The MSO Project - May 2022

ADAPTING YOUR LEADERSHIP PAGE 14

HIRING FOR MANAGEMENT PAGE 16

S T R AT E G I E S A N D I N S P I R AT I O N F O R M S O S U C C E S S

BETTER TECHNICIAN PERKS PAGE 19

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QUALITY ALWAYS David Caulfield helps to bring QC into the 21st century PAGE 8

ABOVE AND BEYOND Contemporaries say that David Caulfield is always one to spot details that benefit the customer.

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THE MSO PROJECT

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CONTENTS

8

Advertiser Index

16

21 F E AT U R E

8 | Dive into Details

15

Blackburn OEM Wheel Solutions

17

FinishMaster

20

Industrial Finishes

24

Launch Tech USA

5

Polyvance

18

Pro Spot International

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SATA/Dan-Am Company

23

Sherwin-Williams Sponsored by

This operator takes quality control to new levels

BUSINESS BUILDING

14 | Roles of an MSO Owner WHO’S BUYING

4 | Acquisitions

COURTESY GETTY, RODEOREADY

EDITOR’S LETTER

6 | Be Adaptable, Be Successful

No two days are alike in this business

16 | Hiring Key Roles

Finding the right fit in a large organization

IDEA SHOP

19 | Strength in Numbers

Keeping the team together in tough times

T R E N D S + A N A LY S I S

SNAP SHOP

7 | Lessons from the Battlefield

21 | Built to Suit

Learn about extreme ownership

TECH USA

This MSO hones shop layouts fr each location

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WHO’S BUYING

ACQUISITIONS COLORS ON PARADE OPENS NEW FRANCHISE IN CHARLESTON AREA Colors on Parade, a mobile automotive paint and dent repair services business, announced in a press release the opening of its newest franchise in the Charleston, South Carolina, market.

The new franchise is owned and operated by brothers Ryan and Aryn Hogue. For the past year, the two have been working with the Colors on Parade Charleston team to hone their skills, and in March they completed their franchise certification training course at Colors on Parade's corporate headquarters in Conway, South Carolina.

“As we continue to grow Colors on Parade with more locations across the country, it is a goal to make convenient, affordable mobile paint and dent repair services accessible for our customers,” Jeff Cox, President of Colors on Parade says in the release. “A key component to doing so is our group of passionate franchisees who provide a high-level of expertise and professionalism to our customers. We're excited to welcome Ryan and Aryn to the Colors on Parade family!”

Colors on Parade has 250 operating franchises across the U.S.

CLASSIC COLLISION OPENING NEW LOCATION IN TEXAS Classic Collision, LLC, has announced a new location in Uvalde, Texas, according to a press release. The new shop in Uvalde is located an hour-and-a-half west of San Antonio, where Classic Collision has 11 other shops in the surrounding metro area.

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"We appreciate the hard work that was put into this project." Classic Collision CEO Toan Nguyen says in the release.

"Uvalde is a beautiful Texas town and we are excited to be a part of the community."

Classic Collision currently has 177 repair facilities in 14 states across the U.S.

CRASH CHAMPIONS ACQUIRES OREGON-BASED ARTISTIC AUTO BODY Crash Champions, an independent collision repair company operating more than 190 centers across the country has just added another state to their list of coverage with their latest acquisition.

Artistic Auto Body, is an independent two-location collision repair center based in Oregon and is known for its electronic and hybrid vehicle repairs in the Northwest. The Artistic locations are in Tigard and Wilsonville, Oregon and contain over 75,000 square feet of space combined.

Founder and CEO of Crash Champions Matt Ebert is looking forward to adding these Artistic locations into the Crash Champions sphere, according to a recent press release. “Artistic’s highly accredited technicians, multiple factory certifications and state of the art electric vehicle repair center have made them one of Portland’s best and most trusted body shops." Ebert shared.

As Artistic owner Terry Mostul prepares to pass the torch, he looks to the future full of positivity that the high standard of care that Artistic has come to be known for will continue on under the Crash

Champions name. “It has been a privilege to help restore our customers’ peace of mind in difficult times through highquality repairs and compassionate service," Mostul said via press release. "And I know that while the sign on the front will change, people will still find the same level of professionalism and repair excellence when they walk through the doors.”

to continue being successful as the industry and operating climate changes. We have a lot more in store for the remainder of this year as we continue to progress across the country,” states Toan Nguyen, CEO of Classic Collision.

