Just ONE Thing
Clearing the Clouds: Better Judgment for Your Auto Repair Shop
Episode 204
with Rick White, 180BIZ
Good morning, good afternoon or good evening. My name is Rick White from 180BIZ, and this is my Just ONE Thing. We're a training and coaching company for the independent automobile and truck repair shops.
What are we going to talk about today? We're talking about CLOUDS. What I'm talking about is you have clouds that affect your vision and your judgment every single day, and you're not even aware of them. And those clouds are hope and fear, right? Think about this: fear keeps you from seeing the possibility and the struggle. Hope keeps you from seeing the struggle and a possibility. Write that down today, because that's a Rick-ism right there—fear keeps you from seeing the possibility, hope keeps you from seeing the struggle.
But I want you to step back and think about this. Okay, let's think about an example of where fear keeps you from doing something that could be really amazing, right? Fear is when you're looking at a potential situation that has, you know, some upside—but with every upside, with every opportunity, there's always the possibility of something going backwards. What I want you to be able to do is recognize, hey, this is an issue, because that fear keeps you from taking action. That fear keeps you from moving forward. And because of that, you miss out on opportunity, because you didn't see the possibility beyond the struggle.
Now, on the flip side, hope is just as blinding. Why do I say that? How many of you have heard of a story where somebody signs up with a business partner, or they make a deal with somebody that they're going to take over somebody's shop? I was just reading this this morning. They got all this stuff, and they worked for a year in the shop, and then had the rug pulled from underneath their feet. See, hope doesn't allow us to see the downside or the issues that we should prepare for in order to move forward.
I hope this is making sense to you. Here's another thing—where you got hope in a situation like… oh, here's one: how about a fleet account comes to you? Fleet comes to you, "I got 40 vehicles, I want you to do all their work." And you're thinking, "Holy crap, that's amazing, I'd love to do that." And then you get started, and you do all this work on the vehicles, and then find out they don't pay their bills. See, you gotta understand that both of these blind you—you got hope on one end, you got fear on the other end.
So what do you do about it? Number one, first thing you gotta do is be aware. You gotta be aware of what your tendency is. You tend to lean one way or the other. You tend to be more fear-focused, or you tend to be more hope-focused. I am more hope-focused. As a rule, I'm ready to jump. I'm ready to jump. Brenda's grabbing me all the time and going, "Ah, you might want to look a little bit more." So for me, I'm very hope-focused. I see all the potential. I sometimes miss the downside.
Brenda, on the other hand, I think is the other way—where sometimes she pulls back. Not all the time, right? And sometimes I do too, where I'm afraid of maybe, "What happens if this happens? What happens if this happens?" I never see the potential. The reality is hope and fear cloud our judgment. They blind us.
So what do you do about it? Number one: be aware. Second thing you gotta do—what's like, if this is a spectrum, fear’s on one side, hope’s on the other side—what’s the thing right here in the middle? It’s curiosity. Curiosity, where you're asking questions instead of making assumptions. By the way, fear and hope are a form of assumption. You're assuming something's going to go bad or something's going to go really, really well.
So you're going to ask the questions instead of making assumptions. You're going to gather information objectively without having a bias towards one outcome or another. You're just going to stay neutral—could be good, could be bad, don't know. That way, you're open to possibilities.
Now I want you to ask yourself these questions. Are you ready? When you're in a situation and you feel like either you're ready to jump or you're afraid to jump, ask yourself these questions:
1. What am I feeling?
2. What am I focused on?
You're going to have feelings, but they're created by a focus. You're not only focused on something; you're focused on something happening. So understand that.
3. What am I missing?
That is going to allow you to step back and kind of look at it from a different perspective, so you're not quite like in the battle. The “What am I missing?” is almost like playing chess. I don't know who's a chess player in here, but you move a chess or a checker piece, and you keep your finger, right, and you're looking around and you're looking around and you're looking around. That's the “What am I missing?” question. Just see it.
Then I want you to use your third brain, right? We talked about that a little bit ago. We're going to think, we're going to ask ourselves, "What do I think about this?" We're going to ask ourselves, "How do I feel about this?" And then our third brain is going to put those two together.
Now, by going through and doing this, you're going to start to see more opportunities than you've been seeing, and you're going to be able to go into it more open-minded. And here's the thing—please listen: when you don't attach an outcome to something, it allows you to stay curious. Because best-case and worst-case thinking limit your possibilities. It's either this or this, and it blinds you.
If this video this morning makes sense to you, please share it. There are people out there afraid to take the next step, and there are some people just making failure after failure because they're not seeing everything. Now, does this guarantee you're going to win every single time? Yes. You know why? Because you're either going to win or you're going to be given an opportunity to learn. And that's amazing. That's what I want for you.
Not every deal you ever do is going to work. That's okay. But what you want to be able to do is step back and learn from it, so that you can become a better version of yourself—both at home and in business.
Okay, so what do I want you to do? I want you to stay curious, and I want you to win the day. All right? Win the week. So please share this video. Shop Owners Round Table, second Thursday of the month, 7 PM Eastern. Please share this with your friends. Absolutely free. No sales process to it whatsoever. We are just here to help and serve everybody. That's the timer.
Have a great week and go make some money. We'll see y'all later. Take care. Bye, bye, bye.
