Episodes

Steve Shaw and Dave Rogers are talking about selling again — and we brought in living proof it can be done. We interview Chrissie Bifulco, Service Manager of Piazza Mazda, on how she turned a sleepy Mazda store into an absolute powerhouse. Then our Profit Partner, Steve Schau of Fast Digital Signs, joins the show. Steve builds menus and menu programs for dealerships that help advisors present with confidence and sell more — the exact tools that turn a service drive around.

Steve Shaw and Dave Rogers get into what really makes a great service manager — and it starts with one word: passion. We talk passion for the job, the role of training, the KPIs that actually matter, and the real, day-to-day ins and outs of running a service department. Then we dig into the part nobody loves to talk about: the knowledge level of today’s managers, and their willingness to learn, grow, and coach their people.

This one is all about training — the real benefits, why to train, and (maybe most importantly) when NOT to. Because training isn’t checking a box. Training is improving. And Shaw puts it bluntly: if you just want to check the boxes, don’t hire him. In fact, don’t hire anyone — it’s a waste of money. But if you’re truly looking to improve yourself, your dealership, and your people, this one is for you.

Dave Rogers and Steve Shaw sit down with special guest Joshua Taylor — host of Wrench Turner’s Podcast — for an honest and important conversation about the life of an auto technician.

Steve Shaw and Dave Rogers tackle something every fixed ops manager and GM feels but rarely says out loud: vendor fatigue.

Steve Shaw and Dave Rogers are talking PARTS, and we brought in the heavy hitters to do it. Our parts expert today is the world-famous Armund Dezii, Parts Director of Mercedes-Benz of Westchester — and we are ALL going to learn a thing or two from this man. Joining him is Anthony Blubello, eCommerce Performance Specialist from Revolution Parts, whose mission is to disrupt and innovate the automotive space by building the most active parts network in North America.

Dave Rogers and Steve Shaw sit down with parts manager extraordinaire Jon Rondolone of Piazza Honda of Springfield — and today, we’re talking everything PARTS.

Life is full of inconsistencies — and so is the dealership. In Episode 66 of Fixed Ops Focus, Steve Shaw and Dave Rogers take on one of the biggest hidden problems in fixed operations: the level of service a customer gets often depends entirely on who happens to pick up the phone. Call the same store twice and you might get two completely different answers. Which operator, which service advisor, which person is on the line — that’s what decides the experience. And even when there’s a documented ...

Steve Shaw and Dave Rogers take on a topic everybody talks about but nobody seems to define the same way: work-life balance.

Steve and Dave take on Vermont! We’re joined by special guest Michael Wright — and a few others — for an honest, wide-open conversation about life in fixed operations. You never know what’s going to happen on this one. We cover everything from AI to third-party vendors to what it’s really like to be a fixed operations director — the challenges, the fun, and sometimes the not-so-fun. If it’s part of what we do all day, every day, it’s on the table. Grab a seat, kick back, and enjoy your Friday af...

Breakeven. It sounds simple — until you actually run the numbers. In Episode 63 of Fixed Ops Focus, Steve Shaw and Dave Rogers dig into breakeven analysis and why it's the true starting line for evaluating your fixed operations department.

In Episode 62 of Fixed Ops Focus, Dave Rogers and I break down what happens when you add additional items to the repair order before the customer ever arrives. A few extra dollars per RO feels small in the moment. Multiply it across every RO, every advisor, every month, for a full year — and it becomes one of the most powerful growth levers in your entire service department.

Steve Shaw and Dave Rogers have a spirited conversation about repair order marketing — and one idea that always gets people talking: what if you preloaded the OP codes right onto the repair order, so the service advisor has to present them every single time? This is Part 1 of a two-part series on what we call the Repair Order Preload.

You’re hired… now what? In Episode 60 of Fixed Ops Focus, Dave Rogers and Steve Shaw dig into the part of the dealership nobody seems to get right: what actually happens after the offer letter. As always, this one takes a lot of twists and turns.

