How Do Automotive Repair Shop Owners Stay on Track?

How to Stay on Track? by Rick White, President 180BIZ

What am I going to talk about today? Guess what? We're going to talk about goals. Hopefully, you've got some really great goals set up for this year. And the reason I'm bringing this up right now is because right about here is where people lose their goals. This is where they lose their momentum. I want to make sure that's not you. So what happens to our goals? We forget.  It’s that simple. We forget them. So, I want to give you some tips that will help you to always keep those goals in the forefront of your mind each and every day.

1. The first thing I want you to do is every morning, as soon as you wake up, you start with your gratitude. What am I thankful for? Do your devotionals, whatever you're going to do, but make part of your morning routine to write your goals down.  This comes in three parts.

1. Goal: Write down your goal.
2. Reason: Write down why it's important. And let me tell you something. When you're writing that WHY down, I want you to visualize it. I want you to feel that why. It should be a strong emotional why. Something that just gets you right in the gut. That's especially important because that why is the fuel to your success?
3. Action: And then the last thing I want you to do in the third column over. I want you to write down what you're going to do today to move toward that goal.
   That's what you're going to do.

When you write down your stuff, you write down your goal, the reason why and the actions you're going to take. I want you to schedule those actions. I want you to put it in your calendar and say, “Hey, from 9 to 10, I'm going to do this. Or from 9:15 to 9:30, I'm going to do that. Whatever the action is. Or if it's an action that goes through the day, I want you to track it. Now, one of the things that work really well is to print out a little calendar and put an X in every day that you do it. Jerry Seinfeld did this as far as writing a joke every day. You want to be able to show the track. And what happens is when you track it, you see all these X's because you did it each and every day.  You're not going to want to break the chain and start over again.

1. The second part that you need is feedback. Feedback is when you get data back, information back that lets you know how well you're doing. Most people avoid feedback. Why? Because they don't want bad news. They don't feel like they're going to live up to it. So instead of feeling bad or disappointed or upset or regretful, what they do is avoid it. But that doesn't help. Head in the sand does not work. What I need you to do is get daily feedback on how you're doing every day. You should see yourself moving the ball forward, moving the needle forward toward your goal. Goals are not achieved in grand gestures and grand events and grand actions. Goals are achieved on a daily level, by doing something over and over again to master it. That's how you achieve your goal.
   
   Feedback is going to do one of two things for you. It's going to reward or it's going to redirect. When it redirects, you have a choice. You can either go into regret and start kicking your own butt. Or you can go into resolve and do better. Resolve is all about, “Hey, I'm not getting where I want it. Fast enough.” Or” Hey, I'm not, it's not working.” Or “Hey, I'm not doing it. I have to resolve. I have to get back on.” I have to get that resolution that says, “I will do this.” That's what you want. Regret doesn't do any good. Ass-kicking doesn't do any good.  You don't want to be perfect. But you must see how you're doing and have more good days than bad, more days on than off. That's really important.
2. And then here's the third tip. So, write them down, get feedback every day on how you're doing. Here's your third tip. Get an accountability partner. Get someone that is going to hold you accountable for what you say you're going to do. One of the worst things we do as business owners is we don't keep our word to ourselves. I want to do this. I'm going to do that. And we drive home at the end of the night wondering why we didn't do any of it. So, I want you to get an accountability partner.  That might be a coach if you don't already have one.  Find someone that will hold your feet to the fire and you conversely are going to hold their feet to the fire.

So those are the three things to help you achieve your goals and keep that momentum going. We're almost all the way through January. How are you doing? If you're kind of sitting there going crap, I really haven't gotten that much done. I didn't start it yet. That's okay. But you need to start moving forward. So, you're going to write your goals down every morning. And I also recommend you write them down every night. That will keep the goals in front of you. When you write down why that it's important to achieve the goal. It's going to refuel you. And then you're going to decide on the actions you're going to take ahead of time and you're going to schedule them.  Don’t forget to get that feedback. Get that accountability partner and get rockin’. That’s my three simple ideas to help you achieve your goals better than anything.

God bless. I want you to stay focused and go make some money.