Link for AutoLeap: https://bit.ly/3n5qW2MIf you haven’t listened to the other episodes in the series please go back and listen to Episode 39, Series overview, Episode 41 Phase 1, Episode 44 Phase 2Are You happy with the shop you have?What’s Next, expansion into multiple locations?Exit Planning and StrategiesDeveloping Leaders, not managersMaking Employees comfortableIdentifying a potential owner in the businessInsurance in the businessIs your REd Envelope/Yellow Envelope done?529 Plans for your children, maybe one for your employees?Profit-sharing plansRetirement Planning, don’t depend on the sale of the business to fund your retirement.Who holds who accountable, who is taking over for you?To listen to more episodes, make sure and go over to iTunes and or Spotify. Don't forget to rate and review us! Connect with Chris:AutoFix-Auto Shop Coachingwww.autoshopcoaching.comwww.aftermarketradionetwork.com 940-400-1008Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AutoFixAutoShopCoachingYouTube: https://bit.ly/3ClX0aeEmail Chris: [email protected]

AutoLeap Link: https://bit.ly/3n5qW2M1. Women in the aftermarket auto repair industry. 2. Embrace Zoom to meet with clients. 3. Overpay great employees! 4. Know the numbers cold5. Say no more often6. More Content7. Ability to throw out the playbook!8. Pay yourself first9. Remember and share the good, let go of the bad10. Don’t get involved in gossip, shut it down on the spotBONUS11. Don’t let the bad employees run off good ones12. Implement Auto Shop Profits and CashflowTo listen to more episodes, make sure and go over to iTunes and or Spotify. Don't forget to rate and review us! Connect with Chris:AutoFix-Auto Shop Coachingwww.autoshopcoaching.comwww.aftermarketradionetwork.com 940-400-1008Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AutoFixAutoShopCoachingYouTube: https://bit.ly/3ClX0aeEmail Chris: [email protected]

AutoLeap Link: https://bit.ly/3n5qW2M1. Giving to others, making a statement—putting it out to the universe, we live in a world that is louder about negativity and quieter about positivity, 2. Our plan for the year—give monthly3. Gift for January, H.E.A.T. Texas State Chapter4. Others we’ve given to: https://ambucs.org/ , https://warriordogfoundation.org/ give to local needs, if you can’t give money give time. 5. 501c for Auto Repair Shops struggling from Natural Disasters6. Helping others, Gary Vee, Giving without expectation, but donating time without expectations, Don’t join a non-profit board for the networking, do it to actually make a difference in someone's life, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do0gIzPa-f8 7. Donation program for businessAlso, find an episode from Remarkable Results Radio speaking fo Joel Ayers from the Automotive Aftermarket Charitable Foundation Inc.https://remarkableresults.biz/remarkable-results-radio-podcast/e128/To listen to more episodes, make sure and go over to iTunes and or Spotify. Don't forget to rate and review us! Connect with Chris:AutoFix-Auto Shop Coachingwww.autoshopcoaching.comwww.aftermarketradionetwork.com 940-400-1008Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AutoFixAutoShopCoachingYouTube: https://bit.ly/3ClX0aeEmail Chris: [email protected]

Rocket Fuel Chapters 4 - 7 Five RulesAutoLeap: https://bit.ly/3n5qW2MRocket Fuel Assessment: https://bit.ly/32lNxRrRocket Fuel University: https://bit.ly/3GSEt5wFree Copy of Ultimate Guide to Auto Repair Shop Marketing: https://bit.ly/3g9eHhVA collection of episodes on the Entrepreneur Operating System (EOS); the overall components of Rocket Fuel. From the Remarkable Results Radio Podcast. https://bit.ly/3ISwXbqCHAPTER 4: THE ACCOUNTABILITY CHART The Accountability Chart is a supercharged organizational chart that forces you to be intentionally proactive about your structure, rather than reactively adapting a structure to fit your current people. CHAPTER 5: THE 5 RULES You need absolute core alignment in your Visionary/Integrator relationship to harness the power of the unique combination. RULE #1: Stay on the Same Page. This is accomplished through the Same Page Meeting. RULE #2: No End Runs. It’s essential for the Visionary or the Integrator to not impede the effectiveness of the other. RULE #3: The Integrator is the Tie Breaker. The basic rule of thumb is that the Sales Leader owns decisions on Sales issues, the Operations Leader owns Operations issues, and so on. RULE #4: You Are an Employee When Working “in” the Business. If you are a Visionary or an Integrator and also an Owner, you must recognize that your role as an “Owner” is very different from your role as an “Employee.” RULE #5: Maintain Mutual Respect. As a dynamic Visionary/Integrator duo, you must truly respect each other. CHAPTER 6: FINDING EACH OTHER Choosing an Integrator entails hard work and takes time. Before you begin this important search process, you must make sure you are ready to commit. Coach Chris CottonAutoFix-Auto Shop CoachingVisit Auto Shop Coaching website HERE.940-400-1008Email Chris: [email protected]

