Are you growing or maintaining your business?

Jan. 25, 2017
Don’t confuse being busy and possibly making money, with growth. I will give you my thoughts to define my idea of the difference between growth and maintenance.

Sometimes in the heat of the day it is hard to understand if you are growing or maintaining your business. Sometimes the difference between growing and maintaining is often a thin line as you work through the daily struggles. Have you ever asked yourself if you worked on your business or did you work in your business today? Again, in some cases, it’s a thin line.

I have talked about setting goals, establishing best practices and training the last couple of articles, so now it’s time for an article about regrouping.

As you look back through the year, were you able to make progress in your business? I’m not talking about dollars and cents. I hope everybody made more money in 2016 than in 2015. I’m talking about progress in your business. Do you feel more comfortable about your success or were you stressed all year long hoping you would exceed your 2015 sales figure?

If you stressed, what was it about? Your cycle time? The insurance company scorecards? Aging technicians? Industry changes? If those were some of your stressors, you are not alone. Those concerns are common throughout the collision industry.

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So back to my original question. Did you grow last year or just maintain your business? I ask that because even though some see a thin line, others are not aware there is a difference. They were busy all year; they made a little more money so they must have grown their business. However, that might not necessarily be true. Don’t confuse being busy and possibly making money, with growth. I will give you my thoughts to define my idea of the difference between growth and maintenance.

When you are maintaining your business, you are reactionary in most cases dealing with things as they occur. When you are growing your business, you are pro-active, preparing for industry changes and developing processes to eliminate reactionary, busy activity. If you are just getting by, reacting to what the day brings you, there isn’t much left to prepare for your future or grow.

When I talk to people they tell me they know they need to change, but in their mind change takes time. Realistically it does take time that they don’t have because they are being reactionary to the day’s events. None of us can stop time but I’m going to ask you to stop, take a deep breath and look around to see how you can change your direction.

Find a quiet spot, get out a yellow tablet and make a list of the things that stressed you out last year to help you develop your thoughts. Once you have created a list, cross off the things that you feel you do not have any control over leaving the items you can wrap your arms around.

Once you have your list of controllables pick three things to work on -- don’t try to work on the entire list, just your top three stressors. Now pull three sheets of paper off your yellow tablet and label each with one of the three stressors. Review each item and list the things you can do to correct the stressor as well as the people who can help develop the resolution. I can almost bet you will feel some relief from the stress just by writing things down.

Use your people to help with the resolution. You didn’t create the situation yourself, so make sure you employ those near the stressor to correct it and take ownership of the new process. As you work through the top three stressors and begin to eliminate some of the issues, go back to your list and start working on another one. I would caution about working on more than three at a time or you will be right back to maintaining rather than growing.

So why all the concern about whether you are growing or maintaining your business? Because the collision industry has changed drastically over the last 10 years. It’s been changing for more than that, but I think we all can agree we have seen a lot of changes in the last ten 10 years. If you are just maintaining your business, it means you  probably have not kept up with the industry changes. So, take the time now to look over your business and begin making the systematic changes so you can work on your business moving forward.

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