17 minute read
STRAIGHT TALK
Columns STRAIGHT TALK
Joe Marconi
CHANGING GEARS
I started my business on Oct. 1, 1980, three weeks to the day after the birth of my first child. At the time, I was working at a Ford Dealership in Larchmont, N.Y., as an A-rated technician, making a good salary, with benefits. Friends and some family members told me I was crazy to leave a secure job after having a baby, just to start my own business. Three days later, I went to the bank to withdraw my last $700. I was dead-broke. The fear I had at that moment was nothing like I had ever felt before. Little did I know, there would be even greater fears to deal with as an automotive shop owner.
While I did have a goal to go into business someday, I never planned on fulfilling that goal three weeks after the birth of my son. It was on the day that I took my wife and baby home from the hospital when I happened to look in the newspaper and noticed an ad to rent a four-bay auto repair shop in Baldwin Place, N.Y., which is about 35 miles north of New York City. After a few visits to the shop and scouting out the community, I made a deal to take over the existing shop owner’s lease. I was a technician on Sept. 30, 1980, and a business owner on October 1. Was I prepared? Heck no. I knew one thing really well: how to fix cars.
The transition from technician to businessman wasn’t easy for me. The first 10 years were a struggle. It’s not that I didn’t do well, I did. But wearing all the hats for every position ended in an emotional, life-changing event in November of 1991 that made me question why in the world did I go into business in the first place. Like so many other technician-turned shop owners, I eventually discovered that in order to survive and thrive, I needed to learn a new set of skills, the skills of running a business. That meant putting down the tools and getting out of the bays; a place where I felt the most comfortable.
The 1990s marked a renaissance period in my life. By then I had two more children, another boy, and a girl. Our business made great strides, with year-over-year growth. By the late 1990’s I had new definition of what it meant to be an automotive shop owner. My responsibilities expanded to more than my family and my business. The entire automotive industry became important as well.
Raising the automotive industry bar became an essential part of my career. Not because I had something to prove, or to out-do anyone. I just felt that there were too many shop owners that had the same start that I did, and their struggles, passion, and commitment did not always result in the level of success they rightfully deserved.
On Friday, Dec. 17, 2021, at approximately 2 p.m., I closed on the sale of my business. With pen in hand, and a few signatures, it was over. After 41 years I was no longer a shop owner. Was it emotional? As I write this article on Jan. 10, 2022, it really hasn’t sunken in yet. The past 41 years has been a wild roller coaster ride. All the memories, the people I have met, the good times, and the not-so good times, has made being a shop owner an experience that will live inside me for the rest of my life.
The anchor during my entire career? My family and especially my wife. I owe so much to my wife, who stood beside me throughout the years. She fully understands what it means to be a shop owner, and supported me, even when I put in those crazy 16-hour days.
Joe Marconi Joe Marconi has more than four decades of experience in the automotive repair industry. He is the former owner of Osceola Garage in Baldwin Place, N.Y., a business development coach for Elite Worldwide, and co-founder of
autoshopowner.com.
Reach him at
j.marconi@eliteworldwide.com
One last thing, I may be retired from my business, but not retired from the auto industry. I will continue to help raise the bar as an Elite business coach and continue to get involved where I feel I can help the most. So, you will still see me at events, read my articles, and I will continue to help other shop owners elevate their own businesses and lives.
I have been asked: “I you had to do it all over again, and knowing all that you know now, would you do anything different?” I need to be honest with everyone, the last 41 years has not been a walk in the park, by any stretch. And, after reflecting on the past 4 decades, If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing.
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What defines a great culture?
In an industry that quantifies so many key aspects of the business, from cycle time to technician efficiency to customer retention, culture remains that elusive quality that is hard to capture in just metrics.
It’s a combo of those all-important quantifiable KPIs, sure, but it’s also influenced by every small interaction you have with your employees. The way you hire, fire, and promote. Which benefits you offer and how you make employees feel. That’s just to name a few.
And in the time of The Great Resignation, which has only compounded a labor shortage that was already in existence for several years, it has never been more important to crack the code of culture.
That’s why Ratchet+Wrench recognizes its annual Best Workplaces. To find successful repair shops that have developed a great culture and a place employees want to work for. To honor them and share their stories to help all shop owners improve their culture every day.
So let’s take a look at three shops, one small (1-10 employees), one medium (11-20) and one large (20+), to find out what has made them among the industry’s best places to work.
Small: Under 10 Employees
Quality Automotive Servicing
Applying for a job at Quality Automotive Servicing looks a bit different than at your run-of-the-mill shop.
Before an applicant even steps inside the shop, they are required to take a Strengths Finder personality test. To the shop’s owners, Bill and Sheila Greeno, it’s a vital first step in the process. If the applicant’s results line up well with the rest of the team's, and he or she possesses the skills needed, the next step is not an interview with Bill and Sheila—it’s with the entire shop staff.
