The Best Auto Repair Shop Owners Play Hurt!

Playing Hurt by Rick White, President 180BIZ

 What I want to talk to you about what I'm calling, “Playing Hurt.” I want you to play hurt. Here's why. I guarantee you are not putting your full effort into what you're doing right now. There is something holding you back like your list, you need a tech, you need an advisor,  you’re behind on your bookkeeping or you’re this, or you’re that, or you don't feel good. Whatever the case is, stop waiting for the perfect storm before you start moving forward. I know, life happens. Here’s my story. We (my wife and I) left our home in Virginia about three weeks ago in a hurry. We had a family emergency up in New Hampshire. We got up there in one day and got things taken care of.

Not long after we arrived in New Hampshire, we find there's a family emergency in Virginia. So, we drove through the night last Wednesday night and got back to Virginia to taken care of things. They were painful situations. And then to top it off, and I'm not complaining, I'm just giving you an example I'm having some significant issues with my left knee. So, as you can see, it would be easy for me to just give up, easy to wait until things get better. It would be easy to say, “I can't do this until…” But that would be putting the cart before the horse. You're telling yourself a lousy story. This is not about perfection. It's about doing your absolute best every single day. Stop waiting for everything to be perfect. Stop giving up on your dreams when things aren't going just right.

I've been on a weight loss thing now for a while and I've been going up and down a bit lately.  But I decided I'm not going to let my knee dictate the energy that I bring. I'm not going to let the emergencies that we've had to deal with bring me down to the point where I'm not at my best. Understand best is different than perfect. Perfect is an illusion created by the devil to rob you of your dreams. I'm just going to do my absolute best today. That's all I'm ever going to ask of myself and of anyone else. And guess what? I'm not going to apologize to anybody for it. I will do my best. And if I can walk off the court of today saying, “Rick, you nailed it. You did good” I don't care what anybody else says. I will tell you three things to do to make this better.

1. Reset your expectations.  I'm not going to go out and walk a couple of miles today because my knee hurts. There's something wrong with it. I need to take care of it. So, I'm going to reset my expectations. There are some things I can't or shouldn't do right now. There are some things that I shouldn’t attempt to do or expect to do right now. If have four techs equal in skill and then you lose one, your sales expectations should drop by 25%. Your expectations should drop by 25% until you replace the tech.  Otherwise you and everyone around you will get frustrated.  They’ll want to avoid you like the plague. So reset your expectations, but you still want goals. You still want something that's going to move you. That's going to push you to be better today. That's going to pull something out of you and show the world that you are growing and contributing and making a difference.
2. Still expect the best.  By having my knee hurt does not give me a bye.  It doesn’t mean that I get to eat crap.  It doesn’t mean I get to stop moving.  It doesn’t mean I can feel sorry for myself. Pity parties are the smallest parties in the world because there is only one person attending. You can look at what’s going on and give yourself 90 seconds to complain. Then step back and decide what’s great about the situation.  You lost a tech, but he really wasn’t a good fit anyway. Now push for hiring a great tech that feeds your culture instead of draining it.
3. Do something to get better. Get over the suck of the situation and do something about it.  With me, I send an email Friday night to the doctor and am now waiting to hear back about my knee.  We’re dealing with the family emergencies.  We are doing our best.  It’s amazing how much that makes a difference.

Play hurt. Stop making excuses. Stop living smaller than you’re capable of. I guarantee at some level, in some point in your business or your life today, you are dialing it in. You're not showing up and you're not being you. You're not being the best version of you. You deserve better. Your family deserves better. Your team deserves better. Your customers deserve better.

So, I want you to go out and play hurt, reset expectations, do your best. And then do whatever you need to do to get better. If you need a tech, get some ads out there. Take a course on ads. Put them everywhere. Don't go fishing with a hook and a line. With one line, you get one fish.  Go out with a net and you just drag that ocean. You may pull in nine-million different things and only find two or three keepers, but guess what? That’s way better than the “one” you got, if any, from one line and one hook.

God bless. Have a good week and go make some money.