Culture Is Your Competitive Edge

“You can do anything. But you cannot do everything.” These words hang in an unassuming plaque on the wall behind Zach Haver, owner of Mad Hatter Auto Repair in Omaha, Nebraska. It’s a message he uses to remind himself to be present in his employees’ lives who, in turn, take care of his customers. But Haver admits his march to becoming culture-centric wasn’t always such a straight line.

“My focus was on getting cars out the door,” Haver explains when he opened in 2017. “It wasn’t on building a team.”

In fact, the mindset didn’t shift toward hiring for attitude over skillset until his COO, Mike Kraus, joined the company in December 2022.

“We hire for culture. It's a lot less about the skills that you bring. It's more about the attitude and the intangibles,” Kraus remarks. “Are you positive? Are you resilient? Or at least, for some of the younger folks that we hired on, are you that wet pile of clay that we can mold that shows signs of being able to tap into something like that?”

While most owners search for the next great technician and the benefits that keep them around, the most overlooked advantages are often the intangibles that make employees feel valued.  

“I often say the purpose of our company is to improve lives and we do that through auto repair,” says Haver, who owns the Omaha location as well as another in Council Bluffs, Iowa. A third shop, Westgate High Tech Auto Care in Omaha, caters to Asian and European vehicles.

Haver takes a three-pronged approach to evaluating whether an employee is a good fit for the team based on the head, the hands, and the heart.  

“You have the head which is can you retain the knowledge, the heart which is the desire, and the hands or the ability to do it,” he explains. “Then we’re at a place where you can come be a part of our team and actually help develop yourself and our team to create a culture that is not about a ‘me,’ but a ‘we.’”

Voted the best place to work in 2025 at the VISION Hi-Tech Training & Expo, Mark Lowe takes a similar approach to handpicking the best employees for Yeck’s Tire & Auto.

“One of my service advisors, Megan, she's been here the longest and she says, ‘The only reason I'm here is because of you,’ and obviously that makes you feel good because you know you're treating people right.”

The Navy veteran and his wife, Betty, have been running the 7,000-square-foot shop on their own since 2015, although Mark has been working there since 1980.

He says getting a team to gel is an art form that comes down to reading people and understanding where they fit.

“Some people might be happy as anything, but they're just not that outgoing,” he points out. “The ebbs and flows of (a team) will change almost with every new person you bring in. And it's same as anything, you just got to monitor it and watch it.”

While there is no magic formula for building the perfect shop culture, there are clear signs you’re on the right track. Together, Haver, Kraus, and Lowe dole out their best advice on maintaining a shop culture that keeps employees engaged and customers returning.  

Create a Welcoming Atmosphere

When technicians feel comfortable and enjoy what they’re doing, that energy rubs off on vendors and customers, Haver says.

“Our parts vendors, when they come in, they’re happy. They love coming in. They love the joking,” Haver notes. “And I’ll be out talking to another shop and they’re like, ‘what do you do to the parts vendors make them like you guys so much?’ And we don’t have to do anything because they just like being here. We don’t have that grumpy technician yelling at people. We don’t have upset service advisors that don’t want to be here.”

Taking it a step further, Haver says, is creating a shop environment where employees trust the owner and his or her commitment to being ethical and transparent. If employees can trust the owner’s word, they will work equally as hard to gain the trust of your customers.  

As the 2025 International Torch Award for Ethics recipient from the Better Business Bureau, Lowe agrees ethical business practices are the ultimate indicator that they are doing something right. Yeck’s Auto Repair was the only one to receive this award for a company with one to 10 employees in 2025 and says culture is created by demonstrating honesty and integrity. If you do right by your clients, your employees take note, he says.

“I always taught the fact that I will always do it the right way for the client,” he asserts. “If it makes the shop or the business lose a little bit of money, that's fine as long as we're doing it the right way and taking care of people.”

Show Respect

Lowe adds one of the easiest ways to make a connection with employees is to simply show respect.

“You don't want to dig into the weeds into your employees’ lives, but you ought to know something about them. You ought to know what makes them tick,” he says. “Just be friendly and show respect. That’s the biggest thing is respect both ways.”

He adds subtle nods even in word choice can have an effect on building relationships and gaining clients’ trust.

“We changed the word ‘customer’ to ‘client’ a long time ago. With customers, you just take their money. It's just a monetary transaction. With clients, you build a relationship with them and that's what I totally believe in. We have clients that have been coming here for 40 years because they trust us.”

Haver says although making sure employees are doing what’s right for the customer should be an industry standard, sometimes shops fall short. But not his.

“Not all the time do people feel like they have someone on their side,” he admits. “But when we empower our people to make good decisions for our customers and really put them first, it really put a lot of customers at ease and really leans into what we try to do of improving lives forever.”

Shut Down Negativity

No one sets out to hire an employee with a bad attitude, but it’s highly likely you will cross paths with one at some point. They may not have started the journey that way but simply soured over time. If this happens, address it or it will spread like a virus, Lowe warns.

“Sometimes you don't realize how bad it's gotten until you make that change,” Lowe points out. “And then suddenly everybody else is in the shop saying, ‘Man, it is so much nicer now, it is so much better. So, you got to really kind of keep your fingers on the pulse of everything and if something's not right, address it. If people aren’t getting along or if someone’s creating hate and discontent in the shop, then it's time to sit down and fix it or part ways.”

Haver adds even the most skilled employee is not worth keeping around if they have the worst attitude. He recalls a time prior to running his own shop when he was working as a manager and the most productive technician retired.

“He probably produced about a third of the entire company’s billables on his own and we were like, ‘What are we going to do?’ We didn’t even have a replacement,” he recalls with a laugh. “Production went up 10% after he left. Nobody wanted to be around him because of his attitude. So, people took longer lunch breaks, longer bathroom breaks, took longer test drives. They did whatever they could not to be in that environment. So, hiring the wrong person can actually cause more detriment to your shop than you realize.”

Lowe adds the same goes for clients. Although not ideal, he says, it’s entirely possible that you may have to fire a client someday for equally dismal behavior.

“If it gets to the point where they're just not listening to me or there's nothing I can do to appease them with whatever problem they perceive, I will just hand them their keys and say, ‘It's obvious we can't make you happy. So, I can recommend another shop, but you're going to have to find another shop.’ You don't want to do that, but some people you're just not going to make them happy no matter what you do.”

Be who you say you are

Some owners have grand ideas about culture, but they may not realize they’re not actually living it.  

For this reason, Kraus says it’s important for shop owners to take an honest look at whether they’re actually following through on creating a culture, or just talking about it. He adds that the reality of holding out to find the right employees can be intimidating, but ultimately worth the risk.

“I think it's the hesitation and the scared of the unknown. It is a big risk, and it can take a long time, and you will lose people, some good, some bad, and that's scary, especially when it's your company and your bank account and your family on the line. That's a tall order to ask somebody to run through that fence because it’s a concrete fence,” he explains. “But it’s worth it. So, just go for it and have the patience to see the results pay off in the future.”