weighit

Many of us do not use face book, so your probably going to have to post here all your trials and tribulations.

It seems many that did respond to the other posting had either first hand knowledge or very close friend knowledge of how some partnerships don't work out. In may cases someones feelings get hurt by either partner working harder than the other partner, spending more time than the partner or the partner spending money or taking money that was not approved. I've had many opportunities to partner up with someone, and every time after sitting down and weighing the pros and cons, I went it alone. Or I should say, I took my wife as my life's partner and we did it alone. Have to say my first wife took my first body shop in a divorce, so even that can have some issues, but this wife and I are on the same page.

delete

delete

I too had a very good agent and he suggested we split the 3 businesses we had under one name. My rates were pretty high to begin with but when we divided the pot up with three names and three separate operations the total bill dropped quite a bit. I have to say I did have a total of 3 different agents over the 12 years in that location. The first was a friend and I feel took advantage of the friendship, the second was lazy on our behalf and the third was an all star.

repeat

How you going to protect your business should one of you have a tragic auto accident and someone gets killed or seriously injured? What if one of you get divorced and the ex-wife wants her half? How are you going to protect cash that might not hit the books? If you think your both always going to agree your not thinking this through. When only one person is in charge, that person controls the day to day operation as they see fit. When two of you are there it may become a head butting issue when you disagree on whatever the situation was. It sometimes is hard enough when you have a manager that is head strong and wants things done differently than the owner, let alone when the other has his money invested. You also need to write right at the beginning, how it will be divide should one of you decide right away, or 20 years from now they want out. I went through a lot of this when I was contemplating a partner, decided the only partner I wanted was the one I sleep with, my wife. Even then there were some issues we didn't agree on, but since we were married we always worked it out.

I used to close down the shop for 3 weeks, last two weeks of August and 1st week of Sept. All employees got a 40 hour pay check each Friday we were closed sent to their homes so they were there when we reopened and not crying the blues they had no money. I needed a vacation and that was when we wanted to go, so it was the best way to let customers know well in advance that we would be closed. Customers that wanted our services either loaded up the shop before we left, or left they car/items in the shop so they could be the first things we worked on when we reopened. All the employees got the same 3 week paid vacation. I did not have any employee I felt could run the place in my absence for 3 weeks, a day or two yes, long run, no.

I guess the nice older guy was married to a ??????

Ya just never know, he was a very nice guy, never had any dealing with his family. But I sure learned a valuable less in my life, Nice or not, you pay when I'm done. We all make mistakes, I always tried to learn the ones that cost me money out of my pocket only once!!!

ill pay ya later customers suck so much....

I did that with a really nice older guy that needed the car so he could take is ill parents somewhere out of state. Let him go with the deal that he would return as soon as he got back to pay the bill, just a shade over $500. Well he fell over and died from a heart attack while on the trip, and his wife said, not my problem what he owed you, take a hike! So that was the first and the last time anyone got out of the shop without payment in full!

I'm surprised this is an issue, in the body shop business when I owned or ran one each tech had a time sheet with job number, time, dollar amount or if needed time stamp and it was sticky on the back. The tech may have a job in one of his stalls for weeks depending on the severity of the repairs and as the week ended if he accrued time on the repair vehicle he could flag money against that job. I as the owner/manager would initial the time sticker on each repair order that he wanted to flag, then took it off his ticket and stuck it to the back of the repair order, and collect the employees time sheet at the end of the work week, so he could collect his pay check for that week the following week. It was my responsibility to ensure that he was not over collecting, or collecting more time that was needed to complete the job. Some guys never touched the time/money allotted on a job till it was done, others took is as a draw so they had a pretty steady paycheck. The shop was large enough that each employee had 3 stalls and if held up on parts, adjusters or some other delay, they had work in another stall. Some of these expensive repairs could be in a stall for may weeks and if the tech was putting hours in on that job he could flag time/money if he wanted. These techs were making 75 to 100 grand a year and some paid their helpers out of their gross still leaving them with these incomes.

When I had the shop and had 5 full time employees I paid all the health insurance for everyone under a group plan. Then on night two the the star players went out and got drunk and had a 1 car accident in a parking lot. Police came and arrested both of them. Courts assigned alcohol school and the insurance company sent a nasty gram a few months later that my 'group' was experiencing an unusually high percentage of expenses and raised the whole groups rate by about double what we had been paying. New rules went into effect, I would write a check once a month for the old insurance rate and the employees could shop and find whatever insurance they wanted, I was only giving the amount i used to pay. Oh yea, if they decided they did not want any insurance, they got no check. I got to see the policy and the bill and made sure they were actually using the money for insurance. I had to do the same thing, cancel the original policy and go shopping for myself a new policy. No more groups for us.

If I was to reopen I would make the employees pay something, I want them involved and aware of the real costs to have insurance. What percentage would depend on my bottom line and how much i wanted to keep those guys.

