Driving Towards A Sustainable Future of the Automotive Industry | Ft. Dave Reece |

For today's episode, we have Dave Reece from Barwell, England.

Dave has 55 years' experience in the automotive industry ranging from all dealership departments to collision repair. These positions have been technical and managerial at a variety of levels.  These positions have been technical and managerial at a variety of levels.  Dave started his career in the automotive industry in July 1967 as a trainee motor mechanic. After completing an indentured apprenticeship, he became a partner in an independent garage in Coventry, moving on to work for Inchcape as a Jaguar/Rover/Triumph specialist technician. This led Dave into an operational role, opening one of the first dedicated fleet preparation centres in the UK.  

Dave has been fortunate to work in most sectors of the industry in roles ranging from technician to general manager. He was part of the first Ford Local Business Manager programme, and for twenty years took part in the Ford of Britain Collision programme.  

He has developed and delivered bodyshop improvement programmes for the Middle East, India, Asia and South America and has been part of various groups supporting the industry, working closely with the IMI, BSI, SMMT and Thatcham.  

Dave now works as part of the exciting team at The Vizion Network as the Training Academy manager. He was very proud to receive the bodyshop Magazine Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014. 

Dave also founded the School of Thought project to join the education and automotive sectors together and promote automotive industry career opportunities to young people in school, colleges and local communities. 


If you are interested in learning more about ClarityCoat, you can visit us here-

Website: https://claritycoat.com
Facebook: https://facebook.com/claritycoatofficial
Instagram: https://instagram.com/claritycoat_official

Transcript

 This is the Autobody podcast presented by Clarity Coat. We'll get stories and talk to people from all over the industry, painters, body guys, manufacturers, and anybody in between. Let's do it. Welcome to the Autobody Podcast, auto Body Podcast Podcast presented by Clarity Coat. Now here's your host, Adam Huber. 

Here everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. Today we have Dave Reece from Barwell England. Uh, Dave is the founder of School of Thought, or at School of Thought, sorry. Uh, I'm guessing it's based in England. And, uh, I'm really excited to learn about a little bit about David, about this. , um, idea that he has going the school that he has going, because he claims himself as a futurist. 

So, . Dave, how you doing today? , you've, you've checked my LinkedIn profile, haven't you? ? Yep. I mean, it's, it's public, so it's there. . That's right. Yeah. Well, I, I, I'll tell you a story that one, I, I went to a, a conference at Nobel Ring some years ago, and there was a gentleman on there that said he was a futurist, and I always thought I'd really like to have that title. 

So, um, so now we've got school of thought and we are, we are looking to, um, for the, into the future of, uh, of young people coming into the industry. I sort of took it basically. Um, nice. So yeah, now I can, I can honestly say that everything I do is, is for the future of the industry. Very nice. So, uh, and when you refer to yourself as being a futurist or someone that signs themselves, the title of a futurist, is it someone that is. 

More concerned about the future of a particular industry than they are about the present or past state or anything like that. Is that a fair it, it, it's fair to say that, I mean, I, I've been in the industry 56 years, so, uh, you know, I, I've seen the history. I've seen the evolution. Um, I, I understand the, the problems that the, in the operating problems that the industry's got today. 

Um, but my, my pure focus now, um, I'm 71 years age, so my pure focus now is on the future. It's keeping the industry healthy for the future and trying to address probably the biggest long-term problem it's gotten. That's people. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, if I may say so myself, you look great for 71 

Thank you. I'll do another one of these now, . Perfect. I'll, I'll make sure to wire the money later. . Um, so. . All right, so let's, let's go back to young Dave. Um, that's typically how we kind of start these things off. I want to know what was young Dave into where you kind of always into cars, and I swear if you say that your parents didn't have a vehicle,  or something like that. 

The last three guests that, or last two guests that we've had on, they're like, I actually, my parents didn't even have vehicles until I was like 16. I'm gonna freak out because it's just, we've never had that before. Do you wanna freak out then? My father never drove a car.  never drove a car. My mother didn't drive a car. 

I was the first person in that side of the family that had a car. Uh, the only person that had a a vehicle with wheels was my uncle, and he was into motorbikes. That is so crazy. Four outta four. There you go. , that is so crazy because it, it must just be, so, obviously Dave is, you could probably guess most of our listener bases in the US and yeah, it is just a ridiculous notion for anybody. 

I would say there, the, the percentage of people that could say the same exact thing as the last three guests have said is so absurdly small in the United States because you have to drive everywhere. Like Yep. Um, you don't really have the opportunity. But the last gal that we had on, um, was, uh, Rachel, and she's from Ireland. 

She said the exact same thing. Um, and then we had another guy on from England, I'm, I'm blanking on the name. Mike. Mike, um, Monroe is, I think is his last name. Monohan. Mike Monohan. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Um, he said the same exact thing and now you're on saying the exact same thing. 

So that's cr Why do you think that is? Just outta curiosity. I think it's a generation thing. I mean, when, you know, I'm, I'm a child of the fifties, so, um, you know, my, my parents were, uh, sort of around during the war and, and I think coming out into the fifties, there was less and less vehicles on the road in the uk. 

Um, you know, the, the, the working class man. , um, generally worked close to it. Close to home. My father went to work on a bicycle. You know, he worked in a car factory, but he went to work on a bicycle. So when, when he, he, he didn't have a vehicle, he didn't have the money to buy a car. Mm-hmm. . So there was other methods of transport. 

Public transport was a lot better then that, you know, you could get around. Um, and it wasn't something that was high on the agenda. When we went on vacation, we went on the train, you know, we, we, we basically pared the family into a train and, and went off on vacation. So it wasn't a priority. There was, there was a few people, fewer our family friends that had cars, but, but it, it wasn't the, uh, it wasn't as today where everybody needs a car. 

Everybody expects to have a car. I think it's generational. I think, you know, the older, the generation, the more people you would get there and give you the same answer up. Yeah, I would, I would agree with that for sure. Um, it's hard to, it's hard to remember that you're 71 cuz you just  feel like I'm talking to someone who's 55  with a, with a good, with a good memory. 

There you go. Yeah, yeah. So, uh, okay. Talk to me a little bit about, um, so you're growing up, are you, are you interested in cars when you're a teenager then? Nope. Not at all. Not, not, not even at all. I mean, my, my interesting cars started when I was 14. Um, I, I went on a day visit to a college, uh, a further education in the uk and I wasn't the brightest, uh, the brightest student. 

I, I wasn't particularly academic. So I went, uh, and had a look at the trades as we call them. You know, the, you know, the building, plumbing, carpentry, um, and I walked into the, um, automotive workshop and the smell got me, you know, it was like, this is the one I wanna do and that, that was it. And then, um, , I came away from there. 

The school got me two interviews with, with local garages, um, and went and at 15 July the seventh, 1967, I started work in a garage as a training mechanic. Very nice. Okay, so what made you switch from mechanic work over to Peyton Body work? That came later on. Um, that came, I mean, I've, I've, I've transitioned through a lot of jobs during my career. 

