Joe Woodriff from Woodriff Preferred Auto took over the business at age 24. Panelbeater by trade he started out in 2006, although being a family business he grew up in the shop. When the opportunity to take over the business was presented to him some 14 years ago, Joe admits he really had no idea what he was doing but jumped straight into the hot seat. At the time he was not really “managing” the business, he was more a Panel Beater wearing six or eight hats and just thinking he could run with it all and just get it done. It did not take long for Joe to realise that there was more to it than that!
When Gavin asked him what he knew about Business Management skills in relation to understanding the business by financial analysis or by numbers or by efficiencies his response was absolutely zero – potentially heading in the negatives. Joe knew how to write a quote but that was about it. They did have the regular three- and six-monthly catch ups with their accountant to go over the numbers but looking back at it now, that data source would have had a lot of holes in it and he probably wasn’t taking any notice of these. Joe admits he was probably just looking more at the bank balance.
Joe is a very curious person and it got to the point that he needed to know more.
He remembers talking to his accountant and demanding something – he didn’t really know what but he knew that there has to be more and it wasn’t good enough. Joe wanted a source to build something from, they had seventeen or eighteen employees and families involved in the business at that stage and for them to move forward he needed a solid foundation.
This was only about 10 years ago, back in their Auto-quote days and this was around the time that Gavin and Joe originally connected. Gavin was consulting and it was back in the early days of Planning Plus and Numbers Plus. Joe found this was the first initial step into looking for a business coach. The transition period to Planning Plus was very good for Joe personally, Gavin taught Joe a lot about the numbers and systems and processes. It was a time where they started to get a better view on what was happening internally. Having technicians clocking on / off and the figures that Numbers Plus were generating from Auto Quote started to brighten the image they were looking at. It started to give Joe something to ask questions about and look to find the answers.
Once Joe started to build on his knowledge and get a deeper understanding of the numbers and how to interpret them, he was then able to relay the information back to his team from a more confident perspective. He finally had something real and in front of him that could then be fine tuned and shared for the people involved in the business to work with. If you don’t have this data it is impossible to build processes and a proper system.
It was all about test and measure.
Build something, test it & measure it. It may need to be tweaked, they aren’t called failures, just lessons learned along the way. If something isn’t working, shift it up, try something new and continue you on your journey. When Gavin first started working with Joe they were doing about 25 cars per week. Over the next three years they were able to get to 50 or 60 cars per week due to looking at the numbers from within Planning Plus, using the task allocation to technician and then being able to create the plan. It was getting co-ordination from the system because previously there were no effective systems. Everything was stored in Joe’s neck top computer which was swollen and quite often full of viruses.
It was very encouraging for Gavin to see the journey that they took as it introduced them to what was possible and where they could take the business and it has certainly grown from there. They have been able to expand the business again, re-invested in the paint shop and taken more space in another building. The have redefined how the panel shop flows and relocated their parts system.
It is always a continuum and evolution of change, but Joe says you cannot be fearful of change, you must change to go forward.