When I had my shop i found that just random advertising was expensive and very hard to track. My advertising budget was about $8 grand a year and I found giving price breaks or free work to selected individuals paid off well for me. The firemen were restoring a old fire truck, so I did all of the work they brought to me for free, and made sure to tell them let others know I'm doing this work. Fireman seem to know a lot of people. Car clubs, church or religious groups got help for free or at a much reduced price from me. A radio personality came in and we bartered work for advertising. As other have said, get your name talked about, get involved in the community and do good work. I talked to every customer, found out what they did, where they worked and in my mind how much influence they might have where they worked for getting work into my shop. They might get special pricing and were made aware this was their price not what the job normally cost. I let them know I need more customers and needed their help. It paid off well for us and in the long run it was cheaper than my budget of 8 grand a year doing it this way.

No longer in the business, now I live in a gated community and have to pay folks to do what I used to do. How times change. Will come look for you on the next trip your way.

Wish you all the best in Florence, I now live in Casa Grande and next time I venture over your way will stop in and say hi.

The Irish Bic Lighter
Mick and Paddy were fishing on the Irish shoreline when Mick pulled out a cigar. Finding he had No matches, he asked Paddy for a light.
'Ya, sure, I tink I haff a lighter,' Paddy replied and then reaching into his tackle
box, he pulled out a Bic lighter 10 inches long.

'My God, man!' exclaimed Mick, taking the huge Bic lighter in his hands. 'Where'd yew git dat monster?'
'Well,' replied Paddy, 'I got it from my Genie.'
'You haff a fecking Genie?' Mick asked.
'Ya, sure. It's right here in my tackle box,' says Paddy.
'Could I see him?'
Paddy opens his tackle box and sure enough, out pops the Genie.

Addressing the Genie, Mick says, 'Hey dere! I'm a good pal of your master.
Will you grant me one wish?'
'Yes, I will,' says the Genie.
So Mick asks the Genie for a million bucks. The Genie disappears back into the tackle box leaving Mick sitting there waiting for his million bucks.
Shortly, the Irish sky darkens and is filled with the sound of a million ducks flying directly overhead.


Over the roar of the one million ducks Mick yells at Paddy, 'What the hell? I asked for a million bucks, not a million ducks!'
Paddy answers, 'Ya, I forgot to tell yew dat da Genie is hard of hearing. Do yew really tink I asked for a 10 inch Bic?'

I used to be on the Board of directors of a small credit union while I owned a shop. The credit union had too much money and needed a way to find new borrowing customers. We ended up doing exactly what is being discussed here, we approached small business that could use our services, loans. The shop customer in need of money to fix a big repair in that shop could contact us and come in for a loan. We had staff that could evaluate the persons credit history and within 1 hour approve or deny the loan. It helped the credit union gain customers and helped the shops we had signed up as approved shops. Over the years we did this, I suspect we loaned many thousands of dollars and also gain many new customers we never would have got. That credit union was taken over by a big credit union and I lost my seat on the board, so have no idea if it is still doing anything like that or not. It would cost zero to the shop to have this system in place with a local close by credit union. Might be worth a try.

The last shop I owned I would give a weeks average pay to each employee 2 weeks before Christmas as the bonus. This included overtime, actual weekly pay divided by 52 equaled their bonus. If we had a great year I explained through their hard work, attention to detail, looking out for the waste and not having any damage, they got a Bonus on the bonus and got 2 weeks average pay. It did not happen every year, but many. The years it didn't happen they all knew why, someone screwed up and it cost everyone. It helped me as they as a group wanted to keep eyes on anyone that might cause them to loose the added bonus. It came out of the net from the company profits, but I figured it kept turnover to a minimum, I hated to train new people. They made more money with me than any of the competition and actually made it easy for me when I needed to add personnel. Explaining the pay and the bonus program let them know how we paid up front and what they could expect. Worked for me. I had 6 employees and that shop 10 years when i sold it. My oldest employee had 9.7 years with me, and the newest hire full time had 6.5 years. The 2 part time employees were the ones that changed out every so often over those years, not the full time guys. This pay was on top of their vacation pay that was based on 40 hours base pay per week.

I no longer have my hand book, but I do know not having one cost me a bunch when I fired an employee for stealing from my company. He fought the firing with the unemployment people and I fought it saying stealing was a fire-able offence. At the meeting in the Unemployment office the very first question the lady asked me was what does the handbook say? What handbook I asked, we don't have one. She said well how do you expect the employee to know what your rules were if you never had him read your hand book of rules? I said common sense should factor in here somewhere and where I come from stealing is looked upon as a crime if not at least a reason to loose your job. She said I agree in theory, but here we work with facts, no hand book, no rules therefore no reason to fire, YOU LOOSE!! The man collects on your unemployment for some 34 weeks!! or until he gets a job....what an eye opening experience.

