Episode 210 - Take Back Your Time: Make Long Days in the Auto Repair Shop Work for You

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. My name is Rick White from 180 Biz, and this is my just one thing. So what I wanted to talk about is days. And I don't mean confused. What I mean is there are days, right? The days I, I came across this quote. It's the days are long, but the years are short, right? Think about that. That hit me like right in between the eyes when I read that. And I thought, oh my gosh, this is such a great just one thing topic. So what do I mean by that? You know what I'm talking about? You feel those days, they just last forever. They don't seem to ever end, but at the same time, right? The paradox on this is the days seem like they take forever to get through, but boy, the years just happen in a blink. And I'm going to tell you something, the older you get, it seems like the faster they go. I gotta tell you though, the paradox isn't about time perception. It's about how you're living your life as far as it goes with the business and everything else, right? You got this daily grind mentality. And this is where the days feel endless. There's constant interruptions, difficult customers, parts, delays, unexpected problems. Man, it just kind of overwhelms you sometimes. And just a mental load of juggling all this stuff and then trying to think strategically, it just doesn't happen. So what, what does happen is you end up being stuck in reactive mode. And when you're in reactive mode, it makes time just crawl. In the process of doing that, you end up in a situation where you get to the end of the year and you go, hey, man, what did I actually accomplish this year? And you're embarrassed, you're disheartened, because you didn't get anywhere near what you went after. And the biggest danger is you're letting these years slip by without making any real progress. I need you to understand.

Later and tomorrow are not your friends, okay? Later and tomorrow are not your friends. Now, there is a time for that. At some point you gotta stop, right? We.

Should work to live, not live to work, okay? So there are gonna be times when you get to the end of the day, it didn't all go the way it should. It's okay. But what I'm saying is when you let these years slip by and you don't feel that progress, you got to understand that busy doesn't mean productive or fulfilling. That's the big thing. Now, if you think this message is going to help somebody, please share it. We need your help with this. Okay? Also, if you know of a shop that would like to get some coaching, some ideas, we have our Shop Owners Roundtable this Thursday night at 7pm Eastern. Share the link. Shannon will put the link in there and you can share the link. Okay. The other thing we have happening this week and I'm super excited for, is we have a webinar in our pocket business genius. And it's going from chaos to freedom. And it's really cool if that's something you want to see. If you're already in the pocket business genius, I'll see you Thursday. Otherwise, if it's something you're interested in, you can just click on the link and, man, it's super easy. Okay? Now.

How do you deal with this stuff? How do you deal with the long days and the vanishing years? How do you deal with this constant barrage of reacting and at the same time feeling disheartened and just not like you're on a rocking horse. You know, you got a lot of motion but no movement. How do we fix this? I'm going to tell you how. This is the solution. You ready? You got to create three anchor moments. In your days, you got to create three anchor moments. These are moments where you're going to do intentional work on your future, okay? They don't have to be any longer than 15 minutes, I promise. But here's what I do promise. When you start doing them, you're going to start to expand that time because you're going to love being in this mode. So the first anchor moment is that the very beginning of the day. You have to start with intention, right? The business, the life that you want, they're not gonna just happen, okay? You've got to have intention, attention, and finally action to make it happen. But before you do that, you got to have a destination. You got to have a. You know where you're going and you got to have a plan, okay? But you're going to start the day with intention, asking yourself questions that help create a focus. That's the first anchor moment. The second anchor moment you need is I want you to schedule 15 minutes, okay, in your calendar every day. That is super, super important. Okay, Now I want to dig into this a little bit. Some of you are like, oh, I'll just do it today. I'll do it later today. No, you put it on the calendar. You make it an appointment, okay? And you do it every single day at the same time. It doesn't matter how busy you are. Remember, you got to double Focus. You gotta, you gotta react to what's going on today. But then you've got to be able to look out here and create what you want for tomorrow. So what I want you to do is schedule that 15 minute blog. Do it at lunchtime, I don't care. Get a cup of coffee, I don't care. And then I want you to do what you did in college, right? At least I never went to college, but I saw it in movies. If you had a friend over and you were going to have some fun, you would put a sock on the door of the room so that nobody would bother you, right? They knew that you were busy, right? It was like a do not disturb. I need you to have these 15 minutes where it's a do not disturb, okay? Tie it to something you enjoy, grab a cup of coffee, something like that. But then you're not going to just sit at your computer and start chasing shiny balls, right? You're going to go in there, you're going to work on one thing, one thing that's going to help create the business you want so that you can get to the point where you're not reacting all day long. Okay? So first thing you're gonna do is start with intention. That's your first 15 minute block. Start with gratitude. Think about the things you want to get done that day. How you have to show up where you want to go. How do you got it? How do you got to show up to help you get to where you want to go, right? We also talked about when you're going through these things. A couple weeks ago we talked about making sure, hey, this, this, this thing that I'm going through right now, this, this pressure, is it helping me get to where I want to go? If it isn't, man, let it go, right? So what you're going to do is schedule that time. You're going to do that, and then the third anchor moment you're going to make for yourself and you're going to schedule this as well, is you're going to end your day debriefing, you're going to step back. What went great today? What was a win? What did I learn today? Right? These are wins. And lessons. Don't just learn. Don't just learn from your mistakes. Learn from the wins so that you can repeat them. And with the lessons, the mistakes, Right? Those are mistakes. That's all they are, is lessons, right? That's how we learn and get better. What I want you to do, hey, Winston, it's great to have you in here this morning. What I want you to do is step back and adjust, Right? You're not going to get from here to here in a straight line. It just doesn't happen. You're going to go off course. You got to adjust. You're going to go off course this way. You got to adjust. It's okay. But know that that's there. Okay? Now, use your tools. Use apps. I have apps that remind me of the goals that I want to do, the actions I want to take, and they come up at different times. Use alarms, use calendars. But the last thing you need is discipline, okay? You got to do this every day, so recap quick. Number one, start with intention. Number two, schedule 15 minutes. These are each 15 minute blocks. Schedule your 15 minutes and work on one thing to help move your business forward. Doesn't have to be big. Start small. It doesn't matter. Third thing, anchor moment. Debrief. That's my time. Use your discipline. Have a great week, everybody. I'll see you next week in Virginia. Take care. Bye. Bye.