Where DO You Find Good Managers? A Shop Owner Roundtable Recap

Hey there, Fullbay friends and family! It’s time for another Shop Owner Roundtable Recap Edition!

In the Fullbay corner, we had Patrick and his co-host, Amy Newman, Director of Onboarding. And in the hot seat, we had Brandon Staley of Naumann Hobbs Material Handling Companies (NHMH) and TransWest Mobile. 

We’ll lead off with the usual platitudes: it was a super-cool chat that touched on several topics we know are near and dear to shop owners’ hearts (like shop managers, hiring and retention) as well as some areas many don’t think about (like selling your shop). 

You should, of course, watch the whole thing here (it’s freeeeeee). But if you’re on a coffee break and just want to see what we found most interesting, well, we got you, fam. 

ABOUT NHMH & TRANSWEST

We will, as usual, start at the beginning (at least, the beginning of this business). Brandon had been working as a service manager in Provo, Utah, and knew he wanted to do something a little different. Lots of his employer’s clients were fleets, and while they liked the work the shop did, they continuously communicated that the downtime was killing them. They needed the work done faster.

The wheels started turning. “I had always had some sort of entrepreneurial spirit since I was a kid and had a desire to try to do something different,” Brandon said, “and so started thinking about what we could do in the industry that would set us apart,” 

You can probably see where this is going.

In January of 2009, Brandon and his business partner started TransWest Mobile with a single technician and a used service truck — a 1997 F-750 their parents had to co-sign on (and one that he deemed “just a horrific truck … I can’t believe we bought it).”

From there, it was a steady progression to a brick-and-mortar location, more technicians, and more customers via word-of-mouth and knocking on doors. By the time they sold the company to private equity in 2022, they had five locations. 

LETTING TECHNICIANS BE TECHNICIANS

It’s a tale (almost) as old as time: a technician starts their own business. Almost overnight, they go from just wrenching to wrenching and dealing with customers…and ordering parts…and figuring out accounting…and maybe doing some marketing…and, and, and…

(We apologize for any flashbacks this may have caused.)

If you’ve been there, you know how wearing multiple hats can…well…wear you down. Brandon and his business partner took a slightly different approach and opted to separate the work from the customers; they let their technicians be the experts handling the diagnostics and repairs, while he and his partner would be the business experts communicating with the customers. 

This strategy has paid off. “We found that the relationships being built between … owner and manager and customer were a lot more solid than maybe the ones being built between technician and customer,” he remarked. 

They’ve also worked hard to cultivate a place where techs want to work. Technicians — like everyone else — want to feel secure in their jobs. They want to know they’ll be able to pay their bills, look after their families, and have time away from work.

“If you can create a stable work environment where hours are consistent, workflow is consistent, opportunities are there for growth,” Brandon said, “those types of things really incentivize technicians … they feel safe.” 

WORK ON THE BUSINESS, NOT IN IT

The conversation veered toward a topic we’ve yammered on about many a time — how true, substantial growth only really happens when an owner steps away from the everyday running of the biz. “Working on it instead of in it” can encompass a lot of things, but for most shop owners, it looks something like stepping away from the actual repairs and focusing on client acquisition, marketing, and so on.

Usually, The Great Stepping Away happens after the owner has hired someone who can manage the shop (and whoever’s working for it) in his stead. 

“Sometimes it’s hard to quantify,” Brandon explained. “[You think] [it] is gonna cost me X amount of dollars a year to be able to bring in a talented person [to help free me up] to grow this business.’”

It can, he acknowledged, feel like putting the cart before the horse (or the trailer before the tractor!). The business usually has potential to grow if you’re at this point, but you still have to convince yourself to put up the capital to bring them on and then surrender control to them.

In other words, it’s daunting. But at some point, if you want to grow your business past a certain size, you need to be the one doing the growing.

THE INTANGIBLE QUALITIES OF A GOOD MANAGER

Later on, Brandon steered the conversation toward management — namely, where do you find good managers? The diesel field often seems pretty compact; the same people get bounced around between operations over the years. 

TransWest has had great success hiring from outside the industry. Their success boils down to two things:

1. Hiring people who are willing to learn;
2. Hiring people who possess certain intangible qualities.

Bro, you might be saying, praytell, what are these intangible qualities?

Well, matey, back in our day we might have referred to them as soft skills. Brandon described them like this:

• Good communicators
• Great customer service skills
• In possession of “a desire to help”
• Ability to listen
• Highly organized

People like this, he said, can absolutely learn about the industry and become outstanding managers.

“I believe that it’s easier to teach how to manage service and how to manage a shop than it is to teach an intangible quality to an individual,” Brandon said. He went on to note that you can teach things like communication, to a point, but most people have a sort of built-in communometer (that’s our word, not his) that can only ever be raised a certain amount. 

In short, look for someone who has the qualities listed above. Everything else can be taught.

SELLING YOUR SHOP

We mentioned above that TransWest attracted attention from private equity. Naturally, one of our questions involved how they managed it. 

“We never had real intentions of selling the business,” Brandon told us. “We were liking the path that we were on at the time that we were approached by our private equity group.”

The actual story is quite intricate, but in a nutshell: 

The private equity group wanted to get into the fleet services market and had a strategic partner at the Naumann/Hobbs Company (they do forklift maintenance and repair). The acquisition “allowed us to get more aggressive with our growth strategy,” Brandon explained. Acquiring customers had always gone all right for TransWest, but being able to really expand and hire required — wait for it — more financial backing, which they received from this deal. 

Patrick asked what the TransWest team might have done differently during the acquisition.

“The biggest key to being able to get an acquisition done is that our financials were clean,” Brandon said, crediting co-owner Neil Townsend with keeping excellent financial records. Those records reflected the “sweat equity” they’d all poured into the business over the years.

(Yes, we dig the term sweat equity too!)

You’ve put a lot into your business. So when you start to think about moving on, you want to make sure you get what it’s worth. Everyone would love to get $10 million for their operation, but you need the numbers to back up your assertion that it’s worth $10 million. “I think a lot of places could benefit a lot from a reassessment of ‘how I am truly handling the financials of my business,’” Brandon said. 

Fullbay, he added, was incredibly helpful in that regard. Because they had the mapping done correctly between QuickBooks and Fullbay, “the financials were pretty easy to get through and speak to … and getting through a quality of earnings was a lot easier than … what we have seen with other potential acquisitions.”

He suggested shop owners ask themselves the following:

• Do I have a good partner? 
• Do I have a good accountant? 
• Are we actually thinking about this properly?

In short, if you’ve got the books to back up how great your shop is, selling it for what it’s worth will be a lot easier.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE?

We’ve come to the end of this recap…but not the end of the Roundtable! Brandon covered several other subjects, including:

• The TransWest bonus programs
• How they handle mentorship
• Way more detail about the acquisition and merger with Naumann Hobbes
• Their approach to marketing

And way, way more.

It’s a thoughtful, interesting episode that reaches some ground you may not have thought about on a regular basis. Again, you can listen to the whole thing right here.

Enjoy, and we’ll catch you next time!