As you get into today’s episode, Phase 2- Repairing YOUR Auto Repair Shop, you may know someone in your network who can benefit from what I’m talking about today, please take time to share personally or through your social network.” AutoLeap Link: https://bit.ly/3n5qW2M1. Growth Mode–Productivity tracking, What’s your shop capable of doing? 2. Employee Handbook–a mechanism to enforce the rules overall3. Employee Job Descriptions–Accountability4. Employee Pay Plans5. Marketing and car count, Determine if you need more cars to reach our shop's capability or just do a better job with what we already do. 6. Auto Shop Profits and Cash Flow, Controlling your money, Identifying the percentages for your business, setting up bank accounts, making an allocation chart, making sure the accountant is on board-if not time to find another one. Start making allocations–slow and steady wins the race. 7. Identify Key Employees, some can only get you so far, realize who those are and replace them if necessary. Keep the great ones! 8. Training for Everyone! It’s your job as an owner to elevate the abilities of everyone in the business. Don’t be afraid of training them and having them go somewhere else…..You can’t live/run a shop in fearCoach Chris CottonAutoFix-Auto Shop CoachingVisit Auto Shop Coaching website HERE.940-400-1008Email Chris: [email protected]

Does everyone remember the receptionist on ghostbusters?AutoLeap Link: https://bit.ly/3n5qW2MWhen I started thinking about this episode I went back to an old slide deck that I put together and I want to share some random bullet points from it:1. What I see most often in small businesses is that we rush to hire and then fail to follow up with employee training. 2. We put new hires on the phone not knowing if they know how they talk to customers. Why aren’t we following up on what the new hires say to the customers? 3. By not praising and rewarding them on what they did right we are teaching and training them poor customer service. Your employees don’t know what they don’t know!4. Locate and identify small problems before they become bad habitsIdentify training and operational weaknessesIdentify opportunities to serve customers more effectively than the competition5. Link incentives to performance—don’t punish people for doing things wrong, you coach them through that part of things, reward them for doing right. Great ways to identify this is by Mystery Shopping and Auditing phone calls. https://bit.ly/3ze561SThe only thing that separates your business from others is customer service, that type of service doesn’t happen by accident. Train yourself and your employees to excel and the results will amaze you! Steps for Giving Great Phone:1. When you hire, make role playing the phone part of your hiring process. 2. On the employees first day give them the script for answering the phone and then have them practice it. 3. Then only have them answer the phone for an amount of time and do nothing else! A lot of times we just put people in their seats and say here's the phone, the pos good luck and then we get upset because they don’t know how we want them to do it, because we never told them….4. Next we present them with the other scripts and practice, then start letting them work with customers in that way, all the while, recording, coaching, and rewarding them doing the right things. 5. One last thing, when you go through the role play on how to greet a customer, have them pretend it’s their long lost buddy from high school, great big smile, the feeling should be how the hell you've been and I can’t believe I’m seeing you now…………Your job should be fun, make it fun for the customer and the employee and you will be blessed in so many ways you can’t even begin to imagine. Shout out to New Zealand! Coach Chris CottonAutoFix-Auto Shop CoachingVisit Auto Shop Coaching website HERE.940-400-1008Email Chris: [email protected]

