to pretty quickly move David away from that. And it's interesting because the true intellects in this world, that's, that's them. Right, right. Because they already know the base knowledge. They don't want to waste their time with that. Exactly.

Lucas Underwood [00:23:00]:
They're ready to move on.

Paul Pate [00:23:01]:
Yeah. When you talk about totally linear instruction from an instructor led event, we're going to start at point A, then I'm going to teach you point B. David, you have a question about point F and what happens? The instructor said, just hold that question. We're going to get to that on slide 237. But just hold that good question and then move on. What did they just do to that adult learner? Oh yeah, turn them off. Exactly. That learning switch just went, oh, I'm out.

Lucas Underwood [00:23:28]:
Yeah.

Paul Pate [00:23:29]:
So you have to look at how people learn what you're talking about right here and how David learns. There's a term for that. It's called andragogy. And Malcolm Knowles is the doctor who figured all this out. He did a lot of research and he's the father of andragogy. Andragogy is different than pedagogy. Not trying to go all college boy on you, but I'm going to do it for just a second.

Lucas Underwood [00:23:50]:
I love it.

Paul Pate [00:23:50]:
So what motivates a child to learn or a juvenile to learn is different than what motivates an adult to learn.

Lucas Underwood [00:23:58]:
Okay.

Paul Pate [00:23:58]:
And one of the things in andragogy, it said there's six pillars of that and one of them is the adult has to be in charge of their own learning. So in our platform, for example, David, if you're on our platform and you want to go somewhere else, it's pretty easy. You hit the training button at the bottom of the bar and you type the keyword search in there and it's going to pop up all the opportunities that you would have to go there. And who's to say going there first before going over here is wrong? There's nobody that's going to say that. So we're trying to apply these principles of andragogy. Other things has to be relevant and the motivation for an adult learner, believe it or not, it's not money. A lot of it has to do with recognition from others. As a peer, I want my peers to that I'm motivated when my peers recognize me as an expert or knowledgeable at least.

Lucas Underwood [00:24:54]:
Absolutely.

Paul Pate [00:24:54]:
So we try to apply all these principles of andragogy. We're just trying to build a different mousetrap here. And, you know, what can we do? So you talked about hands on training. Let me give you a scenario. In our app and for the learners who are out there, listeners who may not know what our app is, you're going to get basically four questions a day. That's the minimum requirement, stress minimum. But that's what you have to do.

Ron Shanas [00:25:19]:
Yeah, it's user definable. So some shops want more, some shops.

Paul Pate [00:25:22]:
Want less, but you're getting four questions. The questions aren't. This is not stump the chump.

Lucas Underwood [00:25:27]:
Right.

Paul Pate [00:25:27]:
They're not trying to trick you, they're trying to teach you. Every question has elements in it where you can go deeper. It's almost like a deep dive in the Internet. It's like, I went here, but then I can click here and go this way or I can click there and go that way. I can learn more if I, I choose to. And that motivation of you choosing is going to help the memory part, but you're going to get those four questions a day, five days a week.

Lucas Underwood [00:25:49]:
Okay.

Paul Pate [00:25:50]:
Imagine a scenario like this. Before a learner wants to learn about, let's just take tpms. You got an entry Level guy, he's trying to learn TPMS before he starts. We decide what that path is going to be. He does his TPMS training for four, five, six weeks.

Lucas Underwood [00:26:08]:
Weeks.

Paul Pate [00:26:09]:
Now, we could put that person with an instructor or we'll put them with a mentor in their shop or somebody who's knowledgeable about this. But they're at least singing off the same song sheet at this point.

Lucas Underwood [00:26:21]:
Yeah.

Paul Pate [00:26:22]:
So then what happens? They go to this class, maybe one of the majors is coming to town and they're offering a seminar on tpms. You send that person to that three hour seminar, they stay awake for hopefully most of it. At the end of that seminar, then what do we do? The traditional model.

Lucas Underwood [00:26:38]:
Thanks.

Paul Pate [00:26:38]:
Here's your certificate. See you later.

Lucas Underwood [00:26:40]:
Back in the bay you go.

David Roman [00:26:41]:
There you go.

Paul Pate [00:26:42]:
Now in our platform we have a thing called spaced reinforcement. And so this spaced reinforcement is all tied back to this forgetting curve research that's gone on. And the space reinforcement says, okay, I'm going to reinforce what you learned between the original questions that you're answering and the class that you went to or the hands on portion.

Lucas Underwood [00:27:01]:
Right.

Paul Pate [00:27:01]:
And I'm going to reinforce that over time for the next several months. I'm sorry, there is no shortcut to learning. I can't just go get fire hosed with information and walk out and say I'm smart. There may be a few people in the world who have that photographic memory and perfect memory. Cocconus is probably close. His head's going to get fat when he hears this.

Lucas Underwood [00:27:22]:
I know, right? We're not going to let him listen.

Paul Pate [00:27:23]:
No, we're not going to block him.

Lucas Underwood [00:27:24]:
I'll block him.

Paul Pate [00:27:25]:
There's a couple of people I've met in my life that are like that. But what I always tell those people is you are a unicorn if you are that way. Most are not. So what are we doing with our training to try to make it different to help them remember. I mean, when it comes down to training, the most important thing is the ability to recall after the event.

Lucas Underwood [00:27:46]:
Yeah.

Paul Pate [00:27:46]:
So our spaced repetition is designed to help. You're connecting the synapses just in the brain. The way it all works, you're just connecting that. And once that's connected, think of it as a circuit. And that circuit can function now.

Lucas Underwood [00:27:59]:
Yeah.

Paul Pate [00:28:00]:
So when I need that, I can turn the circuit on. That's called recall. So that's what we're trying to do. That's different.

Lucas Underwood [00:28:06]:
You know, I was talking to somebody a while back and he was a dealership man. That had left the dealership. And he said, you know, two dealerships pay me to take the certifications for their technicians. And I said, what do you mean? And he said, well, they don't see value in the certifications, but the manufacturer requires these certifications. He said, so they have master level technicians that I took the certification class for, and I was paid $30,000 a year to keep up with these certifications for all these technicians. There is nobody in the shop that actually took their certification. Like, hey, that kind of seems sort of sketchy. Right.