Classic Collision now operates a total of 176 repair centers in14 states across the U.S.

CLASSIC COLLISION ACQUIRES MINNESOTA SHOP

CARSTAR has announced the opening of CARSTAR Camarillo Auto Body in California.

Gary Reichenbach, owner of CARSTAR Camarillo Auto Body, got into the auto body industry in 1962 and opened his own collision repair facility in 1981. Since then, Reichenbach and his team have built a premier reputation serving Venture County.

According to a company press release, CARSTAR Camarillo Auto Body is a stateof-the-art 24,000-square-foot facility. Expertly trained, having earned their I-CAR Gold certification, the 25 employees at CARSTAR Camarillo Auto Body are committed to providing the highest level of repair quality and service to their community.

“Independent owneroperators join our CARSTAR family when they need support in growing their business,” says Dean Fisher, collision group president, Driven Brands.

“We’re thrilled to be welcoming this exceptional facility to the CARSTAR team and support this family-owned business as they look to take their center to new heights.”

Classic Collision LLC has acquired Crystal Lake Automotive in Lakeville, Minnesota, according to a company press release.

Crystal Lake Automotive was established in 1986. In the 1990s, the company experienced several years of growth and expanded automotive service capabilities. In 2000, CLA consolidated multiple locations into a single facility in Lakeville, designed to create a pleasant environment for customers.

“We have changed our business for the better in the past and I am sure this move is another improvement. I am excited for Classic Collision to continue the work we started in this community,” says Karl Drotning, former co-owner and founder of Crystal Lake Automotive.

“As we establish our presence in this new market, we also welcome the entire Crystal Lake’s teams to the Classic Collision Family. This is a time of growth for Classic and we are confident these new centers will have the experience, culture, management discipline, and necessary venture

CARSTAR CAMARILLO AUTO BODY OPENS IN CALIFORNIA

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EDITOR’S LETTER

Change is the Constant

BALANCING THE CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR INDUSTRY LEADERS Business ownership is the art of replacing oneself, as the saying goes.

It appears as a paraphrase from Rick Bisio, who offered his expertise as part of our story about the changing roles in MSO ownership (page 14). The transition can be a tough one, in particular for owners who started with a single, small operation and grew it into a large MSO. And like many parts of ownership, there’s a balance involved. You have to maintain the control and oversight as the leader of an organization. At the same time, you must trust your employees enough to start delegating duties that you used to have complete control over.

“At a certain point, you have to allow your managers to make day-to-day decisions and realize they will not always make the same ones you would and be OK with it,” Bisio says in the story.

However, MSO owners are great at spotting opportunities. Obviously, the challenges of delegating important duties have a counterweight: the fruits of growth. The real opportunity for owners who reach that large MSO stage is to carve out a pathway for their roles.

Only the owner knows what that pathway means for his or her business.

What’s great about Bisio’s advice in this magazine is that his strategies are meant to help owners reach that place—to have the mindset of working toward a bigger, better operation.

I’d also like to highlight the work of this edition’s profi le subject, David Caulfield (page 8). Caulfield runs his innovative operation in California and has become involved in some very interesting technology ventures for the collision repair industry. He’s working to shore up the quality control aspect of the operation, quantifying something that can often be a subjective process.

Circling back to that idea of changing leadership roles, Caulfield found in his ownership journey that he could find ways to impact the industry outside of his shop walls. Th rough his 45 years of collision repair industry work, you can bet it’s not his fi rst or last role adaptation.

If all the day-to-day tasks in your shop were taken care of, how would you adapt your role? I invite you to think about it as you read this edition of The MSO Project.

Steve Bauer Editor, The MSO Project 6

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TRENDS+ANALYSIS

Take Extreme Ownership HOW A NAVY SEAL ENCOURAGES THE AFTERMARKET TO REACH HIGHER

BY CHRIS JONES

The speaker was Leif Babin, a former U.S. Navy SEAL officer, decorated Iraq War veteran, and co-author of the New York Times bestselling book “Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win” with fellow SEAL turned entrepreneur and influencer Jocko Willink.

Babin spoke to automotive aftermarket stakeholders at the Vision Hi-Tech Training and Expo event in Kansas City earlier in 2022.

