Your MVP (mission, vision, purpose will be your guide and strength as an owners. One of the challenges as an auto shop business owner is that you make a lot of decisions each day.
Various sources estimate that an adult makes about 35,000 remotely conscious decisions each day. As your level of responsibility increases, so does the number of choices you are faced with. Assuming, that most people spend around seven hours per day sleeping that makes roughly 2,000 decisions per hour or one decision every two seconds.
As a business owner many of your decisions will have long-term effects on your business and others. You may even want to turn off the day when you go home. Decision making can lead to fatigue and burnout. When that happens everyone from your customers, team and family are affected. Burnout will change how you show up and affect your business success.
Benefits of good decisions
Decision making is a skill. A skill you can develop and improve. The goal being to make better decisions more quickly and being confident with the decisions you have made. Imagine what better decision making will do for you, your team, business, and family. What challenges will you be able to overcome?
- Attracting, developing, and retaining top talent
- Working well with customers, suppliers, and vendors
- Having a business that not only survives challenge but thrives on the other side of it.
- Creating work-life fulfillment that works.
Build you decision making skill
It starts with your MVP: Mission, Vision, and Purpose. I know to many, dedicating time for this may seem at first as time you don’t have. I promise you it is worth it. Skip an hour of TV or streaming one night and work on it. It will be one of the best hours you spend investing in yourself. This is R.O.E. (return on effort)
Start with your purpose
Why do you own a business? The magic is in this seven-layer deep exercise. Many will start with reasons that most people say about having a job. To pay off bills or achieve a specific income level. Those things can be accomplished by a job. You do not have to own a business. So why do you own a business? When you dig deeper and keep asking yourself why after each answer, you get to the core reasons. Over the years when I asked owners why they own a business, here are some of the deeper responses.
- “I felt obligated to carry on our family business.”
- “I wanted to do it better than my past bosses.”
- “Someone told me I couldn’t do it.”
Then as they go seven-layers deep, finally they would get to some form of:
- “I want to be in control of my future because I never felt in control growing up.”
- “I want my family to count on me, because in the past people didn’t believe in me.”
- “I want to provide opportunities for my family and team that I didn’t believe I would ever have.”
- “I want to help people in our community by doing what I’m really good at.”
When you do this exercise, you will find that your purpose is bigger than you. When you get to that point, your business has an advantage over your competition. People can align with a purpose that is bigger than them and want to be part of it.
When I did this exercise years ago, I realized that the automotive industry was seen by some as unprofessional and I knew many smart people (owners) who I admired and respected in the automotive industry.
My purpose: To honor those before me who paved the way to auto shop business success.
Mission, Vision, Purpose, and Culture
When I speak with shop owners/leaders many realize that their shop culture evolved over time on its own. They didn’t intentionally build it. It’s not because it isn’t important. It’s because they are busy putting out fires. There’s a lot to owning a shop and because family and friends may not understand, it can be isolating at times. Taking the time to discover your mission, vision and purpose brings clarity to owners.
Culture starts with you.
You are the foundation of your business. You are in control of more than you know because you are capable of more than you realize.
- Start with core values.
- Vision – 12 months out.
- Assess your culture now.
- Track your leadership progress.
“We change our behavior when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing. Consequences give us the pain that motivates us to change.” – Dr. Henry Cloud & Dr. John Townsend
For Tony and me our relationship was important to both of us. We were building our dream together. As we grew so did our business and our purpose. At first, we saw ourselves as a resource to our community, then it extended to our team and industry peers. Finally, as resource to the next generation coming into the auto industry. Helping them see it as a viable career option. We became involved with activities that supported each of these parts of our business.
Auto Shop Owner/Leader Monthly Think Tank
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