Lucas Underwood [00:28:41]:
Like, I don't know how I feel about that. But then he said, the point that really caught my mind was, is they did not see the value in it. Well, so we're talking about a production shop, or most dealerships are all about the numbers. Hey, they run a tighter margin than independent shops, so they have to be effective. They have to get this right. And so the fact that they don't think training their technicians has value makes you go, hmm, wait a minute. The firestones of the world, Right? Same thing, volume, model. And they train their technicians, but the people in the stores don't see the value because the technician doesn't come back and do anything with the knowledge.

Lucas Underwood [00:29:19]:
Right. Part of it, I'm sure, is material, Part of it is the way that we're teaching them, and part of it is the motivating factor. Right. What motivates us to learn?

Ron Shanas [00:29:29]:
Boy, a number of things.

Lucas Underwood [00:29:31]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:29:31]:
I don't think anyone gets up, especially in our, in our business, no one gets up and goes to work and says, what can I screw up today?

Lucas Underwood [00:29:40]:
Yeah, right.

Lucas Underwood [00:29:41]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:29:41]:
And let's face it, I mean, I mean, they, they hung a horse, Steve. So, you know, our customers value their personal transportation pretty highly.

Lucas Underwood [00:29:51]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:29:52]:
And I think as a society, we know that. So folks that go into our profession, they want to fix things. They really do. But because the technology is changing, because there's so much to have at hand.

Lucas Underwood [00:30:07]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:30:08]:
It's important that strategies be incorporated to reinforce that, to make it more available. I would tell you that from an aspirational perspective, and I think, Paul, you would support this. Our mission is to reinvent the way that training is leveraged in our industry. You know, we talked about instructor led training as being a necessary component, but at the same time, we're talking out the other side of our mouth saying, well, they're just fire hosing people with good quality stuff. Well, imagine if that instructor absolutely knew that audience before they ever set foot in the classroom or the shop.

Lucas Underwood [00:30:50]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:30:51]:
And had that data, who had challenges, what their challenges were, what their level of confidence was. And he had 175 slide presentation, but he could cut down to 70 slides because he'd know in advance, they've got this. If he then paired people up and took them out into the shop, he could pair the less confident individuals with the more confident individuals so that they could team up and a little bit of that confidence could be transferred. Under the oversight of the instructor. We believe that we can drive that type of environment as we become more and more ubiquitous, more and more well known, that's going to be more and more possible. We've done some preliminary work where Paul's group produced a summary of a group of young folks that were tasked to become certified in alignment.

David Roman [00:31:56]:
Right.

Ron Shanas [00:31:57]:
And there was an instructor led group that we provided those summaries for, and lo and behold, they applied that. The feedback we got was mixed primarily because, well, you know, the instructors weren't that familiar with leveraging that data.

Lucas Underwood [00:32:12]:
Yeah, that's a.

Ron Shanas [00:32:14]:
But that data, that information is a lot different than a pretest.

Lucas Underwood [00:32:17]:
Yeah, you know, yeah, for sure.

Ron Shanas [00:32:18]:
It's a lot different than a pretest. It's like looking at somebody's soul relative to your. Relative to your. Your content, your topic, you know, and being able to apply that to their advantage. So, yeah, it's. It's an exciting field.

Paul Pate [00:32:34]:
I'm going to go back to your original question. What motivates somebody to learn?

Lucas Underwood [00:32:37]:
Yeah.

Paul Pate [00:32:38]:
So that is the whole premise of andragogy from Malcolm Knowles, and that is what his whole book is about. It's taught in any graduate degree program in adult learning, which is, you know, where I came from, a couple things. One is that recognition from others, it's a huge motivator.

Lucas Underwood [00:32:55]:
Right.

Paul Pate [00:32:55]:
Curiosity, relevance is what I'm learning. I mean, when that learner gets our question on the phone for that day, does it feel relevant to what they're doing on a regular basis? If it's not, they're not going to be that motivated to learn. Is it enjoyable or does it feel monotonous? Yeah, you know, and that's. Those are some of the things that we really try to build into the platform, is let's make this fun. And then the other thing, competition, believe it or not. Okay, so we have a concept of leaderboards and different competitions.

Ron Shanas [00:33:33]:
Teams can compete.

Paul Pate [00:33:34]:
I will tell teams that we will have, and we have a huge feedback process. It's definitely what separates us from a lot of others. But I will have people contact us because they're missing two points. They may have 12,000 points that they've earned over the. We've had people on the platform for five years and they're missing two points, and they think there's something wrong because, you know, I answered this question. I don't think your answer was right. So I didn't get my extra points for this. And I.

Paul Pate [00:33:59]:
Damn it, I want my points. Right, Right.

Lucas Underwood [00:34:01]:
Yeah.

Paul Pate [00:34:02]:
And so we'll respond, and if for some reason they were right, we'll give them points. But I'm telling you that the competition among peers is a drive motivator. But, yeah, a lot of it boils back to curiosity.

Lucas Underwood [00:34:14]:
Yeah.

Paul Pate [00:34:15]:
And are they curious? Is it relevant? You know, is like, why am I teaching a person about ADOS calibration when they're a tire guy and they're not doing anything like that? Or why am I teaching somebody automatic transmission service when they've never touched an automatic transmission?

Lucas Underwood [00:34:33]:
Don't even work on them.

Paul Pate [00:34:34]:
So going back to your example here, David, is, you know, you're going to pick what you want to learn. So being able to guide your own learning path, that also is a motivator to learn.

Lucas Underwood [00:34:48]:
It really is. And as you're talking about this, one of the things I'm thinking about, we've got a really good friend. Paul Danner does scanner danner on YouTube. Right. And he did Scanner Danner Premium. One of the best instructors I've ever sat under. Right. I mean, bar none.

Lucas Underwood [00:35:00]:
And I remember a time in my life where it was make it or break it, do or die. Right. Like, I had to learn this because if I didn't get the car fixed, that was my business and it was my reputation. It was me on the line. Right. Everything was on the line. And so I think back about that time, and I think about when we were, you know, doing this study that Paul had on particular topics, I would go and I would watch his video and I would read in his book, and then I would go and I would work on the car and I would come back and I'd watch the video again, and then I would read in the book again, and that's what that was. The only time that it stuck.

