Episode 219 - The Warts Holding Your Auto Repair Shop Back (and How to Remove Them)

Good morning. My name is Rick White from 180 Biz, and this is my Just one thing. We're a coaching and training company for the independent auto and truck repair shops. So what are we going to talk about today? We're going to talk about warts. What exactly do I mean by warts? So here's the thing. Warts, they're your mindset, your expectations, your focus. Right? Warts come in from your habits.

Because you got to realize that habits are either going to be an ally or they're going to be your enemy, depending upon how they help you. Then you've also got your actions right. You know, like you're short with people or something like that. You're snappy if you don't see that that's a wart. Okay, how about broken systems? Things that just don't work in the shop that you're kind of not looking at or being aware of? You got to understand that these things, man, they kill. They kill trust, they kill efficiency, and they kill culture. That's really the big part of this. Okay, now what do you do with these warts? Number one, you're usually blind to them. You don't see them. You're oblivious to them. That's the first stage of warts. What's the second stage of a wart? You ignore it. You pretend it's not there. Right? It's just a. It's a fluke. We make up stories about these warts, and then finally you deny them. Like you. Like you just push back. Why do we push back? We push back because to admit we have a wart is to get a little bit humble on our identity as. As far as how we see ourselves showing up, whether it be a successful shop owner or whatever the case is. Now.

What do you got? You know, once you understand those blind ignore and deny right bid. Think that through. That's kind of a cool way to think about it. What I want you to understand is why you're blind to them and ignoring them and denying them. Who sees them? Everybody sees them. Your team sees them, and they tiptoe around them. Your customers and clients see them. They go away. Your vendors see them, and they're not there for you when you need them, and your family sees them, too.

So what I want you to understand are these are blind spots. These are things that you do that hurt you and your business.

And these are blind spots. So one of my favorite quotes of all time is, is you can't read the label when you are inside the jar. How Cool is that. And I really believe it's true. You have a certain perspective going this way of how you're showing up and the life that you live and everything like that. But instead of being able to see that, see all around us, we only have this one perspective. And, you know, to know the truth, sometimes that perspective hurts you. What do I mean by that? It means that what you're doing, when you look out of your eyes, like somebody else will look at you and think, oh, my gosh, look at all the cool stuff they do and how they care and all this stuff, and they think you're amazing. But you look out your eyes and all you see is the brokenness and what's wrong with what's happening. So what I want to do is talk to you about this.

I want to take and give you three A's. This is how you're going to deal with these warts. The first A is you got to accept.

Okay, what does that mean? You have to accept that you have warts. We all have warts. So I need you to understand that everybody has warts. It doesn't mean you're better or worse than anybody else. Honestly, I truly believe that when someone can admit they have warts and understand that, right.

They can accept the fact that they have warts. That's amazing, because awareness is the first part of this. So how do you find these? How do you find these warts? And the best way is to ask. The best way is to step back and either ask yourself what is working, what isn't working, and be honest about it, or to ask your team, ask your family, what are you doing that you can't see that's hurting your relationships and everything else. I hope this all makes sense to you. Right? So the first thing you got to do is accept the fact that you got warts, okay? The next thing you got to do, once you accept that they're there, you got to acknowledge them. What do I mean by that? You've got to own them. Don't make excuses, don't blame other people. Step back and understand that the wart may not be your fault, but it is 100% your responsibility to fix. Okay? So what you want to do is acknowledge it, own it, okay? You can get upset about it. You go through all the stages, that's fine. But if you want to make the wart go away, you've got to be able to own the wart, acknowledge the wart, right? So that you can then take action, Right? That's the whole thing. So that you can accept, acknowledge, and then act. Right. What's another way to say that? Right. I just want to. I wanted to. I came up with this address, right? You can address it. That's what you want to be able to do. You want to be able to accept, acknowledge, and address. You want to be able to go back and say, okay, what are. What am I going to do to make this better? If it's something internal, if it's something in the shop, what you want to be able to do is fix it as a team. You want to be able to step back and say, hey, what do you think is hurting us the most right now? What do you think is preventing us from becoming the best that we can become? Start that thought process with your team and then ask for their help. I need your help. So what I want you to be able to do is step back, recognize you have warts. What are some of the warts? How about. How about things aren't going the way you'd like them to go? You're shorthanded. And here it is five months later, and you are still shorthanded. You're still tolerating the same subpar performance from a team member that you could not and should not be doing. Why is that happening? It's because it's a wart. It's because you want to deny it, you want to ignore it, or you're telling yourself a story to make it okay.

Don't do that. So here's what I want you to do. First of all, if this video is helping you out, what I would really like you to do is share this video. Please. There are people out there that are struggling and they don't recognize that if they're the cause, they can be the cure. And I need your help to get the message out. Okay? That's first thing. Second thing is we have our Shop Owners Roundtable this Thursday night, 7pm Eastern. Please, if you know somebody that is struggling or needs some guidance or some has. Is going through some tough stuff and they'd like to get together and work this through. Our Shop Owners Roundtable is absolutely free. It's one hour long and we typically have about 50 shop owners in there. I would love to have you there. Okay, next thing, real quick. If you want to get more wisdom like this on an ongoing basis, you can sign up for our Pocket Business Genius webinar series. In fact, I got a brand new one coming up this week. Okay. And I'm really excited about it. So if you're in the if you're already joined up, be there. It's going to be awesome. Okay, so what I want you to be able to do is she'll put the link in for that as well and basically you can have me anytime you want. Okay, now step back. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to accept that there are that you do have warts. Number two, I want you to acknowledge, I want you to own them. And then number three, I want you to address them, make them go away. So your homework for this week is to or your challenge is to step back and sit down with your team and identify one wart. I want you to sit down personally and identify one wart.

And then I want you to do something about it. Okay, everybody, that's the timer. I want to say thank you for being here. I want to say God bless. Have a great week and go make some money, everybody. Thank you. Take care. Bye bye.