Auto Repair Shop Owner's Daily Dose 33: Scoring Your Actions

Scoring Your Actions by Rick White, President 180BIZ

 We've been talking about action lately and today I'll talk about how we score our actions. Every one of us has a ruler. We don’t just take action. When we have a destination that we're moving toward we need a ruler to measure progress. And the problem that I see with this all the time, it's a zero-sum game.

I’ll explain to you what happens. Let's say your goal is 2.5 hours per ticket of labor and you fall short of it. That's a negative, right? It's a minus sign. That's how you score it. It was a loss. And it just brings us down a very negative rabbit hole, doesn't it? So anytime we don't achieve what we're going for, you know, the target, you give yourself a negative score. And it kicks your butt. It lowers your self-esteem. It lowers your confidence. It lowers your belief in your ability to meet your goals. And it makes it harder to get up the next morning and be excited about losing again.

But here's the flip side. When you do achieve your goal, it's an expectation and you get a zero. So when you're playing the game of business or the game of life, how do you win When you score like that? The best you can ever hope for is zero. And most of the time you're going to get negatives, a minus one or a minus two.

My recommendation would be to change your scoring system. Score your journey, not your destination. Score your progress and your improvements as a positive. If you're bringing the very best version of yourself every day and you're getting better every day, measure that progress and celebrate it. That's what will get you up in the morning.

I’ve said this many times. There are ways to get out of bed. You can jump out of bed, roll out of bed, or fall out of bed. If you don't see progress every day, if you don't see the needle moving in your business and in your efforts, it's very hard to get up every morning excited. But if you can see that your hours per ticket are getting larger, but may not hit your target yet, celebrate that as a win.  Score forward momentum and celebrate that. It’s progress. Celebrate progress. Get out of this zero-sum game because you can never win that way. Stop giving yourself negative numbers for not achieving and zero for achieving

Celebrate somebody doing something for the first time. Celebrate someone for beating book time. If you celebrate the little things in your day that are worth celebrating you’ll end up with days to celebrate.

Create moments of celebration by tracking progress. We've been talking the last couple of days about taking action. This is a natural next step to talk about because we start taking action and if we use that zero-sum game, we never feel good. We always feel like crap. It's time to stop feeling like crap. It's time to start empowering ourselves and building our confidence, building our beliefs, building that certainty by tracking our progress. It's a game-changer.

Tip for the day. I’ve been talking a lot lately about expanding your audience. I talked about using Facebook videos to increase your reach and to grow that audience. When you grow your audience, your intent is to attract new customers. So, I recommend that you put together a new customer packet. If you are doing things the way I hope you are, you might see 30 35% of your business coming from new customers right now.

Put together a new customer packet that includes a welcome letter thanking them for their business. Talk to them about the benefits they get. Include little things like chotchke, or a magnet. Something that I used to do that customers loved was I included an 8 ½ x 11 dry erase board. They could attach to their fridge that had our logo and contact info on it. People love them. You could include pens and pads of paper, or tire gauges, or little flashlights, or thumb drives. There are so many different things that you can include that are not expensive. But get a packet together that shows new customers how much you appreciate them coming in. And then it gives you another chance to show them how different you are from all the other shops in your area.

 If you need help with this, reach out to me. I’d be happy to help you set it up. Email me at [email protected].

So, to recap, change the way you're scoring your day and your work. It's going to make all the difference in the world.

I really hope these are making a difference. If these Daily Doses are really helping you, would you please do me a favor? Please share them. Let other people learn from these messages. I honestly believe they'll help. If you don't think these messages are helping you, please reach out to me privately, and let's talk about what you think will help you. Let's make this a great day. Grab the day and own it.

Take care. God bless.