Ep. 50 with Erin Vaughan from Kinetic Auto Service

Barb McGrath 0:01
And here we go for another episode of The Secret Life of entrepreneurs. Today’s guest is joining us from a little bit of a different location. While we’re usually sitting in studio together, of course, this lasted a while we’ve been broadcasting remotely. And our guest today is joining us from her work environment. That part’s pretty normal. But her work environment is not your traditional zoom in and join the call. So I will let her give us the details. But our guest today is Aaron Vaughn. And she’s the owner and we’ll say head mechanic at Kinetic Auto Service. So she’s going to talk a little bit about how she decided to enter the trades, and what she’s learned in that industry that’s driving her to encourage more women to enter the trades. Oh, and she’s also running a very successful local business. So Aaron, welcome. Thank you for being here with me today.

Erin Vaughan 1:01
Thank you for having me, Barb, I really appreciate that.

Barb McGrath 1:04
That looks like a really cool background, it doesn’t look like a traditional autoshop background. I don’t see any corny calendars behind you. Tell me a little bit about Connecticut Auto Service.

Erin Vaughan 1:15
Kinetic Auto Service started in 2011. And it was kind of a need my former business partner and I found ourselves in a business that was going bankrupt and we thought, Hey, we can do this. So we thought let’s try it out. And we kind of thought it would be a lot easier than it actually is. Okay. But over the years, we’ve definitely learned a lot and, and at this point, my business partner has left he’s been gone already for almost four years. Okay, so it’s just a knee, which makes me the only auto repair shop in the city that is 100%. female. Wow, only one, one out of two in the whole province,

Barb McGrath 1:58
in the whole province. So you know, it two things. There are lots of things you said were interesting to me. But one, I think so many business owners find themself owning a business running a business, kind of by accident, something happened that led to it. It wasn’t you know, I’ve done school, I’m going to start my own business. So you know, I find that very interesting. But But only two in Saskatchewan, who is the other one in Saskatoon or Prince Albert? And like, do you know each other? Do you collaborate at all? Or? Or Really? Do you find that you collaborate with all shop owners?

Erin Vaughan 2:32
I do find that there are a group of professional shops in Regina and Saskatoon that I do collaborate with, I take classes so that I can continuously build my business management classes. And so yeah, we actually it’s kind of really cool, because we have our own group on Facebook. And we can ask, Hey, what are you doing with this? And what are you doing with this and, and it’s actually kind of like a really nice community as opposed to just like, competition.

Barb McGrath 3:03
You know, and CIA, to me, that’s huge. Collaboration will grow everyone’s business way more quickly than any one person trying to compete with everyone in their circle. And your business might grow in the short term, but you’re not building the relationships that you need to in the long term. And so it’s a short term plan for failure. That’s, that’s my own personal opinion. But right, that’s totally

Erin Vaughan 3:30
right. I think that in business, you have to look at it this as like, a long road and and how are you going to get through that? And I think the only way to do so is to be able to collaborate, make relationships with other physicists that are in the same industry, but also outside of your industry? Like, really, they have different ideas, and we do.

Barb McGrath 3:51
Exactly. And, you know, I think it’s pretty uncommon, you know, somebody in the marketing field might collaborate with somebody in the auto service field, but like, guaranteed, you’ve got ideas that would, you know, help fuel my business and vice versa. Right. And it’s, it’s, it’s not always about here. I’m going to consult with you here. Here’s what you should do with your marketing. It’s about sharing ideas. And it’s about what does our community need at some point in time, right? Absolutely. So okay, let’s back up. How in the heck did you end up in the trades?

Erin Vaughan 4:24
Well, actually, my wife told me when I was 26, that I had to choose a path in my life and to get out there and get a real job. So okay,

Barb McGrath 4:36
so we What were you doing at the time? Like, were you working in a shop at the time?

Erin Vaughan 4:39
No, I wasn’t. I actually had no experience at all with automotive.

Barb McGrath 4:43
Oh, okay.

Erin Vaughan 4:45
Yeah, I was. I was a landlord for a local company. I was a DJ for weddings. You know, I just did all kinds of random things. So it just kind of came to that point where she said like, maybe you should get an adult job and get a

Barb McGrath 5:00
Real job, it’s time to grow up very, pretty much.

