Scraping By Month to Month? How Ben Got Off the Tools
Ben McSparron is careful about how he describes where Automech in Warrnambool started, and the carefulness is the point:
"Before joining the Workshop Whisperer team, our business was running okay, just scraping by from month to month, really."
Running okay. Scraping by. Both, at once, in one sentence.
That is the position most shops are actually in. Not a crisis, nothing obviously broken, and no room at all. It is the hardest state to leave, because nothing is burning badly enough to force a change.
Why "running okay" is the most dangerous place to be
A shop in trouble gets attention. The owner acts because they have to.
A shop that is running okay gets none, because every week there is something more urgent than fixing the thing that is merely adequate. So the owner stays on the tools, the systems stay in their head, and the business runs at exactly the level one person can personally hold together.
That level is the ceiling. Not the market, not the town, not the labour pool. The ceiling is how much one owner can carry, and no amount of effort raises it, because effort is what is already holding it up.
Being stuck on the tools is the mechanism. Every hour you spend producing work is an hour not spent on the things that would let the business produce work without you, and those hours never appear spontaneously. They have to be taken.
What he changed
A lot of systems put in place, which is where it always starts.
Reporting on KPIs: productivity, efficiencies, financials. Numbers reported regularly rather than reviewed at tax time.
An A-team around the business, which Ben is specific about: not just the shop staff, but the accountants and financial advisers. The people outside the building who decide whether the numbers mean anything.
Quarterly retreats to go deep and set a game plan for the next quarter. A plan with a horizon short enough to finish.
Leadership and mindset work, which he raises himself without being asked:
"It's not just business like side of it. It's the actual mindset as well. Really getting you as the owner to be a leader."
Ben has been at this for about three years, in the Million Dollar Mechanics Boardroom.
Watch: Ben tells it himself in a bit over two minutes.
Where Automech is now
Seven employees. Gross profit and net profit have both grown.
And the outcome he leads with:
"I have more free time in the business now to actually work on the business instead of being stuck on the tools."
Free time in the business. Not free time away from it, though that follows. Time inside the week to do the work that compounds.
What a quarterly game plan looks like
The retreat is not a motivational exercise. It produces a short list.
You take stock of what the last quarter actually did, name the handful of things that would move the business furthest in the next hundred days, and then break those into work that lands in somebody's week. Not forty items. A few, chosen deliberately, with somebody accountable for each.
The reason the horizon matters is that a year is too long to hold and a month is too short to finish anything structural. A hundred days is long enough to put a system in and see whether it held.
And the KPI reporting is what makes the next plan honest. Without numbers, each quarter starts from a feeling about how the last one went. With them, you start from what happened, which is usually different from what it felt like in the middle of it.
Which part of this sounds like your shop?
If you would describe the business as running okay and also as tight, you are exactly where Ben was, and "okay" is the thing holding it there.
If nobody outside the building looks at your numbers with you, you have no A-team, and your accountant filing a return once a year is not the same thing.
If you are on the tools most of the week, your mechanics workshop has a ceiling set by your own capacity, and it will not move until you do.
Questions auto repair shop owners ask
What KPIs should a workshop actually track?
Ben names three families: productivity, efficiency and the financials. Hours sold against hours paid for, what each job returns, and whether the profit and loss says what you think it does.
How do I get off the tools when I'm the best technician here?
By accepting that being the best technician is precisely why the shop cannot grow past you. The first step is usually hours protected in the diary, defended like a customer booking, before anybody is hired.
Three years sounds like a long time.
It is, and it is honest. Seven staff and grown profits do not arrive in a quarter. What does arrive early is knowing the numbers, which changes decisions immediately.
What is the point of a quarterly retreat?
Distance. You cannot design the business from inside the week, and a hundred days is long enough to finish something real while still being close enough to see the end of it.
Is leadership really part of this?
Ben raises it unprompted, which tells you something. The systems only hold if somebody is leading the team to work to them, and that is a different skill from fixing cars.
Who should be on my A-team outside the business?
An accountant who talks to you across the year rather than filing once, a bookkeeper who keeps the picture clean enough to trust, and somebody looking further ahead than the next tax bill. Ben names getting those people as part of what changed, which is easy to skip because none of them work in your building.
What to do tonight
Pick three numbers and write down where each one currently lives: hours sold against hours paid for, profit on your last ten jobs, and what the business actually produced last month.
If any of those answers is "I'd have to ask the accountant" or "I don't know", that is your first KPI and your first job.
If you want to compare notes with owners doing the same work, we run a free Facebook group called Your Profitable Auto Repair Shop. Come and join us.
Where to go next
- The numbers to check every week
- How to measure technician efficiency and productivity
- How to build a shop that runs without you
- Why am I busy but not making any money?
- Who is the best business coach for auto repair shops?
Our clients are named auto repair shop owners, from automotive workshops and garages across five countries, on camera, telling you what changed.
More on this topic: all Performance 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. A service advisor is usually the first hour you get back.
- Over $50,000 a month? The Engine Room, with one on one coaching on demand from a business coach who is a current or former auto repair shop owner.
