A tire store owner who trusts his or her employees can focus on the future, not the present. Without trust, an owner will be at the store 24/7/365. But how do you learn to trust your employees? By becoming almost militant on process.
In the spring and summer of 2018, the federal government disciplined the tire and automotive industry by nearly $1 million for wage and hour violations. The government feels our industry is an easy place to generate revenue. And, sadly, they are right.
Employees may come to you with problems they can readily solve on their own, customers may want to speak “just to you” about getting their oil changed, and vendors always want face time to sell you the latest gadgets. Let’s talk about spending your time like the precious commodity it is.
A small business is much, much, much better off as an S corp for many reasons. For starters, if your store or stores made less than $50,000 in profit last year as a C corp, your tax rate is about to go up.
As owners, there’s a certain psychology that tells you change is risking everything you have, and what you have right now isn’t so bad. So the risk outweighs the benefits and we stay the same.
In the tire and service aftermarket, there's no shortage of goals: number of units for the month, sales targets, volume targets and spiffs. What's often missing is the road map for employees to reach those goals.
"I can’t understand why there is no profit, we are so busy.” “I need to hire more staff; we are so busy.” “How are you doing?” “Man, it’s great we are so busy.” “Hey, you need to spend more time working on your business rather than in your business.” “I can’t, I am so busy!”
Owners at some point give authority to others in their stores. Call them store managers or assistant managers: anyone who is in charge of others. It becomes a necessity to delegate authority to someone. You can’t handle it all.
