ATTITUDE by Mike Lee Management Success!

Mike Lee
Co-Founder
Management Success

It is amazing how much your attitude affects the results you get in business. In an auto repair shop, the owner’s attitude directly affects sales, gets mirrored in the attitude of the employees, and attracts or repels customers. A good attitude can carry you over even the worst setbacks. But a bad attitude also tends to gain momentum. When business gets bad, it has a tendency to get worse if your attitude goes bad with it, which causes the business to get worse, which causes your attitude to get worse.

A few years ago I was called to consult with the owner of a transmission shop that wasn’t doing well. The owner was depressed. He blamed the economy for his troubles and believed that nobody had any money. He was doing about half the business that he had been doing a couple of years earlier. He didn’t know what to do to improve things.

I got right to work attacking his attitude. “With your lousy attitude, it’s no wonder business is so bad!”

I asked how much business he was currently doing each month. He said that he was doing about $20,000 a month. I asked him how many other transmission shops there were in his area. He told me that there were six other shops that did nothing but transmission work. After some rough calculations, we figured that there was about $200,000 a month in transmission work being done in his area, which was down from about $400,000 two years earlier.

Then I pointed out that his REAL problem was that he wasn’t getting enough of the business that was there.

I asked what his “break-even point” was. He said that if he made about $21,000 a month he’d be able to pay all the bills. I asked how much business it would take to really make money. He said about $27,000 a month. We figured out that all he needed was to get about two more big jobs a week to be really profitable.

Then I gave him my four-question Attitude Test:

1.  Do you come in to work later than you used to? Do you want to go home earlier because it is slow?
2.  Do you assume the customer is not going to buy or doesn’t have the money instead of taking the attitude that he is going to buy and you are not going to let him out of there until he does?
3.  Have you stopped doing a full road check on each car and stopped using a diagnostic road check form and a complete checkout on the rack because you know he doesn’t have any money?
4.  Do you set your daily target and weekly target and go after it?

He gave all the Bad Attitude answers (“Yes” on #1, #2 and #3, and “No” on #4) and, with a bad attitude, proceeded to tell me it was all impossible and nothing could be done about it. Then I broke the news to him.

I told him that it was easy to get two more jobs a week if he had the right attitude. I set a target for him to sell a certain dollar amount, enough to be profitable, for each day of the next week and gave him several other things that I wanted him to do.

The following week, he did about double the business of his average week. I asked him how much of the business was due to the difference in his attitude. He admitted that he got three jobs that he wouldn’t normally have gotten, ALL BECAUSE OF AN IMPROVED ATTITUDE! (By the way, he is currently averaging about $27,000 a month.)

But there is another, perhaps even more common way in which the owner’s attitude affects his income. Your attitude directly affects how your employees respond to you and the amount and quality of work they produce.

I used to start each morning in the shop by having a small meeting with the employees. I would go over what we had to accomplish for the day and what I expected. If we were busy, I’d tell them, “I don’t want anyone standing around–I expect things to happen!” If things were slow, I would say, “When everything is done and the shop is cleaned up, then you can relax.” If I needed extra effort from them that day, I would tell them this so they knew what I needed. If it was going to be a just a normal-flow day, I would take a few minutes to make them laugh and then tell them to get to work. No matter what, I made sure to set a positive tone for the day.

If it wasn’t too hectic, I would also make a point of going out into the shop once in the morning and once in the afternoon to talk to each guy and see how it was going, to make him laugh and to keep him pointed in the right direction. The effect that this creates is amazing. Some owners don’t realize how many employees are willing to work hard simply to get an “ATTA-BOY” from the boss.

When your attitude is good, you’ll remember to communicate with your employees and acknowledge the good work they do. When your attitude is bad and you only complain, it drags everyone and everything down.

Attitude is a big factor in success. If you’re tired of feeling bad or if you’re not accomplishing what you want to, maybe it’s just an attitude problem. If so, go ahead and give yourself an ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT–a “check-up from the neck up.”

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We talked to three different owners to find out the difficulties they had in their shop before they attended the “How to Increase Your Profits” seminar. Here’s what they told us:

Peyton Knight
Knight’s Automotive
Ledgewood, NY

Dino Di Giulio
Body Best Collision
Sonoma, CA

David Saline
2nd To None Svc.
Moriarty, NM


Q:  What was happening in your shop that prompted you to go to the seminar?

