When Quality is More Than Just a Name
What do you do when the name of a company is also very descriptive of the quality (play on words) of what they offer or what they do? You see, I first met Terry at Quality Auto Body when Startup Hutch was doing one of their Entrepreneur Nights – third Tuesday of every month at Sandhills Brewery.
Terry met me. We identified each other. We did the introductions. All that was great. The conversation was great. I have a history in the automotive industry. He works in the automotive industry, but my son is also in school, in high school, taking automotive auto body. And so I naturally had the question for Terry, “Hey, Since this is something my son wants to do when he gets out of school, do you think it would make sense for him to maybe stop by the shop just to kind of see what the real working environment would be?”
“Do you think it would be smart for my son to come and maybe spend some time at your shop and make sure that this is the direction that he wants to go in?” And the response from Terry was unbelievably supportive. I want to go on the record for this post as saying, from where we come from in Southern California, this would not normally be the response with a stranger you would meet about taking a tour of their business.
People where we come from are a little more guarded. about their operations, their processes, their procedures. And so when Terry was so open to having my son visit his location, I was thrilled. So we followed up with each other. We made an appointment and we went over to see the place. Now, if you haven’t seen Terry’s Place. They have a website here, right? It’s on Morgan Avenue on Hutchinson.
When we went, he actually walked us through the big giant paint booth that can do vehicles the size of an RV. That was really cool. I have a background in automotive. I’ve seen a lot of these things before, but for someone to give you a tour of the step by step process of how it works. was really interesting to someone like me and also to my son.
And so when we got to the facility to meet with Terry, it wasn’t one of those weird deals where he was like put out by it. In fact, he engaged us in conversation before we even started the tour. And then he said, I planned on starting at the South end and working our way through the shop. The key phrase there is I planned on you.
See, Terry was ready for us. He was prepared for us to come and have this experience at his location. And he gave my son this wonderful tour of the body shop that started with, Hey, this is where our building originally started. We started 50 years ago. We’re going to have our 50-year anniversary. And then it expanded to all of this area.
Let’s walk down to this area where I’m going to start the tour. This is where we, um, this is where our subcontracted people come in and reset the calibrations on cars that need calibrations reset. We do some, um. Reinstallations here in this area. This is where we do prep. This is where we mix paint. This is where we keep some of our hazardous materials and how we manage the volume of hazardous materials at our location.
You know, this is our automated process that does this, this, and this, this is our shipping and receiving. I mean, he walked us through the whole thing. This is where our technicians store the parts while we’re waiting for other parts to arrive. This is where we do disassembly and inspection. This is where we do reassembly and inspections.
He showed us this giant touch screen, board that was there. Now it didn’t take me long to figure out cause I’ve been in the automotive business before, but I was like, So this is how you track all of the repair orders. This is how you track all of the work to be done in the shop. He said, “absolutely”. And it’s like a Gantt chart, you know, it’s got columns.
It’s like a Trello board. If you worked with the Trello board before any kind of project management software, but there’s details on each of these cards that, you know, identified the vehicle, the customer, the insurance company, and it goes through the different phases. Of what a typical repair process would be.
That was cool to see. That was really cool to see because that showed me that this business didn’t grow by accident. It has a plan. It has a strategy. And then he walked us through some more of the shop and we got into where they do the 18-wheelers and the RVs and things like that. Now, when that tour was completely done, the tour was not over.
Terry stood there and in good faith had a conversation with the two of us that went on at length. We talked about things like, what kind of sports do you like? You know, where do you see yourself working in the future? Is this the kind of thing that, that you enjoy? Is this the kind of, you know, what’s the climate control like there?
We, I even talked to some of the technicians about how they were preparing their lunch. I mean, it was just a really good, laid-back experience and I wanted to pay it forward for Terry in a way that I thought this post could do. And that is if you are not familiar with working with people, if you’re not familiar with people running an auto body center or familiar with people in automotive, then I want to encourage you to connect on the facebook page.
They’ve got a Quality Body Shop Facebook page. If you jump out to that page, you’re going to see, a picture of the big 18-wheeler they painted, Stories from the industry, reasons why they only do OEM-sanctioned repairs, how to get a quote, what their processes are like,and what are the kind of people that work there.
And if you look at these posts, you’ll see one with Terry in the screen, from April 30th. So they’re active on their page. So if you were curious or wanted to have a connection in automotive more than when you actually need them, I think being connected to a place like a body shop or a tow yard or landscaping and arborist for trees, is smart – right?
How many trees fall down in Hutchinson, a storm comes through, limbs fall down, who do you call? Do you already have a relationship with somebody, when that need happens? Well, if you don’t, I would advise you to kind of reach out and start to follow those folks. Sooner or later, you’re going to have an accident.
And sooner or later, you’re going to need to have a body shop to call on. And who are you going to call when that happens? And as a person that’s new to the Hutchinson area and someone that is just so happy to have been embraced by the community and the way that my family has been, I really wanted to pay it forward for Terry.
I wanted to get him some exposure in this post and I wanted to share with you just how genuine and, and how philanthropic, I mean, that’s really the word for it, how philanthropic Terry is in his approach to community, being connected. And having a business that by its outward appearances obviously is, is how it thrives.
They’ve made the investment. They got the property, they got the equipment, they’ve got the processes. Um, we did have a little talk about, you know, maybe some leadership training and things like that, but as a business grows, Those are the kinds of things that they’re going to see. So I know this is a little different than one of my restaurant write-ups, but I wanted to give this a shot this way.
I wanted to record this video and you’ll notice the text in this post is going to be a direct application of the words I spoke in this video. It’s an AI tool that I’m using but I did want to give you both ways to see this content and I hope that you have a wonderful day. And if you need them, get in touch with Quality Body Shop in Hutchinson.
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