Can't Sleep for Stress About Your Workshop? How BB Garage Changed It

You change it by building systems and then actually following them, including holding yourself to them. That is what Bronwyn and Bodie Geck did at BB Garage in Ipswich, and it took them from month-to-month chaos to a record month and a four-day week for everyone.

If you are lying awake not knowing whether this month works until it is over, you are not disorganised. You are running without a system, which is a different problem and a fixable one.

What it was like before

Bronwyn's own description is the most honest summary of a struggling mechanics workshop I have heard:

"The way I described my business was a hot mess. It was month-to-month, it was chaos, it was pray, hope for the best."

Pray and hope for the best is a strategy a great many owners are running without calling it that. The month ends, the figures land, and you find out afterwards whether it worked.

What they changed

They built systems, then followed them to the letter. Bronwyn is specific that the building was not the hard part:

"The most of all is just following all the systems that we created to achieve those goals and following them to a T, holding our team accountable and holding ourselves accountable."

Read the end of that again. Holding ourselves accountable. Most owners will hold a team to a standard long before they hold themselves to one, and the team notices which is which.

Then they went to a four-day week with the whole team. Not the owners sneaking a day. The whole shop.

Watch: Bronwyn and Bodie tell it in under three minutes.

Where BB Garage is now

A record month in 2023, and a four-day work week running across the team.

What Bronwyn names as the result is not the month, though. It is this:

"Implementing a four-day work week with our whole team and being present with my family and most importantly my kids. It's given me total freedom away from the business."

Total freedom away from the business is the thing most owners actually wanted when they started, and almost nobody gets by working harder.

Why month to month happens

Nobody chooses to run a shop month to month. It is what happens when a business has no forward visibility.

You know what is booked this week. You roughly know what went out last week. What you cannot see is what the month will produce, because nothing is measuring it as it happens. So the only honest answer to "will we make money this month" is the one Bronwyn gave: pray, hope for the best.

That is also why it costs sleep. Uncertainty is harder to carry than bad news. An owner who knows the month is short can do something about it in week two. An owner who finds out in week five can only absorb it.

Systems change that in a way that is not obvious until you have them. A system is not primarily about efficiency. It is about producing the same result reliably enough that you can forecast it. Once the shop does the same thing the same way, the numbers become predictable, and predictable is what lets you plan a four-day week or a holiday without gambling.

Which is why the order matters so much. Systems first, then the accountability to follow them, then the freedom. Taken in any other order it does not hold.

Which part of this sounds like your shop?

If you cannot say whether the month worked until the month is finished, that is the before.

If you have systems written down that nobody follows, including you, that is the middle, and it is further along than most people think.

If a four-day week sounds impossible because of what it would cost in turnover, it is worth knowing that other shops have done it without losing any.

Is this one shop getting lucky?

No, and that is worth saying plainly, because the most common reaction to a story like this is that the shop must have had something going for it.

We have been doing this for thirteen years, with more than 10,000 auto repair shops across five countries, and generated over $175 million in additional profits for the owners we work with. BB Garage is not an outlier in that group. They are a fairly typical version of what happens when an owner stops improvising and starts running to a system.

What makes Bronwyn and Bodie worth reading is not that they are exceptional. It is that the starting point, month to month, chaos, pray and hope for the best, is where most shops actually are, including plenty that look fine from the road.

Why the four-day week came last

It is worth noticing where the four-day week sits in their story.

It is not the thing they did to fix the business. It is what became possible once the systems held and the team were accountable to them. Taken in the other order it would have been four days of the same chaos with less time to absorb it.

That is the sequence most owners get backwards. The freedom is the result, not the method.

Questions auto repair shop owners ask

How do you get a whole team onto a four-day week?

With systems that hold without you, which is why the order matters. BB Garage built the systems first. A four-day week laid over chaos is just chaos in fewer days.

Doesn't a four-day week cost you a day of turnover?

Not automatically. Other shops we work with have moved and held their numbers, because the constraint on an automotive workshop is rarely the days open, it is what gets sold and billed on the days it is.

What does holding yourself accountable actually look like?

Doing the thing you said you would do on the day you said you would do it, when nobody would know if you did not. That is the whole of it, and it is harder than it sounds.

We're a small garage. Is this only for bigger shops?

No. Smaller shops usually move faster, because there are fewer people to bring along and the owner's own habits are most of the system.

I feel like we're the only ones struggling like this.

You are not, and that feeling is one of the most common things owners tell us. Shops that look fine from the outside are often running month to month exactly like this.

What to do tonight

Write down one thing you have told your team to do that you do not reliably do yourself. Just one.

That is the first system worth fixing, because every other standard in the shop is sitting underneath it.

If stepping back is what you actually want, our 4 Day Work Week ebook shows what it takes.

Bronwyn and Bodie are not an exception. Our clients are named auto repair shop owners, and garage owners across five countries, on camera, telling you what changed.

Where to go next

• How to fix your cash flow
• How to move to a four day work week without losing profit
• How to what systems a mechanics workshop needs first
• How to the numbers to check every week
• How to hold your team accountable without micromanaging

More on this topic: all Systems articles.

Whenever you're ready, here's how we can help.

• Free. Shop Talk, a 30 day reset for auto repair shop owners, and our free resources.
• Under $50,000 a month? Auto Superstars Academy, $997 one off. Your service advisor is where a system either holds or leaks.
• Over $50,000 a month? The Engine Room, where BB Garage built this, with one on one coaching on demand from a business coach who is a current or former auto repair shop owner.