What To Do If You're Opening A New Shop (Service Drive Revolution)

The voice of God is here.

The voice of God is gazing upon the massive wreck of the fourth wall that we just broke.

This first question comes from YouTube. I'm opening a Euro shop with a friend who's a veteran in the auto industry ase master tech. Been a shop foreman for a year or so and he believes he knows the recipe for an independent shop to thr thrive. I'm new to the auto industry but doing my best to run front of the house. We use one of the major manager shop programs as first time entrepreneurs and shop owners. What are the most important variables in maintaining a healthy financial environment? And can you list any typical problem areas as well? Thanks. I get a lot of inspiration from you guys.

Nice.

Jeez, you got. I don't suggest you get in our coaching program program and we'll help you. Cuz it's not.

You know, it's like if you were to say what's the most important part of making a movie? It's like, well, you got to have a good script, you got to have a good director, you got to cast the right actors, then the actors got to execute on the script. Then sometimes you film things that you thought were going to be good when you read the script, but they're not and you got to rewrite and. And then once you've filmed in the right locations with the weather cooperating and the right equipment, then you gotta edit it and then you gotta promote it. And it's like what's the most important part? Well, all of it. And so it's really hard to say what would be the most important part because you gotta be able to produce the work in the shop. You gotta have systems to create, you know, to inspect the cars, create more work, communicate with customers, pricing strategies.

All of that marketing, I mean it's a lot of stuff.

Well, the good news is if he's got a partner that has the back end of the shop, the expertise they're taking care of, you need to focus on the front end, take care of the customers and really make those customers feel really good. Communicate with them properly.

Yeah, do accounting from day one. Like do your accounting, right?

Yeah.

The other thing too, I think with that is that a lot of people go into business for themselves and they expect it to be easy. And they don't understand that.

Success has like a gauntlet that you gotta jump through and it's gonna get harder before it gets easy. And you're gonna be tested a couple times right to the point of giving up. And so if you set your mind to that. That it's going to be harder than you think, that you know your top tech's gonna walk out right at the wrong time. Like all that stuff, like.

You'Ll, you'll be more successful if your expectations are that things are going to go right, you're just going to be disappointed and it's going to spin you.

Right.

And if you're easily spun, your energy is going to be spent in the wrong place.

Yeah. My other concern is partnership. Right. Make sure you've got the compensation laid out as far as what happens, have.

It signed and written up, how you get out of it. That's the other thing is if your partnership doesn't work, now's the time to talk about how you exit, how you buy the other person out.

Yeah. If there was ever a time to talk about your thing about never assume a social contract, it's when you're in a business partnership with somebody like you can't be. You can't over communicate that either. That you've got to make sure that everything's laid out and it's very clear and there's no decisions to be made at the time when everyone's all emotional and things aren't going like they're supposed to.

Yeah. Because then everybody just wants to win.

Yeah.

So if it's pre written out when everybody is, you know, amicable, then those end up being the rules to follow and it makes everything easier.

Yeah. The other thing about expecting that things aren't going to go right is like you almost start to train your mind that when that happens, you kick it into another gear. Going the other direction as opposed to folding up and failing. You're like, oh no. So this is the time to double down and get going and get better. Right. I think that that's so important to be realistically aware.

Yeah. I actually am putting this in some training, the story that we're doing. But I was thinking about there was this time that I left being a general manager and I was buying my own dealership. And there was about a year in between I didn't feel like it was right to work at the dealership I was at and try to buy my own. Like.

Right.

I wanted to be fair to the guy. And so I, I wasn't working. Like I was going to meetings, I was talking to banks, I was talking to manufacturers, I was doing a lot of stuff. I did a little consulting, but I wasn't really working. And so I'd go to Vegas a lot and I ended up in a six month period, making about 120 grand gambling. And so, like, for. For a year, I made my. I never pulled money out of savings because I won gambling. And I would go, like, on a Friday and I would gamble through the weekend, and it was fun. Now, I don't. I don't know that I could make my living gambling if that was my intention. This just kind of happened. But I took it very serious. And I read a lot of books about gambling, and I think business is a lot like that. And so one thing is, like, if anybody's played blackjack, and let's say you're sitting in a blackjack table and you're betting $25 a hand, and you've lost five hands in a row, people's tendency is to pull their bet down.

You need to go up five times.

Yeah. And so the thing that I learned is I'm not going to lose 10 hands in a row. And so if I put 50 and then I put 100, and I just had to pay attention to what the limit was. Right? Right. So if the limit is 500, I want to start with 25, but I'm not going to get to 500 before I win again. But most people start playing not to lose instead of playing to win, and they play scared. And I think businesses like that is a lot of times when we hit an obstacle, what you. What you need to do is double down your effort, Double down your. Your studying the subject, your preparation, your planning. Right. Like people say, oh, I can't hire a good technician. I'm like, well, what have you done?

Nothing.

Put it down.

Well, you got to double down. You got to be better at recruiting, you got to be better at writing an ad. You got to be better at networking. And so the success in business is created by doubling down when things go wrong, not backing off. And the, the other thing is, is you can't go bet $25 a hand if you don't have a bankroll. Part of the reason why one is because I had a bankroll that I could lose for a period of time and double down and get it back. Right. And so you shouldn't go into a business that you don't have the skill set for. If you're not a good leader, if you can't think creatively, if you don't like obstacles, if you don't like challenges, then you can't double down. If a challenge shuts you off and you go home with your tail between your leg, then you probably are meant for business. Right. You Got to have some cojones.

Yeah, absolutely.

And so I just. I don't know. I guess the. The lesson there is life or businesses like blackjack, right?

Yeah.

It's appropriate or craps, depending on how you look at it.

Yeah. Well, yeah, I didn't. I never played blackjack, actually. Rarely. I won my money on roulette and crops. But it's the same, Same.

The same concept.

It's the same. It's the same sort of idea. So I. I think that that's where people get messed up is they. They like, oh, I expect to win. And then they lose five hands in a row and they retreat when what you really have to do is double down. What you really have to do is stick in there. You got to push in. You can't. You can't pull back.

I think, too, one of the things that I. I can kind of read into this is if there's a. Are starting a shop and the technician, shop foreman, partner is going to actually do the work and do all this, I would definitely side with you and say, get a coach right away. Get into coaching right away. And you guys have to extract yourself out of the business because otherwise what you're going to do is build a job for yourself in that box because you're doing the work. And if they don't have the money to bring in the people, the talent to actually run the shop for them and focus working on the business, they could get stuck in that business very fast, and it may not be the business that they want.

Yeah. And if you do a couple things right from the beginning and have that basic understanding of marketing and the financials, you. You have a hard time not succeeding. Like, it's not. You're your worst enemy. It's not the market. You're not a victim.

Yeah.

So good question. Thank you so much for watching this clip of Service Drive Revolution. Now you can catch the full episode on YouTube, iTunes, or Spotify or wherever you consume your podcast. If you have any questions, go ahead and post them in the comments below. Make sure you subscribe and hit the bell icon so you're notified when we post new episodes. I'm Chris Collins, and you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Chris Bulldog Collins. And I'll see you again on the next episode.