I learned to coach before I ever had a single coachee.

Here's how I learned to coach before I ever helped my first F&I manager. Nobody taught me F&I. In my first F&I job in 2012, the only training I got was a graph drawn on a piece of paper. So I built my own feedback loop. 5 minutes after every deal, I wrote down what I said, what they said, what worked, what caused friction. Every 10 deals, I looked for patterns. Then I changed one word at a time. Make it simple. That loop is the entire reason AssureOps even exists today. I coached myself for years before anyone else ever sat in that chair across from me. And if I had to install a coaching cadence at a brand new store today, here are the 3 things I'd lock in in week 1. First, 15 minutes weekly. Non-negotiable. Same day, same time. The cadence is the system. Without it, everything drifts inside 90 days. Second, review 3 deals per session. Not 10, 3. Patterns show up in small samples. Volume simply hides them. Third, Change one word at a time, never the whole script. Most managers rewrite everything when one tweak could have moved the numbers significantly. Save this if your coaching never sticks.