Just ONE Thing
Why Do You Still Work Late at Your Auto Repair Shop?
Episode 282
with Rick White, 180BIZ
Hey, good morning, everybody. My name is Rick White from 180BIZ, and this is my Just ONE Thing.
So let's get started. We're gonna talk about location. Think about this. Almost every vehicle today, whether it's with your phone or an app in the car, has a GPS in your vehicle, and that GPS, in order for it to work, in order for it to be able to tell you how to get somewhere, it has to know where you are, right?
If I'm in Massachusetts, but it thinks I'm in Michigan and I wanna go to California, totally gonna screw me up. And here's the thing, that GPS, it doesn't care how you got to where you are. It doesn't judge you for making a wrong turn. It simply starts with your current location. And I need you to really dig this because your business works the same way.
That's the reality of this, okay? Where are you today? Ask yourself this. Are you happy with where you are? Are you frustrated because you'd be further... you thought you'd be further along? Are you afraid you're never gonna get to where you wanna go? Here's what I really want you to understand. Your location is simply where you are.
It's not who you are, and it's not where you have to stay, okay? You got... but the first thing you gotta be able to do, though, is you gotta be able to accept your location. You can't change where you are until you're willing to acknowledge where you are. I wanna say that again because that's so important.
You can't change where you are until you're willing to acknowledge where you are. Maybe your shop isn't making enough money. Maybe your team isn't working out the way you need them to. Maybe you are working 80 hours a week. Or maybe things are going pretty decent, but you know there's another level to reach.
Whatever your situation is, that's your current location. And here's the thing, you can't change where you are. You can't go back and change decisions you've already made or maybe decisions you avoided. That happens sometimes, too. You can't change what happened yesterday. Kicking your ass and just staring at the mistakes you made, all it does is create regret, and it causes you to focus on the problem instead of coming up with a solution.
But I need you to really understand, I really need you to embrace the fact that you can change what happens next. See, acceptance of where you are right now doesn't mean you approve of the location, and it doesn't mean you have to surrender to it, that you have to stay there. It simply w- means that you're willing to see things as they really are.
You don't have to like it to accept it. So I need you to ask yourself, "Am I seeing my business as it really is, or am I seeing it through my fears, frustrations and God forbid, excuses?" See, where you are doesn't define who you are. Think about how easily you judge yourself based on your results. Your shop is struggling, so you tell yourself you're a bad shop owner.
You can't seem to keep good employees, so you decide you're a terrible leader. You aren't making the money you needed to or expected to, so you start believing you're a failure. But are those things really true? We've talked about this before, right? Every failure that you're having in business, every setback you have in business is just a set of business skills you've gotta learn.
That- that's the truth. All these stories that you make up about who you are, you're a bad business owner, you're a bad leader, you're a failure, those are all stories. What you've done is you've made your location your identity, and that doesn't work. Okay? So you just gotta understand, your results tell you what's happening.
They don't tell you who you are. A shop that's losing money doesn't mean you're a loser. If you got a shop with employee mee- problems, it doesn't mean you're a bad person. It means if something isn't working the way it needs to, and that's something you can address. So instead of asking, "What's wrong with me?"
Start asking, "What's happening? Why is it happening? And what do I need to learn to change it?" You don't need to become a different person, you just need to develop some new or better bus- business skills. So I want you to ask yourself, "Have I allowed my current condition to change how I see myself?" That's super important to understand.
Now, the other thing I wanna just touch base on super quick, where you are today doesn't determine where you're gonna end up. Think about that GPS again. You might be 100 miles from where you wanna go. You might have to ma- ta- you might have taken a wrong turn. You might have headed in the wrong direction, but none of those things mean you can't reach your destination, right?
You just have to make changes. You learn. I have a best friend of mine, and he has a, had an uncle. He has an uncle. He has an uncle that was a millionaire, and in 2008 lost all of it. Took him 20 years to become a millionaire, and people they saw how devastating it was for him, and they looked at them, him and said, "What are you gonna do?"
And he just looked at them and smiled and said, "I'm gonna start over and do it again." What happened? In two years, he was a millionaire again. See, what he did was he took what he learned in that 20 years, and he took all the trial and error out of it because he knew what worked, and he was able to do this stuff.
You gotta understand your current location does not equal your destination. And truth be told, you think you got some growth, and it's amazing. It feels great, but that's not the destination. You could have a setback. That's not the destination. You're gonna lose some money. That's not the destination.
You're gonna have a facility issue. That's not your destination. You just gotta make changes, and your business is no different, right? Your past decisions help bring you where you are today. Your current decisions are shaping where you're going, and your future results will depend in part on what you choose to do next.
But there's a trap here. You don't have to s- to decide to stay where you are to end up staying there. You can get so busy dealing with today, getting to the end of the day without killing somebody, that you never work towards tomorrow. You don't build the business for tomorrow. You can keep doing what's familiar because that's what you know, and before you know it, another year has passed by.
There's more competitors, or their competitors are further ahead because they are changing. You've gotta have a double focus. You gotta have a focus on the business you're doing today to make money, but you also have to have some amount of time, some amount of focus on the business you want to create.
Super important. So I want you to ask, am I making decisions that move me towards where I wanna go or am I simply repeating what I've always done? Here's where it all comes together. You take responsibility for your location without blaming yourself for being there. There's a difference. Blame focuses on what went wrong and who's at fault.
Responsibility focuses on what you can do about it. Maybe you did make some bad decisions. Maybe you ignored some problems that should have been addressed. Maybe you didn't know what you didn't know. You can't change any of that, but you can learn from it, and you can make different decisions moving forward.
Remember, you don't have to be responsible for everything that happened for you to be responsible for what you do next. So stop spending time beating yourself up or avoiding r- being honest about where you are. Start using this time to figure out where you wanna go and what do you need to learn to get there.
Once again, ask yourself, "Am I spending more time judging how I got here or deciding what you're gonna do next?" I just... In closing, I just wanna go through this. Your location is just that, a location. It's not a judgment. It's not a life sentence. It's certainly not your identity. You can't change where you are today.
You can't change what brought you here. But you can absolutely change where you go from here. So here's your just one thing for this week. Take a good look at your business today. Be willing to see it for what it is, without excuses, without judging yourself. Then ask yourself this one question: "What's one thing I need to learn or do differently to move closer to where I wanna be?"
Because your s- location is simply where you are. It's not who you are, and it's not where you have to stay. Don't stay there. That's the worst thing. If you're going through hell, right? There's a song that says, "If you're going through hell, keep moving," right? You gotta keep moving. Don't set up a campsite and start roasting marshmallows.
Don't stay there. The only way it becomes a location is giving up, is not learning to grow from it. If this message has resonated with you, please share it. I hope it really has. It was an important one for me to share with you today. And also, if you're struggling with this, if you've really b- feel like you're banging your head against the wall and just really frustrated, don't know where you wanna go, what to do next, Shannon will put a link in my calendar in the comment section.
Grab a spot. Let's sit down and talk, you and me. No pressure, no expectations. Let's see what's going on.
Everybody, I want you to have a great week this week. I want you to make some money, and I want you to have fun. Take care, everybody. I'll see y'all next week. Bye-bye.