Erin Vaughan 5:05
So, I went and looked in the calendar, calendar, see what was available. And I obviously didn’t get very far because I stopped an automotive service technician. Okay. So, yeah, it was, it was one of those things that like, I really do like working with my hands. And I like to have, I just, I don’t like to stop moving. So fitting is kind of like a killer for me. So it’s been, it’s been actually really, really interesting. And this is the type of thing that really you can take with you and use. It’s very nice to have. Mm hmm. Yeah.

Barb McGrath 5:45
So and we look at auto service. So my grandpa used to own a service station, where I grew up, and he had had that service station, you know, the whole time that grandma and grandpa had kids, they were no one in the community. And, and even as a kid, like we would go, but what, what a vehicle was then, and the computers on wheels that you have to service now. And you have to have that whole breadth of knowledge because someone can pull in with that 1950s 60s and 70s vehicle, or they can pull in with the latest and greatest off the lot. So like, how do you put all of that together? Because that’s huge. It is?

Erin Vaughan 6:33
Well, it’s really, um, we see a lot more than newer ones. And we do the older one, the older one that does come in, but we don’t spend a lot of time with them. Actually. There’s the odd one that maybe it’s a, like, you know, it’s just maybe a one off that will take in, but at this point, like it’s an essay with a carburetor. Pretty much the test was we’re given all the answers in school. Here’s the carburetor. Here’s the answers to the test. Because we don’t see them really anymore. So, yeah, we do the odd things on older vehicles, but for the most part, it’s, you know, 2000 enough. So,

Barb McGrath 7:07
Okay, so the last 20 years, for the

Erin Vaughan 7:09
Most part, absolutely. And you’re, you know, you really, we really still are seeing of that amount of change in those 20 years. So we just, it’s a it’s a learning learning lesson every day, we’re always learning, which is again, why it’s so cool. Yeah, it makes us pretty good technicians to because we can take the information that we’ve learned on on a board and it may apply to a Honda, you know, we do have that advantage over the dealership because we do have the exposure to everything.

Barb McGrath 7:38
Yes. Do you find that it’s almost like a puzzle? Oh, we got you know, such and such a vehicle in today. And maybe it’s older, maybe it’s newer, but it’s, and you know, this is happening, and we can’t figure out where it’s coming from? Or is it really as simple as we hook it up? We run the diagnostics, the diagnostics, tell us the problem. And now we just have to solve it. No, there’s no such thing as the simple button. Okay, good.

Erin Vaughan 8:01
No, it’s not simple. Really, the thing is, is we can we can hook our scan tool up to it and see what the codes are see all the data that happened within the failure. And then we take that information and start looking through the repair procedures that are from the manufacturer. So we subscribe to a bunch of programs so that we have all of that information. And don’t just follow follow a diagnostic tree to come up with what the problem is attached to everything. So it’s very complicated. We’ve become computer technicians.

Barb McGrath 8:31
Mm hmm. Exactly. Yeah, it’s not an auto tech anymore. It’s computer tech. And the so if my vehicle was under warranty, which is not I can you guys fix it, or does it still have to go to the dealership,

Erin Vaughan 8:44
It needs to go to the dealership for warranty related work. Okay, other than that, if you’re getting any maintenance done, like oil changes, anything that you have to pay for that can be done anywhere. Okay, properly, as long as there’s record, your vehicle will still have warranty, and as long as the parts that are being used are the same quality as the original manufacturer.

Barb McGrath 9:06
Okay, so you know, that’s interesting to me, because having to go back to the dealership all the time. The dealership that I was dealing with, like it was a pain in the butt. It was location, like it was everything. Right. Um, and so when my warranty ended, I wasn’t sad.

Erin Vaughan 9:24
No, actually, that’s not. That’s a pretty common statement. And it’s, it’s unfortunate, because I think that they do have a lot of loyal clients that would probably say, but I think the most common thing that I hear from people is they just don’t feel like they’re heard. I think they kind of feel like a number.

Barb McGrath 9:43
Oh, absolutely.

Erin Vaughan 9:45
And that’s not totally uncommon when it comes to bigger businesses, either people feel that way when they go to a favorite business.

Barb McGrath 9:51
Yes, exactly. Okay, no, that makes perfect sense to me. Um, okay, so you totally ended up in the trades by accident because it started with an A and that’s where you stopped That’s hilarious. I gotta remember that one. I at least got halfway through the alphabet. Wonder how many people get to woodworking?

