As Shop Owner,letting go of control of the shop is still so hard to do

[Joe Marconi]

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[Marksas]

I just try and stay out of their way. I get frustrated when I have purchased tools (software) and they are not utilizing them to the full potential. My team actually does a great job of getting cars done and utilizing the scheduler. I tend to take more cars in when I am there. If someone wants to give me keys I take them and set the expectation. If I load the guys up they get it done. I've come to realize that I just need to set the expectation and get buy in from them, then let them run with it. I write this from a cabin in the Rocky Mountains where I've been for the past week hiking. I just checked the daily numbers and they are above plan for the week, month, and year and I received several great reviews. So I can't complain. I did receive a bad review because of a screw up from the rental car company that made us look bad and I would bet that the manager is already on top of it with the customer and rental car company.

When my manager is out I will hang around more but I just stay out of the way. It's the manager's job to have his assistant and the lead tech handle the day to day operations. I tell them I don't want to fix cars or customers, my job is to fix the business. I trust those guys to handle business and I am actually going to start working out of my home office to make room for some additional employees to support our collision operation. I'll still come in on a daily basis but do the bulk of my work from home. I think this is going to be a little bit difficult for me in that I am used to being there almost everyday. Just last week I moved all of my tools to my house to create space and I haven't worked on a customer car for years so they were just taking up valuable production space. It was still a bittersweet moment to see all my boxes loaded up on a trailer. Working from home will help prepare me for the opening of our new shop this next year where I just won't be able to be at our collision operation and general service operation at the same time.

 

I don't always agree with everything they do and as long as they work within our core values then I am ok with it.