How you’ll know your garage is working: you can take a holiday

When was your last proper break? Not a long weekend with the phone glued to your hand. Two weeks, away, not thinking about the garage.

There are garage owners I started working with who hadn’t had a break for six, seven, eight years. Just think about that.

So when people ask me what success looks like for the owners I work with, I don’t reach for a number first. I tell them: they had a holiday. They got away for two weeks and didn’t worry about their business.

I talk about it in under a minute and a half here.

Why a holiday is a proper test, not a nice extra

A fortnight away sounds like a reward. It’s actually a test. You can’t do it unless a lot of things in the business are already right.

For an owner to switch off for two weeks, they need:

• People in place who are doing the job correctly.
• A team that knows where the business is going, so they don’t need you to make every call.
• Issues that are manageable, so a problem on day three doesn’t land on your sunbed.

If any of those is missing, the phone rings, and the holiday is over before it’s started.

The problems don’t vanish. They get smaller.

Let’s be honest about this. Running a business, you will always have issues. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

What changes is that there are fewer of them, and more importantly they’re manageable. They don’t put more stress on everyone. That’s the difference between a business that needs you every minute and one that can run while you’re away.

The money comes first

The holiday is the outcome. But the benchmark for me, the starting point, is where you are financially. In business we have to make a profit.

So my first step with any owner is understanding, and getting them to understand, where they are financially. Then in 9 months, 12 months or 15 months, we can look back together and say: that’s where you were. Now look where you are.

That number only goes up if three things are in place: the right people, the right customer database and the right processes. Get those right and the profit follows. Get the profit right and the holiday becomes possible.

Someone else lifts the shutter

There’s a picture I always come back to. It’s 6:30 on a Monday morning, it’s dark, it’s pouring down with rain, and somebody has to open that shutter.

For years, that’s been you. Success, for me, is the owner who isn’t standing there anymore, because there’s another team member doing it.

What to do next

1. Write down the date of your last two-week break. If you can’t remember it, that tells you something.
2. Find out where you are financially today, so you’ve got a starting point to measure against. The free Garage Healthcheck is a quick way in.
3. List the jobs only you can do right now. Those are the ones to hand over first.
4. Pick one person on your team who could open up on a Monday, and start there.