Lucas Underwood [00:35:33]:
Now, I don't use that knowledge every day, but that knowledge is still up here. Right. If I run into a spot, I know my guys run into something, I still have that knowledge to provide a perspective on it, Right?

David Roman [00:35:44]:
Exactly.

Lucas Underwood [00:35:45]:
The classes. There's very, very few instructors that I ever remember sitting under that I actually took anything they said. And I can remember, like, I Remember Ian Lebby and the way he described the Flex Ray networks? And he's like, hey, you know, it's basically, you remember defragmenting your hard drive. You're defragmenting the network and putting things in an organized space. So the message is going out at the time that we expect the message to go out. Right. I'll never forget that. And it was the way he approached it.

Lucas Underwood [00:36:16]:
So there's a cross between being hungry for the knowledge and a cross between the instructor being able to convey the knowledge in a way that you'll retain.

Paul Pate [00:36:23]:
That's relevant.

Lucas Underwood [00:36:24]:
Yeah, you know, absolutely.

Ron Shanas [00:36:26]:
Yeah. And I think, you know, it's unfortunate too, because traditionally, you know, I call it three hours in a pizza.

David Roman [00:36:32]:
Right.

Ron Shanas [00:36:32]:
It's been after hours. People have worked a whole day, et cetera, et cetera.

Lucas Underwood [00:36:35]:
Exhausted.

Paul Pate [00:36:36]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:36:37]:
And then you carve them up and.

Paul Pate [00:36:38]:
You sugar them up and then you expect them to stay awake.

Ron Shanas [00:36:40]:
And he doesn't know what people know and what they don't know. And even if he's got a really great personality, he's really good at interacting with those students. He's got a challenge, you know, he's really. He doesn't know who's in front of him, so he has to start at A and go to Z. Well, if half the audience knows half the albread already, you just lost him.

Lucas Underwood [00:37:02]:
Yeah, exactly.

Ron Shanas [00:37:03]:
They've tuned out.

Lucas Underwood [00:37:04]:
Yep.

Lucas Underwood [00:37:04]:
They're not even remotely interested.

Ron Shanas [00:37:07]:
I mean, the best instructors almost have a sixth sense. They're not about entertaining the audience. We call that edutainment.

Lucas Underwood [00:37:14]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:37:14]:
You know, you hear that a lot, right? You send guys off training. I've done it all my life. Well, what'd you get out of it? Oh, maybe three or four minutes or. Hey, I really like that instructor. Boy, he had me cracking up. But did you learn anything?

Lucas Underwood [00:37:24]:
Right.

Ron Shanas [00:37:25]:
You know?

Lucas Underwood [00:37:26]:
Yeah.

Paul Pate [00:37:26]:
Well, even if you did, did you, after you learned it, did you reinforce it? Did you retain it? Did you utilize it?

Lucas Underwood [00:37:34]:
Right.

Paul Pate [00:37:34]:
Because it's gone if you don't.

David Roman [00:37:35]:
And.

Paul Pate [00:37:36]:
And going back to that. That forgetting curve study, after about a week.

Lucas Underwood [00:37:40]:
Yeah.

Paul Pate [00:37:41]:
It's basically all gone.

Lucas Underwood [00:37:42]:
Yeah.

Paul Pate [00:37:43]:
If you haven't used it.

Lucas Underwood [00:37:44]:
Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:37:44]:
Well, the example in that book, the talent code that he kept using is he was saying you could go out and you could lift a heavy weight once and you would not gain strength from lifting it one time. But the repetitive motion and the repetitive motion of taking it to failure every time that you lift stretches that muscle and causes it to reform itself. And so he's talking about Myelin and the way it works in the brain is that unless we stretch that system and we exercise that system, it never grows.

Paul Pate [00:38:12]:
Right.

Lucas Underwood [00:38:13]:
And so it can't just happen one time. You can't just hear the knowledge to retain the knowledge. And so that's really what you guys are saying with this, right?

Ron Shanas [00:38:20]:
We're exercising it consistently. Yeah, exactly. The other thing that I think is really important, shop owners have to make the decision as to where to invest in training.

Lucas Underwood [00:38:30]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:38:30]:
You know, and they're presented with a number of alternatives. It may be our platform, it may be other forms of training. Instructor led training is still important. I mean, I think I shared. They. They have to make the connection between knowledge and action and that's a really good venue for doing that. But who do you send to what training?

Lucas Underwood [00:38:49]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:38:49]:
Most of the time that's a subjective judgment.

Lucas Underwood [00:38:52]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:38:52]:
Sometimes it's a really lazy process. Well, we got this thing coming up here at Napa. Or we got this thing coming up through.

Lucas Underwood [00:38:59]:
He's going to send you.

Ron Shanas [00:38:59]:
Who wants to go?

Lucas Underwood [00:39:01]:
I'm guilty of that.

Ron Shanas [00:39:01]:
Right.

Lucas Underwood [00:39:02]:
I'm guilty of that.

Ron Shanas [00:39:03]:
Are you putting the round peg into the square hole? That's the question. With this platform, in an instant you can see who's ready to go to an advanced electrical course.

Paul Pate [00:39:19]:
You can also see who shouldn't go.

Ron Shanas [00:39:20]:
Exactly.

Paul Pate [00:39:21]:
There's kind of a sweet spot. Am I going to send the person who's 95% confident and competent in that to a class? Only if they want to go, Right? If they want to go. Yeah. I'll let anybody.

Lucas Underwood [00:39:34]:
Otherwise I'm wasting their time.

Paul Pate [00:39:36]:
Exactly. And what's going to happen to the instructor now who's trying to deliver? You got this person who's a rock star. You got a person that doesn't know which end of the screwdriver.

Lucas Underwood [00:39:44]:
Excuse me, sir. You're wrong. Let me show you. Hang on.

Paul Pate [00:39:47]:
Right, Exactly.

Lucas Underwood [00:39:48]:
I've seen it.

Paul Pate [00:39:49]:
So using the data, and that's probably the biggest difference in our training platform is the data that can be produced to tell you about a learner down to very specific skill sets. Like this learner does not understand voltage drop. So we need to start there because that's kind of foundational for our industry anymore. Right, right. Did you do anything?

