Efficiency is the engine that drives the entrepreneurial attitude of Jamie Lasher.

Twenty years ago, Lasher took a hard look at corporations such as Jiffy Lube International Inc. – where he had worked as a technician – and began to wonder how the fast-oil-change philosophy could be applied to other facets of the automobile repair industry.

In June 2010, his dream was realized with the opening of Minor Wreck Express, a Johnston-based company that Lasher likens to an urgent-care facility for cars.

“When you have strep throat, you don’t go downtown to the big hospital,” he said. “You go to an outpatient clinic so you can get in, get treated and get back out. That’s basically what Minor Wreck Express is for the auto-body repair business.”

With a certificate in hand from Western Iowa Tech Community College in Sioux City, Lasher ratcheted up his experience in the early 1990s by working as a painter, estimator and manager for various car dealerships and repair shops in Greater Omaha.

Purchasing his first company in 2000, the Iowa native advanced his entrepreneurial approach with the opening of a Dr. Vinyl Group LLC franchise in Johnston.

Summing up his role with the mobile auto-body repair company, Lasher said he moved to Greater Des Moines and drove that business-to-business opportunity forward by offering Dr. Vinyl’s services to local automobile dealers and fleet-vehicle organizations.

The following year, Lasher partnered with Dr. Vinyl to launch The Doctors Touch, which utilizes new technologies to quickly touch up chipped paint and buff out scratches.

“I could see that a lot of these car dealerships had light body damage and they really weren’t doing anything about it, because they couldn’t get it fixed affordably or fast enough,” Lasher said.

After building the company to include more than 100 franchises in the United States, Europe and Ecuador, Lasher said he last year sold his stake in The Doctors Touch to Dr. Vinyl. Relinquishing his position as the company’s chief operating officer, Lasher set out to fulfill his dream of operating fixed, consumer-focused retail locations where people can find alternatives to traditional repair shops.

“We want to be ‘express’ in everything that we do,” Lasher said, noting that his next goal is to begin franchising his affinity for writing fast estimates and making quick repairs. “Every time I look at a process, from writing estimates to how we fix cars, I look for the inefficiencies and eliminate them.

“I’ve really never left the car business. I was just fortunate to kind of be in business while all that was coming about. As time went on, I could really see that a few years down the road, this can happen.”