Just ONE Thing
Are You Creating, Shifting, or Reacting in Your Auto Repair Business?
Episode 221
with Rick White, 180BIZ
Good morning. Rick White here from 180 Biz. We are a coaching and training company for the independent auto and truck repair industries, and this is my Just One Thing.
So what are we talking about today? We're talking about shifting.
What is this whole shifting thing? Well, I see business—and life honestly—as three possible scenarios.
Okay, so the first thing we can talk about is creating, right? You hear me talk about that all the time. Now, creating is simply determining a future you want to be at, right? To be at when you step back and you think about it.
Creating is nothing more than dreaming with a plan and a deadline. That's all it is. So we have creating, which is amazing. We all want to be creating. I think that's really, really important.
However, the opposite of creating is reacting. Reacting is painful. Reacting is victim feeling—like you feel like a victim, victim thinking.
But what I want you to understand is there's a thing in the middle called shift. Shifting is where you set a dream—which is just a destination and a deadline, a plan—and then you start off on it, acting as if everything is going to work out okay.
And the reality is, it doesn't.
So what I need you to understand is, when you start out creating, you just expect everything, you know, to kind of go your way. To go the right way. That everybody's going to fall in line, things are going to happen exactly the way they should.
And guess what? They don’t.
There are outside influences that you can't control, such as situations, circumstances, events, and other people. You can’t control them. So what happens is you either push really, really hard and try to bend the world to your benefit—to the way you want it, to your view—and in the process of doing that, you start reacting.
So what I want you to step back and realize is that if you keep pushing and pushing and pushing, that’s what we tend to do. If things aren’t working out, what do we do? We tend to push. We tend to push harder. We tend to just grit our teeth, get our shoulder into it, and we just push harder.
So if it's not going to work, pushing harder doesn't make it better.
And this is one of the things I want you to be aware of. Thomas Jefferson once said that we have to be set on the destination—firm on the destination—but flexible on the path. But we don't tend to do that.
What we tend to do instead is we tend to get really, really firm on the path and flexible on the destination when we don't get what we want.
In other words, I set a dream for over here, and when I push and push and push and it doesn't work, then I go, “Okay, I'm not good enough. I'll put it here.”
That's not what we're there to do.
What I want you to understand is that there's something really awesome in the middle between creating and reacting, and that's adapting—shifting. This is what I like to call creating with data.
In other words, here's my plan. This is what I'm doing moving forward. Now I'm getting feedback. I'm either getting feedback from people that they're resistant to it, or I'm running into situations that I didn't envision.
So I really want you to think this through. Instead of pushing harder and harder, let's look at that data and adapt to that data. I like to call it creating with data. So we're still being creative, but now we're getting realistic feedback. There's something we've got to do about it.
The other way I like to look at it: I like to call it proactive reacting.
See, when you're creating, the world's your oyster. You get a million different options. Everything's going to work out—blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's great. We all need to have that. If we didn't have that, then we wouldn't be moving forward.
That creating, that dreaming, that's hope. That's hope we can achieve it, hope we can grow to it. And as John Maxwell once said, “When you have hope in the future, you have power in the present.”
But as you implement that power, you're going to get feedback. Don't deny the feedback. Don't ignore the feedback. Adapt to the feedback.
Okay, you want to be able to adapt. This is going to keep you from reacting. Because when I'm creating, I’ve got this many options. When I'm adapting and shifting, I'm realizing I don't have all these options—I’ve got this many. That's awesome.
But if you keep pushing and pushing and pushing and don't change anything, you're going to find that when you go into react mode, you have one or two options, and it's really, really painful.
Okay, that's what I want you to understand.
See, you could be a shop right now that has a car count issue, right? Some shops out there do right now. And there are two things you can do straight off the bat: you can create and shift.
In other words, I'm not getting the car count that I want, but you know something—I can do some marketing. I can change how I think. You know, I've been hearing about these LSAs, or Local Service Ads by Google. I'm going to look into those.
That's proactive reacting.
Whereas if you just keep letting it get slower and slower and your bank account starts to drop, now you're letting people go. That's reacting. I don't want to react.
I want to be proactive about this. I want to create with data. That's the huge thing here.
So as you're going through this, as you're pushing for what you want and where you want to go, be aware.
What I want you to do is, as you're pushing for your dreaming, your goals—and let me be clear: for you to achieve what you want to achieve, if it's a big deal, it is going to require you to push—but push with feedback. Right? Push with feedback.
Have daily feedback, weekly feedback, monthly feedback, so that you can step back and adjust.
That's what this is all about. It’s that shift. We call it zigging and zagging—same thing. That's all it is. You gotta have this going on.
Here's another one to look at. I was talking to a client this morning about, instead of thinking about SEO today, you got to start thinking about GEO—which is generative… generative EO, right?
What is SEO? Search Engine Optimization. So it's Generative Engine Optimization. Generative because people are starting to use AI for their searches instead of a search engine.
So if you have a marketing company, make sure you're stepping back and talking to them. And that's shifting. This is the stuff that really makes a difference.
It requires you to have your thumb on the pulse of the business.
So the reality is, when I'm creating, I'm out front. I'm leading with vision. Man, I'm dreaming. I got something this big. And then I get some feedback, and I have to adapt. I got to adjust before pain sets in.
Okay, that's the amazing part of this: I can adjust before the pain sets in, or I can just keep pushing and wait for the pain and then react.
So I got a real quick question for you. I want you to step back and ask yourself a couple of questions:
* Are you choosing what you're going through or defaulting to it?
* What would you do differently with better information?
And I'm going to ask you one quick question: Where in your business are you creating, shifting, or reacting?
Pick one area and start to work on that. Because here's the core thing I want you to get across: The sooner you respond, the more options you have.
So I hope that really makes sense to you all. Thank you so much. I appreciate you being in here. Please share this video. Other people need to hear this. They need to know that pushing harder isn't the answer—not all the time. For some people that don't start, it absolutely is.
But I also want to invite you to our Shop Owners Roundtable. If there's something that you've been struggling with, the Shop Owners Roundtable—second Thursday of every month, 7 PM Eastern—free. Join about 50 other shop owners, and let's have some fun talking about it. There's no sales, just there.
Okay. Now the other part of this is, if you love this kind of content and would like to get more of it, you can sign up for our blog, or you can get Pocket Business Genius Webinar Series, which has a monthly webinar—every month live, second Thursday of the month at 1 PM Eastern—and a library of over 85 different management webinars that are really awesome.
Everybody, thank you for being here. I appreciate you. I want you to have a great week. Go make some money. I'll talk to y’all later.
Take care. Bye-bye.