Chapter 1-The VisionaryIf you are a visionary you are entrepreneurial, a creator, and most likely you founded your company. You are an Idea generator, You have lots of ideas. As an idea generator, you probably have 10 new ideas per week and sometimes maybe 10 per day. Many of them might not be good and or not fit with the company’s focus, some might even be dangerous but in the end, some are absolutely brilliant! Those few great ideas keep the business growing and as the person that has/creates those ideas you are priceless to the business! Chapter 2- The IntegratorIntegrator is one who integrates, they harmoniously unite the major functions of a business, they are the conductor and keep the train running on time, they also create focus, accountability, and alignment. An Integrator’s role and skills are unique, they are the glue and the visionary’s right hand, they beat the drum and make sure everything gets accomplished they are referred to as the inside man or inside woman. Do you have an integrator in your organization? Are you the Integrator? Chapter 3- The RelationshipThe 2 roles are a complementary force coming together to form a system where the whole is greater than the parts, one without the other is doomed, together they create and the interaction evolves and they transform each other via complement, I want you to think of a rope with two twisted strands. Click here for more information about AutoLeap: https://bit.ly/3n5qW2MCoach Chris CottonAutoFix-Auto Shop CoachingVisit Auto Shop Coaching website HERE.580-491-3519Email Chris: [email protected]

Repairing Your Auto Repair Shop - Chris Cotton Weekly Blitz 041You've realized it's time to make a change and now it's time to put in the work/rise and grind! you didn’t get here overnight!1. Start at the beginning: Income Statement-This is how we check the margins, true scorecard for success! Has to be organized in a way that is readable, 5 areas of Income: Labor, Parts, Tires, Sublet, Shop Supplies. You have to have offsetting categories for COGS. Email me for a link of a sample Income statement. YOU can’t run your business without one. 2. Hire a bookkeeper, or do it yourself but you should never be more than 24 hours from your Income Statement is up to date. My preference would be someone (YOU) updating it daily. If your current accountant and or bookkeeper can’t do that then fire them.3. Do you have a great POS system? You need to have great reporting. Time management, ability to interface with the customer and a DVI, need to be able to see your margins in real-time and on the work orders/estimates and be able to adjust. 4. Profit Margins in order, parts matrix in your POS, labor rate that pays your people well and lets you make a profit.5. Tracking and measuring, KPI’s–ARO, Average Estimate, ELR, LHPRO, Technician Productivity6. Working on Processes and procedures: Huge List, you should be able to hand someone on their first day all procedures pertaining to their job. If you don’t have these things then you don’t have a mechanism to hold employees accountable. Most employees want to be held accountable and want others to be held accountable. Time Off Policy & Procedure Blog Post: https://bit.ly/3zi2aRN7. Starting to actively coach your employees and hold them accountable to the processes and procedures. RO Audit Process: https://bit.ly/3sJEPY48. Identifying the right people to keep in the business and the people that aren't going to be able to continue with the business.9. Phone Skills & Coaching—Phone CAll Auditing: https://bit.ly/3ze561S10. Sales Skills11. Pay Plans for Service Advisors, Technicians, must be easy to understand and explain to their significant others! Coach Chris CottonAutoFix-Auto Shop CoachingVisit Auto Shop Coaching website HERE.580-491-3519Email Chris: [email protected]

Looking Back on 2021 - Chris Cotton Weekly Blitz 0401. Growth of Business and industry2. Chris' Personal growth as a coach–almost 10 years as a coach, 19000 hours, Kimberly and I have traveled over 25,000 miles this year. 3. ServiceUp4. Tire Profit Gateway5. Peer Groups-Open to others in the automotive industry6. What you allow is what will continue. 20217. Don’t put a wishbone where your backbone should be! 2022 8. Wise words from Ashlan Kaplan, Not changing things we are improving, improving from where we were this year and where we ended, and improving things in 2022.9. Health & Wellness……………-------------------------Coach Chris CottonAutoFix-Auto Shop CoachingVisit Auto Shop Coaching website HERE.580-491-3519Email Chris: [email protected]

Our Sponsor:https://autoleap.com/?utm_source=chris-cotton&utm_medium=partnership&utm_campaign=chris-cotton-websiteShow Notes: One quick note before we get started. Every shop is unique in its situation and what takes one shop 6 months to complete may take another 3 months and or 16 months. That's why we believe as a company there is no cookie-cutter plan and progression to get you from where you are to where you want to be. If you have a great handle on 'C, D OR E' then we can catch up and master 'A & B' and then move to 'F' and so on. In future episodes, we are going to go into greater depth in all of the topics that I am going to talk about today. Pre-Phase, Acknowledging you need help, you ask for help and receive help. Phase 1, You've asked for help, now what? Getting profits in place and processes and procedures. Phase 2, Growth Mode- Do we need more cars, fewer cars? Marketing and planning. Phase 3, Time to put a bow on it! Are we expanding? Are we happy with the shop we have? Exit Strategies and planning. Phase 4, Hero rides away or Margaritas on the beach? Everything has worked out and it's time to move on. You must remember, you can't do any of this if you don't ask for help!Coach Chris CottonAutoFix-Auto Shop CoachingVisit Auto Shop Coaching website HERE.580-491-3519Email Chris: [email protected]

