You just had ten forklift drivers respond to your State Inspectors ad. Your $$3,000 Google Adwords campaign only generated a $30 oil change. Your new “A” Technician that started on Monday still hasn’t come back from his lunch break. Each of these scenarios has one thing common. They leave you feeling frustrated. This is problematic because it’s impossible to feel…
What’s possible if you become a master of persuasion? As I ponder this question, I’m reminded of something that happened back when I was a shop manager in need of a new car. The shop was 45 minutes away from home, so I was looking for a reliable and dependable vehicle. The plan was to get…
“My tool guy says that everybody’s slow!” Said “Katie”, the service manager of a local repair shop. She was averaging $12,000 per week in sales which was a 16% decrease when compared to the previous year. Katie went on to tell me: “It’s a tough economy, and we’re in the fall season, but I’m sure things will pick up…
How do you achieve a positive outcome in a negative environment? To answer this question, it helps to understand the concept of home-field advantage. In the sports world, teams that play in front of their home crowd, have a better chance of winning than the visiting road opponent. For example, in the National Football League, a…
What’s the biggest barrier that’s blocking your path to success? As I ponder this question, I’m reminded of a story shared by author Ryan Holiday. In his book The Obstacle is The Way, Holiday shares the story about a King from the ancient times, who conducted an interesting experiment with his subjects. The king purposely…
Have you ever wondered what you could do to get the jump on your competition? The answer came to me as I was watching a video presentation that was conducted by motivational speaker Gary Ryan Blair where he provided the following detailed data on the sporting event known as the competitive high jump. During the…
When I was growing up, one of my favorite basketball players was Earvin “Magic”Johnson, who played for the Los Angeles Lakers. He could look in one direction while throwing an accurate pass to a teammate on the opposite side of the court. But that’s not why I liked him. He had the guts to take the…
Are you getting the results you planned for? I thought about this last week as I embarked on my morning run. One of the specific running results that I planned for was to run two miles in under an eight-minute per mile pace. I even watched a running instruction video to learn the correct posture. While running…
“Nobody can do it like Eric!” This was my motto during much of my career as a district manager. My ideal picture of an effective leader was someone with an authoritative approach who had all the answers. Since I had all the answers, my people would contact me with all their questions regarding how to deal…
The story is told of a man who walked across the entire US continent from coast to coast. Afterwards, he was swamped by news reporters. One of them asked him to recap what the most difficult part of his journey was. “Was it dealing with the desert heat? Was it rambling through the Rocky Mountains?…