Lucas Underwood [00:40:08]:
For sure, for sure. You're an OE guy. So I have to ask. I mean, I'm just going to. I'm just going to drop this out here. Why are we still teaching resistance from the OEs like it's across the board. All of them are Doing it?

Paul Pate [00:40:19]:
I don't know.

Lucas Underwood [00:40:20]:
I mean, is that not ridiculous?

Paul Pate [00:40:22]:
I left that world because what I, I really figured out in my mind I just didn't see that we were making a difference. And nothing against the training, the people who put together, the training, instructors that were there, they were awesome people. But did it make a difference in the long run? And that's kind of why I came to today's class.

Lucas Underwood [00:40:41]:
Do you know Peter Orlando?

Paul Pate [00:40:44]:
Not well. Okay, so Peter, I know he is.

Lucas Underwood [00:40:46]:
Yeah, Peter's a friend of mine and he was saying that years ago and who else was it? So one of the other carquest guys and him and Peter were talking about it and he said years ago they had a Chrysler and they were doing a case study on it and they said everything pointed to a fuel trim issue. Fuel trims were off, but there was nothing telling the controller that, hey, we have a fuel trim issue. The upstream looked good. And they said, but now wait a minute, the downstream's off. But there's nothing in any data anywhere. There's no fault code that says we use downstream fuel trims. There's no data in the manual anywhere that says we use downstream fuel trims. Let's just try it and see.

Lucas Underwood [00:41:29]:
It was Ken Neal who was telling it and him and Peter were talking about. They went back to Chrysler because they determined if they freak out the downstream and make the voltage a normal voltage, the fuel trims would come back down. He said, so I went to an engineer I knew at Chrysler and said, what in the world? Like, why would. That's pretty important information, don't you think? Like if I don't have this. And he said, listen, that sensor would never fail in the hundred thousand miles that car is under warranty. We're not in the business of fixing the car after it's out of warranty. We're just in the business of fixing.

Ron Shanas [00:41:59]:
The car while it's under warranty.

David Roman [00:42:01]:
Right? Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:42:02]:
And so I thought that was a really interesting perspective and it kind of taught me that when we're looking at this dealer train, because a lot of these guys, and I'm going to offend some people, I do this all the time. Sorry, I know you're going to get hate mail over this. A lot of the guys that are in independent shops, that are high end independent shops, right, they really train their guys hard. They're looking for the top 1% of technicians in the world. They'll hire a dealership technician that was a master level certified technician, put them in the shop and they're like, whoa, now hold up. Yeah, right down the drain.

Ron Shanas [00:42:35]:
Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:42:36]:
And it's like, why? This dude's been through all this training, he's taken all these classes, he got all this information. It wasn't the right information.

Paul Pate [00:42:44]:
Right.

Lucas Underwood [00:42:45]:
And so I, I had to ask about the, the resistance because, I mean, like, they're, they're sending these guys to unplug harnesses. I saw a resistance on a starter cable the other day, and I'm like, what are you doing? This is crazy.

Ron Shanas [00:42:58]:
Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:42:59]:
You know, and it says it can have one strand.

Ron Shanas [00:43:01]:
Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:43:02]:
Right. So, I mean, I, I don't know. I can't see the logic behind it. Some people say that the, the real reasoning for that is that many of the manufacturers who are engaged with training and are trying to train their guys, they're not really interested in training them to a too high of a level. They want to make sure that they have to call the helpline in some cases to fix cars because they don't want them to be a potential threat to their business model.

Paul Pate [00:43:27]:
Oh, my God.

Lucas Underwood [00:43:27]:
Whether or not it's true or not, I've not seen it.

David Roman [00:43:30]:
But if you think about it, though, the business model is not designed around having overly competent diagnostic technicians. Like, that doesn't make any sense. It makes sense to me to put the resistance test in there because what are they going to do? They're like, well, it's process elimination at that point. It's under warranty. It's not customer pay.

Ron Shanas [00:43:49]:
Right.

David Roman [00:43:49]:
So what difference does it make? Hey, I've got enough evidence to say that it's that. Let's just throw that part on there. It's sitting in there. And then they'll get to the point where there's five or six failures in a row. Now they don't even bother checking it. It comes in with these symptoms.

Lucas Underwood [00:44:03]:
They just change that one or two.

David Roman [00:44:05]:
Things and then they throw them.

Ron Shanas [00:44:06]:
Heart comes out right the way the.

David Roman [00:44:08]:
Car, but it fixes the car. That's the problem. And that just reinforces them that, hey, I can cut out all this diagnostic time. I'm not going to go through all these steps.

Ron Shanas [00:44:17]:
Well, I mean, you know, I was one of the people that really popularized identifix. Right. So hotline archives, you know, fast fixes. It's a great tool if you do the work. But how often do you hear shop owners complain that, yeah, my guy looks in there and if it's got 60 occasions of it being the purge valve sensor. Get me that purge valve sensor.

Lucas Underwood [00:44:38]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:44:38]:
You know, and they Want to install it, they don't want to do the work. You know, that's another iteration of what you're talking about. Because the system then reinforces the technician to take those types of shortcuts in the absence of really understanding the system.

Lucas Underwood [00:44:53]:
And it's created the reputation our industry has by doing that.

David Roman [00:44:56]:
I know, I can see doing it in a dealership. I can see doing it in the dealership. It makes sense to me. And if I were in a dealership, that's probably the approach I would take. Them on flat rate, only have so much time. They keep cutting into my warranty.

Ron Shanas [00:45:10]:
Absolutely.

David Roman [00:45:11]:
I need to be able to turn that big. So that's how I make my money.

Ron Shanas [00:45:13]:
Right.

David Roman [00:45:14]:
But in an independent shop, it doesn't make any sense to not just go, there are too many variables. That car's been on the road for150,000 miles.

Lucas Underwood [00:45:22]:
Yeah.

David Roman [00:45:23]:
I don't care that it says 175 instances. It fixed the car.

Ron Shanas [00:45:26]:
Right.

David Roman [00:45:26]:
I don't care. This car is unique. Like it's unique. It throw everything out the window. Let's figure out processes, systems. And the biggest, the biggest issue I see with diagnosticians is not what were you said? What did you say? Plan. What is it again? Plan? Yeah, what is it?

Paul Pate [00:45:43]:
Plan, do, check, act.