Um, but I had a, I had a, um, a target that when I was 30, I didn't wanna be a technician. Oh, I didn't wanna be on the shop floor anymore. I wanted to progress. So I moved through dealerships, through departments, you know, through fleet departments. And, um, probably about 35 years ago, I got the opportunity to work for a distributor of painter materials in the UK who had an auto finish, uh, department, um, and dropped into that. 

So that's how I, I started in, in the body repair industry. Um, and then, uh, that, that went on for a little while. And then in, uh, 1999, um, I joined Ford Motor Company on the, on their, uh, body and paint program in the uk. And I was on that for 21 years. So, ended up, ended up running the whole. You know, the whole network in the uk, um, traveling abroad, setting up, uh, a couple of programs, body Shop, quality Care for Ford, Ford Service Excellence. 

Um, and that was that. Yeah, that was it really, you know, sort of dropped into it as the next progression in, in a career path. Really interesting. Very interesting. So you were on the sales side from, um, a B2B standpoint, and then you were on kind of like the OEM side of things? Yeah. Overseeing. Ford would qualify as good repairs, bad repairs, or how, what, what did that look like? 

That was, it was managed basically. It was, it was developing, it was developing You, you've got, in the UK you've got the fccn program for Ford over there. Um, we had the, the, we, we had the Ford Accident Repair Network over here. We've just introduced the fee fccn model here. Um, but the Ford Action Repair Network was about, um, primarily developing standards, making sure that shops were working to a, a standard, we didn't have a British standard at that time. 

Uh, working to our standard. , um, making sure the training was up to date, making sure they got the right equipment, making sure the customer service was, uh, you know, was right. Um, and we did that with a, um, a major program, um, which was Body Shop Upgrade. Um, and that was 15 days consultancy where we went into businesses, stripped them back to the bare metal and, and started again and made them efficient and, and, and profitable, um, and, and made sure that the customer service levels were great. 

So yeah, it was a major, major problem and that ran, that ran right up until probably 2020. Um, so we did that for a lot of years, um, and grew the network. Uh, I think that was the major, the major. So, um, so yeah, that was, uh, that, that was what we did. So that was my, uh, and then became a sort of an expert in, in body shop processes, which is uh, which is the natural, another progression. 

And that took me all over the world. So, , were these shops ones that wanted to sign up for these kinds of things? Like they wanted to progress and be better? Or was some of 'em had to, you kind of had to drag 'em into and keep them and screaming ? Oh, some of them, some of them were very resistant, um, to change. 

Absolutely. Um, the program was a mandatory program for Ford over here. So, you know, if you wanted to be a Ford accident repair center, you had to go through the program. Um, but there was a Ford were really, really great. They, it was, it was a cost to the, to the, the repairer, but it was, um, but it was basically, um, a money back guarantee. 

So if we didn't put the, the amount of profit on their business by doing the program, we gave 'em their money back. And over the 20 years we did it, we never gave anybody a penny. So we did a good job . So, yeah. That's great. Yeah. What, what were some of the things that you saw, um, roughly what time period are we talking about here? 

Are we talking about like seventies, eighties? No, we're talking, we're talking from the year 2000. So we, you know, we're not talking no way, way back. We're talking from 2000 to 2000 to 2018. That, that was the timeframe. Um, so that, that was, that was where we were, you know, that's where we were proactive, so to speak. 

And what were some of the processes that you were seeing that these shops needed the most help with? Like across the board? What were some of the top three things that shops were really inefficient at and really needed help fixing, predominantly production management. You know, they were pretty good at, at, at the, the front end, the, the service advisor, you know, handling the customers. 

Um, but generally pretty, pretty poor at, at, um, at the production side of it, you know. Interesting. Very, very in. . Um, and we and what was, what were they inefficient? That, like as an example of, uh, was it parts ordering where car would come in and, you know, they would only order what was nece or what they thought was necessary at the time. 

And then car, they'd get halfway into the car and they'd be like, oh shit. Like, we forgot these things. And then, yeah, that was a common, that was a common theme. The common theme of, of damage assessors, um, was because at that time, The repairers were extremely busy and, and the pressure on the vehicle damage assessors was to, was volume. 

So they were looking at, you know, between 15 and 20 assessments a day. So you can't do accurate assessments if you're doing 15 or 20 a day. Yeah. So they were, they were basically skimming. They were, they were missing, missing, you know, key items. There was no, there was no, there was no strip to strip to investigate at that time. 

It was just do the assessment and then, um, but the big one was that when the technicians were stripping the vehicle down, they were just stripping it down, putting all the parts in a basket and, and waiting till the end to put it back together again. And then you get the missing items that, that didn't get picked up. 

So we had to change, we had to change a lot of that. Um, that was a common one. The other common one was, um, looking at Booth ef. We, we, we, we did booth checks. We, we did time, emotion studies on, on people moving around the shop. We did, you know, where was, where were the welders positioned against the guys that needed them? 

Where were the Special Doors petition positioned? It was a massive, massive program. Um, and we take the booth, for instance, we, we did plummy, we did 200 chops, and, and it was very consistent that 40% of the time the booth was either empty or wasn't being used to spray anything in. Wow. You know, so again, if you're looking at today how many, how, how many, you know, how much money you spent now warming booth up. 

So, you know, that's, that, you know, you fire those, you fire those burners up and they're burning your fuel. Whereas we keep 'em at a constant temperature. And, and my, my am my emphasis is if I've got a painter, I want 'em to paint, you know, I don't want 'em to stand around. Then you, you have to be super, super efficient. 

So that was part, you know, the efficiency of the shop was you, was really, really, uh, interesting. But as soon as we put the processes in, as soon as we put things in it, like stage check quality to make sure that everybody checked their own quality and it, and, and we got to the end of the line and the vehicle was great to sign off, everybody became more efficient, you know, and, and, and that was, and, and the, the process. 

We'll speed it up. So we got more volume through more cars, through less, less corrections, you know, less, less rectification, because you know, as well as I do, as soon as you get rectification on a car at the end of the line, you've wiped your profit out on that job pretty well. You know, it has to go back through the pro, back through the process again. 

So, so yeah, that was, that was pre pretty well, uh, you know, the, the hub of it was, um, was that production piece and then being a vehicle manufacturer a little bit was look and style, making sure that the customer experience, you know, makes sure they had a, a, a nice area, a nice reception area, were nice waiting area. 

Um, they had, so that was the, the, we call those, the fluffy bits, you know, the little bits of customer service, the, the real heavy stuff was sitting behind it, which was the, uh, you know, which was that, um, that, that production management, which, which shops were predominantly not very good at, you know, um, this is really interesting that we're talking about this today. 

I read a book or I am reading a book right now. Um, very famous book, um, over here, but I'm pretty sure it's probably pretty well known over there as well. Rich Dad, poor Dad. Yep. Um, and there was the chapter that I'm on right now, uh, is it Steve? I think it's, uh, is his name. Uh, I, no, it's guy, um, guy, isn't it? 

Um, anyways, it doesn't really matter. Um, people know who I'm talking about. I'm at the chapter where he is talking about where if you really want to become rich, you need to diversify yourself into, um, two different types of education. The example that he uses is the, um, writer who writes for a newspaper, but then he advises her that she should go and learn how to do sales. 

