Description

This episode dives into Kaylee’s journey from managing a Subway store to becoming the Sales & Marketing Director at PartsEdge, a company focused on helping dealerships optimize their parts operations. Kaylee shares how her nontraditional path gave her unique perspectives on leadership, customer service, and process efficiency. She emphasizes the often-overlooked value of parts departments in dealership profitability and highlights how culture, education, and proactive strategies can transform fixed ops.

The conversation is equal parts personal growth story and operational playbook for dealerships, showing how transferable skills, discipline, and curiosity can reshape an entire department.

 5 Memorable Quotes

1. “I didn’t know what I was getting into—but the parallels between running a restaurant and running a dealership were surprisingly close.”
2. “The parts department is the heartbeat of fixed ops, but too often it’s treated like a storage room instead of a profit center.”
3. “Inventory isn’t just numbers on a screen; it’s customer trust sitting on a shelf.”
4. “If you’re not educating advisors on how parts flow through your system, you’re creating friction instead of speed.”
5. “You don’t need to reinvent the wheel—just commit to doing the basics consistently better than anyone else.”

 5 Takeaways

1. Transferable skills matter – Leadership and management lessons from other industries (like food service) directly apply to automotive.
2. Parts drive retention – Having the right part at the right time builds customer trust and supports service efficiency.
3. Culture of respect – Treating parts departments as partners instead of back-office silos changes how dealerships perform.
4. Education is leverage – Training advisors and techs on parts processes reduces errors and delays.
5. Data + discipline = profitability – Using tools to track inventory and enforcing simple processes can unlock hidden revenue.

 5 Strategies You Can Use Tomorrow

1. Audit your inventory flow – Check where delays or double-handling occur between parts, advisors, and techs. Fix one bottleneck immediately.
2. Run a cross-department huddle – Bring parts, service advisors, and techs together for a 10-minute daily sync. It builds alignment and respect.
3. Reframe the parts department – Stop calling it “the back.” Start calling it a profit center in team meetings to shift perception.
4. Create a quick-reference guide – A one-page cheat sheet for advisors on parts ordering rules and timelines can cut down mistakes.
5. Review one parts metric daily – Instead of drowning in reports, pick one KPI (like fill rate or obsolescence) and track progress as a team.