WHAT DOES FREEDOM MEAN TO YOU?
By David Rogers
I know we’re half a year away from the day where we spend the most time thinking about freedom, the 4th of July. But as we head into the holidays, freedom of time, freedom from stress, and even freedom from chaos are as important as ever.
After all, when do we have more time to enjoy our freedom than during the holidays? Or when are we more trapped by the freedom we don’t have…working late hours, missing family gatherings, worrying about your shop?
Speaking from personal experience, being a shop owner can feel like the least free position in the shop. And after you do everything the experts say in their seminars — you hire, you train, you delegate through systems and through employees — and you still can’t get the results you want, it can feel like the opposite of freedom.
I know what that feels like. How it seems like you’re on your own. Like you’re the only one in the organization that is trying to fix it all.
I used to picture my shop as a big lumber wagon, where I was the only one strapped in and pulling us forward. Most of the employees were in the bed of that wagon, kicking up their heels, along for the ride, and laughing as I struggled to move ahead. And I even pictured a few employees out back behind that wagon, digging in their heels and trying to stop us from moving entirely.
I hope this doesn’t sound familiar to you. But as somebody who has owned a shop for 40 years and who spent the first 26 of those years suffering and struggling and failing, I know from experience that being a shop owner often feels helpless. It’s easy to feel jaded like you’ve lost your dream and your vision.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
At the heart of all of the fears and frustrations is the real freedom we need as shop owners: freedom from fear.
Fear can be pretty paralyzing as a shop owner. Fear of not knowing what’s wrong. Fear of not being able to pay the bills.
If you don’t know what’s wrong or what’s coming, it’s hard to begin to know where to start.
Worse, it can lead to shooting blindly, wasting time and money as you try every solution you come across to try to find answers.
In my 40 years of owning a shop, the undeniable lesson I’ve learned is this:
Freedom from fear only comes when you can keep score and know if you are winning every day.
That means measuring the right numbers accurately, aiming for the right benchmarks, and paying attention to whether you’re hitting those benchmarks on a daily basis.
Why does it all stem from here?
Freedom of time only comes when you have a team that is trained, measured, and held accountable.
Freedom from stress only comes when you know all aspects of your shop are performing well every day.
And freedom from chaos and messes and micromanagement only comes when your team has the right policies and procedures in place and can hold your team accountable for following them daily.
In other words, freedom starts with measurement, training, and accountability.
This is good news for a shop owner because it means you have the ability to destroy fear on your own.
You have the power to make real, sustainable changes in your shop that will make 2013 your best year ever.
All you need is a tool to help you measure the right numbers, hold your team accountable, and train them to use the right policies and procedures.
There’s a question in all of this: how is this different from the ideas they teach in seminars that don’t work?
Measurement and training and accountability aren’t a quick fix — which is why they’re different from what you find at seminars.
These things have to be done every day, by everyone on your team…
But the result is an end to micromanagement, and end to chaos, and an end to fear.
How do I know?
This is what we do — and what our clients do — every day to make real, sustainable changes in our businesses. I created the RPM ToolKit for my shop, to measure and track the right numbers and hold my employees accountable for the right benchmarks.
It’s meant that I can manage my shop completely remotely and still know what is happening every day.
For our clients, the RPM ToolKit™ has meant an end to the fear. They know where their shop stands each day.
They know where the problems and bottlenecks are located in their business and have targeted solutions for fixing them. And they have empowered employees who know what needs to be done each day — and how to accomplish them — so that the owner is free from having to micromanage.
The RPM ToolKit isn’t the only solution. After all, I started out using spreadsheets that my team updated daily.
But the RPM ToolKit is the only solution that combines the measurement, training, reporting, accountability, and marketing tools that David Rogers and I have created into a single tool.
Whether you decide to go it alone with spreadsheets or to use the industry-leading RPM ToolKit, the same thing is true: measurement, training, and accountability are the only sustainable way to free yourself and your shop of fear.