At the same time. She, she should have a sales job. , she's extremely resistant to it, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, he, what you're talking about reminds me of this other piece that he said in there, which was, he was talking to a class and he asked the class, do you guys think that you could cook a better burger than McDonald's? 

Everybody raises their hand and says Yes. And he's like, so then why don't you have a billion dollar empire ? He said, because in the point that he was driving across was the fact that you can probably cook a better burger than McDonald's, but what McDonald's does better than you is processes and procedures. 

Yep. They can, they can replicate so much faster than you can, um, a workforce, which means that they make more money and they can keep consistently good quality across the board than you could ever dream of. And what is so fascinating to me is it doesn't really matter. There's not a lot of businesses out there that this does not qualify for, but you might be good at this thing. 

You might have a great product, you might. . Um, you might have such and such that's so much better than your competitor. But if you don't, if you have a messy backend, um, your admin is messy, your sales is messy, your product ordering is messy. All these things, if these things are messy or in, in the case of a body shop, if your production is messy, meaning it's not streamlined, it's not, there's not a process and procedure in place. 

Yeah, you're, you might be the best body shop there, but you suck because you can't get all these other things at duck in a row. And what's so interesting to me is that a lot of these guys get so annoyed  at the thought of having a process and procedure because they look at it a bit like, a lot of people look at a budget, like a, a, a budget, uh, for your finances, right? 

They think it's restrictive. Where in all actuality, it's not supposed to be restrictive. It's supposed to be okay. Here's how we do things, but the, we're just gonna put it on paper and in place so that people stick to it and you can always adjust it down the road. Like there's nothing saying that you can't adjust it. 

Um, is that kind of the same attitudes that you've run into as well? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I mean, we, we had a strap line, which was, you know, process plus people equals profit. Really, really simple. But, but it's true. You've gotta have the process in place. I'll, I'll tell you a quick story, please. It's a podcast. 

We've got 45 minutes. . Yeah, I, I, I did some work in Saudi Arabia with, with Ford, and I went to a big Ford repair, obviously mega shops over there, you know, huge 60,000 square foot monsters. And the manager was probably two weeks away from a nervous breakdown. That was, that was, and that, that was serious. He was a young, a young man. 

Well, mid, mid thirties, um, young guy. Um, I appreciate that. Thank you. I'm 33, so I appreciate, yeah. , he'd been an assistant manager. The manager had left because the pressures were too much and he'd been left to, to his own devices and he was, um, he was the sort of guy that didn't trust anyone. He had to do everything because he knew at that point it would be done. 

So I had, I had the first production meeting with him. He'd never had a production meeting before. I said, right, we'll get everybody together at nine o'clock. We're gonna have a production meeting. Let's sort the day out and. When I got there, he had literally printed spreadsheets out on his desk of all the performance, and I sat and watched, and he went through these, these spreadsheets, how many estimates he'd done, how many cars were waiting, how many what was waiting for parts. 

Nobody said a word he did. His production team, his line managers, his supervisors, his estimators just sat there and let him talk. And at the end of it, he went Right Off you go then Oof. And I said, what did you get out of that? He said, well, I come in at six o'clock every morning. I print these sheets out, I study them, and then I tell them what, what, what they've done, and tell them what they need to do. 

I said, well, can I do it tomorrow? And he went, yeah, okay. So I went around to each department, , and I can already tell he was all like, fidgeting, . Well, oh yeah. He was like, oh, well, you know what's gonna happen? So I went down, I went to the, the vehicle damage assess, said, right, this is the information I want from you. 

You need to bring that tomorrow. I went to the production site team and said, I need this information. You bring it tomorrow. I went to the parts people and said, we wanna know what outstanding parts are. You bring that tomorrow. And I went, I set the meeting up and I sat in the meeting. I said, I don't want you to say a word, not one word, just sit. 

And I sat there and it was you, you know, when you sit there in 30 seconds, seems like an awful long time when nothing happens. So I sat there for 30 seconds, didn't say a word. Didn't say a word. And one of the supervisors says, right, are you gonna tell us what, what to do? And I went, no. I said, you, you go on that whiteboard there and you put your figures up and you tell me how you achieve that and, and how you're gonna achieve it today. 

And we got to the ve, we got to the vehicle damage assess, and they brought the sheet and they put it in front of the manager and walked off. . And I said, what are you doing? And he said, oh, well I've given that to the manager. He's now gonna talk to us. I went, no, no, no. You are gonna bring information in every single day. 

It's your department, it's your responsibility. And when we did that, and the, the, the manager suddenly it, it was like a light bulb moment  where he went, you haven't come in, asked six in the morning. You haven't printed all this thing off. You've given the responsibility to other people, and they're responsible for their own departments. 

So I said, well, would that make your life easier if that happened every day? And he went, I could spend an extra hour and a half with my family. I could have a breakfast. You know, all that stuff added up. So and so, that was the education. But, you know, that's not, that hasn't been unusual in our industry that, um, they don't, people don't trust their teams around them. 

They, they, you know, they, and when you've got a team around you and you do everything for it, it will let you, it's like having children. When you, when you do everything for your children, they don't learn to do it for themselves. And business is about, you're right, business is about process. Get the processes right, get the right people in the right place. 

Make sure they're trained and they know what they're doing. And to be brutally honest, from that day on, that guy became a very, very good manager. He moved around the Middle East. He's now one of the best managers in the Middle East. But that's the way he operates now. You know? So I sort of, I sort of had, had 10 days with him and stopped him from ending up in a mental institution. 

You know? It was, it was that sort of thing. But that's, we've, I've found that over the years that what you've said is right. There is a, there is a resistance to change. There's a resistance to people who, uh, are not particularly, um, good at, at, at managing the processes You. , I, I, the book, I, the book I refer to when I, when I look at this is the Toyota Way. 

So if you read the Toyota Way, oh yeah. That is, that's all about Kaizen. That's all about, that's all about process management. And a body shop is basically a production unit. Mm-hmm. , that's all it is. It's, it's, it's, and it runs, it should run on the same process as building something, whether that's McDonald's or Toyota cars. 

You know, the process needs to be put in place and if you can get those processes in place and you can manage them and make sure they stick, that's why a lot of the National Body Shop chains over here works so well because every single shop is a McDonald's, isn't it? It all works the same. So they are, they are better at it. 

I'm not saying they're absolutely perfect at it, but they're certainly better at it because they put these processes in and fundamentally people have to follow them. So that's, that's, that's, that's the way. But yeah, it's all about process. Adamant at the end of it, you know, and getting, you know, the round pegs and the round holes. 

And the square pegs. And the square holes. Yeah. Um, have you heard of a writer by the name? I refer to this guy all the time on the podcast, so I know that everybody's just like, oh God. Okay. . But have you heard of a guy named Jocko Willin by chance? I haven't, no. No, I haven't. I mean, um, the, the one I do know is David, David, Dave Luer, David Lu over there. 

He, he's, oh, he's, he's, uh, he, he, he's, um, he's quite a, he's quite, he's quite famous over here as well for his, his, his, his sort of body shop background and some books he's written. Yeah. Um, can't think of the name of the company now, but I haven't, I haven't heard of the one you've just mentioned now. Um, well, Jocko has nothing to do with the auto body industry. 