I immediately went back to the shop and researched handbooks, and started writing ours. Line one was is is not OK to hit, stab or shoot the boss, or any other employee or customer! Might as well make it a rule so if it ever happened I could fire his azz legally. Also has the sexual harassment clause in there, how much time you can be missing or late, phone usage and clothing styles or sizes. If I thought it was something that was going to bother/hamper or cause discord in my shop, it was in the handbook. Yelling, swearing or other types of loud conversation that could be heard by others was in there too.

When a new hire came in, I gave them time to read the book, there was two pages in the back that said they read the book, had any questions about the book answered, and were signing both pages stating such. One stayed in the book, one got removed and into the guys file. I also had a meeting with all the existing employees and explained exactly why the new rule book was being started, answered all the normal questions and also had them sign it. Never again paid any more unemployment to anyone fired.

Now with the age of computers it is so much easier to research, as this all took place in 2003 and i was in the library for a couple of hours hunting how to do this, but I can't see anyone in business now not having a handbook for the employees.

In my last lease for a vacant building that was empty for well over a year I proposed a 3 year lease at a per month rate, but I would give first, last and 1 month security at the signing, but I wanted 1 month free, the 3dr month I was in the building. This gave me a slight break in the outgoing funds on a start up business. It was to be a triple net lease and I wanted 2, 5 year options to continue at the end of the first 3 years. Since it was empty, I felt I had some bargaining power and if I had to I would forgo the free month, but he gave it to me to just get someone in the building. I had a 6,000 sq ft warehouse type building with other smaller shops on either side of me and I paid $1800 per month plus taxes and any upgrades I did to the building. Second lease we went to $2,200 and third lease went to $2,500. I ended up trying hard to buy the entire building but never got him to let it go.

This is a little off topic, but it touches on something I have been thinking about doing and wonder if anyone has any experience with this idea. I am considering renting out lifts with tools to anyone who wants to work on their own cars. Has anyone ever tried this?

 

Scott

I opened a do it yourself paint shop with a paint booth and really wanted to expand to a do it yourself body shop but never got that far along. The building I was in never had a space I could rent to expand and I needed the body shop and paint shop next to each other. The fellow that tried to open a do it yourself service center failed miserably. Rather than he being there he hired some low life individuals with bad attitudes to run the place and it closed in a year.

I used to go to Sam's club type of store and buy those round tubs of Twizzlers red licorice in individual clear wraps and put my company logo on the outside of the box. I think there was something like 100 or 150 in a package and when I dropped that tub off at various places I wanted to advertise with, with a stack of my business cards they knew who brought it in. About once a month I would make the rounds with the tubs and it got to be that the places I would stop in to looked forward to my visit. I also used to keep a open tub on the customer write up desk and most everyone that came in would grab some of those Twizzlers. It was a reasonable cost advertisement that folks remembered. A tub to the NAPA store might get you a lot more work than a thousand dollars of radio advertisement.

Happened to be in a small town in Texas a couple of years ago and needed a oil change for the PT Cruiser I had. Pulled in and checked in and noticed their sign they did rotation and balancing too. Said sign me up, I was really impressed with the speed and while the oil was done on one rack and the tire work on another, it was very fast. In talking with the owner I asked how the added service was working? He said to me it has been a real money maker and turned his 'dead' flat stall into real money. He said he cross trained the employees and gave them some spiff money for any tire work sold. One stop shop for me and I was happy.

Good thoughts. I need to change my mindset from seeing these tool trucks as an over-priced nuisance to seeing them as an informal networking tool across multiple shops. Thanks for the idea.

I looked at the tool salesmen as a bother too for a long time. They stopped my techs from working when they were out in the truck spending money. Then I figured out how I could gain from their contacts and used them as I needed them. Give it a try.

 

Weighit, could give a bit more practical advice on how to go about doing this? I know of several shops in our city with great techs. I know I could offer them a better total compensation package. However, I'm not sure how to go about approaching them. Nobody knows them directly, so I have no connections to them. I've heard of owners just strolling into competitors' bays and talking with the techs, but I'm pretty hesitant to start doing that....

The people that know all these tech are the tool salesman, Snap-On, Cornwell, type guys. Also the fastener salesman are in every shop and get to know who is good. Paint supply salesman, Napa drivers and tow truck drivers & oil delivery drivers. Some of these guys see a lot of tecks and know who is good and who is trouble. Sometimes they know a tech is being mis- handled, held back, or just plain not happy for some reason. If you talk with these people and let them know your looking for the best and if they know anyone they would recommend you sure would appreciate it. I guess the term network fits this method of hunting. But to get a good employee, you need to be better than where he was in either pay, work environment, benefits or advancement possibilities. Something needs to motivate them to move. I've found someone, we talked twice, i made a offer and then they used my offer to get more from where they were working, they won and I had to start over hunting.