zack little
Forum Replies Created
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The most important question to ask before getting the help is: is the owner really ready for change? They are going to make or break any attempt from outside sources to help. My dad signed up for ati re-engineering program and didn’t do a single thing they asked because he assumed out advisor at the time would do the work. Well when him and the advisor got into an argument and he left, my dad was already in the program. I learned a ton from it while he says it was a waste. I knew I needed to change because before ati I didn’t know anything about the car world I came to help my dad. Before that I was breeding reptiles . However he has changed too, just not moving forward but rather slowly sliding backwards.
so it’s really a question for the owner. Are they ready to commit to change regardless of how uncomfortable the beginning might be? Putti nag full trust in the coach to guide you and the shop we’re you ultimately want to be
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Sounds like a case of the “law of the lid” in john maxwells book it says that a business can only grow to the height of its leader, beyond that it will hit a lid unless others have been put in place and allowed to develop the business to greater lengths.
personally I found myself in the same spot except the owner is my dad if you can call me or text I’d be glad to help answer questions with answers that would be helpful as they helped me
714.472.5488
take care
zack
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Great piece it’s important when purchasing to investigate your potential supplier and make sure they back their quality of lift with documentation of what it’s capable of.
cheap lifts are often overrated for weight, they will take a 9k lb lift and sell it as a 12k (the industry requires a lift to support 1.5x it’s listed weight so 9k would mean 13.5k max potential support) lift while also using cheaper welding methods and parts. -
What is your YouTube link? The teaching thing I totally understand. When I started to try and do this I gathered my guys and told them flat out “ look I have not taught these things before and some of the ideas are still even new to me, but if you guys will be understanding and provide feedback it will do what is intended.”
so far it’s been ok I must admit a couple times were I had something planned to teach as the guys and I sat in the office I had to ask them to give me more time because at the time I didn’t feel I could explain it in a way that would translate or make sense. My goal for 2020 is to have myself move back from doing all the teaching and actually have them doing projects by themselves and with each other then having to present them to the rest of us. This is suppose to reinforce the learning while allowing for me to see who may be a good teacher to invest in for development in that area.
if you don’t mind I would like some insight on the marketing you did as currently that is an issue. I mainly run the day to day functions of the shop and my father who started it is suppose to cut the checks and do marketing. Getting the phone to ring is what we need help with. My email is -
That is a very good insight on how someone manages their life. It is very difficult these days to find good people that have good skills because like you said many of them have been poor performance people for a lifetime and as a result they do not need or want things on the same level I do. Where I have found a bit of hope is using the training (we all attend as a group together) and I have each person do a 10 minute demonstration practicing something they took away from the training. With those things the meeting that follows we discuss how we can implement new ideas or processes to correct any problem areas we might have. I type them out and as a group we sign the document we created. It’s a new way of doing things but so far it’s working. Before my dad who is a very old school boss type would bark what was wrong and who was at fault and what he wanted different, those “meetings” fell on ears that were tuned out. Since they have been giving input on how the procedures and rules are created their has been times were I have to stop and apologize because they point out I didn’t follow a new rule which is great because it’s one step closer to not needing to be present every minute of the day.
as for the work, I definitely agree finding diag, trans and specialty work people is hard which is why I have been monitoring the hours and how much of that stuff we do. At this point our diag hours can not justify paying a tech those wages and having them RR 75% of the time. So a tech and I will usually do them and if needed help from identifix or somewhere similar. For the most part we are able to do just about all that comes into our shop. I am holding out hope that the younger generation will be more accepting of training and applying the knowledge as most of them did do some time in a college setting. I have one kid now who was stuck at a Honda dealer for 2 years only changing oil and he has been great and gotten a chance to spread his wings (supervised still) and grow. -
Larry I agree with you that there is not very much training out there that gets the owners a return on investment as far as what the tech actually learned during class. Bosch was doing a class recently on electricity that I attended and they have begun to Utilize their API onto Mann website as a testing platform post training seminar so we were all given access to a test that was 10 questions long that had to do with the topic of the training we had attended that night and upon completion we got to print out a certificate for the shop to bring back they also have a lot of starting point tests that the tech can take to get a baseline of where they are beforehand
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I believe leading by example is huge. Expecting your staff to train and stay current with certs and skills while the owner does not creates confusion for the staff, also it distances the staff and owner as they become more proficient if the shop is being run like it always has over time the shop will suffer.
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This was great! It would be a dream to be able to go to a big training event with the shop. Any advice on how to have this convo with my pops/owner who is mainly focused on anything but the shop?
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Dave is a personal favorite of mine. I remember a few years ago watching him on YouTube on tst seminars channel doing a programming training. It all seemed kid like like jibberish a couple years ago. Fast forward to today, with that video and a few others I’m doing the programming for most cars in our shop.
Its great to have an outlet for learning, when the shop doesn’t exactly have a path for growth for training and development of staff.
