Don't Just Be a Guy Who Punches In and Out
A few weeks ago, one of my guys was walking through the shop and found a note I had handwritten a while back. The note said: "Their dream has to fit inside your dream."
He took a picture and sent it to me with a message saying it was a good quote. I had forgotten I even wrote it, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this one sentence has become the way I run everything in my business.
Everybody can get a job
Anybody can get a job, and anybody can get a paycheck. People are looking for more than that. People want a purpose, and they want to work for a company and a leader with a clear reason and a clear direction. They want to know where we are heading and why we are going there.
I now tell candidates upfront, right in the interview, how hard the work is going to be. I do this because I do not want anyone signing up unless they truly want to go for it. I would rather lose a candidate in the interview than lose an employee six months in.
For the right people, that becomes the pitch. We tell them they can work here and help us change an industry, or they can go down the street, run a shift, punch in, punch out, collect a paycheck, and go home for the weekend. Down the street, they will learn how to do a job. Here, we teach far more than the trade:
Business: how a shop actually makes money, what the numbers mean, and how real decisions get made
Hospitality: how to take care of a customer from the first phone call to the moment they pick up their car
Accounting: how to read what is happening in the business and understand where every dollar goes
Management and leadership: how to run a team, set expectations, and grow into a bigger role
This applies at every level, and it has nothing to do with titles. Everybody wants to feel important. Our porter holds what is probably the lowest position in the shop, and he does his work with pride because he cares about it and loves it. There is a man down in Houston who has been washing cars at the same shop for thirty years, and after all that time he still sees himself as part of a bigger goal and takes pride in every car. A real mission reaches every position in the building.
The same thing is true for customers
Last week I drove one of our longtime customers home while we worked on his car. We did not have any loaner cars available, so I offered to take him myself. On the ride, I explained how we do things behind the scenes, and he already understood every piece of it:
Why we send video updates while his car is on the lift
Why we call before we do any work
Why our messages sound the way they do
He loves knowing that there is a reason behind everything we do and that we are working toward something bigger than the invoice in front of us. Customers want the same thing employees want. They want to know why you are here. The same discipline applies on the customer side. You are not for everyone. One of the biggest mistakes you can make, especially early on when you do not have enough customers, is trying to take everything in. You have to pick your lane, know your clientele, and serve those people well.
Think bigger
The most extreme example of this idea just played out in front of all of us. When SpaceX went public this summer, Elon Musk became the richest man in the world, and many of the people who helped him build the company became millionaires along the way.
Those engineers could have worked anywhere, because every big company hires engineers, including Meta and Apple. They chose the harder mission of building a company that can move people to another planet. They believed in the company first, and the money followed.
I am running an auto repair shop, and the principle works exactly the same way it works at a rocket company. People choose to work here instead of down the street because there is a mission here, and their ambition fits inside it.
Every leader should ask themselves whether their dream is big enough to cover the ambition of their people. If it is falling short, the answer is to dream bigger.