Peyton:
For me it was lack of control in the shop and not knowing where to turn to for the answers.  I would be with a customer and the techs would just be standing around.  I would finish selling the job, then would walk out and ask why they weren’t working on cars. They would say, “Well, I don’t know what to do next, boss.”  And I would explain to them what needed to be done next with every car. “Well, I don’t know how to fix this one, boss, what do I do now?” they’d say, or “Well, I’m waiting for a part, the part’s not here yet.”

At the end of the day everyone would leave and I’d be stuck there working on cars at night.
I could fix a car alright, but I just didn’t know where to turn to for the answers of how to run my business. I knew for sure this wasn’t the way to do it.

David:
The reason we went to the seminar in the first place was that Management Success was able to completely describe our shop operation without even being there. I was doing service writing, being the mechanic, outside sales, managing. I was doing everything and was working from 14-16 hours a day.

I’d spend most of the morning writing up service, getting the customers checked in, and then the afternoon I was writing estimates, doing phone calls and trying to get parts ordered—all while trying to work on vehicles at the same time!  Then I would make sure the customers that had to be done and gone by the end of the day were finished. Then I worked on everything else from 5pm to 10 or 11pm at night trying to keep up with the work. And I did have two other techs working with me.

I had no time with my family, I spent all my hours up at the business and all I was making was mechanic wages.

Dino:
I just needed help. I was at my wits end. I was not in a good place health-wise, I wasn’t in a good place mentally, very tired when I got home every day—especially on those days when we were really busy. We weren’t organized, that’s the simplest way to put it. My shop was very clean, but organization wasn’t one of the things that was in place. I was the owner running all the time from the front to the back. And if I added a new employee it seemed like things got worse. We were getting busier and busier and I just didn’t know how to deal with the workload like an owner should. 

I was tired of chasing my tail and a friend had done the seminar and told me that it was great, he really got a lot from it. And this was someone who owned multiple shops. So—I went to the seminar.

Q: How was your point of view changed about what was going on in your shop after you went to the seminar?

Peyton:
I sat there for two days at the seminar trying to figure out how the speaker knew every single thing that was going on in my business!  How did he know all the problems I was having?  If he knew that much about what was going on in my shop and he’d never been there, then obviously he knows his stuff about running a shop. When I sat with the consultant to go over my business analysis you get with the seminar, he really broke it down for me. Between the speaker, the consultant, and talking to the shop owners who had actually been to the seminar before I realized there were real people out there with real shops that changed their business with the seminar. I could believe it. I got the confidence that Management Success would be able to help me repair my shop. And they did!

David:
After I heard everything the seminar speaker had to say and the seminar was over I realized I had to make some changes in the shop or we weren’t going to make it.

One of the first things that we did was improve the organization and work flow system in the shop. We had a system before but it was all verbal, whoever was doing the job did all the details verbally, we would end up doing the invoice with the customer standing in front of us. Sometimes we could only guess what should be on the invoice, and who knew how much we were losing there!

Now all the billing is done before the customer gets there. The Service Writer keeps track and everything is double-checked as it goes through the system. We also have Quality Control as part of our service now, to ensure everything is running smoothly before the customer is called.

I was able to get off the floor and was no longer working on mechanical stuff. I’m spending more time doing outside sales, bringing in new customers. Now I come in at 9 a.m. I’m off by 5 p.m. I have my weekends off and if I choose to go out of town I can just pick up and go and the shop runs itself, nothing to worry about.

Before Management Success the business was running me completely.  I was at its mercy. Whenever customers showed up or called, I was on call 24 hours a day. I was in the shop more than I was at home. There were many nights I spent sleeping in the shop because it wasn’t worth my time to go home to sleep.

Now WE run the business. What a difference!

Dino:
After the seminar, I looked at my business differently. I started on the road to getting things organized, putting systems in place, making people accountable for their area. It’s as simple as that! I didn’t see the shop as a problem anymore. Before, I would go home after a long day and just go “holy crap,” you know? I mean there were days when I wished I had never gone into work. At the seminar, I was given this “toolbox” for my business and I knew I had to open it up and use it and fix my shop.

I had things I changed right away, including putting the correct work flow in the shop to handle the jobs. Putting everything in writing instead of being verbal was the first major shop policy that I put in and boy did that help, cause I was probably the worst of all at putting things in writing!

It was a change for my business, but also a personal change.  Because of all the things I learned from that weekend at the seminar and after, my entire life changed. It changed the way I look at a lot of things for the better and the shop is now the best that it’s ever been.

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A Bad Week, by Robert Spitz, Management Success!

Robert Spitz
Snr VP of Business Dev
Management Success!

