Episode 242 - Practice Beats Knowledge in Auto Repair Shops

Good morning. My name is Rick White from 180 Biz, and this is my just one thing for this week, something that I teach a lot that I haven't really ever talked about. Here is what I call the learning loop. What I mean by that is you don't feel like you're ready to start something yet. You don't know enough, so you get some more information, and then you start feeling like, okay, well, I know a little bit more, but I still. I'm not quite right there. What I'm seeing is shop owners. I see shop owners devouring podcasts, YouTube videos, audiobooks, books, training, and just, you know, just grasping for that silver bullet, that one thing that they can do that's going to make all the difference in their business. And you know what actually happens? Nothing changes. You get stuck in what I call the learning loop. This is where that learning feels productive. It feels like progress, but it's a false sense of progress. The danger here with the learning loop is its motion. Without movement, the knowledge piles up, but the results stay flat. What I want to do is I want you to understand that learning without applying what you learned is just fancy entertainment. It's entertainment with better branding. And that's not okay. Why do we stay stuck there? It's because practice feels so bad at first. Practice is ugly, uncomfortable, and slow. And if you're the leader, very humbling, especially in the beginning. You're gonna be awkward, it's gonna be ugly. You're gonna stumble, you're gonna fall. Your team's gonna see you do this while you figure out application of what you've learned in real time. But that discomfort, it's not a sign that you're doing it wrong. It's proof that you've stepped outside of the learning loop. And that's exactly what you want. If what you're doing today doesn't feel uncomfortable, you're probably still consuming learning instead of practicing. And I think that's really important to understand. The second thing about practice, you know, there's this old saying that what? Practice makes what perfect? But it doesn't. Practice doesn't make perfect. Practice makes permanent. And whatever you or your team repeat on a consistent basis, good or bad, becomes the standard in your shop. And here's the thing. When you have random or inconsistent or rushed practice, it hardwires those things to poor habits. The truth is, I want to talk to you about what doesn't work, and it's hard to talk about. We have had clients who weren't successful. They came into coaching, but they didn't succeed. I want you to understand it wasn't because they aren't smart. They planned, they talked about what they were going to do and they learned. But they didn't practice. They didn't apply what they learned. Bottom line, no practice, no performance. You can't wish your way to better results. You can't learn your way to better results. You have to practice. And the shops that win aren't the ones that know the most, they're the ones who do the work. So I want to give you a really simple framework to get out of the learning loop. I want you to write down Shannon, if you don't mind, put it in the notes real quick. First thing, using the word practice, I want you to write these down. First thing I want you to do is pick one behavior. I don't want you to think about a concept. I don't want you to think about changing some system. I want you to work on one observable action. That's all I want you to work on. Second thing are reps over sets. You know when you're weightlift sets are a whole bunch of exercises that you do together to get the whole workout. Reps is when you do one exercise over and over again. You don't want to practice everything. You want to practice the same thing over and over again. Bruce Lee has this amazing quote. I don't fear the man that knows 10,000 kicks. I fear the man that knows one kick. Practice 10,000 times. That is really so important. So first, pick one behavior. Second, reps over sets. Third, apply immediately. Don't wait for the perfect time. What are you going to do today? This week? The perfect time is right now. The Chinese have an old saying. The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is today. Next coach it live. This is feedback on the go. It's simply correcting what's going on without delay. This is where you tell them what they did a great job on. Next time, I want you to focus on what to work on next time. Great job. Next time is what we call it because I need you to understand the lack of feedback. Silence is tacit approval. If you're not giving me active feedback, then I must be doing okay. Next track it visibly this is really important. You've got to get it somewhere where you can track that behavior and see it so that it's everywhere. Everybody sees it, everybody knows it. So we have the pdr, the A, the C, the table. Now the I improve. Don't Go for perfection. Perfection is illusion created by the devil to rob men and women of their dreams. What you want to go for is progress over perfection. Always. You only want 1% better, not flawless. Flawless is a joke. I've been doing thousands and thousands of videos. I have never done one perfect, including this one. It just doesn't happen. Next, I want you to commit publicly. I want you to tell your team what you're practicing. Number one. So accountability is built in. What's really cool is when your team sees you struggle going through that awkward stuff, going through the suck to get to great. That's when it's really, really amazing. And it's even better when you go, hey man, can you watch what I'm doing? If you see something I can do better, can you let me? When you can show that leadership and learning is not you dictating, but it's a back and forth where you're supporting each other. It makes such a difference. What I want you to understand is commit publicly. And then the last one is evaluate weekly. What worked, what didn't. Adjust, don't give up. Adjust. That's going to make all the difference. Here's what I want you to do. Practice your way forward. The performance you're looking for isn't learned, it's practiced. You got to understand confidence. You're never going to get confidence before the action. Confidence comes after. Your competent competence comes from repetition. You gotta do suck, get better, get good, then get confident. Decide what you're going to practice and accept the results. You're either going to decide to practice something new or you're going to continue what you've been doing. And that doesn't work. Please stop learning your way to nowhere. Start practicing your way to high performance. Please share this video if you think anybody could get some benefit out of it. Also shop owners roundtable February 12, 7pm Eastern our next PBG pocket business genius webinar is smart scheduling maximizing efficiency with your schedule. February 12th, 1:00pm have a great week and go make some money. Okay, take care everybody. Have a good one. We'll see you. Bye bye.