Erin Vaughan 10:07
I don’t know.

Barb McGrath 10:11
This is true. Hey, who? God that’s funny. Um, okay. And now I know you’re also doing some work to encourage more women to consider the trades. And it’s not just the Auto Service trade, but trades in general, is that right?

Erin Vaughan 10:24
That’s okay, I’m on an advisory board to assist the office to advance women apprentices. This is just helping women that are girls really that there is a place for them to go. And then if they have decided to go that path, just support them throughout their apprenticeship. And then even after once they get their dirty person certificate. And so the hope is that we can get more women involved. Because really, like we’ve there’s, we’re always crying for employees, like the automotive industry is always looking for technicians. And there’s a huge pool of people that would like to do it if they knew about it. And okay, you know, in in Canada, there’s only 6.5% of employees that are in the trades that are women. And I really think that, you know, we can bring that up. organization started in Newfoundland, and they have bred now to Nova Scotia, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan as well. I think I’m competing in the scheduling portion of, of this office.

Barb McGrath 11:27
So, you know, and that’s, and that’s interesting to me. So if you look at the, I’ll say, the teaching profession, it is very heavily dominated by women, and I don’t know what percentage are men? If you look at my own profession, it’s fairly heavily dominated by women. And in fact, that’s something that I don’t like, right? Like I I actually enjoy working with men. And anytime I’ve worked in an environment where there’s more men than women, as long as there’s still, you know, at least a few token females in there, I find that I enjoy that environment much more. And so it’s interesting to me, there’s all these industries where women are underrepresented. And yet, there’s so many other industries where they’re over represented, and shift the dynamic to balance that out seems to be happening. So slowly. What what’s driving that? Why is that happening? So slowly? Do you think?

Erin Vaughan 12:26
I think that really it starts at, at the parenting when children are small, you know, allowing them to know that there are more options than being a nurse for a female and being a mechanic for a male. I think that’s kind of the portion of that’s the part that I think we need to start at is, is letting little girls and little boys knows that they can do whatever they want to do whatever they want to do. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so I think that that’s where it needs to start. It’s going to start at home, there has to be options, you know, just got

Barb McGrath 13:03
that’s where it starts. You know, it was interesting to me when my son was going to see it was five, because he was old enough that you could have a conversation. But like he hadn’t been exposed to a huge world yet. And we were driving home from the mall one day, and I made a statement about you know, him maybe being a doctor. We don’t have any medical professionals in our family. So it was just an off the cuff conversation. And his response to me was, like, can’t mom because my skin’s the wrong color. And I was dumbfounded. But I realized every health care professional that he had dealt with in his short little life wasn’t Caucasian. And so he was he had made this assumption that, you know, he had to be a certain color. Our daughter is adopted, and she’s from Africa. So my son is Caucasian. My daughter is some African. And they always used to think that every family had children of multiple colors. And they would ask people, oh, okay, so you’re this color? What color is your sister? You look at my kids and be like, What are you talking about? But they just thought it was normal. Right? And so, now they understand and I’m like, No, no, you can’t quite see it like that.

Right? You’re gonna explain it to them a bit. But But those preconceived notions come from such an early age, where, you know, Mum and Dad can talk till they’re blue in their face. But if the extended family or all the friends are, you know, so there’s so many influences. And of course, one of the big ones is TV. Every teacher you see on TV tends to be a girl and every mechanic you see on TV tends to be a boy. So those social norms, I would say TV is behind. What the world actually looks like? It’s not reflecting, you know the world anymore. Totally. Right. But it’s what we’re comfortable with

Erin Vaughan 15:09
What we see, you know, I think you’re right, like, you know, people need to obviously start becoming more comfortable with seeing diversity, no matter whether that in color or whether that’s in career. I think that now that we have these other platforms like Netflix and crave, they’re allowed to produce whatever they want.

Yeah, don’t have to go along with whatever rules there were. So I think it’s actually kind of great, because, you know, you start seeing more people being represented. Mm hmm.