David Roman [00:45:44]:
Yeah, it's the planning part that they fail.

Paul Pate [00:45:48]:
Yeah, it's the.

David Roman [00:45:50]:
Where do I go? Yeah, like what, what, what's the next step?

Paul Pate [00:45:54]:
Right.

David Roman [00:45:54]:
And who is it that teaches that? The PDG class, Is it Jim Morton?

Lucas Underwood [00:46:01]:
Yeah.

David Roman [00:46:01]:
I think starts with the. He starts with the. Let's start with larger system tests and then let's funnel it down to isolation tests. But if you don't start with those bigger tests to figure out, do I have a fuel problem, you have an ignition problem, do I have a compression problem?

Ron Shanas [00:46:16]:
You don't check the battery voltage first. What are you doing? Doing?

Lucas Underwood [00:46:20]:
Yeah.

David Roman [00:46:20]:
Oh, yeah. He tells stories all the time. Like he, he used to have a shop that just did diagnostic work. And he's like, man, I used to fail car battery after car battery after car battery would come in, they'd be like, I can't be the problem. Throw battery in there and see what happens. And it was, that was the first thing he checked. I got to check my base voltage, I got to check the battery. It's got to have good, good battery supply.

David Roman [00:46:45]:
But I think that's where the diagnostic, diagnosticians tend to have the biggest problem is I've got this symptom. I think this is a, this problem. What do I attack it with what's, what's my plan? And they don't even get to the.

Paul Pate [00:46:59]:
You're creating that hypothesis. What, what could be the cause?

Lucas Underwood [00:47:02]:
Yeah.

Paul Pate [00:47:03]:
And to do that, what do I have to know? I have to know how the system works.

David Roman [00:47:06]:
System works.

Paul Pate [00:47:07]:
I have to understand the foundation.

Lucas Underwood [00:47:09]:
And that's exactly what Skander Danner was teaching. Right. Is that, hey, you have to understand how the system works before you understand that there's no reason to do any testing. Right. Like, you're just spinning your wheels and you're wasting your time.

Ron Shanas [00:47:20]:
For sure.

David Roman [00:47:20]:
For sure.

Lucas Underwood [00:47:21]:
And I think what shop owners, we talk a lot about technicians turn shop owners, and it upsets people sometimes because they think that we're saying technicians shouldn't be shop owners. But that's not the case at all.

Paul Pate [00:47:32]:
It's a different skill set.

Lucas Underwood [00:47:33]:
It's saying that you have to learn to be a shop owner. Right. But one of the things, when I was first in coaching and training to learn how to run a business, my coach would always tell me a, you have to be okay with sucking for a while because you're going to suck at this for a while. And there were a lot of factors that he talked about and he taught me that, hey, you're not going to see things in the way that you would have to, to understand what that technician is going through. And I'm like, what do you mean? And he would say, well, listen, you have the knowledge, the curse of knowledge about this particular subject. So you look at your technician and you automatically think he knows that, but he may not. And if you just assume so we base our training and it's all of our personal experience, we're basing it off what we know and how we act and how we would handle things. And we expect everybody else in our organization to do what we would do.

Lucas Underwood [00:48:27]:
And oftentimes we've never shared with them how to do it or what we would do.

David Roman [00:48:30]:
Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:48:31]:
And if we don't know what they know for sure, it becomes an impossibility.

Ron Shanas [00:48:34]:
And that's the key. But, you know, I don't want your audience to be intimidated. You know, our, our platform, it's a, it's a form of a learning management system.

Lucas Underwood [00:48:43]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:48:44]:
And a lot of people are intimidated by that. Oh, my gosh, you know, I got a million things to do today. How am I going to do this? Yeah, look, we're interested in knowing what data, what you need to know about your people.

Lucas Underwood [00:48:56]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:48:57]:
And we also know that your needs are going to change over Time. So, I mean, if you don't want to do it, we're going to. We don't set it and forget it. We take the time to understand what's going to be important to you and we'll push that information to you.

Paul Pate [00:49:14]:
Moreover.

Ron Shanas [00:49:15]:
Moreover, I think what's really important is that your needs are going to change over time. Your goals are going to change over time. And so many information services that serve our vertical, they sell it to you and then they'll push you updates and they may tell you about a new release through an email or some new feature.

Lucas Underwood [00:49:37]:
Right.

Ron Shanas [00:49:39]:
We're much more focused on. Well, I mean, you're going to need your focus in training to change with the seasons.

Lucas Underwood [00:49:46]:
And think about it.

Ron Shanas [00:49:47]:
You don't want to start up knowledging for H Vac in the middle of August. Certainly not here in Nevada.

Lucas Underwood [00:49:53]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:49:54]:
Okay. We were 100 degrees through the second week of October.

Lucas Underwood [00:49:57]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:49:58]:
Okay. So that's not something you want to do. So we're there. We consult with you. Our expectation is we want to meet with you, we want to understand your business. You get a new person, you're lucky enough to get a young GST that shows up to work every day and is invested and wants to learn our industry. Hey, where do you want that individual to go next?

Lucas Underwood [00:50:22]:
Right, right.

Ron Shanas [00:50:23]:
What can they contribute to your business? How can we help you get them there?

Lucas Underwood [00:50:28]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:50:29]:
And that's, I think, a key differentiator.

Paul Pate [00:50:31]:
For us as well.

Ron Shanas [00:50:32]:
So I don't want your audience to be afraid that, oh my God, if I take on this form of training, that I've got to spend all this time managing that training system. Because that's not the case.

Lucas Underwood [00:50:45]:
Yeah.

Paul Pate [00:50:45]:
So how do we get them there? I'm going to expand on that just for a little bit. Bit.

Lucas Underwood [00:50:48]:
Okay.

Paul Pate [00:50:49]:
You might think I'm going in left field, but I'm not.

Lucas Underwood [00:50:51]:
Okay.

Paul Pate [00:50:51]:
Our platform actually teaches people to read more effectively. So let me tell you where this is going. If I need to understand how a system works. You were talking about Scanner Danner and how he taught you. He took you back to understanding how the system works.

Lucas Underwood [00:51:06]:
Yeah.

Paul Pate [00:51:06]:
What do you think description and operation in any service, information is written at grade level wise.

