MY World and Welcome To It!

Hello!

If you’ve landed on this page, on this site, at this particular time, you’re among the first to share the latest in a series of “Great Adventures” that has defined my career as a professional technician, a repair shop owner and a trade journalist.

What kind of an adventure?

The best kind! One filled with a modicum of dread, great opportunity and more than a little excitement. It’s the kind of adventure I am consistently drawn to and find just about irresistible. I hope it’s one you will find equally attractive and rewarding.

I know, right about now you’re probably thinking to yourself, “Well, that’s great… I’m glad Mitch is all jacked up. But, he still hasn’t told us what kind of an adventure he’s about to embark upon!”

Well, take a deep breath and hold on for a second, because that’s exactly what I was just about to do.

I’m a lucky guy. I’ve been lucky for more that a generation!

That’s right, more than twenty-five years! That’s how long I’ve been privileged to share my thoughts and feelings: my experience, hopes and fears, with the industry I love.

That’s how long you have allowed me to become a part of your life… That’s how long so many of you have chosen to become a part of mine…

It started with Shop Talk: the column I wrote for Motor Service beginning in March, 1985, and grew to include a second column in Jobber & Warehouse Executive, Hunter’s “manufacturing and distribution” magazine, focusing on the want’s, needs and expectations of the repair community – only we didn’t call it the ‘repair community’ back then.

From Motor Service, I moved to Motor Age and Aftermarket Business – where I continued to share my world with you and create a window into that world for manufacturers, warehouse executives and jobber store operators for more than a decade.

I moved from Advanstar (Motor Age & Aftermarket Business) to Babcox Publishing: Import Car, Brake & Front End, Underhood Service, Counterman and AftermarketNews, and then back to Advanstar just a few years ago.

I owe a tremendous debt of personal gratitude and a good deal of my professional growth to the incredible people I’ve worked with over the years: Fred Gaca, Jim Halloran, Jean Ballinger, Rusty Jackman, Hugh Robinson, Tony Molla, Doug Ferguson, Teri McMeniman, Bill Babcox, Mary Della Valle, Andrew Markel, Ed Sunkin, Brian Cruickshank, Jeff Stankard and countless others. They afforded me a platform and allowed me to find my voice and serve an industry that has served our family for a hundred years.

Now, it feels like the right time, the perfect moment, to leave the formal and more structured world of corporate communications for the chance to write directly to you regardless of where your home within the Aftermarket might be. I hope you will find the content engaging, the platform familiar enough to remain comfortable, the material refreshing enough to hold your interest and intimate enough for you to recognize that I really am writing to and for you.

There will be pieces that look and feel like the columns I’ve been writing for a lifetime: a place to share important issues along with the intimate details of our every day experience. And, there will be blogs that will be more immediate, but no less open and honest.

You will find a continuation of the live series (56 segments) of webcasts focused on Shop Management we put together over the past two years along with some new webcasts designed to help distributors and manufacturers understand our world just a little bit better.

You might even find some of the pieces appropriate to share with some of your clients.

The site, Mitch Schneider’s World (http://mitchschneidersworld.com), goes live January 1, 2013, and will have an area for technicians, shop owners; shop owners who are still wrenching; and, technicians who wish to become shop owners… along with an area I hope warehouse executives, manufacturers and other distribution professionals are equally at home with.

My goal is to create a place you can listen, learn, grow and engage other professionals like yourself in a conversation whose sole purpose is to help you make sense out of the insanity that awaits us at the shop every day while still attempting to elevate our industry.

I promise to do whatever I can to keep this site fresh and challenging without making it contentious or confrontational. I promise to encourage bi-directional communication and a level of open and honest conversation that is too often missing from our industry. And, I promise to remain committed to you, your future and the future of our industry.

I’m glad you’re here and I encourage you come back… often! I promise to make your return worthwhile if you do.

The price is right. The admission is FREE with lots of free content waiting for you. Subscribe if you like what you see and join a conversation guaranteed to help you learn and grow (even if it makes you a bit uncomfortable in the process) – enjoy another level of content, a Members Only level, that won’t be available otherwise: content designed and created just for those of you who are looking for something more.

So, Hello!

If you haven’t figured it out yet, you’ve just landed right, smack in the middle of my world, Mitch Schneider’s World, and I’d like to be the first to say I’m glad you could make it!