Um, he is a former, uh, Navy Seal retired and. What you were just talking about. That story that you were talking about goes back to one of his, uh, seven laws of combat, which is decentralized command. Mm-hmm. , and he doesn't say this in the book, but I've, I've read this enough and I've seen this enough in, in some of the other businesses that I've helped, is that manager probably learned how to operate that way from operating a very small team of people. 

Yeah. He probably had say five, six people around him that you, he could literally go around and tell those people what to do. And it was very easy for him to do that because it's very easy to do that with five or six people. Once you expand that out past roughly about a dozen people, it becomes awful to do that. 

It's, it is so much work to, um, keep track of what everybody's doing and you are working yourself, just like you said, into a mental institution and. So in the book, um, extreme Ownership is the book that I'm talking about. Jocko talks about this where, um, if you would like it, I will, I will actually buy you a copy. 

So, um,  , um, he talks about how there's two reasons as to why decentralized command is the way to do this. One is those people are specialists in what they do. Mm-hmm. . So in the seals you have a machine gunner, you have a sniper, you have a recon guy. You don't need to be a specialist in recon, you don't need to be a specialist in machine, uh, machine gunner. 

You don't need to be a specialist in a sniper. That's what they went and did training on. So why are you gonna sit here and try and tell them how to do their job, right? Mm-hmm. . But the other part of it is, is people understand a plan so much better when they're the ones that came up. Yeah, yeah. Everybody is more bought into that plan if they were the ones that had a hand in making that plan. 

And if they have control of their destiny, because shocker, people don't like being told what to do. Nope. They, they just, they just don't on across the board. Uh, and if that was true, then communism would be all over the world and it would win. But it's not . No, no, no. Um, Adam, I mean, you, you, you're absolutely right. 

I mean, one of the, one of my tricks of the trade, if you want as a, as a, as a, as a business improver, as a consultant in the body shop industry and, and in the, the service world as well, cuz it all works out, is I use, the first thing I used to do, um, was to go on the shop floor. I'm, I'm shop floor. You know, I, I've, I've been on the spanners and I know, I know the language, I know how they talk. 

But ask them what the problem with the business. Ask the guys that are, that are in the middle of it, what's your problem? And you'll probably get two or three little gems that you could change that business in, in a week just by talking to the people that are snarled up in the problems. You know, I have to wait at the parts department for 20 minutes every time I get apart, you know? 

And then, you know, or, or I have to walk across the workshop to get the welder because the welder is right over there and it takes me, that takes me 10 minutes. And, you know, all these little, these little things that the people that are in the middle of it will tell you. And you're right, they're all specialists. 

You know, my, my son is a, a great example. My eldest son, he, he's never laid a spanner on the car, but he's probably one of the best vehicle damage damages, says is in the world. Mm. But he, but he, but he's, he's basically left the knowledge to the experts. So if he wants to know something, he'll go and talk to a panel tech. 

He'll go and talk to a painter. He'll go and talk to a mechanic. He'll go and talk to the guy that does the adas reset. Um, he doesn't need to be able to do the job. He just needs to be able to understand it and build an assessment around it. And, and, you know, Richard's, Richard's now 34, uh, he's, he's just transferred to a manufacturer program, but he, he came out, he's never laid a spanner on a car, ever. 

And the interesting thing about that is, is you will pick up certain things and knowledge from osmosis from you. You bring the panel guy over, he looks at it and he says, oh, you know, this thing is totally screwed and blah, blah, blah. Here's the reasons why. And then if you're smart, you sit there and you kind of write these things down in the background, right? 

Yeah. And then you learn 60 to 70% of what that guy knows. . And because of that, then you become a better assessor. Or over time, it just requires you to open up your mind in your ears. Yeah. And shut up and listen to people. Right. Um, and so then less and less, you have to bring that person over to actually do stuff because, or do the help you with the job because you already know 60, 70% of it, and then there's only gonna be one out of 10 times or whatever that you actually have to bring that person over and say, Hey man, like this is really weird. 

Can you help me out with this? And then they're gonna be, you know what? Okay. I'm gonna give you a little secret secret, Dave. You know what's great about podcasts? People love talking about themselves and they love talking about the thing that they know very, very well, right? Yeah. And that is, Podcasting for me anyways, is easy because I just sit here and I just wanna learn from you. 

That's it. Like I just wanna, I just, I'm, my ears are open, I'm ready to learn, right? Yeah. And number two, you do most of the talking. . , so it becomes great. It's a, it's a, you have 50 some years of experience that if I allow myself to just sit here and learn from you. Yeah. I'm gonna become better at lots of different things. 

Right. Hey guys, Adam from the podcast. I hope you are enjoying today's episode. Just wanted to ask you a quick favor. If the show has brought you value in some way, would you mind giving us a review and sharing the show? It really helps the show get out there. Also, if you are looking to expand the services that your shop offers and you want to do more than collision work, you should really check out our company Clarity Coat. 

Clarity Coat is a peelable paint that allows body shops to offer color changes cheaper than a repaint, while still looking like real paint. You can also offer clear protection that has no edges and is sprayed instead of laid. Unlike Vinyl and ppf, clarity Coat can be sanded and polished so you can give your customer the exact look that they are wanting. 

If you are looking to expand your shop services, go to clarity Coat.com and fill out our, become an installer form. All right, let's get back to the show. And that, and that. That's, that's, that's my journey. That's, that's where my journey is going now, is to, is to go out and meet young people and, and tell 'em what a great industry we in. 

Uh, it, like you can be in any industry in the world, and there's good and bad days. There's good things that happen and bad things that happen. We've got two things that fundamentally are flawed. We've got vehicles and we've got people, so something's gonna go wrong, you know, but nine, you know, 90% of the time, um, I've had a fantastic career. 

You know, I, I've, I've had, I've got three kids, I've got two grandchildren. I've got two great-grandchildren all be there, and they're all, that's all because I've been in this industry. . You know, I've, I've had redundancies, I've had good times and bad times, you know, but at the end of the day, it's, it's given me a really good, uh, good living. 

And I've been to some exciting places in the world and done some really great things. And that's all from a 15 year old that left school on a Friday, um, and started work on a Monday and went home to his mom saying, I never want to go back to work again. I hated it, you know, . So, you know, so, so it, it, it is, it is a great industry. 

So, you know, our, our, our project that we are on now, um, which will probably, I've got no plans to retire anytime soon. So, you know, this is a five year program that we've set up to go and educate the educators and educate young people that there is a career path in our industry. There is room for them, there is, you know, um, but, and that's another learning curve. 

It's really great because I've stopped worrying about the industry's infrastructure. What's going wrong with the industry? We, we, we, we know what's going wrong with the industry. We know the problems the world's creating for the industry. We know that fuel costs are causing massive problems for body and paint in particular. 

You know, so our fuel over here, the, the gas and oil over here is quadrupled in price in the last year. So body shops are struggling. You know, they're starting to shut booths down and only use one booth because they can't afford to turn 'em on. That's, that's, that's a problem that will be resolved. It will be resolved, it doesn't seem like right now, but it will, it will resolve doesn't. 