David Roman [00:51:14]:
I'm going to say nine.

Lucas Underwood [00:51:15]:
Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:51:15]:
Yeah.

Paul Pate [00:51:16]:
More like 12 to 14.

Lucas Underwood [00:51:17]:
Really?

Paul Pate [00:51:18]:
Yeah, really. What is high school graduation requirement in most states for reading level?

David Roman [00:51:25]:
Sixth grade.

Paul Pate [00:51:25]:
Eighth in this state.

Lucas Underwood [00:51:27]:
Close.

Paul Pate [00:51:28]:
Okay. I'm a resident of Nevada.

Lucas Underwood [00:51:29]:
In.

Paul Pate [00:51:30]:
In Nevada, it's eighth grade.

Ron Shanas [00:51:31]:
We're 48th out of 49.

Lucas Underwood [00:51:33]:
Yeah. Reading comprehension. Comprehension is a problem.

Paul Pate [00:51:36]:
Reading comprehension is a huge problem. And this is not. We're not saying technicians can't read read. That's not what I'm saying at all. Excellent diagnostic people are excellent readers.

Lucas Underwood [00:51:47]:
Yeah.

Paul Pate [00:51:47]:
And how do you get better at reading?

Lucas Underwood [00:51:49]:
You read.

Paul Pate [00:51:50]:
You read okay.

Lucas Underwood [00:51:51]:
Exactly.

Paul Pate [00:51:52]:
Duh.

Lucas Underwood [00:51:52]:
Well, that's how you get better at speaking. That's how you get better at writing. That's how you get.

Paul Pate [00:51:56]:
Well, take the people who try and fail ASE tests. What is the problem? A lot of times it's their lack of ability to comprehend what they're reading.

Lucas Underwood [00:52:05]:
Yeah.

Paul Pate [00:52:06]:
Way, way back in the day, we called it reading and decoding. It was a classic every potential instructor had to take to understand how people read and how to decode what their problem is. So when you look at our platform, we've even got some of the more advanced questions now where we're starting to put out a description and operation that we make up, then they have to answer a question. What are we doing? We're teaching them how to read and scan information.

Lucas Underwood [00:52:32]:
Correct. Yeah.

Paul Pate [00:52:33]:
So that they can answer. Because that's what you're doing on a vehicle. If I don't understand how this lane departure system works.

Lucas Underwood [00:52:40]:
Yeah.

Paul Pate [00:52:41]:
I got to go read. I got to understand it. And if I don't read effectively, my diagnostic is going to fail. Unless I get lucky.

Lucas Underwood [00:52:49]:
Yeah.

Paul Pate [00:52:49]:
Or unless I go to Dartboard and say, yep, I'm going to put this.

Lucas Underwood [00:52:51]:
We're going to get.

Paul Pate [00:52:52]:
Throw that in the dark Magic. Dartboard says put that part in, and we're eventually going to stumble across a problem or just a customer.

Ron Shanas [00:52:58]:
Well, exactly. You know the first commandment, Read the service repair information.

Lucas Underwood [00:53:03]:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it does not happen as much as it should. It does not happen by any means. Let me ask you this. So if we're talking about your product. Right. One of the things that I see people struggle with is they see a new product or they see a product they're interested in, and they don't really understand how it implements into their shop. So give me a rundown.

Lucas Underwood [00:53:21]:
If I call you tomorrow and say, hey, I want to sign up for today's class, I'm going to implement this in my shop. Give me a rundown of what happens next. How does the product work? What do we do? How do we get set up the whole nine yards?

Ron Shanas [00:53:32]:
Well, there's a process, okay? And we're not. We're not naive. So we know that we're not going to be a good fit for every shot.

Lucas Underwood [00:53:40]:
Okay.

Ron Shanas [00:53:41]:
And we're real invested in understanding whether or not we are going to be a good fit for you. If you call.

Lucas Underwood [00:53:49]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:53:50]:
So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to spend some time with you on a call, in a ZOOM meeting.

Lucas Underwood [00:53:54]:
Okay.

Ron Shanas [00:53:55]:
Understanding your business, what your objectives are.

Lucas Underwood [00:53:58]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:53:59]:
What it is you're doing, where you started, where you are right now, who your people are. Okay. And we're going to challenge you to think about that intersection of training and development and your business objectives. And I got to tell you, a lot of shop owners aren't used to thinking of it that way.

Lucas Underwood [00:54:17]:
Right.

Ron Shanas [00:54:18]:
You know, where do you need some bandwidth?

Lucas Underwood [00:54:20]:
I just need the car fixed.

Ron Shanas [00:54:21]:
Exactly.

Lucas Underwood [00:54:22]:
I just need the car fixed.

Ron Shanas [00:54:23]:
Exactly. And so based on the results of that interview, some don't shake out of it. And I'll flat tell them a lot of times I'm the one that does that. You know, this isn't a good time.

Lucas Underwood [00:54:35]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:54:35]:
You know why? Well, because they're running around with their hair on fire. They just lost two people and, you know, they think that, oh my God, if I don't get some training and development in here. Yeah. I'm going to lose the. The third and the fourth. You know, that's not a good time to do this. Okay. We want you to succeed.

Ron Shanas [00:54:53]:
Then beyond that, a lot of times we'll recommend, hey, listen, sit for a. Sit for a walk through. Sit for a demo.

Lucas Underwood [00:55:00]:
Okay.

Ron Shanas [00:55:00]:
That'll give you. It's going to invest 45 minutes to an hour. We. We host those regularly at convenient times. They're live. There are other shops. They'll ask questions that maybe you didn't think of that'll spark your interest or provide answers that you otherwise wouldn't have gotten from yourself. And then if you still wanna move forward.

Ron Shanas [00:55:20]:
I like to say we're a reluctant vendor, and we are. Okay. But being reluctant has served us and served our clients well. If you still wanna move forward. Okay. We launch new clients in cohorts every three weeks. It's always on a Monday. And the only term of commitment we ever asked for is the first 90 days.

Ron Shanas [00:55:47]:
Why? Well, because look at what we're doing. It's three to five minutes a day at a minimum.

Lucas Underwood [00:55:52]:
Yeah. You got to get 90 days.

