Performance Management

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Back to Your Roots

Growth-Focused Leader

Since purchasing the shop in 2010, Heath Harris has diligently worked to more than triple revenue at his St. Louis, Mo., CARSTAR shop.

E V E R Y D A Y I S A F R E S H S T A R T.

Photography by Jennifer Wagner Photography

It was almost like one big April Fool’s joke, Heath Harris thought.

Harris had worked at CARSTAR Arnold since 1997 but the first month after he purchased the shop in April 2010, was the slowest month for sales yet.

Looking at the sales numbers in 2010, he wondered if he made the right decision. Shrugging it off, he looked at the shop as a whole and he knew he had a vision.

“I knew the business could do so much more and I’m not saying it wasn’t run correctly, but I just saw so much more growth potential in this shop,” he says.

Now, looking back, he’s proud he stuck with the shop and his vision. He’s grown the shop to three times its initial size in volume without adding additional square footage. Today, Harris operates a $3.5 million shop in a 10,000-square-foot building.

Despite the growth, Harris doesn’t have just “one” key to success. He’s put to test his associate’s degree in collision repair and technology from the Ranken Technical College in St. Louis, Mo. He’s grown the business by taking classes, implementing routine processes and strengthening the shop’s quality control process.

Every day the shop opens at 7:30 a.m. and I am here at that time to open the

doors. This is the time I get everything turned on in the shop and up and running for the day. I help get customers in rental cars if they’re here for those. The team has a release meeting every day to go over production.

I let our production manager run the

morning release meetings. I try to attend three to four of these per week but we’ve really tried to make them as concise and to the point as possible. These meetings are critical to good communication throughout the shop. We touch every vehicle during this and try to eliminate every question we have on the car.

We’ve also slowly adapted to making these meetings more of an individual meeting with a technician at his or her toolbox. Then the office staff will meet at the production board outside the shop floor.

After opening up the shop, I tend to linger on the shop floor or in the

front office. I try to help where I can. Sometimes I’ll step in to help write walkin-estimates. This doesn’t happen often. We encourage customers to make appointments for estimates but if the customer really believes a walk-in estimate is best for him or her, then I help write that.

Other days, I spend the morning helping the parts department.

I stay on top of my tasks because I practice “480 time management.”

This is a time management strategy from CARSTAR and I’ve practiced it for years. Basically, it represents the minutes you have in an 8-hour workday: 480 minutes. Then, the strategy is pretty straightforward. Plan to work and work the plan.

It’s important to write down or outline a plan for your work for the day and then work to meet that goal. You have to be mindful of the minutes of the day you’re using up. If a technician decides to take two minutes to walk across the shop to get a tool and does this 10 times per day, then that’s 20 minutes wasted in the day’s work.

Make sure to schedule your parts orders, car deliveries and estimates and stick to the time.

I’m really proud of our in-process qual

ity control program. This process is very strict and we pride ourselves on implementing this tough program. We’ve adapted to the newer, modern vehicles. We’re practicing what they call “hard stops.” We have one staff member from the office who is the inspector. We call him our “checkpointer.” So, when we get to a certain spot before a vehicle moves from the body department, it stops on the production line and gets a full inspection for quality and accuracy. Then, it gets moved into the next phase, which is into the paint department. Prior to it returning from the paint department, before going back into reassemble, it does a hard stop again and gets a full real steel inspection to make sure everything was done as per the work order.

They’re reading every line of the estimate. They’re using boroscopes to look inside a panel to make sure the repair was done properly. They’re verifying that all the OEM repair guidelines were followed strictly and documenting who and how we did it.

We’re verifying that everything on

the repair was done correctly. The in-process quality control system is not new to our industry, per say, but years ago we adopted it 100 percent and it was a game-changer. This is one of the tasks you have to show to your employees can be beneficial and show them that doing one task just once is time-efficient and more profitable.

It minimizes any delays or comebacks. It helps your performance reviews for when insurance companies are looking at you. I’d rather have the DRPs that do not want a discount. I pride ourselves on the fact that the ones we've partnered with grade us on our performance. About 60 to 65 percent of our business comes from DRPs.

I don’t take a break during the day for lunch. I like to eat my lunch at my

Eye on Time

Regardless of the staff member’s position, time management is a skill that owner Heath Harris is constantly working on with his team.

desk most days. It’s rare if I do take a lunch break. Once a month or so, I go to a St. Louis business group meeting with other CARSTAR store operators and then I’m able to sneak away for a lunch break.

To stay on top of every single item I have to complete, I set reminders

for myself. I’ll constantly be putting in a new reminder on my phone to alert me to deadlines.

I’m also a list-maker. I like to write out a physical list and then cross off each item as the day goes on. I like to work towards that end goal and see it completed.

When I leave the shop at night, I like to remind myself that every day is a

fresh start. This means that if I’m at my desk at the end of the day and there are items on my to-do-list that I didn’t get to finish, tomorrow now starts at the end of today. I’ll take those extra minutes before I leave the shop to figure out what steps I need to do to complete the task tomorrow. Sometimes I am able to delegate the task to an office employee.

I end my day around 4 p.m. Prior to the COVID-19 virus, I was able to leave right as the work day ended but now that’s changed a bit. Now, we have more cleaning procedures and steps we’ve implemented and my day typically goes past 4 p.m.

I’m glad to be a part of a larger franchise group during this time.

Even with COVID-19 going on and the uncertainty of it, I’ve been able to take advantage of some of CARSTAR’s programs as an owner. Photo estimating has been very helpful in this case because now customers are actually realizing what it is, how to use it and why it’s helpful in offering them a touchless repair.