“Our mindset is not that our employees are here to make us successful. We are here to guide them to their success, which leads to our success,” Sheila says. “So, they are involved in all aspects of the business.” Jamie Millard has been on both sides of the desk, first as the interviewee two years ago, and now as part of the interviewing team. The experience has been just one piece in a larger puzzle that the Greenos have established at the shop, with the central goal of maximizing strengths and prioritizing employees, she says.
“I’ve been at a few shops before. This has set a new standard for me,” Millard says. “It’s been eye-opening.”
QUALITY AUTOMOTIVE SERVICING
Owner:
Bill and Sheila Greeno
Location:
Truckee, Calif.
Staff Size:
9
Average Monthly Car Count:
490
Annual Revenue: $1.8 million
Employee-Centric Processes
The results of the strengths test
play a larger role than in just hiring. The employees' top-five strengths are displayed at the front of the shop. If the team knows a particular technician’s top strength is “maximizer,” they know to work a bit harder to make sure everything is on time for that technician, because a late part could lead to an argument. Bill says having the awareness of how each employee operates have avoided situations from devolving and brings the employees closer.
That level of detail is carried through all the team’s processes. The shop pays for its employees’ taxes to be completed by an accountant. They provide life coaches and therapists, and bring in a massage therapist monthly. They have passes to the local ski resorts for employee use. And in the rare situation that an employee needs housing, several apartments on the upper floor of their building are available.
“Personal time outside of work is the most valuable asset our employees have,” Bill says. “So how can we improve their time when they're not at work? It’s not just throwing another benefit at them, it has to do with improving quality of life.”
Bill and Sheila organize team building events, with the ideas almost always coming from their staff. They’ve done escape rooms, river rafting, skeet shooting, and team dinners. They’ll even have the occasional nerf gun fight during lunch.
The company also hosts an annual retreat, with family members welcome to join, which gives the team a chance to reset, revisit its core values, and spend time together.
“We’re kind of like a low-key comedy show,” Millard says. “If we were a reality show, we’d be a hit.”
-BILL GREENO, CO-OWNER, AUALITY AUTOMOTIVE SERVICING
Pathways
Jamie Millard, who assists on the interviewing team, says this shop’s attention to detail in hiring sets the company up for success down the road.
Stretching the Team
But that doesn’t mean the work isn’t prioritized. The team of nine services just under 500 cars per month and generates $1.8 million in revenue. Each team member is required to complete 40 hours of training every quarter, and the team is constantly pushing each other.
“We ask our employees to stretch themselves to places they wouldn't go if they just came to work and did their jobs,” Sheila says.
“That’s what makes it a great place for me,” Bill adds. “I’m just so grateful that I’m able to be stretched just as much as I'm able to help people be stretched.”
59 Auto Repair
Rich and Linda Brauer like to joke that they’ve mastered the art of terrible singing.
Co-owners of 59 Auto Repair since 2006, the couple organized their fair share of employee birthday celebrations, which always include a crown along with the singing of “Happy Birthday” in front of their customers.
It’s just a small part of a larger goal that the Brauers have on their minds every day: Treat every employee like a member of the family. And it led them to be named one of Ratchet+Wrench’s 2022 Best Workplace winners.
“We consider ourselves family,” Dave Matel, the shop’s foreman, says. “With the Brauers, if you need something, all you need to do is ask.”
A Family Dynamic
The family atmosphere is seen both literally (six members making up the staff of 12), and through the shop’s actions. Matel has known the Brauers for more than 25 years. One of their techs has been at the shop for 13 years, another for 14. The Brauers inherited two employees when they bought the repair shop 15 years ago; both stayed on until last year when they retired.
The duo works in tandem to keep the shop’s atmosphere where they want it, with Linda manning much of the backend HR, bookkeeping and management and Rich handling the shop floor. They credit that split approach in keeping the shop culture intact, along with keeping a keen eye on the benefits that will maintain quality of life.
The shop sends its employees to NAPA, ASE, and ATI training, and have
59 AUTO REPAIR
Owner:
Linda and Richard Brauer
Location:
Plainfield, Ill.
Staff Size:
12
Average Monthly Car Count:
366
Annual Revenue: $1.8 million
Little Things
Co-owners Linda and Rich Brauer know that small reminders, like birthday celebrations, create a family atmosphere in the shop.
-LINDA BRAUER, CO-OWNER, 59 AUTO REPAIR
two employees in NAPA’s apprenticeship program. They also have in-house mentoring for its lower-level technicians to help them grow internally. As a result, the shop was named the NAPA Auto Care Center of the Year in 2021. Rich has been named ASE Technician of the Year for the Chicagoland area three times.
