When I opened my auto shop, Pleasant Car Care, I thought I needed more cars. So I went to someone who helped shop owners with advertising. His name was Bill Brusard, and his response was: “If you don’t know what to say on the phone, don’t advertise. You’ll just waste your money. You need to meet Todd.”
Two weeks later, I met Todd Hayes. He stood in front of a dozen shop owners, and within minutes, I knew I could learn a lot from him. One of the first things he said was: “The customer pays for everything.” Payroll, rent, equipment, software, the owner’s profit. All of it comes from the customer, which means the way you serve that customer affects the entire business.
I respected his knowledge. And yet, following his advice was harder.
By then, I had spent more than a decade diagnosing cars, checking in customers, writing estimates, ordering parts, and completing repairs. I had experience, strong opinions, and habits that felt right because I had repeated them for years. When Todd told me to do something differently, I often challenged him. Sometimes I was afraid. Sometimes I couldn’t see how his approach would work. He eventually called me the “hard-headed Greek.”
Looking back, I can see that I wanted help improving my business, but I was reluctant to change the way I ran it. If you’ve hired a coach and keep finding reasons to put off their recommendations, that’s worth examining. You may have a legitimate concern. You may also be asking for a different result while protecting the habits that produced your current one.
Your experience can become the reason you dismiss good advice
Years in the business give you knowledge a coach needs to understand. You know your customers, your employees, and the problems that come through your door. But experience also makes certain habits feel like facts. “Our customers won’t do that” or “My team needs me involved” can sound like practical judgments when they’re assumptions you haven’t tested.
For example, suppose a coach recommends giving an employee responsibility for a task you’ve always handled. Your first response might be, “They’ll just come back and ask me anyway.” Before dismissing the recommendation, consider why that happens:
Has the employee been taught how to make the decision?
Do they know what they can approve without you?
When they make a reasonable decision differently from how you would have made it, do you support them or take the task back?
It’s possible that your team’s dependence on you may partly reflect how you’ve trained them to work. A better response to your coach would be, “Right now, they bring those decisions to me. Help me define what they can handle themselves and when they should involve me.” You’ve turned an objection into something you can work on.
Replace “That won’t work here” with a specific concern
A broad objection ends the conversation before you’ve learned much. A specific concern gives your coach a chance to help you adapt the recommendation to your business.
If you’re worried about cost: “Here’s what we can afford right now. What should we prioritize?”
If you’re worried about your team’s workload: “What would this require each day, and what could we take off their plate?”
If you’re worried about customer reactions: “Here’s what I expect customers to object to. How should we handle that conversation?”
Suppose your coach recommends changing how your team handles calls from people asking for a price. You might think, “Our customers just want a number. They won’t stay on the phone for more questions.” Instead of rejecting the idea, ask: “How do we get the information we need without making the customer feel like we’re avoiding their question?”
That leads to language your team can practice. For example: “I can help you with that. First, can you tell me what’s happening with the car?” Or: “Have you already had it inspected, or are you looking for help figuring out what’s wrong?” Those questions help clarify what the caller needs before your team decides how to respond.
You don’t have to pretend you agree with every recommendation. You do need to explain your concern clearly enough that it can be addressed.
Before you judge the advice, check how you implemented it
An owner can introduce a new process at a meeting and assume the team now knows how to follow it. But hearing an explanation once doesn’t prepare someone to use it during a busy day, with a waiting customer and a ringing phone. When the process breaks down, it’s tempting to conclude that the advice didn’t work.
Before reaching that conclusion, ask what the team actually received:
A written process they could refer to.
A demonstration of what following it looks like.
Time to practice and ask questions.
A clear point person for help.
A scheduled opportunity to review problems and make adjustments.
Those details help you distinguish a problem with the recommendation from a problem with how you introduced it.
For a new phone process, implementation could be straightforward: write down the essential steps, walk through a few common calls together, and have employees practice answering each other’s questions. Tell the team, “We’re going to use this consistently, bring back the questions we’re hearing, and review it together on Friday.” Now there’s a clear expectation and a way to improve.
Your own behavior matters here, too. If you tell employees to follow a process and then skip it whenever you’re busy, you’re teaching them when it can be ignored. Before asking why the team won’t commit, check whether you have.
Agree on what would count as progress
A change can feel awkward before it becomes familiar. That feeling can make you want to abandon it, especially when the old approach is faster for you personally. Agreeing on what you’ll measure helps you evaluate more than your initial discomfort.
Ask your coach:
What should improve if we do this correctly?
What should we track?
How long should we use the process before evaluating it?
What would tell us we need to adjust our approach?
For a phone process, you might look at how many inquiries become appointments. For delegating a task, you might track how often the employee needs help and what questions keep coming up. Choose a review period that makes sense for the change, rather than expecting every recommendation to prove itself immediately.
If the results disappoint, bring back details. “We used the process, but callers often got confused at this point” gives your coach something to help you fix. “We tried it, and it didn’t work” leaves too much unanswered.
Give your current approach the same scrutiny
We’re quick to ask what could go wrong with a new idea. We’re less likely to ask what our familiar way of working is already costing us. If you believe you’re the only person who can handle something correctly, consider how much of your day it consumes. If you keep postponing training because you’re too busy, consider how much time you spend correcting the same mistakes.
A useful question is: “If someone recommended our current process to me today, would I choose it?” Would you deliberately build a business where every decision needs your approval? Would you choose to explain the same task repeatedly instead of documenting it? Familiarity can make an expensive problem feel like an unavoidable part of ownership.
Todd stayed with me through my resistance. Over time, I became more willing to apply what he taught. We built systems, refined operations, and committed to following the key-to-key process. That was a turning point for the business, and it required me to change alongside my team.
Before your next coaching call, choose one recommendation you’ve been postponing. Write down:
What you’re worried will happen.
What you’ve actually tried.
What help you need to take the next step.
Bring those notes to the conversation and say, “I’ve been resisting this. Here’s why. Can we work through how to put it into practice?”
That gives your coach a chance to help with the part you’re struggling to do.
Hiring a coach means acknowledging that there are things you still need to learn. Following their advice asks more of you: the willingness to feel inexperienced at something, let your team work differently, and give an unfamiliar approach a fair chance.
I’m grateful Todd stuck with me, but I also know I could have started making changes sooner. If there’s a recommendation you keep putting off, bring it up at your next coaching call. Explain what’s holding you back, ask the questions you need answered, and agree on a concrete next step. You don’t need to feel completely confident before you begin. You need to be willing to learn as you go.