But, but our, our industry is, is incredibly good at getting through bad times. The thing that they've lost the vision on probably over the last 30.  is getting young people in. Mm-hmm.  is attracting young people in and it's hitting us like a tsunami now, you know, not so much mean, probably the same in the States. 

I did have a, I did do a podcast with Ibis last year. Um, so it, it is an issue, it's a global issue. Mm-hmm. , but we've had things in the uk. Everybody's had the pandemic that was terrifically disjointed for, for everybody, especially young people. We had Brexit where we came out of Europe, so we don't have the European influ influx of, of, uh, of, of workers, so, mm-hmm. 

you know, we, that's a big hole. That's been what's happened with, I dunno if it's happening in the us but what's happening in the UK is that people of a certain age through the pandemic have decided to retire. Decided to take the chance, um, to say, right, you know, I, I can, I can cope with 80% of my salary. 

I don't need the big books anymore. I can change my lifestyle. Uh, they've, you know, they've drawn their pensions and, and retired. So this, this whole thing suddenly hit us. Um, and the reason I set Score of thought up was to, to take the industry into education and just, um, make sure that, that schools and colleges know the industry, that they know the great jobs that their industry, in the industry. 

They know that, you know, there's over 200 different job roles in our industry, but when you go to a school, they'll only know one. Mm-hmm. . And that'll be a tech, and it won't be a Body Tech cuz they'll have never heard of body work . It will only be a mechanic or a, you know, that'll be the, the thing they think about. 

So, you know, we, we've got a big job and usually, usually they think of those roles as with disdain. Yeah. Like why would, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Why would you want to go and work on something. . We've got two things really. We've got parents that, that, and we, we did a, an event called the British Motor Show two years in a row. 

Now it's a bit like, um, it's a bit like the, you know, the, the, um, the major motor shows like the London Motor Show we've had in the past. You, you've got the same in Detroit. So we've done these shows and we've spoken to moms and dads and they've come along, said, we don't, why would we, why would we bring our children into this industry? 

You know, it's dirty, it's grubby, the wages are poor. Um, and that's all perception. Mm-hmm. , you know, and it's a perception that's been built over the years. We know now that, you know, the industry is evolving massively. It's the fastest growing tech industry in the world. You know, um, you can't just be a, a normal old school, old school mechanic or panel tech anymore. 

You've gotta have enhanced skills. It's a massive, it's a great industry to be in. Girls and boys can be in it. There's no barriers anymore. Um, but Ed, the educators are still, um, a little bit ignorant of our industry. So we go and talk to schools and colleges and we bring them up to speed. And it's amazing that once we tell them and we present to the youngsters all the career opportunities, it's like they are interested. 

And one of the things that I, I, I, I sat next to a, a bit of a dinosaur of the industry a few years ago, and he. Young people aren't interested in cars anymore. You know, I've ridden, I've, I've, I've, I've heard the statistics and, you know, by 2030 they won't wanna buy cars, they won't wanna drive cars, they won't wanna be interested in it. 

And I can categorically say now, by connecting over the last two and a half years with over a hundred thousand young people, they do love cars. They do want to be in our industry. They just need to know how to get here. And that's what, that's our mission now. That that's what we're trying to do. Yeah. Um, everything that you've said, I, I a hundred percent agree with. 

Um, and I would say that the, besides the fuel and oil costs, which, I mean, ours have gone up a little bit, but, you know, we have the, we have a different resources that we can tap into than England does. We're struggling with young kids getting into the industry as well. And there's, thankfully, there's a lot of great programs that I've had people on talk about this in the US to try and move this forward, but, The sentiments on the teacher side still and the educator side still are still there. 

They, yeah, they, I, I, I, I feel like they mean well, but they're just in, in the nicest way to put it. They're just ignorant. They just don't understand. And probably, I, I, I wonder if one of the biggest drawbacks to the autobody industry in getting people familiar with it, is that you don't interact with our industry until something drastic has happened. 

And that really only happens every couple of years. And what I mean by that is, is why would anybody ever visit an autobody shop unless they were in an accident? Yeah. Right. So you've already got a bad situation going on where the only reason why you're visiting this place is because you've had a horrendous accident. 

You're annoyed because now you don't have your car. And so you already have kind of like a negative connotation.  towards that, um, industry because of that. But then you don't have to return back hopefully, unless you're an idiot and you wreck your car every year. Um, you don't have to back for another 3, 4, 5 years. 

So you, you only have that one touch, right? Yeah. Um, so people started as exposed to our industry as they maybe we're, it is 20 years ago. But you look at our, yeah. And you look at even on the service side. Service service schedules now are what every two.  every three years, you know, it's stretched and stretched and stretched. 

So you don't do, you don't repeat the visit on the body. On the, on the body repair side, we have always relied on insurance company relationships, cuz that's the driver for a very high percentage of the work. But we don't get walk-in traffic like the dealers do in their dealerships. So we don't get the public just walking in and saying, hi, you know, or I want to have my car serviced, or I wanna buy a car. 

They don't, we don't get that traffic in the, in the body repair industry. So you're right. But I think where we, where we are starting to make some, some waves is we change in the perception of the industry to education. So if you go into any school, it'll be the same. I I, we've, we've just launched a, a program in southern India, um, in a school. 

And if you go into the, into the school, there's a perception that you don't need to be academic to be in our industry.  academia, you know, the academia route is let's get them to college of further education, let's get 'em to university, let's get 'em a degree. You don't really need that if you wanna be a technician in our industry and our industry now is so high tech and when you look at apprenticeships now you are learning more on a two or three year apprenticeship than you'll learning on a degree course. 

And it's high tech. And that's the stuff that we are finding a rooting to schools with young people interested. But if you, I dunno whether you have careers fairs or jobs fairs o over there, but we have, we, we've have them over here all the time. And the competition for those young people is so great. We can go to a school that does a careers fair and we can have 30 or 40 different companies from 30 or 40 different industries competing for those youngsters. 

Mm-hmm. . And we are finding that we are the only ones from automotives that are there. Interesting. Yeah, so, and there's a few little pockets of people that are starting to do a little bit more, but when I went, I, we, we have apprentice week in February. We did, we did for five days. I went to five different schools, uh, and did five different careers fairs. 

And I was the only one from automotive and that was various parts of the uk, not just, not just close to home. So we've got a big job to do, but when we get in front of these young people and tell them, it's really encouraging. You know, the other thing we did for a, for a one of our body repairers locally, we organized an open day. 

So we invited two schools to bring 25 youngsters to the, to the site, uh, Saturday afternoon. So it was in their own time. We put some demonstrations on and I was doing airbrushing and all sorts of stuff, you know, showing these youngsters. Um, we got 17 young people that wanted to sign up as apprentices. 

That's awesome. Just on that day. Now, he could only take four, but he's got four young people that'll start in May, June that are new to the industry. We are now placing the rest into businesses and around the area. So we know from experience that if we get in, if our industry gets in front of these young people and shows them what it's all about, they'll come. 

Yeah. Are you finding that they're more interested in it because they are working with their hands, or is it because they it's, it's because it's cars. It's, it's, we, we had this dilemma, , which was, when we started this, we had a dilemma and somebody said to me, how do we make our industry sexy? You know, , it was like, what have we got? 