Barb McGrath 15:40
Yep. And I think it’s, it’s race, its culture, its religion, its love. Like, it’s everything, it’s across the board. Right. And, and so we’re, we’re being a climatized, which builds a comfort level. So what my grandparents sort of were were willing to accept. And I’ll be honest, they weren’t the most accepting people, again, love them to death, but they weren’t the most accepting people. And fast forward to our kids. When we explained to our kids that that people that we went to school with used to have a special classroom and they were segregated, my kids are just horrified that a child who may have had autism or a physical need, different than their own would have been segregated. They weren’t like they, they wanted to turn the clock back. And so yeah, everything starts to change and society starts to change. Right? So tell me about some of the initiatives that the committee or the group is doing to encourage more women to to get into the trades now that you’re spreading across, you know, a few other provinces?

Erin Vaughan 16:50
Well, it didn’t start in Newfoundland. And now these other provinces have joined on. And in Saskatchewan, specifically shyla, who is the coordinator, she’s just going around to all the trades, and just getting businesses signed up. And any female technicians or laborers, or whomever carpenters excuse getting them signed up so that they see they can see can help them move through their apprenticeship program. And then again, same support them afterwards. They are trying to get out into high schools and discuss, you know, this type of thing with the students and in the high schools. I’m not sure really, at this moment what they’re doing for elementary, but I do think that there’s absolutely a way for them to be able to get in and start having discussions with with girls in elementary schools, and I’m sure that will happen once again.

Barb McGrath 17:45
Yeah, exactly. Well, and I think you know, kids are so hands on nowadays, when you walk down, you know, the hallway in a school, they’re not just sitting at their desk with pencil and paper anymore. They’re in the hallway, they’ve got a laptop, they’re working in groups, they’re, you know, sprawled all over. So the sooner they’re exposed to something, and they get to be hands on and and see how cool and fun it is, the more likely they are to be, you know, attracted to that kind of thing.

Erin Vaughan 18:09
Right? Yeah,

Barb McGrath 18:10
Yeah. So I think that’s very good. So tell me about your shop. what’s what’s different about your business? And some of the others in town? Or, you know, what do you really pride yourself on?

Erin Vaughan 18:21
I think we pride ourselves the most on being transparent, trustworthy. We have, we do our very best to communicate effectively with our clients so that they know what they’re driving, we do digital inspection. So when somebody brings in their vehicle, every single vehicle that comes in gets this digital inspection. And it’s pretty much just kind of like a snapshot in time of this is the condition of your vehicle. And it will alert us to any type of dangerous things that need to be looked into further. So I think the thing that is the most different about us is that I don’t know, like, I don’t want to say there are these all of these things I’m doing right, I know that what I do is I provide my employees with an inclusive, comfortable environment, that mental health is important. And a balance is important for them. I don’t make them work overtime, you know, things like that. And so what I want for our clients is to walk into a place that feels comfortable, that he trusts that have people that are doing what’s best for them. And I believe that that’s what we’re doing. And I’m sure they’re up potentially other shops that are doing other shops that are like, I’m proud to be a part of that group shop.

Barb McGrath 19:42
Yeah. So um, you actually said the word trust twice as you were describing your business in different ways. And trust is not always something that’s been associated with your industry. So is there something that you’re doing different or very purposefully and consciously to help instead Trust in your clients or clients, you know, trusting you, but But even as you’re hiring staff and training staff and communicating your expectations to staff, how do you build up that trust factor?

Erin Vaughan 20:13
With our clients? Mm hmm. I think it’s really about giving them all of the information. I think that really is what it comes down to. is just, here is the information. do with it as you will. And we try what we do too, is we try and help people budget so we say okay, so today this is required, and then about three months, this is required, and, and it just as good for them to be able to have that plan in place. Okay, well, I need to save this amount of money for this next appointment. And then we can just keep their vehicles running, you know, perfectly. Right. Yeah. So I don’t have yet avoiding breakdowns is very important. Yes. You know, our whole goal. Exactly. We don’t want our clients vehicles towed in. So it’s actually very, very rare that that happens. We Oh, is it? Yeah, we do. We do a very good job, just keeping people up to date on their vehicles, and they need these things to keep it running. And, and again, we’ve we’ve done a good job building that truck.

Barb McGrath 21:12
Yeah, well, and I think that’s key. Because if you’ve built the trust, then when you tell me something needs to be done, I’m that much more likely to do it. But if the trust isn’t there, and you’re telling me to do something, and it’s especially if it’s something expensive in a vehicle, and it’s inevitable The day after warranty, that’s when it all happens, right? We all know that. Um, once that trust is built up, it’s like, Oh, okay. Well, you know, they said we need and, and so you don’t question it the same way.

