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Letter to the Editor

Learning from Others' Mistakes

Some bumps and bruises on the business highway of change and growth can be avoided if you heed the lessons others have picked up along the way

Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, may have summed it up best when he said, "The trouble in America is not that we are making too many mistakes, but that we are making too few."

Mistakes, Knight understood, sometimes happen when you try something new, when you take a risk, when you attempt to do things differently from others. But Knight embodies the success that also can come from these same types of business activities. Too few mistakes, he said, may mean you're playing it too safe.

Nearly everyone in business can point to mistakes they made - and the lessons they learned from them. One of the real benefits of interacting regularly with other shop owners is not to just learn from what they've done right, but also from what they've done wrong.

"It's cheaper that way, to learn from someone else's mistakes," said William Parkins, general manager of Metro Auto Rebuild in Seattle. "My job is not to reinvent the wheel. I don't know every answer, but I can usually find the people who do."

This month, INSIGHT compiled the stories of what some shop owners view as the biggest mistake they've made in business. In some cases, they asked not to be identified in print or to have some identifying details changed. But the real value here is not who made the mistake, but the lesson that they - and you - can learn from it.

Missed opportunities

Not surprisingly, many shop owners look back at "roads not taken."

"There's been a couple times when we've had good opportunities to expand, and we didn't," said Dan Charlebois, the general manager and one of three partners who own B & J Body Shop in Rancho Cordova, Calif. In particular, Charlebois points to a satellite facility in a near-by community the business could have acquired at a good price.

"Probably the biggest mistake I made was that I didn't become an owner soon enough," said Lloyd Fletcher who, along with a partner, bought a 2-shop business in downtown Portland, Ore., in 2000. "I had managed other people's body shops since 1980, and they would probably all give you a good review of the services I performed and the levels that I brought their businesses up to."

Excessive optimism

The boom-and-bust cycle of recent years led to mistakes - and lessons - for a number of shop owners. A shop owner in the Northwest said he never anticipated the economic turn-down when he bought his shop in 1996.

"That's something I should have been more cognizant of, and maybe been more conservative on the future projections," he said. "I might have done some things differently. I bought everything new in terms of equipment at the time."

He also hadn't anticipated the development of a large building on the empty lot next to his - which eliminated his shop's visibility from the high-traffic highway a block away.

"That's made a difference, although in my defense, I'm not sure there was a more visible location available for me in this area," he said.

"My mistake has been getting too far into debt at a point or two," said the owner of an 8-employee family-run collision repair shop in a west coast suburban community. "I'd buy too much at a time. Times would be real good and you'd have money flowing so you'd buy something, and then all of a sudden work would drop off and you still have to pay for it."

Marketing and customer mix

"Don't put too many eggs in one basket," advised Steve Sturken, the second generation owner of Sturken's Auto Body in San Jose, Calif. "If you do and something goes wrong, will you be able to afford recovery?"

Many shop owners have faced that question when they've found a particular insurer has grown to 20 or even 30 percent of the shop's business - only to have that relationship come to an end for some reason. Sturken does little direct repair work at his 30-employee company, but still faced a similar situation.

"Mine was a dealership I was doing a substantial amount of work with and they made a change for no good reason, just like people do, and it kicked me in the teeth," Sturken said. "It wasn't exactly losing my whole business, but it was a radical wake-up call."

Sturken recovered from the change, and has worked to avoid becoming too reliant on any one particular source of work.

Another second-generation shop owner, Mike Coyner of Coyner's Auto Body in Portland, Ore., said his mistake about a decade ago when he bought the business was as-suming he could run it much the same way his father had.

"My old man believed that if you do quality work, the customers will come," Coyner said. "It was all about quality work, a fair price and customer service. We still do the same quality work and customer service. That stuff still matters, but the biggest thing today is marketing. We never used to market other than an ad in the phone book. My dad didn't go out and attack the market and make things grow. I spent a few years after I bought this thing doing the same thing, just relying on what we had for the last years and not going out after more. We lost ground. Our market share got smaller. And now I'm playing catch-up. What he'd done worked, but we just needed to keep up with what's going on."

Personnel errors

One California shop owner said the wounds are still a little too fresh to be real comfortable talking openly about the personnel situation he faced about five years ago. Suffice it to say, a long-term manager at the company left - and took nearly a third of the shop's workforce with him.

"My mistake was giving that person too much authority and autonomy within my company," the shop owner said. "I'd created a 'king,' an 'emperor' or whatever you want to call it, instead of a manager who really had to be responsible to me. I will admit that I enjoyed a lot more freedom with him and his abilities here. But everyone else knew at some point that he wasn't loyal to me any longer. And I'd let too many of them develop a connection with him instead of me. So I'm trying to avoid making that mistake again."

Conversely, one mistake Barbara Heitzman said she has made is not parting ways with some employees soon enough. Heitzman is the second-generation CEO of Heitzman Body & Paint in Beaverton, Ore. It doesn't take long to find employees at the shop who have been with the company 20 or 30 years. Heitzman said she works hard to treat employees like family, but said in the past that desire may have led her to keep some employees around too long even if they weren't good for the company.

"That can hurt you more than it can help you or them," she said. "I'm better about that now, and can usually tell within three to six months if this is the right place for an employee."

Miscellaneous mistakes

One Illinois shop owner said he needs to look no further than his front door or sign post to see what he considers his biggest mistake: putting his own first name on the business. Thirty years later, he said, everyone who calls asks to speak to him, and the company name may interfere with his ability to get top dollar for the business were he to sell.

Another shop owner said he'd spent $12,000 with a consulting firm, only to realize that while the company had some good offerings, their expertise was better suited to the mechanical side of the business rather than collision repair.

Myron Hazen, president of Collision Repair Center, Inc., in East Moline, Ill., said he was once burned by a phone solicitation about a business opportunity related to convertible tops. The perpetrator was eventually caught, imprisoned and ordered to pay restitution, but the several checks for $25 Hazen has received are a long way from the several thousands of dollars he invested in the scam.

Another shop owner who'd been burned in the past said his mistake was imparting too much trust in a few customers, including one who happened to be a friend of his niece.

Other shop owners cited working with particular family members as a key mistake. "My first wife and I weren't cut out to work together," one said. "We get a long better now that we're divorced and don't work together."

Learning from experience

In addition to not focusing on marketing and launching a second location sooner in his business, Dick Guthrie said his primary mistake has been not letting others in his business make some.

"My No. 1 biggest mistake is trying to do much myself, not having the confidence to delegate and the ability to let go of issues and let someone else deal with it," said Guthrie, owner of J & D Auto Body in Galt and Lodi, Calif. "Body shop owners as a rule tend to be very controlling people. And because of that, we're not good delegators. I've found it's best to let people do their job, make a mistake and then coach based on those mistakes. Don't pre-coach to the extent that you don't want them to make a mistake. Then they're only doing something because you told them to do it. They're not doing it because they know it's the right way."

In short, Guthrie has learned, let them make some of the mistakes Phil Knight sees too few of in America.   o

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