And it's, and, and you sit back and you think, yeah, you know, you've got that question, but then you look at all the, but the tech is helping. So the tech's really helping. You know, I stand in front of youngsters and the first thing I'll say is, name the electric car. And they'll, to a man, to a girl, they'll go, Tesla. 

and they'll know, you know, so tech's helping the, the tech is really helping. But when you talk to youngsters about, you know, we need youngsters that can, uh, operate a laptop, that can, that can reprogram vehicles, that can do aid, and they really, really are interested in it. Um, but then when you start to talk to 'em about the body repair skills, that opens their eyes. 

Cuz nobody's ever talked to 'em about that before. You know, you know, young, we, we've got young, um, young female painters out there that are part of our program and we say, look, girl, this isn't, this is a video of a young girl painting a car, and the, and the girls are going, we didn't know any of this. , but not just the girls, the teachers and parents know nothing. 

Mm-hmm. , so you're right. You know that word. Ignorance is a horrible word, but it's actually relevant when you, when when schools don't know us, you know, they'll know what, they'll know what a mechanic is, sort of, but they won't know anything else. So we did a, we, we got involved in an organization, two organizations over here. 

If you, you've obviously got STEM over there, haven't you? I think it's STEAM over there. Science, technology, engineering. Yeah. STEM over there. We've got 17 STEM hubs in the uk and we connected, we contacted them in 2019 and not one of them had got a connection with automotive. Not one of those STEM hubs got a connect and they get, they get nearly 3 million hits on their website a year for youngsters trying to find careers. 

And then we, we got, uh, we were put together with another organization called Youth Employment uk. They get another 4 million hits from youngsters trying to find careers, not just youngsters, moms and dads and career and careers advisors. We, our industry was invisible. There wasn't anything on there you could find. 

Mechanic, which really interesting. Sorry to interrupt. Yeah, yeah. Which is really interesting because STEM is science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Right? That's our industry. Well, , , the two of those are technology and engineering, like, yeah. I don't know. Crazy, crazy thought here, but cars are pretty engineered, right? 

So, well, you take, and we've got science now you're taking hydrogen cars now that's science. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. That's science. You know? Um, so, so, you know, there are the, there are core skills that we are looking for. Um, but yeah, we, we, we've sort of got 8 million, 8 million hits on two websites. 

And if you wanted to find a, a career on there, you got mechanic, which was buried in engineering. Literally, you couldn't find it. So we, we basically, Julie Eely, my co-founder and I, we, we purchased a portal on one of these websites. Um, and that's now the automotive, the only automotive portal in the UK that, that go, goes through these websites that the youngsters can now find us. 

and find the industry. And we are developing more and more. I mean, we're self-funded. We're a community interest company. We're not for profit. Um, but we are slowly but surely making, making the right, um, noises and talking to the right people. We did the research early on that, that was, we have to connect with education and that's, that, that's anywhere in the world. 

If you can get our industry, the body repair industry to connect with education in some way, shape or form, and educate the educators, we'll start to see youngsters that will be more interested. You know, I've got youngsters over here that say, yeah, we watch West Coast Customs and, you know, and, and, and Pimp My Ride and all the, yeah, they, they, they watch this sort of stuff. 

Mm-hmm. , um, they, they know it. So it's in, it's an interesting concept and we, you know, we, we are sort of, we're, we're three and a half years into it with Covid in the middle. Um, so it, it's, it's, it's a bit of a, it's a passion now. Um, and that, that's, that's the driver behind it. . Uh, what's interesting is we had Rachel on from Ireland and you had that paint by Rachel. 

That's Rachel Paint by, she's one of my ambassadors. Yeah. Yeah. I figured that I was starting to draw the, the connection there, . Yeah. But when we had her on, she said that before she was in the industry, the way that she thought cars got repaired was they just ordered the panels and they were color matched and they just fitted them onto the car and then that was it. 

She's like, I had no idea that, you know, there was an actual art and skill into doing this kind of repair. And I bet I would be willing to bet that if you were to go to most of the young people that are out there, high school aged and ask them, well, how do you think a car gets repaired? Paint and body wise anyways, absolutely. 

None of them would've. Any idea the skill level that it takes to repair something back to looking like factory. We, we, we, we are sort of, we were always class when we were younger. When I was younger, we were classed as motor, motor engineers. That's that. If you looked at a, at an old, um, garage in the UK through the fifties and sixties, it was motor engineers. 

That's what we were classified as. And then it got sort of declassified over the years to motor mechanic. But when you look at the technology and, and the, and, and, and the craft that you need now in body and repair to put things back together the way they should. We, they're en we, we've got, we are bringing new engineers into our world. 

Not not just technicians. These are engineers, you know, as well as I do. You, you, you take a car back to chassis and you start messing around with that. You can't be a, you know, you're welding, you're joining, you're riveting, you're bonding. It's all, it's, it's a, it's a huge skillset now that we need to put these cars back together. 

And then we've got on top of that, now we've got all the, you know, all the adas and all the computer systems. So our, you call 'em stripped down, don't you call 'em stripped down in, in the us They, they're no longer stripped down. These are highly qualified technicians to work on modern day cars. Yeah. You know, um, so it's, it's, it's all changing. 

And when you start to talk to youngsters about, about these skills, , um, I always call painters primadonnas cuz they're always the ones that , they're always the ones that claim the glory, don't they? You know, it's like, wow, look at my, look at my paint job. You know, they don't, they're not bothered about what's underneath it, but, but that's a skill in itself because that's changing, you know? 

Yes. We've gone from cellulose to waterborne to fast drying. You know, we've got, you know, we've got sim technology now, you know, the fast drying, gas drying, uvs, uvs getting more and more use in the industry. Um, it, it's a massive industry and that learning curve is so great for these youngsters. Um, but, but it's a career path. 

What I say to the youngsters over here, you're not gonna be earning the big books for probably five or six years. You know, you're just not gonna get it. But once you are mid twenties, you can be earning big money by having your skillsets and being qualified and then, you know, and, and that's the attraction. 

So,  perception. This, you know, sort of destroying that perception that moms and dads and teachers and careers advisors have got of our industry. It's, it's sort of, we do, we do parent groups now. You know, we go out and meet parents and say, right, we'll tell you about the industry. You know, that's the way we do it. 

And we get into other groups, we get into the scout movement, you know, cause these scouts are, these scouts have got hand skills because the scout movements, you know, makes them make things, don't they? Mm-hmm. . So we are getting, we work with the scout movement now and try and find youngsters that way, but then trying to find, maybe we've got a big gap of people between 18 and 24 that are either outta work or looking for a change of job. 

So we've got the opportunities, we've just got this poorer people and we've gotta get to them before the other industries do , you know? Yeah. That's, that's the secret. The, and, and you're so, you're so right that, you know, going into healthcare or going to be. A lawyer or whatever is the thing that's pushed, there's plenty of techs, mechanic, plumbers, electricians, whatever, that I know that are making just as much money as any lawyer, doctor that I know. 

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And I dunno what it's like over in there, but you try, you try and get a plumber or a builder to come around to your house, you know, they're like, the old expression is, they're like rocking horse poo. You can't find them, you know, they're just not around because they're earning so much money, they're fully booked. 

