ļ»æJust ONE Thing
Practice Beats Knowledge in Auto Repair Shops
Episode 242
with Rick White, 180BIZ
Good morning. My name is Rick White from 180BIZ. This is my Just ONE Thing for this week.
Something that I teach a lot, that I have not really ever talked about here, is what I call the learning loop. What I mean by that is you do not feel like you are ready to start something, yet you do not know enough. So you get some more information. Then you start feeling like, okay, I know a little bit more, but I am still not quite there.
What I am seeing is shop owners. I see shop owners devouring podcasts, YouTube videos, audio books, books, training, and just grasping for that silver bullet. That one thing they can do that is going to make all the difference in their business.
And what actually happens? Nothing. Nothing changes.
You get stuck in what I call the learning loop. This is where learning feels productive. It feels like progress, but it is a false sense of progress. The danger with the learning loop is that it is motion without movement.
The knowledge piles up, but the results stay flat. What I want you to understand is that learning without applying what you learned is just fancy entertainment.
It is entertainment with better branding, and that is not okay. Why do we stay stuck there? Because practice feels bad at first. Practice is ugly, uncomfortable, and slow. And if you are the leader, it is very humbling, especially in the beginning.
You are going to be awkward. It is going to be ugly. You are going to stumble. You are going to fall. Your team is going to see you do this while you figure out application of what you have learned in real time. But that discomfort is not a sign that you are doing it wrong. It is proof that you have stepped outside of the learning loop, and that is exactly what you want.
If what you are doing today does not feel uncomfortable, you are probably still consuming learning instead of practicing. That is really important to understand.
The second thing about practice. There is this old saying, what does practice make? Perfect. But practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent. Whatever you or your team repeat on a consistent basis, good or bad, becomes the standard in your shop.
Here is the thing. When you have random, inconsistent, or rushed practice, it hard wires poor habits.
The truth is I want to talk to you about what does not work, and it is hard to talk about. We have had clients who were not successful. They came into coaching, but they did not succeed. I want you to understand it was not because they were not smart.
They planned. They talked about what they were going to do. They learned, but they did not practice. They did not apply what they learned.
Bottom line, no practice, no performance. You cannot wish your way to better results. You cannot learn your way to better results. You have to practice. And the shops that win are not the ones that know the most. They are the ones who do the work.
So I want to give you a really simple framework to get out of the learning loop. Write this down.
First, pick one behavior. Do not think about a concept. Do not think about changing a system. Work on one observable action. That is it.
Second, reps over sets. When you lift weights, sets are a bunch of exercises done together. Reps are doing one exercise over and over again. You do not want to practice everything. You want to practice the same thing repeatedly.
Bruce Lee has an amazing quote. I do not fear the man who knows ten thousand kicks. I fear the man who has practiced one kick ten thousand times.
Third, apply immediately. Do not wait for the perfect time. What are you going to do today? This week? The perfect time is right now.
The Chinese have an old saying. The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is today.
Next, coach it live. This is feedback on the go. Correct what is happening without delay. Tell them what they did well. Then tell them what to focus on next time. Great job, next time.
Silence is tacit approval. If you are not giving active feedback, people assume they are doing fine.
Next, track it visibly. This is important. Track the behavior somewhere everyone can see it. Make it visible. Make it known. That is the P, R, A, C, T, I, C, E framework.
Now the I. Do not go for perfection. Perfection is an illusion created by the devil to rob men and women of their dreams. Go for progress over perfection.
You are aiming for one percent better, not flawless. Flawless is a joke. I have done thousands of videos. I have never done one perfect, including this one.
Next, commit publicly. Tell your team what you are practicing. Build accountability. When your team sees you struggle, go through the awkward, and push through the hard part to get better, that is powerful.
It is even better when you ask them to watch you and give feedback. Leadership and learning should be a back and forth, not dictation.
Commit publicly.
And finally, evaluate weekly. What worked? What did not? Adjust. Do not give up. Adjust.
Practice your way forward. The performance you are looking for is not learned. It is practiced.
Confidence does not come before action. Confidence comes after competence. Competence comes from repetition.
You struggle. You get better. You get good. Then you get confident.
Decide what you are going to practice and accept the results. Either you practice something new, or you continue doing what you have been doing. That does not work.
Please stop learning your way to nowhere. Start practicing your way to high performance.
Please share this if you think someone could benefit from it.
Shop Owners Roundtable, February 12th, 7:00 PM Eastern.
Pocket Business Genius Webinar, Smart Scheduling: Maximizing Efficiency with Your Schedule, February 12th, 1:00 PM.
Have a great week. Go make some money. Take care, everybody. We will see you. Bye-bye.