Recently, a shop owner was venting to me about the “bad week” he was having. He was not really interested in running his shop anymore. He just wanted to coast along until he could sell it, so he could do what he really wanted with the rest of his life.

When I say he was “venting,” it was worse - he was furious! Earlier that week, his lead tech had been into a Ford block and had managed to sheer off the head of a bolt. So, the tech got a bolt remover and sheered the bolt remover as well! That is when the tech ran out of ideas and gave up. The owner, who is an excellent tech, stepped in. He removed it, re-threaded it, and finished the job - bang, bang! Boy, was he ticked off about all this. This incident was not the only thing that had gone wrong during the week, but it was the one that drove him over the edge.

Here is the truth. The entire incident was a direct assault on what he was trying to accomplish. He hired a tech that he thought - in other words, hoped and wished - could do good work. He wanted to slide along as an owner. He definitely did not want to be there, but he had to be there; otherwise, everything would fall apart. Like a ball and chain, he felt he not only had to be at the shop, but he had to have his head under the hood. In his eyes, several things crashed in at once - a very bad week.

This shop owner is a super individual, definitely worthy of the best possible life. So, after I heard this I cut straight to the heart of it all and asked him what he really wanted to do with the years to come. He first apologized for venting and then eloquently outlined some excellent dreams.

He said his time spent thinking about visions of a better future was the only thing helping him get by with a work situation he sometimes hated. But there was an unworkable fantasy in the middle of all this, and I knew it would block his dreams if he did not tackle it. He was sick of sheered bolt removers, but he was even more tired of employees who sheered off bolt removers! He still had a shop and he still had employees, but in his mind, he was done with all of it - and there he sat.

Quite frankly, this adds up to more than a bad week. 

I could not help him with his week, but I could certainly help him with his future.

He needed to learn how to get others to do a good job. An owner’s primary duty is to get others to get the work done. This is easy to say, but it takes tremendous skill. That, alone, would change his life in a big way. Yes, he could do an excellent job himself. That is an exceptional starting point in any activity. If you cannot deliver the goods, then what matters? 

Here’s the bottom line – many shop owners are great techs. They will say (and they are often dead-right about this) that they are the best tech they know. However, they need to be able to say “I make the best techs I know." When they can truthfully say that, from that point forward, their life will change fast. Many things will not change for a repair shop owner until they can make that one thing happen.


It is not the end of all bad weeks, but it is the beginning of a bright new future. Now, here is my question to you: Can you make the best techs you know?

At Management Success! we can show you how. Then, the new game can begin.

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I'm Sure I'm Making Money, So Where Is It? By Mike Lee Management Success!

Mike Lee
Co-founder
Management Success!

One of the major problems facing shop owners is the fact that they spend everything they make. Even when the business is expanding and they are doing fairly well, they seem to have problems accumulating money.

One of the least understood areas of the business has to do with MONEY! Very few people know how to accumulate money and live within their means.

This is amazing, since one of the major benefits of going into business is to make more money. Yet a great many shop owners had more money to spend when they didn't own anything and worked for someone else.

Most of the money-related problems in the business come from not understanding how to handle and control money, both in the shop and at home.

No Matter How Much I Make, It Never Seems to Be Enough!

Over the years, I've observed an interesting phenomenon where the business grows and yet the owner is unable to take more money out of it. Eventually the owner quits expanding the business, because even though it has doubled its gross sales, the shop is making less and less money!
 
It is not unusual for businesses to be grossing over a million dollars a year in sales and not have enough to pay the bills!

The solution is to learn the correct way to accumulate money despite the bills and all the reasons why it can't or shouldn't be done. Otherwise, the business will spend every dime and have nothing left over.

My Accountant Says We Owe Lots of Taxes, So Where's the Cash?!

Most shop owners were trained as technicians, not as business people. So when it comes to understanding the financial statements given to them by their accountants, they haven't a clue. Unfortunately, a good many accountants don't either. There are tremendous confusions regarding balance sheets and profit and loss statements.

An example of this is a shop in the Midwest owned by two partners who were told by their banker that they were doing really well and should borrow the money to expand. After they borrowed $198,000 and then found that they weren't making any money, the banker wanted them to sell off their personal stuff (houses, etc.) to pay the note down.

After becoming a Management Success! client, they paid off $40,000 of the debt in 8 months, except now the banker says they're not showing any profit and should go buy inventory so that "the financial statement will look good."

He advised them to go back to the way they were doing it two years before. If they had followed this advice they would be out of business and have no homes!

