For What It's Worth

Our feature article this month, Seeing the Value, gives us some math exercises to perform. This is a good time of year to flex your muscles, intellectually and physically, especially here in Cleveland, where winter has been a bit rough this year - and long.

Do the chart computations for your facility, and see for yourself how much the place to which you devote a major portion of your energies is worth - on paper. I am betting that your shop and your employees are worth a lot to you and to your customers.

Mark Claypool, former Executive Director of two valuable industry groups, the I-CAR Education Foundation and the NABC, has lent INSIGHT readers some of the valuable lessons he has learned in our special feature this month on Mark’s new project, Mentors At Work.

Whether you decide to try Mark’s mentoring methods or devise training methods of your own, it is crucial to the Collision Repair Industry to attract and train young people. We need to “see the value” in spending time and money on new technicians.

TrainingForTechs.com has launched a free training product search utility online (See dot.COMMENTS on page 15.). Check it out for some training ideas.

So far so good, it seems, on the OE service and training information sharing agreement. The industry has been hearing from automobile manufacturers during the last month. INSIGHT will continue to keep a close eye on developments.

The California BAR has stopped posting notices of violation at its website. Caliber Collision filed a lawsuit in January.

The Collision Repair Industry mourns the passing of Salvatore Licitra. Talk about real value! Sylvie taught a lot of us a lot of good lessons. His value? As the credit card company says: Priceless! He was one of a kind.

To help us exercise our smile muscles a little, our publisher, Charlie Baker, has passed along some valuable lessons he learned from Noah on his Investment Page. (Directly from Noah?)