Put Your People First and Profits Will Follow: A Shop Owner Roundtable Recap

Summary: Growing a shop isn’t just about working harder. In this Shop Owner Roundtable, industry leaders break down the shift from technician to owner, and why your people are the real key to scaling. We cover how people-first culture drives performance, retention, and profit; how delegation is the difference between growth and stagnation; and how flexibility and trust can turn employees into long-term assets. 

At some point, every shop owner runs into the same problem: the thing that made you successful (being a good tech) won’t help your shop actually grow. That’s because growth doesn’t come from doing more work yourself — it comes from building up the people who do the work with you. And that’s a very different skill set. 

That was the core theme behind this Shop Owner Roundtable. Back in February, Fullbay CEO Trent Broberg and Peter Cooper of Ascend Consulting sat down with Bill Kerry of Kerry Brothers Truck Repair and Nate Taylor of New England Fleet Services to dig into what it actually takes to grow a shop.

The conversation covered a lot of ground, but it kept circling back to one idea: If you want to grow your business, you need to put your people first and stop thinking like a tech.

You should totally watch the full episode here, but keep reading for a few of the highlights. 

A People-First Culture Can Drive Profitability

Everyone involved in this conversation agreed that taking care of your people isn’t separate from profit. Heck, it’s how you get there. 

At a high level, that means hiring for attitude and investing in development — and actually giving a damn about the people who show up every day to keep your shop running. 

The reality behind opening a shop is that from day one, your job has fundamentally changed. Once you open your doors and hire people, you’re suddenly responsible for more than just yourself and a service truck. You’re responsible for your people, and if those people aren’t engaged and supported, the entire operation will start to wobble.

“If you have an employee that trusts that you’re looking out for them or a customer that trusts that you’re looking out for them, I’ve found the performance increases based on the amount that they believe that you’re looking out for their interests,” Nate said. But, he added, that trust goes both ways: “As business owners, we depend on our employees. But as employees, we depend on our employers. That’s [a] really symbiotic relationship.”

Bill sees it the same way. “Our internal customers drive our external customers,” he said. In other words, the way you treat your people shows up in the way your customers are treated.

Every. Time.

For Kerry Brothers, that mindset goes beyond the shop floor. Whether it’s helping someone move, advancing pay if things are tight, or throwing a Christmas party that includes employees’ families (and Santa!), the goal is the same: build a place people actually want to be. 

(It’s scientifically proven that happy techs tend to be more profitable. Seriously, there was a study!) 

Be Flexible (Or Get Left Behind)

Flexible scheduling has been a thing in the white-collar world for a while, but its adoption in the blue-collar world (and heavy-duty repair overall) has been somewhat spotty. But it can be a huge competitive advantage, particularly when a lot of shops are still operating like it’s 1995 with fixed schedules and rigid expectations. 

Bill and Nate both acknowledge that their employees have lives outside the shop, and that working with that reality leads to better outcomes.

Nate brings a straightforward approach to scheduling. “[I tell them] I can work around whatever you have going on in your personal life … as long as we know what we’re looking at, we can plan around everything.”

That kind of flexibility builds trust and improves operations. When people can structure their schedules in a way that works for them, they show up more focused and more consistent. 

Bill took it a step further by expanding shop hours from 4 AM to midnight, pointing out that modern life in general benefits from flexibility — people have kids, families, appointments, things to do. The result was more coverage and more throughput, along with more opportunities for employees to work schedules that fit their lives.  

Flexibility helps you keep good people. And keeping good people is a lot easier (and cheaper) than constantly trying to replace them. 

Delegate And Elevate

Delegation sounds simple.

(It is not simple.)

For the shop owner, delegation means letting go of what they’re best at, which for most of their working life has been turning wrenches. It can be a jarring shift. But if you’re still the one fixing every problem — “Here, I’ll just do it myself real quick” — then you’re making yourself into a human bottleneck. 

The shops that end up growing are the ones where the owner can step back and start building people instead of trucks. Again, this is difficult — but if the owner is constantly stepping in to “help” or “take care of things” (Peter refers to this as meddling), all they’re doing is getting in the way and preventing the people you hired from learning and growing. 

“It’s a discipline that you have to learn to be able to really hand stuff off to people and delegate and elevate and, you know, continue to grow the people around you,” said Bill. Otherwise, “You’re robbing people of the opportunity to be successful.” 

And that’s the real cost of not delegating. Yes, you’re costing your team time, but their development is also taking a hit. 

When you can step back and delegate effectively, you give your people room to step up. And when your people get better, your shop gets stronger (and more profitable). 

The Panel Also Discussed…

The conversation ran for a full hour and covered a lot of interesting topics, including:

• How both shops develop and maintain their company cultures.
• What a daily huddle looks like, and how it can benefit a shop.
• Leadership development inside the shop.
• How Bill is going to deal with the, um, burning truck situation after leaving the studio.

Again, we hope you’ll watch the entire webinar — you can stream it for free on our YouTube channel — but if you only take away one thing from this recap, let it be this:

You don’t grow a shop by doing more work. You grow it by building a team that can do it with you. So take care of your people! Trust them and give them room to grow. At the end of the day, they’re the ones in this with you.