It is OK to say NO!1. Establish your proper boundaries and policies -- early and well2. Just say “no"3. Offer an alternative.4. Be assertive, but remain courteous.5. Don’t respond immediately6. Know your value.7. Practice your response.8. Be more selfish.9. Use the ‘Broken Record’ technique. Coach Chris CottonAutoFix-Auto Shop CoachingVisit Auto Shop Coaching website HERE.580-491-3519Email Chris: [email protected]

Do You Have a Yellow and Red Envelope? - Chris Cotton Weekly Blitz 037. Chris talks about the Importance of planning the continuation of your business in case of a short-term or life-changing moment.

Slow Down to Go Faster - Chris Cotton Weekly Blitz 036

Gratefulness - Chris Cotton Weekly Blitz035

Behaviors That Limit Success - Chris Cotton Weekly Blitz 034Six behaviors that prevent us from achieving the success we desire. Behaviors that are limiting our success in life.Jealousy Self-Limiting Beleifs Living in the Past. Living Life in the Rear View.GossipGiving Up Too Soon. Throwing in the Towel.Negative Thinking    

Hitting Your Five Iron - Chris Cotton Weekly Blitz - 033Gaining your ConfidenceWhen you know you can

Dealer Parts - Forget List Price - Chris Cotton Weekly Blitz 03Chris crashes the list price paradigm on dealer parts and for that matter on list price in generalHe's discovered that there are some great dealer service advisors ready for hire

Let's Talk Employees - Chris Cotton Weekly Blitz 031Chris explains his 20-60-20 Rule as it relates to your team.

Fix the Stops and Starts and Become More Productive - Chris Cotton Weekly Blitz 030

Alignments as a Profit Center - Chris Cotton Weekly Blitz 029

Health and Wellness - Chris Cotton Weekly Blitz 028. Chris talks about mental health and keeping fit. He shares his personal goals and challenges all shop owners

Making and Keeping Appointments with Yourself - Chris Cotton Weekly Blitz 027

The Notebook Technique - Eating the Elephant - Chris Cotton Weekly Blitz 026

Four Phases of an Auto Repair Business -Chris Cotton Weekly Blitz 025

Repair Orders as Legal Documents - Chris Cotton Weekly Blitz 024

Collaboration - Weekly Blitz with Chris Cotton 023

Relationship Building - Weekly Blitz with Chris Cotton 022

Heads Up and Eyes Open -Weekly Blitz with Chris Cotton 021

Shoot For the Stars - Weekly Blitz with Chris Cotton 020

Can Do's and Must Do's - Weekly Blitz with Chris Cotton 019

Customers ARE Willing to Pay for NO Surprises! - Weekly Blitz with Chris Cotton 018

Are You A Thermostat or Thermometer - Weekly Blitz with Chris Cotton 017

To-Do Lists - Weekly Blitz with Chris Cotton 016

Couples Working in the Business - Weekly Blitz with Chris Cotton 015

Own the Dash OTD - Weekly Blitz with Chris Cotton

Lost Lettuce - Chris Cotton Weekly Blitz 013

Be the Leader YOU Wish You Had! - Weekly Blitz with Chris Cotton 012

Continuing Role of the Auto Shop Owner - Chris Cotton Weekly Blitz 011

What You Allow is What Will Continue! - Weekly Blitz with Chris Cotton 010

Price-Value-Perception - Weekly Blitz With Chris Cotton 009

Green Lights - Weekly Blitz with Chris Cotton 008

Tires, Round and Profitable - Weekly Blitz with Chris cotton 007

The 300 Percent Rule -Chris Cotton 006

Getting Hiring Right - Weekly Blitz with Chris Cotton 005

Practice Active Coaching - Weekly Blitz with Chris Cotton

Frictionless Customer Service - Weekly Blitz with Chris Cotton