Yep. You know, that's, and, and yeah. Where I'm living, um, so the place where I live is, uh, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. And, uh, we've experienced probably we're the fastest growing city in the Midwest for like the last five years running or something like that. And in, in the Midwest, you, your building season is only about seven to nine months long. 

You can only build houses, or you can only build stuff for about seven or nine months, and then winter hits, and then you've gotta shut everything down. Right? Yeah. Well,  in those seven to nine months. It is a gold mine for every plumber, every electrician, every builder. They, you can't, you cannot find someone that's in the trades industry in, in those seven to nine months. 

It's just good luck trying to find a plumber. And, but what's interesting is that is the also their greatest downfall, which is, um, if they could just be a little bit more organized on that front end, answering back phone calls, text messages, emails, they would just literally never run work. But yeah, you're right. 

Like these guys are making so much money from doing new builds and everything like that, which is, which is categorically easier than repairing old stuff. Oh yeah. Um, so why would they ever bother doing anything else? But again that they, the, the, the trades are suffering the same as, as our trade is suffering. 

Yes. Is is encouraging new people in, you know, we, we, we are starting to work with building and construction over here. My, my daughter-in-laws in works for a major construction company in the uk and they can't, they can't find the, the, the, the skilled people that they need on building sites to, to bring them in cuz they're just not here cuz they haven't got that transition. 

So we'll be launching a school of thought for, um, building and construction, um, probably back end of this year. Love. And do, do the same with them and going to schools and say, look, look, these jobs are here. It's not just, it's not just working on a cold, freezing building site. You know, these are hand skills that'll see you through to your life. 

And that's the one bit of advice I took from my father. He said, get a trade and you'll never be outta work . Yeah. So, and we've just said that ourselves. So, so yeah, it, it, it is a, it's a great time. It's a great, you know, but I think more people now, more of the major. Um, companies in our industry need to step up and support programs like School of Thought, like anybody that is, that is trying to promote our industry. 

You know, the vehicle manufacturers have gotta have got to take some responsibility, you know, they've gotta invest in it because they tend to invest in themselves. So you'll say a vehicle manufacturer's got a great apprenticeship program, but it'll be for them, it'll be for Ford or Cries, or, you know, it won't be, it won't be a, a promotional program for the industry. 

We've got major corporations, the insurance companies who rely on us to keep them going, to keep their customers mobile should invest back in us. You know, not just in themselves, not just not just be insurance companies giving out money. Are you, are you crazy ? Well, we have got one instance, two instances over here where our, our apprentice fund, there's a levy over here. 

So 2% of the profit for major companies. , the government takes off them in a tax and goes into a levy pot, and they have to use that for apprenticeships, but they're allowed to donate 20% of that back to, to, um, companies to bring more apprentices on. So we've got two or three insurers that are now doing that. 

Um, so yeah, you know, yeah, we've got the old adage that insurance companies are in it for themselves, but they need to step up because we, we put a, we put a strap line out, um, just before Covid that, you know, without automotive, the world stops. But without new talent, automotive stops and then covid hit and just prove the point. 

you know, just cause, you know, irrespective of all those other trays, if the wheels had stopped turning on the delivery vans and the food delivery vans and through covid and we were responsible for keeping them going, whether that's, whether they crashed or whether they needed service in repair, we, we, we kept the world rolling through Covid in reality. 

Yeah. And I think. , everybody needs to recognize that, you know, we are now talking to the Department of Transport and saying, you know, transport's transport, and that's all right. You throw loads and loads of money at it, but you realize that we keep the wheels moving, so you need to invest in us. So, you know, I I perhaps I'm, perhaps I'm on my, on my, my, my soapbox at that point, but, oh, that's a, that's the whole point of a podcast, 

Yeah, no, I think, you know, I think the industry, the industry as a whole now needs to take some responsibility to try and do something about the biggest problem that it's gonna have in the next 10 years. And that's, that's people, and I will, I'm gonna make a guess here that you would agree with me on this, but if you don't, feel free to disagree with me, because I'm happy to have a conversation about it. 

But yeah, one of the things that blue collar, we call 'em, uh, sorry, white collar jobs have over blue collar jobs. I'm not sure if you have the same saying over there, but Yeah, yeah, we do. Yeah, yeah. Corporate jobs and everything like that. One of the things that they have a big advantage over us on.  is the fact for the last 20, 30 years, they have invested usually across the board pretty heavily into leadership programs. 

Yep. Um, and management programs and everything like that. Now, that's not saying that those companies are good at it, but again, by osmosis, you pick up a few tricks here and there and you become a better organization because of the fact that you, they're dumping this kind of money into you. Yeah. And I think probably one of the, one of the other problems that a lot of shops or trades are gonna have to just deal with reality on is the fact that categorically across the board, you guys are pretty awful at handling people. 

Like you're just not great at it. Yeah. And so you can fix the pipeline one way, which is you're doing a great job of like making the industry known and getting these people in here. Yeah. But then they get into the industry and they're like, no, actually this. Sucks because Steve, the manager is an asshole and like, I hate working for him. 

Well, you also have to fix that part of it because why would anybody ever stick around if this part right here? You can't. And I, in your conversations with young people, I talk with young people a lot as well. Mm-hmm.  and I guess you could probably refer to me as a young person cuz I'm 33. Thank you again. 

Oh yeah, yeah. You're, you're, you're a baby Adam. You cannot pay me enough. To work for someone who's an asshole. It's not going to happen. I I will just, I will just be like, all right, I'm out. See you later. And you can call that lazy if you want to. I, I really don't care. You're going, I mean, you we're, we're all talking about the Zed generation, aren't we? 

Generation Zed. That that's the latest buzz, isn't it? I've just written an article about Generation Zed goes now in our little magazine. Um, they're different. They're, they're, they're, they're the young people today are different. Totally different. And they won't take, they won't stand for nonsense. They'll just move on. 

Yeah. And that's what they do. But you're right. And we, we've, we've got a program, um, that we'll be launching with a major, um, body repair group. It, it's gonna be slow burn, but we've got connectivity with about a thousand body shops in the uk, the, the premiums. Wow. And we are gonna, we are gonna be launching what we call a legacy program for them. 

But the very first thing will be to do a health check of their business to make sure they're fit for purpose for young people. And that's, that's, that's critical. And before we even sign them up, we've gotta make sure that they are ready.  and willing to change their business to suit young people. And you're, you're absolutely right. 

That's one of the things that, that, that's bothered me for years is that we encourage these young people, we are wonderful, wonderful, shiny, sexy, brilliant adverts. And then we put 'em into a, into a 19 60, 19 70, 19 80 shop. Um, which, which they will soon, um, fall out of love with and go and find. And they will, they will go to McDonald's and burger flip for a, you know, for a few dollars an hour, or they will end up in a, in a warehouse, you know, so the biggest disruptor we've got in the UK is Amazon. 

because Amazon pay great money. They take young people in, you know, they give them lots and lots of benefits. Um, and they, they're, you know, they're on things like continental shifts, so you can work three, you know, you work three 12 hour shifts and now the rest of the week off and all those things that our industry has been very, very bad at adopting over the years. 