THE MESSAGE

GETTY

Leadership is the solution to your problems; take extreme ownership of the work in your sphere. Babin opened by telling the room that as an officer, he’s made “every mistake you can possibly make on the battlefield” and that’s why he can talk about leadership. That leading isn’t a lack of making mistakes, but making mistakes and recovering quickly, as well as learning from the mistakes of others and applying the lessons learned.

“Leadership is a skill you learn, and when we made mistakes, we took ownership of those mistakes,” said Babin. “We listened to recommendations and implemented them, and we got better and better.”

Babin made four points, all gleaned from his time in combat in Ramadi (Iraq).

Dubbing these the Laws of Combat, Babin’s points included: Cover and move. Form the strongest relationships you can with members of your team and support one another.

He stressed collaboration and warned against individuals working within their own silos instead of within the team to achieve the goal together. “It's not about you, it's about the mission. In cover and move, I'm going to do what I need to make sure we're successful and win. The opposite of cover and move is, 'It's not my job,’” he said.

Simple. The way for leaders to communicate is to keep it simple.Babin said people in the shop need to do read-backs with those in their charge. When a teammate is given a duty, responding “OK” isn’t enough. Have them tell you their understanding of the task at hand. Clarity cuts down on mistakes and shows that the leader effectively communicated the message. “The readback isn't a test for them, it's a test for me to make sure I communicated it clearly. If they don’t understand, there's probably others who don't understand, but when you understand you can execute."

Prioritize and execute. Leaders need to be strong in taking a step back and assessing situations. “Relax, look around, make a call” was Babin’s charge. He stressed seeing the big picture and not being target fixated, which leads to tunnel vision.

Decentralize command. Leaders produce other leaders. Babin said the time he was proudest during gunfights in Iraq was when he didn’t have to give orders.

His men knew the why and they embraced the mission. He encouraged attendees to not wait for orders, but lead from the floor. For those running businesses, he said, “Everybody leads. If you’re trying to do everything, you’ll be sucked into the details and won’t be able to do anything.”

Preparing the mind.

In closing, Babin left the room with his mindset for victory. They were: Default: aggressive Have an action bias. Problems don’t solve themselves. Have tough conversations in a constructive way.

Innovate and adapt Everything changes. The battlefield, the enemy, tactics, technology, you. Always improve your effectiveness.

Humility: check the ego When you aren’t humble you can’t evolve or adapt; you don’t respect the enemy; you’re complacent; you can’t self-assess.

If you operate with humility, you can learn from others. You should want your team to win.

Take extreme ownership Don’t make excuses, point fingers, or deny problems. “You lead in every area that impacts your mission. Own everything,” he said.

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Futu For David Caulfield, necessity is always the mother of invention

By Daniel Pearson

Photography by Juliet Peel Photography

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ture Forward

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FUTURE FORWARD

For David Caulfield, neces always the mother of inve

D

avid Caulfield was priming a classic car for delivery at Fix Auto Anaheim North, a specialized collision repair center he owns and operates that separates the work performed on lighter hits and heavy-hit vehicles into two buildings, when something underneath the vehicle caught his eye.

Bill Taormina, a long-time, major property owner in Anaheim, was admiring his 1963 Falcon’s new paint job—a oneoff ticket completed by Caulfield’s crew for his longtime associate and friend—thinking the car looked perfect when Caulfield dropped to the ground and looked up at the car’s rockers. He reached up and pulled off a piece of 3M Scotch tape that at best was the size of a fi ngernail.

“That tiny piece of tape never would have been seen by another human, but that’s a typical case for David,” Taormina says. “He has this almost savant ability that’s far and above any body-shop owner or entrepreneur that I’ve ever come across. In my 60 years in business, I’ve dealt with hundreds of entrepreneurs and he sits on the top of that list for integrity, innovative creativeness, and promise-keeping.”

Caulfield’s work in the collision repair industry now spans 45 years and in 2018 opened Fix Auto Anaheim North, considered by many to be the industry’s most innovative specialized collision repair center because of its separation of light collision repair work from heavy-hit vehicle repairs.

Caulfield also carved out enough time to innovate technology that’s now ubiquitous in the collision repair industry. He’s the founder of UpdatePromise (which he sold to CCC and became CCC UpdatePlus) and web-based application DataSpin for KPI data.

In 2019, he founded Flashback Forward, Inc., a company that designed what may be his crowning tech innovation, MyQCIQ.com, which gives body shops the ability to quickly view, verify, track, and grade in real-time every step of the repair process.