Elevating Employee Passions
The shop, with influence from its employees, is also very active in the community. They are an active drop-off site with a local food pantry, participate in a backpack program to give children meals on the weekends, and, this year, purchased Christmas gifts for 35 families.
The team has also worked with military veteran organization “Operation Welcome Home” for nearly 10 years, and team member Sarah got the shop involved with Cars of Hope, providing free car repairs to several local residents in need.
“We need to show our employees not with our words but our actions that we care about them and the things they’re passionate about,” Linda says.
It’s part of a wider effort to make sure their employees know they have a hand in the decision-making of the shop. Their thoughts, ideas and actions have a real impact on the business. It has helped craft a culture in which the cliche “our door is always open” is actually true.
Large: 20+ Employees
Open Door
The entire team at 59 Auto Repair is encouraged to give input and improve processes when opportunities arise.
Silver Lake Auto and Tire Centers
Growth is at the core of every decision Dan Garlock makes.
Personal growth. Growth within the community. Expanding current locations and adding new ones. And, most importantly, individual employee growth.
Co-owner of Silver Lake Auto and Tire Centers, a four-shop operation in Wisconsin, with his brother Darren, the duo have guided the family-owned company from a single location into a network of shops with 42 employees generating more than $6 million annually.
But the numbers aren’t the impressive part. What made them one of Ratchet+Wrench’s 2022 Best Workplaces is their actions with team members. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone with a bad word to say.
“I’ve had other possible opportunities, but it’s family more than employer here,” says Tyler Peartree, manager at the company’s Oconomowoc location. Peartree, now 31, has spent nearly half of his life working for the Garlocks. “Dan has been a business mentor, a life mentor and it’s never felt like a business, it’s all about me as an individual and how they can help me improve.”
SILVER LAKE AUTO AND TIRE CENTERS
Owner:
Dan and Darren Garlock
Location:
Four in Wisconsin
Staff Size:
42
Average Monthly Car Count:
546
Annual Revenue: $6.2 million
Life Outside the Shop
You can’t have a conversation with the Garlocks or any of their employees without work-life balance coming up relatively quickly. It’s a core tenet that Dan has worked to make a pillar of the company.
Using OfficeVibe, a product that allows the company to send weekly anonymous surveys to its employees, Garlock was able to see how important work-life balance is to the team. So, he decided all training and meetings would happen during normal shop hours. And if they needed to close down to conduct the sessions, they will.
“We never took a step backward when we went from [being open] seven days to five days, so why can't we be shut down for a couple hours every so often for training? We wanted to show we were hearing their feedback,” Garlock says.
The work-life balance has been pivotal for Peartree. A 14-year National
Guardsman, Peartree has been sent on several deployments over his tenure, always with the guarantee of returning to his job after. Furthermore, Peartree says any conversation with Garlock was never about the business, and solely about Peartree and how he was doing.
-AUSTIN HILL, SILVER LAKE AUTO AND TIRE CENTERS
Employees as Brand Ambassadors
That dedication to valuing employee time has reverberated throughout the organization and has led to few hiring issues over the last several years. Garlock constantly gets recommendations on new writers and techs to hire when positions open up.
Austin Hill was one of those recommendations; he left a service writing position at a dealership and just a few months into his tenure, he’s already recommended several of his former co-workers to Gar-
Gathering Information
Through anonymous surveys, the owners of Silver Lake Auto and Tire Centers get honest reports from inside the company culture.
Big Referrals
One recent hire at Silver Lake liked his job so much that he began recommending new hires as an enthusiastic ambassador.
lock. The company has already hired one of them.
“It’s not something I feel I need to do,” Hill says, “I just want to tell people how much I like working here and naturally people become interested.”
The Importance of “You”
Throughout conversations with employees, Garlock and his leadership team want to make their purpose clear. Garlock meets with his managers bi-weekly, and those location managers meet one-onone with each employee weekly. In those meetings, the focus is on the employee, and what they need and want.
“It’s all about you,” Peartree says. “It’s not about the supervisor's agenda; it’s about yours.”
Garlock also heavily invests in training. Several members of his leadership team are in ATI’s executive groups, location managers get bi-weekly training from an ATI coach, and Garlock himself is in the ATI CEO program. They’ve also had Transformers Institute come in to train.
Garlock has grown the company to four locations because of the internal growth, the organized training and individualized nurturing that fosters the culture. In fact, the impetus for adding shops was to provide more advancement opportunities for team members.
“Honestly, the challenge for me is keeping up with the growth,” Garlock says, “but that’s a good problem to have.”
Good Problems
Owners Dan and Darren Garlock have lots of growth to keep up with, and it’s the result of investments made in company culture.