So, yeah, you're right. Uh, 100%, you're right, Adam, that we can't bring young people into old tech, old, old tech and old businesses. The businesses need to step up and evolve themselves. What can help them? What, what is the, what is the one thing that you're hearing from young people that, um, they want out of a job? 

Because to me, the number one thing, I'm, I'm not hearing his money. They don't care about money. What's the thing that you're hearing from him? I really wish, you know, I would love to work for a place that's like this or whatever. Yeah. Well there's, there's, there's two things that influence that. There's, do we work with a, I'm a, I'm an ambassador for an organization called Teen Deck. 

Um, and they, they, they, they polled parents in about a thousand schools in the uk, um, and children. And it worked out that 96% of, of the, um, children said that their parents were the, were the influencers in their career. Okay. Crazy. There's the one they listen to mom and dad, they li oh, they're uncles now aunties. 

Um, and, and these are, these are, these are young youngsters from from 13 to 15 at that critical time when they need the advice, cuz of next steps. So there's that one. And then we've got youngsters that, that come along and have this misconception, oh, I don't wanna work on cars. It's all about, you know, it's all about working on cars. 

And we go, hang on a minute, you know, yes it is, but do you realize how high tech these cars are? And once we start to talk to them about the tech, then they, they're at eyes light up a little bit and then we relate to it as more of an engineering role. Cuz when I go to schools and colleges, I get lots and lots of requests saying I want to be an. 

I wanna be an engineer. And that's girls and boys. We want to be engineers. They don't quite know what an engineer is, but they wanna be one. And the other one that's, that's starting to grow. Um, a little bit more over here is, is the apprenticeship route. So, mm-hmm. , we, yeah. The teachers are telling us about apprenticeships now. 

We don't really know what they are. So, so again, it's that doubt that they've got in their mind. So once you clarify stuff for 'em, it, it, it, it opens their eyes a bit and then they can make a, they can make a concerted decision of whether they want to come in or. . So, you know, they don't know. Our apprenticeships have a, a level, we call it a level four math and English. 

So they have to have literacy and numeracy to, to qualify for it, to get into your apprenticeship. They don't know. So we are, we are constantly teaching them that. So they want, they want to, they wanna work, they want a career. That's what they're looking for. They, they, and that's what their moms and dads are telling them that they should look for. 

They look for a career. Don't just look for a, a job that's gonna last you 10 minutes, or, you know, you're now going to school. You're going to leave school at 16 or 18. You're gonna be in work now until you're 60, 65, 70. You know, so it's a career path you're looking for. So the one thing that really, really helps us is people like me and you that have got a, had a career and got a career in our industry and we've got a journey. 

And when you start to tell 'em the journey you've had just by start that start. , then they start to get, they will start to get them in more. But yeah, they, they don't ask about money. When, when I, well, the younger ones do the 13 year old say, how much do you earn and what car do you drive, sir? That's what they normally tell you. 

So I say, I'm not gonna tell you how much I earn, but I drive a Mustang and that that's only, oh, you have a Mustang? I, yeah. It's only a little one. It's only the, it's only the Eco Boost one. But yes, I've got a Mustang and it's bright yellow and it's a drop head. So, you know, and the kids love it because I, I, I take it to schools and they have photo shoots with it. 

So it's really, really brilliant. But so we What year, what year is it? It's a 2018. 2018. So it's anus shape. So it's great. And I mean, we took, we took a Tesla and the Mustang to a school, to a special school in, in South Wales. And we said, right, you can have a picture taken with a Tesla or the Mustang. And none of them wanted a picture taken with a Tesla 

You know, it's, it's so, it's so interesting. My business partner, um, is over in London as well. Yeah. And it's really interesting to me that Chargers, challengers, Mustangs, Camaros, yeah. Everything like that, right? Like that's, That is the car that, that he thinks are cool, right? Yeah. Yeah. Obviously, you know, he's, he loves like the high end Porsches and everything like that, but it's so interesting because over here they're just, they're just everywhere. 

Like you knows, we just have so many of 'em over here. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, I mean, they're cool, but like, it's just kind of one of the, I don't know, it'd be like you seeing. Uh, range Rover Defender or something like that. Like, it's just like, it's just everywhere. So, yeah, to us it's, it's so interesting to me that Mustangs or, or you know, Camaros or whatever are so interesting over there. 

Yeah. As soon as they started, as soon as they built 'em in right hand drive, they went mad over here for 'em. So it's, it was really good. It's really good. But, yeah. But you know, the question really is, you know, the youngsters, they just want to, they just want a career. They want to step into something where they can, where they can learn the trade, where they can earn some money. 

They, they are interested in money because that's what their peer groups are doing. Yeah. So they can earn some money, they can learn a trade, and they, they've got progression. So, you know, and, and I always say to them, the job you start with won't be the job you finish with, you know, you will have this career or. 

Yeah, it shouldn't be, but, but you know, you will have this career path and as long as you've got a, just taken my, you know, I, I, I wanted to be off the shop for, by Farmer 30. I was, I then ended up as a workshop foreman for a big fleet company. Um, then I moved into, into distribution. So I worked in, you know, in parts distribution. 

Then I moved into paint and Refin distribution, learning the trade I've been in. I'd been in car sales, truck sales, van sales, just learning, learning my, my craft all the way through. And then hit the, hit, the hit, hit, hit my sort of, uh, golden era when I got the job with Ford and 21 years later, and I stepped outta that, um, December the 31st, 2019. 

I, I stepped away from it because I'd had 21 years of it and I wanted to do something else. Yeah. Understandable. Yeah. Well, Dave, We have reached the end of the hour and, uh, yeah, yeah, we could probably go on for, we could probably go on for another hour of this. Right. , . Um, where can people find out more information about you? 

Um, what you have going on, um, all these kinds of things? Yeah, we've got a, I'm, we've, we've, we've got the website, which is, um, www.schoolofthought.info. Um, and anybody can connect with me on email if you wanna pass my email details out, Adam, that that's, that's, that's great. I I have no problem at all with that. 

You found me on LinkedIn. You know, I, I'm, I'm on LinkedIn. Um, so yeah, we are, we're, we're, we are reachable anywhere, but through the website is one. Um, and through direct email, um, yeah, we, we are contactable and it's great. It'd be great to talk to people all over the world about this, this problem and, and you know, it'd be nice to talk to people that are doing something about it, cuz I'm not, I'm not ashamed to steal people's ideas and adopt them and move them forward if they're, if they're really gonna work, you know? 

Yeah. Awesome guys. Go check out Dave. Um, I will put his website and email info in the description below. Um, Dave, thank you again for taking time outta your day to do this. Really do appreciate it. It's a pleasure, Adam. It's a pleasure. And, um, stay outta the snow . I'll try. Thanks. Okay, lovely, lovely to meet you. 

Cheers now. You've been listening to the Autobody podcast presented by Clarity Coat. Our passion is to talk to and about anyone in the industry, from painters, body guys, manufacturers, and anyone in between. We hope you've enjoyed the show. Make sure to like rate and review and we'll be back soon. But in the meantime, visit us@claritycoat.com and find us on Facebook and YouTube at Clarity Coat. 

See you next time on the Autobody Podcast.