Ron Shanas [00:55:53]:
You got to get 90 days to. Well, for the owner to understand whether or not they can hold their people accountable, whether or not they can move from the shiny new fancy penny phase to adoption. And at the tail end of that, and we meet with them three times. Think of it as a 20 group.

David Roman [00:56:11]:
Right.

Ron Shanas [00:56:11]:
Because there are other shops that launch in this cohort. We meet with the whole group three times over the course of it to understand what their data needs are, show them how to source for themselves, or understand what we need to push to them to answer their questions. So it's a whole education process for the owner, operator at. While their team is building knowledge, building data, and we can literally see that. We can see the knowledge growth. At the end of that 90 days, we sit with the individual operator or owner individually on a meeting and we debrief, we look at what has happened over that 90 days, and we solicit feedback from them, additional feedback. How's your team responding? Where's the pushback? Who didn't want to do it? How did you overcome that? Okay. And if it makes sense at that point, and we're going to lose maybe 10 to 15% of that cohort at that point, it doesn't make sense.

Ron Shanas [00:57:06]:
And I'll tell you, sometimes we'll walk away. We're not nasty about it.

Lucas Underwood [00:57:09]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:57:10]:
But we'll tell them, this isn't working for you.

Lucas Underwood [00:57:12]:
Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:57:13]:
I'm not going to spend your money.

Ron Shanas [00:57:14]:
Don't spend your money with me. If you're in a hurry to spend that money, give it to the church.

Lucas Underwood [00:57:18]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [00:57:18]:
Okay. You'll do more good there. You know, charity of your choice. But then we'll move them into a month. A month if they. If that. If they shake out. And I got to tell you, that process has served us well.

Ron Shanas [00:57:32]:
You know, so we're like, we're on.

David Roman [00:57:38]:
The very tail end of the podcast here. So I'm going to give you a little pushback. Somebody listens to this part here. I. I absolutely hate your process. I hate it. I want to throw it into the dumpster and I want to light it on fire. Then I want to pee, to turn it off and then light it back on fire again.

David Roman [00:57:54]:
And here's why. I am 100% sold on your product, on your thing, your deal. I love it. I absolutely love it. But here's the thing. I look at it from a completely different standpoint. It is not about. I want to make the business more profitable.

David Roman [00:58:09]:
Sure, I do whatever. Right. It's not about any of the things that we talked about about. It's about employee retention. 100%. If my team is engaged and excited and they're learning new things and I'm pushing them, they will 100% stay with me and my shop because I've introduced them to this. They're Getting this platform with me. I'm making sure that they're on the app.

David Roman [00:58:35]:
I'm making sure that they're learning. I'm then sending them to relevant classes. I'm making sure that the classes that they go into. I know I am. I hate your problem process. Here's the problem. I don't want to take multiple steps. I all.

David Roman [00:58:48]:
The first time I talk, I don't know who I talked to. I talked to somebody, maybe it was you. I don't know. I. The first time I talked to him, I was already sold. I was sold. I'm like, let's do this. And then I heard the price.

David Roman [00:58:58]:
And here's the thing. Your process would 100% make sense if it was $2,000 a month, if it was a coaching company. Coaching companies are $1500 2000amonth, 1500 $2000 a month. I expect to take 75 steps to get there because they want to make sure they vet me. They want to make sure that I vet them. They want to make sure that if I walk away, I don't just start smearing them because like, oh, I signed up, I paid $6,000 for the first 90 days. Now I didn't get anything back. I'm going to blast it all over the Internet.

David Roman [00:59:30]:
I'm going to tell everybody that I know. I'm going to be pissed off about it. I'm going to be bitching about them all the time. And they don't want that. So what are they going to do? They're going to vet me. They're going to make sure, hey, you're taking the steps that I'm giving you. Did you do these things that I asked you to do? We're going to have meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting, then maybe we'll sign you up. Then maybe.

David Roman [00:59:46]:
But what you guys are charging for the steps I have to take blows my mind. Like, this is not expensive. This is a no brainer. This is a any shot, right?

Ron Shanas [00:59:59]:
We deliberately made the price low. Look, our point of profitability is in the future.

David Roman [01:00:04]:
No, I'm with you. Don't raise the price. I'm just saying, I'm saying that the price is not high enough for me to want to take all those steps. The price is low enough that I can go. This makes sense. And if the I understand that first initial meeting, that makes sense. Let's have a conversation because this is unique. This is not the same.

David Roman [01:00:24]:
This isn't a platform. I've had the ACDelco LMS thing. I've had that. Right. And putting them in front of the computer. And hey, you're going to spend 15 to 30 to 45 minutes an hour or whatever to learn this stuff that you may or may not know or whatever. They don't engage with that. And what do you do? You end up spending the money, doesn't end up working, then you drop it.

David Roman [01:00:45]:
It's whatever. This is not the same thing. So if somebody buys into this and they go, this makes 100% sense. Like, why isn't everybody doing this? IT machine learns and starts pushing and then asks you, and then if you don't like it, you can jump into something else and you can f. Follow the rabbit trails. I'm a rabbit trail person. I see something and I'm like, oh. And then I will chase that rabbit for miles and miles and miles.

David Roman [01:01:11]:
And I become obsessed. I got to learn everything about this thing and I see something else, I'm like, oh, I gotta learn about that. And I will get into the weeds because that's how the way, that's just the way I am.

Ron Shanas [01:01:21]:
I understand your frustration. Yeah.

David Roman [01:01:22]:
And so I want to just be able to go, hey. And here's the other step too. This is maybe like eliminate 90% of your steps. Not for everybody, but, you know, somebody like me, I went to my team and I said, hey, this is product. You get on there, it's quick learning. It asks you questions, it engages you. And then it starts to change up the training to reinforce and to challenge you on new things, things you want to learn. Everybody went, let's do this.

David Roman [01:01:53]:
They, they were bought in. They were like, yeah, let's do this. Come on, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go. And I'm like, okay, great, I got seven more meetings to go and then I can sign you guys up.

Ron Shanas [01:02:02]:
It's not that difficult for one thing. But to your point, we are concerned with the experience that people have. You know, we're, we're taking market share from.

David Roman [01:02:14]:
Sure.