Erin Vaughan 21:40
Right? Yeah. And you know, and that’s the thing is, is it’s very difficult for us to do our jobs and take care of people if they don’t trust us. Building trust is absolutely, number one.

Barb McGrath 21:50
Yeah, it’s key. Definitely. Um, as we’re coming out of COVID, you guys are back open, I can hear the sound in the background. Um, have you? Did you make some changes during COVID? that will last?

Erin Vaughan 22:03
Yeah, I believe so. And technically, our door is not open to the public yet. Okay, mainly, because I wasn’t two shirts, there’s just so much. So much information that I thought it would be best to just continue on with what we’re doing. And what we’re doing is we’re, we’re doing pickup drop off service, we’re not paying for it at this point, I suspect at some stage, we will probably start to charge for it. But for now. We’re just trying to pick pick up vehicles, service them, disinfect them before and after service and bring them back. And, you know, actually, we’re finding that our clients are loving that, you know, so it is one of those things where we think, Okay, well, they love this, they don’t have to go anywhere. And we just say they can continue on with their lives. Because the issue right now is like, how am I going to give somebody a ride to work. That’s the thing that’s hard is like, I can’t put them in the bag next to me, you know. So that’s kind of a challenge that we’re having. And so for us to not do that, I feel like our customer service suffers. So I feel like if we just stick with this for as long as we can, this might be our business model for a while as pickup drop off, right?

Barb McGrath 23:14
So and I suppose that, you know, if somebody drove themselves to work, you could pick the vehicle up from work, bring it back to their place of employee by the end of the day. And yeah, I suppose it, it changes the model. But I agree with you. You know, we were talking on the weekend about winter trips. And I said, I think it’s going to be a couple years before we do a winter trip again. Like it’s just, you know, and and the precautions are in place. Because here’s, here’s my thing, let’s say that you do get to go someplace to get there, you have this wonderful trip. And now it’s time to come home. And of course, I expect by the time that all of this can happen, you know, they’re gonna be taking temperatures at the airport and doing some things like that. So now all of a sudden, they take the temperature of your 12 year old and discover that they have a fever. Now what, how does that work with insurance? Does one parent state because a 12 year old can’t stay on their own? Did the other two Trump like it opens up this huge can of worms? Yeah. Yeah. So you’re right. Yeah. And it’s, it’s no different than you guys. You guys pick up a vehicle. And I’m sure you’ve, I don’t know, got gloves on, or you’re sanitizing before you get in. But all of that takes time. And in business Time is money

Erin Vaughan 24:32
Is your rate. And so then what I need to do going forward is I have to figure out, you know, what the cost of that is? Can I can’t Is that something somebody is willing to pay for? So I think for us, we’re just, everything’s fine as it is like, looking in, we’ve gotten used to this way of doing work. Right. And I think we’ll stick with it until it’s feel until we have until we feel like we can see exactly, yeah,

Barb McGrath 24:57
Yeah, that makes sense. I’m Aaron Boone. We’re not we’re pretty much at a time. And in fact, we’re over time. So Oh, well, fast to wrap it up. Um, tell people where they can find you and how they get in contact with you to book an appointment or just learn more about your trustworthy service.

Erin Vaughan 25:13
We are located at 845 McDonald Street. You can call 7894710. You can email info at kinetic Auto service.ca. You can go on our website, kinetic Auto service.ca to find us on Facebook and Instagram. Yeah, we’re I’m all over the place, using your everywhere.

Google Kinetic Auto Service, and you’ll find it.

Barb McGrath 25:37
There we go. Awesome. Perfect. All right. That brings us to the end of another show. And Aaron, thank you very much for joining me today. Aaron and I actually had this conversation twice because technology failed us the first time round. And so I always like to tell my guests it’s like having a cold beer on a Friday or a glass of wine. And so Aaron and I got to do this twice.

Erin Vaughan 25:59
We’re gonna win with a very nice,

Barb McGrath 26:01
awesome. If you’d like to be a guest on the show. You can email me at Barb at Google girl.ca or just reach out on Facebook and Instagram at Above the Fold. ca. Just a reminder, you can submit questions in advance of the live show on our Facebook page. I’m your host, Barb McGrath, local business owner and Google girl. Remember, you worked hard for your success. Don’t keep it a secret. Bye for now.