Sherwin Williams acquired the exclusive reseller and distribution rights for MyQCIQ.com in 2020. It is just now being launched in North America as part of Sherwin Williams’ “Collision Core” suite of cloud-based solutions. MyQCIQ has about 50 users as of this writing, and a soft launch is planned

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for the first quarter of 2022. The initial market target is collision repair shop owners who are early adopters of technology—those with a heightened awareness of the importance of standardizing the quality control process and who also have high expectations for CSI scores and standards.

“My reason for inventing a quality control app was to create a standardization of the QC process in the body shop industry that has been lacking for many years,” Caulfield says. “QC can be a very emotional process for some, many

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necessity is invention.

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FUTURE FORWARD

won’t admit it but some do, and I was trying to cure that and create something that measures and grades the quality and existence of products and services that a shop sells, and to be able to satisfy customers with a predicted, perceivedquality outcome. It allows shop owners to present a car and have the customer be wowed by it.”

Technology is the Future of QC Many collision repair shop owners are wary of technology, a fact of the industry Caulfield tried to address with MyQCIQ’s design. Jim Huard, former long-time business partner of Caulfield’s and owner of Painters Collision Centers (a two-shop chain with locations in Queen Creek and Chandler, Ariz.), says the app is easy to use and picture-oriented, allowing his employees to take a photo of a vehicle, circle the sections of it being worked on that require attention, and send it in a matter of seconds to the person in charge of making the correction.

“That way, no one is wasting time walking around looking for someone in the shop,” Huard says. “What you need to communicate is right there and it creates documents that detail the progress from front to end. And it prints out a certificate of sorts at the end that shows customers what their vehicle went through during each step of the process.”

Caulfield believes the collision repair industry eventually will be 100 percent guided through technology. He says shop owners who still balk at implementing technology into day-to-day business plans may not realize they already heavily rely on tech to provide estimates and for marketing through social media. He says it takes two steps to adopt technology for shop-wide, daily use: No. 1, humbling up to entertaining the idea, and No. 2, demanding it.

Caulfield encourages shop owners to take a look at their technology tools and try to see their full potential. A program like Word of Excel, for example, might be used for simple word processing or bookkeeping, but the programs have so many untapped uses for most people. He says it’s like someone who owns a talented dog but just lets it sit around the house all day.

“You can train dogs to grow up and compete in performance arenas, drive sleds, do tricks,” Caulfield says. “What I’m getting at is that the dog is the technology and some people choose to use it in its most basic form and never get the pleasures of going that one step further and really understanding and learning and implementing its full capability.”

Customer Service, Cleanliness Remain Key Caulfield loves wowing customers and one way he achieves this is by making cleanliness the number one priority of his shops.

“It’s marketing 101,” he says. “Cleanliness is marketing.

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“My reason for inventing a quality control app was to create a standardization of the QC process in the body shop industry that has been lacking for many years.”

- David Caufeild, Owner, Fix Auto Anaheim North It’s customer perception. First impressions. If you have a customer enter your shop and it looks clean and it’s organized, the happiness that individual feels stays with them throughout the repair process and makes for a good state of mind for the consumer. It’s super important to have that differentiator between your shop and someone else’s.”

Caulfield takes cleanliness so seriously, Chip Foose, former host of the Discovery Channel’s reality TV series “Overhaulin’,” compared Fix Auto Anaheim North’s shop hygiene to that of a hospital.

“He has a Zamboni that cleans the floor every day and it’s spotless,” Foose says. “The repair shops are separated in the showroom by glass so customers can see their car being repaired. Parts are kept in a separate area so there is no clutter. Cars are cleaned before they go into the shop.

It’s impressive how clean and efficient he is in everything he does.”

The perception of some consumers that repair shops are bad, even perhaps corrupt, can be an issue for repair shop

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owners. Wherever it comes from, customers who have a bad experience can and do translate that into negative word-ofmouth and online reviews, justified or not.

Overcoming that image again comes down to owners assuring their shop’s image is satisfying to the consumer— from curb appeal to someone’s fi rst approach—from the inside of a shop looking and feeling satisfying to the office and the working area, Caulfield says.