Ron Shanas [01:02:14]:
From an established training infrastructure or an established training industry that isn't as effective as it could otherwise be. And so, yeah, maybe we are a little bit hypersensitive to your point. Right. We don't want people to speak ill of us. You know, I will tell you, we have that happen. Hey, look, you know, I've done my research, I want to do it. Yeah, we'll take your money.

David Roman [01:02:39]:
We'll take my money.

Ron Shanas [01:02:40]:
You're going to go into a 90 day evaluative period.

Paul Pate [01:02:44]:
Yeah.

David Roman [01:02:44]:
And here's the thing like, so if on the front end they want to eliminate some of the vetting, then. Then you have a thorough enough process on the back end, on the onboarding portion. Those first 90 days where you can see, it's like, hey, you guys aren't logging in. Your guys aren't logging in, right? Hey, you're not engaging with the product. What's going on and if. And let's have a meeting. Let's have a discussion. What.

David Roman [01:03:09]:
You know, if I'm not pushing this thing here again, I may be excited on the front end, but really what you need to find out from somebody like me is the why. If the why is strong enough and if it makes sense, I'm going to push this product out on my guys. One, they're excited about it. Right. Because that's the culture in my shop. They want to learn.

Ron Shanas [01:03:32]:
Right.

David Roman [01:03:33]:
I'm sending them to every class conceivable. I'm going to the training events. The problem is I cannot tailor it. They're going into classes where one guy is bored, one guy doesn't know anything, and one kind of picks up some information. It's because I'm just, I'm blasting it all at them. So introducing them to something like this, if they buy in, I'm going to make sure that I'm on top of it and that they're going to end up buying it. But you should be able to see it on the back end and on the onboarding process and go, hey, you were excited about this, what's going on.

Paul Pate [01:04:05]:
But you know what? You're. You're a progressive shop person, because you are the one. You, you're taking claim of this and you're saying, okay, guys, why aren't you using it?

Ron Shanas [01:04:16]:
You are exceptional.

Paul Pate [01:04:17]:
Yeah, you're exactly what we're looking for.

David Roman [01:04:19]:
I'm just telling you right now, everybody that listens to this podcast is also exceptional. Every single one of them.

Ron Shanas [01:04:24]:
Call me because.

Paul Pate [01:04:26]:
Because we're trying to, as you say, change the industry.

David Roman [01:04:29]:
But I'm telling you, like, the shift is going to be retention.

Paul Pate [01:04:32]:
Yes.

David Roman [01:04:33]:
Because we don't have enough technicians coming into the industry. Everybody, everybody is going to be. How do I keep the guys that I have? Yeah, everybody is going to be looking at that. And engagement, learning new things, keeping them focused on and excited about coming in. And what do I get to learn today? What do I get to learn today? Well, keep them at your shop. Having a tool like this is integral. It's integral. I'm just telling you that you can do all the ancillary benefits.

David Roman [01:05:01]:
Everybody offers healthcare, everybody offers a retirement plan, everybody offers this, that and the other. It's the people that are going, hey, what are, what are they not doing? And I guarantee you they're, they're sending.

Ron Shanas [01:05:10]:
Them to those, they're not investing in their people.

David Roman [01:05:12]:
Yeah, not like this. Yeah, not like this.

Ron Shanas [01:05:15]:
Yeah.

Paul Pate [01:05:15]:
Appreciate the feedback that, yeah, that's great feedback.

Ron Shanas [01:05:18]:
It really is. And I'm sure you're right. There are a lot of folks like you that are out there. Bring them on. I mean, we'll modify the process, we'll get them into that 90 day process and we've had that happen. Okay. Part of my concern, and I don't want to dwell on it, but you mentioned circling back to someone that, hey, what's going on here? You know, your people aren't logging in.

Lucas Underwood [01:05:38]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [01:05:38]:
A lot of times I can identify, that's a personality trait.

David Roman [01:05:42]:
Right.

Ron Shanas [01:05:43]:
I call those types of leaders supporters. Right. Everyone has to buy in and well, if my people will buy in, you know, I'll do this. This isn't right for you.

David Roman [01:05:54]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [01:05:54]:
Because it requires accountability. So I want to know, can you hold your people accountable? And I'm going to ask you point blank, can you hold your people accountable?

David Roman [01:06:03]:
Yeah.

Ron Shanas [01:06:03]:
To do something like this, are they. And the biggest three to five minutes.

David Roman [01:06:06]:
Of effort a day, it's the buy in from them. If you introduce them and they are excited about it. And they're asking me, they're like, hey, what are we doing? What are we doing? What are we doing? Yeah. And I'm like, yeah. But here, here's the thing.

Paul Pate [01:06:19]:
Do you ever have a situation, now, I don't know about your shop or how many people are on it, but do you ever have a situation where you start to see the chatter on the shop floor becomes not, hey, what, what happened in the football game last weekend? But did you get that question about, you know, this ABS system? And now the techs are starting to talk. Instead of talking worthless stuff, they're talking about our industry, they're talking about their profession.

David Roman [01:06:42]:
Oh yeah, no, no.

Paul Pate [01:06:44]:
Is that like a win win or what?

David Roman [01:06:46]:
I mean, no, that, that's the idea. Especially if you can bring them all up, that they're talking at the same level.

Ron Shanas [01:06:52]:
Oh yeah.

David Roman [01:06:52]:
Because I, right now I've got a guy that's two or three steps above, above everybody else, knowledge wise. And I, I come in and I have to have that conversation with them. But my other tech should be able to have that conversation with them where they're challenging each other and going, did you look at this? Did you think about this? And they're having high level conversations. You want that in the shop? I gotta have the tool. Just don't want to go to 75 meetings. For sure. Yeah.

Ron Shanas [01:07:21]:
This has been great.

Lucas Underwood [01:07:22]:
If somebody wants to sign up, what do they do?

Ron Shanas [01:07:25]:
Go to todaysclass.com and submit an inquiry. Call me, I'll give you my mobile. Okay. Just dial 702-306-5341. Okay, if I'm there, I'll pick it up. Text me, email me. R S H A N A S. It's one of those@today's class.com.

Lucas Underwood [01:07:50]:
Got it. Sounds good. Thanks, Paul, Ron, thanks for being here.

Paul Pate [01:07:53]:
All right, thank you, guys.

Ron Shanas [01:07:54]:
We appreciate your having us.