Today we’ve got a powerhouse panel. We sit down with Jamie Rellis — co-founder of Dealer Focus and CEO of ME Technologies & Consulting — and David Securia, Service Director at Benzel-Busch Motor Car, NADA Academy graduate and NADA Show speaker, to talk about the one thing every dealer wants more of: GROWTH. This is the full conversation on how you actually grow a fixed operations business — not theory, real moves. We get into technician development, OEM training, investing in your people, NADA t...

Some people coach. Some people train. But almost nobody in our business has a real, structured coaching and mentoring program — and in Episode 58 of Fixed Ops Focus, Steve Shaw and Dave Rogers dig into why that’s one of the biggest missed opportunities in the dealership today.

Steve Shaw and Dave Rogers crack open one of the most honest — and weirdly hilarious — topics in this business: getting fired. It starts with a friend of Steve’s who just got let go. That one story sends Dave and Steve straight into the Wayback Machine, where they relive the times THEY got fired from the dealership, what those moments taught them, and how they came back stronger. Then they flip the script to the other side of the desk — the associates they’ve had to let go — and the part nobody ...

It seems like everybody and their cousin is selling service contracts — on TV, on YouTube, on TikTok, you name it. These days even the customer can go buy their own. So how is a dealer supposed to handle the flood? Do you charge extra? Add a processing fee? Hire a dedicated extended-warranty expert just to keep up with all the paperwork? This is the discussion no one is having right now — and it’s costing service departments time, money, and CSI.

One message. A dozen detours. Dave delivers an all-time rant about oil changes. Steve fires back on everything that’s broken about dealership training. There’s even a little conspiracy talk (hey, it happens). And buried in all the chaos is a genuine fixed ops masterclass on the monsters every service leader is fighting right now: employee retention, building a real career path, and the customer service challenges crushing the drive.

This live episode features two power-hitters. Ed Kopec of Paul Miller Audi walks us through his career — from service manager of a small four-technician Porsche store to building a $1.5 million+ fixed ops gross powerhouse, and his trajectory from service manager to general manager to vice president. Then the Profit Partner Spotlight goes to Michael Scorcio, MBA, Vice President of Traxtion, on how modern training tools and technology are helping the best dealerships grow.

Dave Rogers and Steve Shaw tackle one of the most under-trained skills in the dealership: the art of diffusing a hostile customer. They cover why most associates have poor customer-diffusion skills, what to do when a customer drops the F-bomb, how to define your line in the sand BEFORE the conflict starts, and a set of practical diffusion strategies for the service drive.

Dave Rogers and Steve Shaw expose what they're calling The Pseudo Warranty Conspiracy: a 25-year, quiet financial shift by automotive manufacturers that transferred billions in warranty cost off OEM books and onto dealers (via reinsurance liability) and customers (via repair bills). The mechanism: extending service intervals so that wear-and-tear failures fall outside warranty coverage, while vehicles also fail sooner. The episode connects warranty cost, planned obsolescence, used car mechanical...

Episode 50 of Fixed Ops Focus Live tackles the difference between management and leadership—and what really separates a good service manager from a great one. Guest Bob Orozco of Wilmington Land Rover shares his path from service advisor to service manager to general manager, while Profit Partner Michael Keene of Chameleon shows how the right data helps managers grow into true leaders. Tune in for real stories from the bays, one immediate-impact idea you can put to work today, and practical take...

Steve Shaw and Dave Rogers tackle one of the most confusing — and most urgent — paradoxes in fixed operations today: customer satisfaction scores are at all-time highs, while customer retention and RO traffic are quietly collapsing. Those numbers should not be moving in opposite directions at the same time, and yet they are, everywhere in the country. Dave and Steve unpack the real economic forces driving this paradox, then return to the prescription: a back-to-basics, slow-down, every-tenth app...