“When that is organized and clean and the customer can feel the process happening it puts their mind at ease, and at the end of the day when they pick up their vehicle and it meets their perception of quality, it can all change any neg-

ative image they might have had, but it’s going to take the shop owner to make those changes fi rst,” he says. “Then, the consumer will get the message out there that these are good places and safe places. There are always going to be a few outliers but collision repair shops have so much power to change negative perceptions.

“Taking that initiative to do that absolutely leads to a great benefit, for the business, employees, sustainability, and to insurers looking at shops the same ways as consumers. If you present cleanliness and do right by quality control, the consumer will be more in tune with how they are treated and serviced, and that’s a very good formula for success.”

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BUSINESS BUILDING

Changing Roles

AS YOUR MSO GROWS, HOW DOES YOUR ROLE ADAPT WITH IT?

By Daniel Pearson The role of an owner changes when his or her business continues growing, bringing the opportunity to expand into two or more locations. Owners used to making every decision at a single location now are faced with the prospect of trusting others in decision-making roles they always handled, and that uncertainty often leads to feelings of anxiety. Making the situation worse is that most people in leadership roles just aren’t born leaders.

with knowing everything that’s going on in your business at every moment once you get into multiple locations,” Bisio says. “At a certain point, you have to allow your managers to make dayto-day decisions and realize they will not always make the same ones you would and be OK with it.”

For many, expansion makes it easy to fall into the trap of micromanaging situations and people, an affliction for both owners and employees—owners who can’t let go of control for fear that anything and everything will go wrong, and the workers who have to deal with a boss who obsesses about their every move—that eventually leads to reduced productivity, resentful employees, and unhappy customers who pick up on the negative culture.

Rick Bisio, the author and founder of The Educated Franchisee, says it’s common for business owners who are used to managing their small companies to feel like they might lose control when their business expands into two or more locations. They have to start trusting others in leadership positions because focusing on minor mistakes—nitpicking—is a behavior that eventually leads to low staff morale, poor decision-making throughout the organization, and high turnover.

“You have to release that decision-making authority that goes

Bisio says business ownership is the art of replacing yourself.

Learning to trust, guide, train, and build up your employees leads to freedom, flexibility, and time, and time is the most precious asset a business owner can possess.

If you’re unsure if you micromanage your employees, some sure signs to look for are: • You require every process no matter how minor to meet with your approval.

• You take things personally when employees question any decision you make.

• You take a hands-off approach but obsess over every detail at the last minute and demand changes no matter how difficult it makes life for your workers.

• You hurry to fix mistakes that could have been avoided through frequent communication.

• You aren’t open to suggestions because you believe the way you’ve always done things is the only way.

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Recognize the signs.

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BUSINESS BUILDING

REACH HIGHER WHEN HIRING HOW TO REGAIN FOCUS AND HIRE GREAT MANAGERS

By Daniel Pearson One of the most important decisions a business owner will ever make is who he or she hires as the second-in-command. A Gallup study found that companies “fail to choose the right candidate with the right talent 82 percent of the time.” Making matters worse, the study says just one in 10 people have a flair for any kind of management role, and two in 10 exhibit true managerial talent.

Those are disheartening finds for business owners, and they cast a spotlight right onto the often difficult decision-making process owners go through trying to find that No. 2 who is able to take on a lot of the day-to-day work so they can focus on big-picture projects. And clearly, it’s not always an easy position to define or train someone to do.

Lee Rush, manager of business consulting services for SherwinWilliams Automotive Finishes, spent more than 20 years managing multi-store operations in the body shop industry. He says the roles and responsibilities of an operations manager should be hands-on, meaning they are responsible for driving the vision that’s necessary to ensure the company has the proper operational and administrative controls and people in place to effectively grow the company.

“Finding great managers is one of the challenges in the automotive industry,” Rush says. “If you really step back and think about it, many body shops do not have a written plan to share with their staff. That makes no sense to me.

“Outside the collision world, it makes no sense to other businesses to not have some sort of business plan or operational plan, which drives the focus of resources, people, and actions to meet desired outcomes in sales, profitability, customer satisfaction—whatever you identify as most important. Without a written plan how can you possibly begin to groom someone intuitively? You can’t.”

The Dos and Don’ts

Many body shop owners manage their business naturally, keeping everything in their head (a bad habit in the industry, Rush says) and when the time comes to hire a No. 2, they expect that person to step onsite and be capable and confident enough to perform all of the functions that they developed over 25 years. It’s an unrealistic expectation without an operations plan.