Their accountant gave them similar information and said they were "not doing it right." (Oh! By the way...they have a new banker and new accountant!)

What shop owners don't understand about financial statements can result in them following bad advice and potentially going out of business. The solution here is to get trained on how to read and understand financial statements!

Sales Are Going Up, But Expenses Are Going Up Faster!

It is very common for shop owners to see their sales increase dramatically as a result of learning to do some marketing and advertising. However, in the course of expanding, their costs can go up just as fast. What is happening here is the owner tends to concentrate on the shop rather than the money.

Part of the process of changing from being a technician or service writer to an executive who runs the business is the realization that an executive must put his attention on THE MONEY! Often, the owner of the shop doesn't know exactly where the business is at in terms of financial matters, and doesn't have the ability to get key data necessary to make good business decisions.

Most owners are shooting from the hip when it comes to the financial numbers. Too often, they leave this area for others to handle. As a result, they are never sure what is really happening, because in the owner's mind, it ain't his job!

NEWS FLASH!!! One of the primary jobs of a business executive is to control the money!

We Make Just About What We Need!

Another common problem is shops that are doing "okay" but never seem to get the full potential out of their business. Often this is because when the business starts to do well, the owner tends to relax.

A common trait among business owners who are at the top of their game is that they don't relax. The key to really getting the most money out of the business is to keep the pressure on and do the right thing at the right time. I also recommend that you never let employees, service writers, or the production department know exactly how well you're doing, or they'll relax too.

The Secret to Getting the Most Money Out of the Business

The real secret to getting the most money out of the business starts with the shop owner and his ability to control the money! The difference in getting 20% out of the business vs. 35% is in the office, and in controlling the checkbook.

A shop owner should know where the business stands at all times, and be able to know everything about the money coming in and where it goes. The successful executive is at least a week ahead in planning, fully understands the purpose and the use of financial statements, and is able to guide the accountant instead of being totally confused by him or her.

Ultimately, the shop owner is responsible for making sure the company is solvent, making LOTS of money and putting LOTS of it away for emergencies, and having a plan to get everything paid off.

Take control of your business; learn what you need to know to guide the business into a strong financial position and personal prosperity, it is your job, but Hey, it's ONLY money ... YOURS!!

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Organization By Lisa Shomo Management Success!

When I walked into Steve McNamara’s general repair shop in Huntington Beach, CA, I got a sense of order and organization. It is clean, the staff knows what they are doing, no one is frantically searching for parts or paperwork, the manager is clearly in charge and has control of both the front and the back. The staff is very happy and eager to get their job’s done. Steve (pictured right) can leave his shop every night knowing they’ve done a good day’s work. He can return home unburdened with the problems that often happen in an unorganized shop.

Having a bad day at the shop can lead to a miserable night on the home front. Situations such as a problem customer, bad debts, or financial losses can end up bringing everybody in your life outside of work down a few notches.

If a husband and wife work together in the business, they’re likely taking their arguments to the dinner table, sharing the stress with the rest of the family or hashing it out in front of the customers.

Or are you a shop owner who gets home late in the evening, doesn’t get to sit in the bleachers for his kid’s game, or is just plain tired all the time?

Perhaps your thoughts are constantly back at the shop—thinking about all the things that you left undone, or need to do when you open up the next morning.

There is relief for the stressed-out, tired, overworked shop owner—organization.

Organization for your shop means owning a shop that is well-run and profitable. A shop that is completely organized will continue to stay organized the next day, and the day after that. Worry will never follow you home from the shop. Your family and home life stay happy; your shop stays organized and profitable.

Getting organized can require some motivation. Here’s an example. Years ago, you asked that special person out on a date. And they said yes! Before the date, you washed the car, pressed your favorite shirt or bought a new one, found out what food they liked and made reservations at the best restaurant and left early enough to pick them up on time. You planned it out and organized enough of the details so the night would go perfectly.

In your shop, suppose you have an investor or important financial source coming in for a visit. You might get your shop super clean and tidy with everything put away in its place. You would also ensure your staff looks presentable with new uniform shirts and everyone has their best foot forward.

Organized businesses are valuable and worth more money. It’s true in lots of little ways. A crisp operation inspires trust and respect. Customers always notice when a shop is running efficiently. When everything is designed to flow smoothly, work becomes easier, things get done quicker and you have more free time. This can spill over into your home life. Money spills over too! Having a truckload of cash doesn’t necessarily make a happy home, but it can sure help. A well-managed, tightly organized shop makes a lot more money than one that is not. You can bank on that.

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