Auto Repair Shop Owner's Daily Dose 52: Grow Through It

Grow Through It by Rick White, President 180BIZ

 Today I want you to ask yourself a very honest question. Have you been waiting for this to end or have you been looking to grow through it? Do you hear the difference? When you're looking for something to end, you get this “wait and see” mentality.  This is where you pull back a little bit and don’t move forward. But I want you to ask yourself, “Am I waiting for this to end? Am I waiting for something to go back to normal? Or am I growing through this?  Am I looking at this as the new reality where I will adjust and move forward?”

That’s two vastly different energies. Two vastly different focuses. And I'm going to tell you why I'm asking you these questions. It all comes back to what you believe about this situation. Is it a blessing or is it a curse? Is it doom or is it potential? Every bit of what you do gets filtered through what you believe. What do you believe? Who defines normal? Your idea of normal could be completely strange to me and mine could be strange to you. It's okay. Your beliefs dictate what you see in the world. You must understand that.

Number one, your beliefs are completely subjective, and they're based on perceptions.  Your brain is always looking for a cause and effect. When I have an effect and our brain searches for what caused it. So, if it's something we really enjoyed, we want to figure out what that was so we can do it again. If it was something that caused pain, we want to be careful and avoid it. When something occurs, we will subconsciously look around to see what’s unique, recent, or consistent with that feeling.  We will then associate what we see with the pain or the pleasure we felt.

For example, have you ever gotten sick from something you ate?  And now whenever you think about that food, you start to get a little queasy. You probably will not eat that type of food again. That's because your brain associates that sickness with the food. It happens all the time. That's the way our beliefs work. Everyone develops beliefs about certain situations.  And that dictates your focus, your expectations, and your actions.

Beliefs are either a flower or a weed in your brain and you get to pick them out. You get to decide whether you keep disempowering or empowering the beliefs in your mind. It is an amazing exercise to go through.  I keep a running list of my beliefs.  I created the list two years ago and keep updating the list to refine and add to my beliefs.

So, I want you to ask yourself, “Am I waiting for this to pass or am I looking at this as a new reality?”. We’re out of the sprint phase now and have entered the marathon phase. The only way you're going to get through the marathon part of this is to have endurance.  Endurance starts with your beliefs, and then it goes to your focus, followed by your expectations and finally ending with your actions.

Here at 180BIZ, we are actively growing. You're going to be seeing training classes offered.  We will offer half-day, Saturday courses very soon. And we're doing that because we're growing. We must help shop owners all over the country. That's our mission and it's our crusade. We want to help people get better. Before, we were working with associations and going to their events to help spread the word. Right now, we don't have that available.  So instead of sitting back and waiting for it to go back to the way it was, we're pushing forward.

What I’m saying is that you must do things differently now.  You need to start moving forward and looking for those opportunities, however different it might be.  Stop looking at this as a disruption and see it for what it truly is. It's a change. What are you going to do differently? You need a plan to engage and attract people to your business. That's what you need to be working on. Do you have a car count issue or an opportunity issue? Do you have a mindset, stinking thinking issue? It's time to move forward. And it all hinges on your beliefs. So, I'm asking you, “What do you believe is true about this?” You're going to have either positive belief or a negative belief. There's always the flip side.

When they talk about 30% chance of rain. Why don't we talk about the 70% chance of sun? Right now, the U.S. has 16% unemployment. That’s a terrible number. But from a business perspective, that means 84% of the population is working. I can work with that. So, this is what you need to work on. What are your beliefs from this point forward? It's going to make all the difference in the world. Don't just get to the end of the day. Step back, figure out what your beliefs are, and then come up with a plan to grow. You need help with this. Reach out.

Stay safe. Go make some money. Take care. God bless.