“Without one, you won’t be successful at developing and hiring a No. 2 who succeeds, the caveat being you could get lucky and stumble onto someone who intuitively is an outstanding leader and has the ability to manage day-to-day operations, train employees, produce budgets, et cetera.,” Rush says. But as the Gallup study shows, that’s remotely likely at best.

Beyond creating an operations plan, finding a talented right-hand person is a tricky task, and it should be time-consuming. It takes patience and determination and the end result shouldn’t be born from luck.

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Mistakes many owners make when searching for that perfect No. 2 include: • Hiring someone you feel like you could hang out with or who is a good “cultural fit.”

• Believing your new hire alone will improve your company’s performance or solve nagging operational issues.

• Promoting from within just because an employee has been with you a long time or demonstrated loyalty.

• Starting the hiring process only when you have an immediate need.

• Never establishing a formal hiring process and “winging it” during interviews.

• Rush says there are three principles every business owner should follow that will help him or her find the right candidate when searching for a second in command.

Focusing on Accountability

Rush says that the first step for candidate interviews is to seek someone who can hold others accountable. He views this as a key skill that often goes unnoticed at the interview and hiring stages.

“When I talk about holding others accountable, I mean professionally and respectfully, not walking out on the floor and yelling and cussing, which unfortunately are the traditional methods many shop owners use for managing people,” he says.

It’s one thing for an owner to run one store and hold 15 employees accountable when he or she is present in that shop every day, constantly adjusting and reacting to every situation. Once a No. 2 is hired, that shouldn’t be the case. To keep your manager accountable in your absence, define what he or she will be accountable for and establish clear goals to be met with daily, weekly, monthly, or as-needed benchmarks.

And recognizing and celebrating progress should be a priority.

A Clear Interviewing Process

Rush says many body shop owners are car people in the car business, and too often the people part of the overall equation comes second. It’s crucial to be interested in the kind of person someone is—how they think, feel, and behave—which should indicate his or her true talent even better than what skills show on paper.

The interviewing process should be threefold, which provides layers of protection to ensure you don’t hire the wrong person—a catastrophic mistake from which some businesses never recover.

“The first interview is a 30,000-foot overview where you’re trying to sell them on the opportunity,” Rush says. “The second interview gives you a better feel for who they are. In the third interview, you start drilling down into some hard questions and start pressing once you’re certain they are interested.”

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IN TIMES OF LABOR CHALLENGES, FOCUS ON YOUR FOUNDATION

BY CALEB BROOKS

Currently, U.S. companies are facing a massive worker shortage, making it difficult to fully staff operations. The collision repair industry is not an exception to this trend.

Some estimates place the industry turnover rate at nearly 30 percent. With an estimated mechanic shortage of 20,000 to 30,000. In the face of these daunting numbers, what can your shop do to increase retention?

According to Harvard Business Review, creating a clear career progression and providing wage increases are two ways that you can boost retention. But how can these principles be effectively implemented in the collision repair industry?

John Keller, director of business operations at 1Collison, thinks differently about his operation.

“We aren’t a MSO,” Keller says. “We always want to allow shops to keep their individuality.”

Keller describes 1Collision as a corporate entity that provides guidance and support to a network of shops. Part of this support is advising shops on how to handle pay raise requests and creating career progression.

COUPLING PAY AND PROGRESSION

According to Keller, one of two things will happen for a manager to initiate a pay raise conversation. First, a technician will ask for a raise. Second, a manager will notice that one of their techs is knocking it out of the park, and the manager will approach the technician.

“Either way, the fi rst question that the manager asks should be, ‘How much do you want to make?’” Keller says.

Once they answer this question, you need to look at their pay plan. Are they paid on commission or flat rates? Either way, the employee is paid based on what they produce.

“The question then shifts to, ‘How can we make the employee more efficient?’”

Keller says.

Th is could include offering more training, purchasing new tools, or getting better technology.

Shops shouldn’t only be concerned about increasing their employees’ pay, they should also care about advancing the careers of their technicians.

“Across 1Collision, we see that coupling pay increases with career progression leads to higher employee satisfaction than just one or the other,” Keller says.

Under this model, employees are happy learning more and getting better in their profession, especially when it means a pay raise through increased productivity.

