Why most garage owners struggle with the business side: there’s no school for it

Here’s how most garages start. A good technician, working for someone else, decides they can do it better. Or they’re unhappy where they are. So they open their own.

In my experience, that’s 99% of garage owners in the UK. It was me, years ago.

And it’s exactly why so many of us struggle once we’ve got our name over the door. I explain it in under two minutes here.

You can’t go and study to be a garage owner

If you want to become an accountant, you go and study accountancy. If you want to run a garage, there’s nowhere to go.

Mechanics is a very hands-on, spanner-in-hand job. When you’re learning it, you’re learning the car. Nobody teaches you the business. There’s no qualification for running a garage, and no standard you have to meet.

So owners arrive at ownership brilliant at repairing cars, and with no grounding in the part of the job that decides whether they make any money.

Owners become employees of their own business

Here’s what happens next. The technician who opens a garage becomes an employee of their own business.

They don’t manage anything. They carry on doing the same thing they did for years when they worked for someone else. The difference now is that they’ve got the bricks and mortar, and all the operating expenses that come with it.

The best pair of hands in the building is under a bonnet all day, while pricing, people and planning look after themselves. Or don’t.

The business side is a different dimension

Being good at what you do, repairing cars, is not the same as running a business. It doesn’t matter what you’re selling. The business side has a different dimension, and it isn’t about a spanner.

It’s about all the things that come with business training: understanding your numbers, leading a team, looking after customers, marketing yourself. None of it is rocket science. But none of it comes with the toolbox, either.

Why I started teaching it

I was one of those technicians. That’s why I do what I do now.

In the video I say I was the first, around 10 years ago, to bring business training to garage owners in this way. NEEDS: Andy to confirm the wording and timing of this claim before publishing.

If there was something that we could go and learn as technicians wanting to be owners of our own garages, I think the motor trade in general would be a far, far better place.

Andy Savva

Where to start

1. Be honest about how your week splits between working on cars and working on the business. Write the hours down.
2. Start with the numbers. If you don’t know what it costs you per hour to open your doors, that’s the first gap to close.
3. Get some help. My online courses and in-person training were built for owners who came up through the workshop, like I did.