Just One Thing

The biggest threat to your business is your brain. It's your brain, my brain. It's the biggest threat to each of our businesses. Let me explain why.  Your brain is designed to do two and only two things. The first is to keep you alive. The second is to conserve energy. That's it. It’s a survival tool. What I want to talk to you about is an area where your brain is not your friend. I want you to think about the last time you heard yourself saying, “That's good enough.” Keep listening along to find out how having a Plus One Mentality can help you not only in your business but in life also!

I want to talk to you about the word example. It's really important because every one of us is an EXAMPLE. We are either a teacher or we're a warning. It's not that you're all in or not in or anything like that. That's not it at all. We are both good examples and we're warnings. We all have both within us. This is why I am so against hero worship. Hero worship is dangerous because you put people on pedestals. You're putting fallible human beings on pedestals, and at some point, they will disappoint you. And when they disappoint you, when you feel let down by that person, you end up throwing away all the examples and you label them as bad. If that has you interested and you are wanting to lead by example for your team or just in life.. then keep listening along!

What I want to do is help you with three really simple success hacks that will completely change your business. The first hack that you want to be aware of is how you position things in your brain. If you're looking at something you're going to do and you think, I've got to do this. I don't want to. It's a pain in the butt, blah, blah, blah. What kind of energy do you think you're going to bring to that activity with that kind of mindset? What kind of energy are you going to bring? It won’t be great. It will be lousy, and you’ll most likely complain about it the whole time you do it. It will make your life miserable and everyone around you. Do I have your attention now? Do you want to know what the other two really simple success hacks are?? Well then, keep listening along to get collect all three!

If you got our messages, emails, or texts, you're going to notice that the word of the week is “Crap.” That is actually not the word I wanted to use. I wanted to use the word “$hit.” Brenda and Shannon both nixed the word. So, they said I can use the word “crap” or” poop.” And I said, fine! I’ll use “crap.” The reason I said “$hit,” is to get your attention. What I want to talk to you about is Own Your $hit. And as a coach, that's one of the things that I do is help business owners own their $hit. Do you struggle with owning your crap?  Listen along for tips that can help. 

I really want to talk about the final aspect of invoicing. And I want you to realize it's a contract. Your invoice is a contract. Yes. You're going to get paid. Yes. You're going to have parts and labor on there, but you want to make sure it's complete. You want to make sure it's telling a story. In other words, what was the customer's concern? What was the cause? What was the correction? Was it confirmed? What are any consequences for any declined work documented?  Are we making them aware of those consequences? Follow along to make sure all your i's are dotted and t's are crossed!

I will continue talking about invoicing, but I know, it’s hard to get excited about that. Most people think profit lives on the P & L, but it doesn’t. Profit is reported on the P & L, it lives on the invoice. So far I’ve talked about connecting with your clients and not trying to impress them. And then to be CURIOUS, to make their agenda, your agenda, and to ask questions, to really understand what's going on and to understand what's driving them. And then I talked about CONTROL. How to keep them in control the whole process so that their comfort level goes up.  That makes all the difference in the world. We talked about documenting the CONCERN properly, and then documenting the CAUSE while building the value in what you do. I’ll continue that value building today in two more areas! I know you want to know what those two areas are.. so keep listening to find out!

I’ve been talking about invoicing and how important it is to your business. First, I focused on being curious and then about documenting control. Your invoice is so much more important than we give it credit. So today, what I want to talk about is how to document properly. I’ll talk about two key areas in this episode and more in the next one or two episodes. Be sure to keep listening and see if you are asking the right questions!

This is the second episode where I’m talking about invoicing, the second most neglected area in an auto repair shop. In the previous episode I talked about curiosity. Today I will talk to you about Control. Most of us do not communicate properly with our clients or with our potential clients. It's not that we mean to hide stuff, but we do. Either through a lack of communication, omission, or just hoping and praying they don't realize what we're doing because we're afraid of being called out on our pricing. Most of the time we neglect communicating properly with our clients until it is too late. Be sure to keep listening to make sure it's not too late.

Today I’m going to talk to you about the second most overlooked area in a typical auto repair shop. The first area is your finances, not knowing where you're headed. That is a really dangerous place to be. The second most ignored area is invoicing, your documentation. Neglecting this part of your business is costing you money and exposing you to potential legal action. Over the next four broadcasts or so, I’ll talk to you about your current documentation and how you can improve it to be more successful. So listen along to find out more!

Over the last three weeks, we've talked about effective communication. We talked about a framework that allows you to engage and attract the people that are in your life. The first step is to understand and appreciate. The second step is to identify. Last week we talked about the third step (I massaged this a bit), brainstorming. This week is the fourth and last step - bringing it all together. Spoiler alert! . A great leader doesn't have all the answers. A great leader has a destination. Intrigued? Finish the series by listening to this episode.