Auto Repair Shop Owners Run Their Business in One of Four Ways

Which Way Do You Run Your Business? by Rick White, President 180BIZ

In this episode, I’ll talk about three things.  Well, it’s actually four ways you can run your business.

At first, I thought there were three ways, but this morning when I was thinking about it I thought of one more.  So, let's talk about the worst way.

1. Just getting to the end of the day. That is the absolute worst way that you can run your business because that's not thriving. That's not growing that is merely surviving.  You just want to get to the end of the day. If you're in that mode you are wasting your time. You are wasting your days, your weeks or months or years. I wish I could tell you how strongly I feel about that.  Richard Flint says every day we have a choice. We can either hop out of bed, roll out of bed, or fall out of bed. Which are you doing when you're getting to just the end of the day? Typically, you're just falling out of bed.
   
   
2. The second way is waiting for something to get better. This is not good if you are waiting for something to happen. You become a spectator and a victim when you're waiting for things to get better. This is a huge problem. Think about it. Many people are waiting for the pandemic to end or they're there waiting for the weather to get better.  Or they're waiting for, they're waiting for, they're waiting for. But I must tell you something. If you have a pen and paper, write this down. NO ONE IS COMING! No one's coming to help you. No one is coming to save you.  If you want to make things better, it is up to you. There are 10 words I learned from Brian Tracy. If it is to be, it is up to me. That is such an important thing to understand. So that is the second worst way to manage your business is waiting for something to get better, waiting for your business to get better, waiting for your life to get better, and waiting for your relationships to get better. You're a spectator and a victim. Life isn't standing still, life is moving. If you're waiting, you're dying. If you're waiting in a relationship, your relationship is dying. 
   
   
3. The third way of going after things in your business, growing your business, running your business is to look for the big wins. It’s when you're going to look for these grand gestures like these big lottery-type wins, and you're waiting for those or looking for those aggressively all the time, you're looking for the quick score, the quick win. And that is another issue because you're tripping over opportunity every single day. While you're looking for this massive way of getting better, it doesn't work. In that mindset, you're going to jump from one get rich quick scheme to the next get rich quick scheme to the next get rich quick scheme. I see shop owners doing it all the time. It's not some grand gesture that is going to fix your business. This is in business and relationships. It’s not cleaning the whole house that’s going to fix a relationship if there's a problem between my wife and me.  It doesn't work that way. 
   
   
4. And the best way to work your business is to set a goal. Set a destination that you want to get to, and then make incremental improvements, incremental steps every day towards it. It's a lot less sexy than the grand gesture, but when you're taking incremental steps every day, you get to see what's working. You get to see what's not and then you get to refine it. You get to you get better. And then before you know it, it’s turned around and you'll be amazed at how much further along you are.

So, I'm just going to ask you real quick out of these four, getting to the end of the day, waiting for something to happen, looking for the grand gestures, or making incremental steps every single day toward a goal that you've determined, which are you doing?  I think that is a really great question to ask yourself. And if you've been doing any of the first three, I'm going to beg you to please set a destination. It could be for the week. It could be for the month and then start working towards it.

Thank you very much, God, bless, stay safe, and go make some money.