Gavin McGahey from Planning Plus Software & Auto Body Shop Consultants had the opportunity to talk with a special guest all way from America, Mr. Greg Lobsiger from Loren’s Body Shop. Gavin came across Greg through Dave Luehrs, Elite Body Shop site where he was generous enough to do a 20-part series on profitability that he shared on Dave’s Facebook community page. Gavin was reading all of them and each time he opened one of the new articles, it just blew him away. The information that Greg was putting into that series was so informative and he was doing this out of the generosity of just being able to share his knowledge with other community members.
None of us are as good as all of us
A mentor of Gavin’s always said, “Gav, none of us are as good as all of us.” and Gavin takes that with him everywhere he goes. Whenever there is an opportunity to share some information and to just help and encourage people that is what he does. One of the big things that Gavin has focused on and one of the reasons why he penned his book, Know Your Numbers! It’s The Heartbeat Of Your Business, is he wanted to get some depth back into the word profit. Gavin wanted business owners and businesspeople, and even managers and technicians or anyone that picked up that book to start thinking of the beauty in the word profit, and to stop seeing it as it’s not possible, that we get what we get and that’s the limitation of it. In the series that Greg wrote, he just opened the fact that there is profit and you must work for it, and you have to get educated on it.
Gavin wanted to know how Greg came into Loren’s Body Shop and his journey on the road to understanding the meaning of profit. Greg is a third-generation shop owner. His grandpa started the shop back in the 1951 and then his uncles took over in ’76 with Greg starting full-time after high school in ’85. Greg was what they call a combo tech. He did the body work or panel beater and then he also did the painting from ‘85 to 2000. When his uncle started to retire, Greg worked as the owner from 2000 until 2008. He struggled and made money but he didn’t have a life. He was working like a fool and was the only A Tech in the shop. He had some okay people working with him but, if it didn’t get off the frame rack, it didn’t get in the paint booth. If it didn’t get in the paint booth, it wasn’t going to get out and it wasn’t making him any money.
Your profit and loss will actually talk to you, if you know how to listen
Long story short, Greg was approached by a consulting outfit back in 2008 and the timing was just right. During that time, he learnt how to read his numbers and understand his profit & loss. He learnt how to read it and set it up correctly. Greg says your Profit & Loss will actually talk to you if you know how to listen and it will tell you exactly what you need to do but you have to know your numbers to understand your numbers. Over the years and through a series of different coaches he learnt about lean manufacturing and different things that you could apply to a collision repair shop. Greg said there is smoking good money in collision repair you just have to know what rocks to look under. This is what is crucial in having the knowledge because the insurance companies have got some very smart numbers people, they have statisticians that have doctorates and they’ve got psychologists on how to deal with the repairers and healthcare providers and everything else, and they know their numbers very well. Greg says it is not that they are out to get shop owners, but they are trying to control their costs which is something we all have in common, they are trying to make profit too.
Working in a body shop is not just about trading dollars. There is a saying that Greg was told “I don’t mind going home tired, or I don’t mind gong home hungry, but I am not going to go home tired and hungry.”