You're Not Just a Mechanic

There is a subculture inside auto repair where the people in it undersell and undervalue themselves. We noticed it early, and we have not been able to unsee it since.

A little background first. Before we specialized in auto repair, we experimented across more than a dozen verticals. Some of it was work with brands carrying valuations in the high nine figures. Some of it was small to mid sized businesses across hospitality, food and beverage, and plenty in between. So when we walked into automotive, we had a wide baseline to measure it against.

The thing that stood out to us was the level of sophistication. Even a shop owner who feels like they do not really have their business figured out usually has it far more figured out than they realize.

But the more we talked with owners, technicians, and service advisors, the more we kept hearing the same thing. It is a struggle to get customers to see the value of the trade. And it is just as hard to get people to see the value of it as a career path.

Coming in from the outside, from a corporate background and all of those industries, we think the trade could not be more wrong about itself. We have written before about how undervalued this industry is, so we will not relitigate the whole case here. The short version is that some of the smartest, most resourceful people we have ever worked with are in automotive.

We will only add one thing to it. In corporate, and we mean no offense by this, and this is not about ranking one path above another, it is not uncommon to work with people who could barely find their way out of a cardboard box. In automotive, it is the opposite. We keep meeting people who simply do not know how good they are.

So where does the problem actually lie?

The obvious answer is the distrust between consumers and shops. But the more time we spend inside, the more we see a second kind of distrust, the kind that lives inside the industry itself. Shop owner to shop owner. Shop to vendor. Coaching organization to coaching organization.

Here is our thesis, and we hold it loosely, because it is subject to change. A lot of it comes down to a lack of collaboration, and a lack of appreciation for what each of us brings to the table. And underneath that is something even simpler. It is how you see yourself.

If you do not see yourself and your peers in a positive light, how can you expect your community to see the trade in a positive light?

Because this is not only about trust. It is about perceived value. If you have ever worked alongside a stellar technician, or a stellar service advisor, or anyone who is genuinely an A player in a shop, you know the skill and the years it takes to get there. That value is real. The only question is whether the people who have it can see it in themselves.

So why is a company that builds high impact social media for independent auto repair shops writing about this? To us it is straightforward. If we cannot fix ourselves, collectively, then we cannot fix the things that affect the whole industry, and that includes how customers see us.

So the point of this write up is simple. We want you to sit with it. Take pride in what you do. Do not say you are just a mechanic. Do not say you just own an auto repair shop. Whether you are in the United States or Canada, our societies run on wheels, and those wheels aren’t going anywhere without auto repair.