A Coach in Your Corner

The best coaches know your strengths and weaknesses, understand your goals, and can objectively assess all the variables at play in your field of competition. This is highly valuable intelligence—the kind that can give independent shop owners and small franchisees in the highly competitive quick lube industry a serious boost in business performance.

Just like in sports, though, you need a coach you can trust. Somebody who knows how to play the game and win, and can help you do it, too.

Chris Cotton, owner of Wichita Falls, Texas-based AutoFix Auto Shop Coaching, is one of those guys. The nationwide company offers coaching from current successful quick maintenance owners that know the ins and outs of the business and can help owners figure theirs out, as well. Cotton owns two shops himself.

Here is some of his best overarching intelligence on what shop owners find when they opt for business coaching.

An Outlet for Ongoing Accountability

Cotton says accountability coaching, as he calls it, is the biggest piece of what he and his team offer.

“It’s a once-a-week phone call or Zoom call where the coach is working one-on-one with the shop owners, and it’s directed toward what the customer’s needs are,” he says. “A lot of coaching companies offer cookie cutter-type systems where Week 1 you do this, Week 2 you do this, and so on. We really think about where the shop operator is currently and where they want to go, and then we work toward getting them there.”

Real-world coaching is the approach, Cotton says. “We go through the same things in our day-to-day operations, as well, since all of our coaches are shop owners. We’ve done it ourselves and with hundreds of shops around the country. We’ve seen what works and what’s working, and we’re able to guide people through that.” 

A Shorter Window of Trial-and-Error

Shop owners don’t know what they don’t know until they know it, Cotton has found.

“Until somebody has taught it to you, the only way to learn is through trial-and-error,” he says. “And that’s where (coaching) can really help shortcut the process.”

He adds: “Shop owners are some of the greatest, most caring people on the planet. They’re very giving. But most of them don’t have a business background. Most have a mechanical background.”

So, Cotton says he routinely helps shop owners deal with paying sales tax, paying workers comp insurance, putting together an employee handbook—even knowing their parts and labor margins. (Oftentimes,) somebody has to teach you all these things about how to run a shop,” he says.

Improved Business Skills in the Face of Ongoing Competition 

Whether a shop owner’s hair is gray or they’re green behind the ears, everybody must be learning on an ongoing basis if they want to succeed.

Cotton makes this observation: “We have a thing in the industry now called a “silver tsunami”, where there’s a certain group of people who are trying to get out of the business—those may be the ones who are set in their ways. They’ve been doing it the same way for 30 or 40 years, and they don’t (necessarily) want to change.”

There’s a new group of owners coming up, though, that are especially open to learning and are willing to ask questions.

“We also have a lot of people coming from outside our industry right now,” Cotton notes. “Many of these people are used to getting help from consultants, trainers, and mentors in other industries.”

These people are essentially in training to be the competition for current shop owners. “They will outpace the other shops that don’t get help (from a coach),” Cotton says. “I have a podcast called ‘Weekly Blitz’, and I did an episode about this not long ago.”

Peace of Mind from Reaping the Profits in More Ways Than One