HONE IN ON THE WHY

While responding to pay raise requests and creating career progressions is excellent, a large piece of the picture is missing. None of this matters if you cannot get people to work for you.

“You really need to hone in on the why,” Keller says. “Why would someone want to work for a shop in the 1Collision network?”

He says technicians sometimes talk about working in the past for big consolidators. They felt like the companies treated them like a number, and the challenge for him is to build stronger personal connections.

Keller says 1Collision strongly believes in letting shops remain family owned and operated. When this happens, the workplace begins to feel like a family.

“By keeping our shops family owned and by focusing on employee’s efficiency thereby increasing their pay,” Keller says.

“We enable shops to create a culture that anyone would want to work for.”

Closer Look

What does a flat rate pay increase look like on the shop floor? For a description of this process, Kelly Cooper, 1Collision’s director of field operations, offers his insight.

“When you hire someone for a flat rate, you determine that rate based on their experience,” says Cooper. “If a tech asks for a raise, is it just that they need another dollar an hour, or can we do something that is win-win?”

In Cooper’s opinion, there is always a way that a technician gets a raise and the shop makes more money.

“Say the estimator says a fender bender repair will take three hours,” says Cooper. “But your technician is a superstar and gets it done in an hour and a half. They still get paid for the booked hours.”

To Cooper, this is how you give your employees pay raises, by making them more efficient.

Increasing worker efficiency not only allows you to repair more cars, it also gives your employees a pay raise by increasing the amount of booked hours they work per week.

“This is a plan of action that not only makes your employees more money, it makes the shop more money as well,” Cooper says. “But, you have to be cautious not to sacrifice a quality repair.”

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SNAP SHOP

HEPPNER’S AUTO BODY & GLASS

BY CALEB BROOKS PHOTOS BY R ACHEL LEE

ADAPT TO THE SPACE

“Heppner’s has only raised one shop from the ground up,” says Jesse Jacobson, co-vice president of Heppner’s Auto Body & Glass. “Because of this, we adapt the spaces we have.”

This adaptation has touched every aspect of Heppner’s locations.

“We realized that our waiting room walls were covered with old pictures,” says Jacobson. “They weren’t very inviting spaces.”

With a unique pivot, Heppner’s made their spaces more inviting and established who they are in each shop.

“Two boards are standard in our shops,” says Jacobson. The first displays their certifications and who they are as a company, including their mission statement and values.

“The second board reads ‘We love our communities,” says Jacobson. “It includes thank you letters, articles, and reviews.” Heppner’s takes great pride in being active in their communities.

TAILORED EXPERIENCES

Heppner’s leading value is creating a culture that listens to and values their employees.

“We really don’t have a ‘standard’ shop floor layout,” says Jacobson. “If anything, our standard is what works best for and what matches the needs of our employees.”

Their main priority is to take care of their employees by giving them the tools they need to succeed. They accomplish this by following industry trends in relation to efficiency and performance. Heppner’s standard layout is what works best for their technicians.

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SNAP SHOP

Heppner’s Auto Body & Glass Locations:

Woodbury and St. Paul, Minn.

Owner:

Linda Clatt Number of Shops:

6

Size:

10,000 to 14,000 square feet Staff Size:

88 total

Average Monthly Car Count:

470

ARO:

$2,900 Annual Revenue:

$15.5 milllion

A RECOGNIZABLE FACE

“Our exterior logos were standardized about two years ago,” says Jacobson. This was when Heppner’s added glasswork to their services, the perfect opportunity to update their outward signage.

The logo is a large “H” with a horizontal line extending from the crossbar. Above the crossbar is Heppner’s name and inside the crossbar is “Auto Body & Glass.” All printed in Heppner's recognizable red, white, and gray coloring.

Heppner’s exterior coloring has been painted to match their logo. Those locations that don’t currently match are slated to get a new paint job.

“We created uniformity across our brand so customers recognize us,” says Jacobson.

SERVANT LEADERSHIP

Many technicians in MSOs feel like they are just another number. But Jacobson has found a method to excuse Heppner’s from this trend.

“Each day I try to go to two of our shops,” says Jacobson.

“Some days it might be one, but others it is all six.”

Jacobson is a leader who pushes to be present. Making it a point to talk to each technician face-to-face, enabling leadership to have a finger on the pulse of the company.

“Our main goal is to take care of and support our employees by giving them leadership that works for them,” says Jacobson.

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