Where Does Your Shop Stand Today?
Rick White · Just ONE Thing · Episode 282
| If I’m in Massachusetts and my GPS thinks I’m in Michigan, I can enter the right address in California and still get lousy directions. That little blue dot matters. So let me ask you something about your shop. If I asked where you are today, would you tell me what’s happening or what you thought would be happening by now? |
Start with the part you can see
Maybe the shop is making money and you’re still working 80 hours a week. Maybe the team gets cars out the door on time, but when you look at what’s left at the end of the month, you wonder where all that work went. Or maybe things are going pretty well and you’d like to take a Thursday afternoon off without spending it on the phone. Each of those owners needs different directions.
Take the long hours as an example. Say you stayed until seven three nights last week. Before you decide you need another employee, go back through those evenings. What were you actually doing? If you were at the counter finishing estimates that sat on your desk all afternoon waiting for your approval, that tells you something a timecard alone can’t.
Listen to the story you attach to the result
| The judgment: “I can’t get anybody to take responsibility around here.” Where do you go with that? You can carry that thought home and bring it right back to work tomorrow without getting any closer to leaving on time. |
| The observation: “My advisor brought me four estimates yesterday, and I rewrote all four.” Now you’ve got something you and your advisor can look at together. Did the advisor have a question about the work, or have you taught them by experience that you want the final say? |
That’s the part I want you to sit with. You might discover that a decision you made when the advisor was brand new is still holding both of you up a year later. It can sting to see your part in it. But now you can pull up one of those estimates, explain what you look for, and agree on which decisions the advisor can make tomorrow.
Give tomorrow’s shop a little of today’s time
You can spend the whole day doing work your customers genuinely need and still go home with the same problem you walked in with. Nobody has to decide to keep working late. All it takes is another afternoon when getting the estimates out feels more pressing than showing somebody how you want them written.
In our example, I’d pick one ordinary estimate and have the advisor walk me through it while the thinking is fresh. I’d listen for the point where they usually come looking for me. Then I’d let them handle the next similar one and set a time to look at it together. That gives the advisor a chance to practice and gives me a way to find out whether my instructions were clear.
Your Just ONE Thing this week
| 1 | What happened? Pick one part of last week you’d hate to repeat. Write down what somebody standing next to you could have seen. |
| 2 | What do you need to learn? Maybe you know exactly how to build an estimate and have never had to teach somebody else how to do it. Those are two different skills. |
| 3 | What will you do differently, and when? Put the practice on the calendar. At the end of the week, check whether your advisor handled a decision that used to wait for you. |
Your starting point can be uncomfortable to look at, especially if you thought you’d be further along by now. Look anyway. The next decision is yours, and you’ve got a much better chance of making a good one when you know where you’re starting.
| FREE TRAINING If the part you need to look at is what’s left after a busy week, join me for the free Predictable Profit training for auto repair shop owners.Register for the free training ↗ |
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