24 • February 2024 • Powersports Business www . PowersportsBusiness . com

Maggie Stevens recently celebrated five years at ARS Powersports and was a 2023 Women With Spark honoree at the Powersports Business Accelerate

Conference . She is pictured with her dog Holley . Photos courtesy of ARS Powersports

BY MADELYN HUBBARD ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Maggie Stevens , 2023 Powersports Business Women With Spark honoree , recently celebrated five years at ARS Powersports . Stevens is the parts manager and her husband , Ben Stevens , is the service manager of the Okeechobee , Florida , location .

“ My husband and I owned an independent shop on the other side of Florida that we ran for about five years ,” Stevens says . After selling the business , the couple was recruited to move across the state .”

She has worked with her husband for a decade and shares that the biggest benefit is having someone who understands the highs and lows of working within the dealership day-to-day .

“ When it ’ s busy season and you have someone in the industry with you , let alone the trenches , they understand the late nights or early mornings ,” she explains . “ They understand the good and the bad , versus someone who ’ s not in the industry who can appreciate it , but not fully understand it .”

STREAMLINING THE PARTS DEPARTMENT

Stevens had little knowledge about powersports at the start of her career . She asked many questions to learn how to be successful and began documenting the knowledge she gained .

“ There ’ s this strategy I have that ’ s called the Rebel ’ s Playbook ,” she says . “ It ’ s like a football playbook of successful strategies for myself and for my department and it ’ s the way we store knowledge . It ’ s very detailed .” She and her department use the Google document to increase efficiency and enable continuous process improvements .

The “ playbook ” includes a section accessible only to Stevens that includes big picture goals and how they will be executed . The Hub is the second section of the “ playbook ” that is available to all members of the parts department team .

“ They use it all day ,” she says . “ It ’ s just a Google document and a Trello document . The Hub is probably 40 percent to 50 percent of either feedback or suggestions from my team , so all our brain is in that document .

When it ’ s busy season and you have someone in the industry with you , let alone the trenches , they understand the late nights or early mornings . They understand the good and the bad , versus someone who ’ s not in the industry who can appreciate it , but not fully understand it .

Stevens is pictured with her husband Ben , who she has worked with for a decade .

We added two new things today ; both documents are living and breathing . Every image , PDF , anything I get from conferences , part numbers and phone numbers are in those two documents .”

She created The Hub so employees can find the answer to most questions on their own . “ Every time we would bring in a new employee , I would find these gaps of knowledge ,” Stevens says . “ Trying to onboard someone was so painful ; not because of