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February 26, 2010
Garage Business
The 5 Year Plan
Success requires planning. Stop what you’re doing, sit down, and plan your future.
For many years now, I have been involved with the media. What started out as a regular guest appearance on a local TV call-in show has lead to my own television projects across the country.
Although I love what I do and enjoy the benefits, let me tell you—it wasn’t easy. In fact, we produced over 550 consecutive radio programs over the last nine years, plus three seasons of television… and that’s on top of running my own shop, writing columns like this one, etc.
Million-dollar question
Starting out and being new to the radio/TV industry, we hired a mentor to help us out—a professional with years of experience in the radio and television business. It was during our first meeting that he asked me a question that was so simple, yet so profound that I still use it today as a business philosophy: “Where do you want to be in the next five years?”
All too often we get so wrapped up and busy with day-to-day affairs that we forget to plan for the future. But if you don’t know where you want to be in five or ten years, how will you get there? How will you succeed in business and in life if you haven’t defined what success means to you and where you want to be in a given amount of time?
Where do you see yourself and your business and how are you going to get there? It seems to me that we are so wound up with our short-term issues that we fail to see far beyond the next week, next month, next quarter.
The secret to success lies in the simple question, “Where do I see myself and how do I get there?”
Power of peers
Recently we attended the NAPA AUTOPRO convention in Southern Ontario where a group of associate AUTOPROs and I gave a talk on the benefi ts of working with our peer group to resolve issues we all may run into. NAPA refers to this association as a “Business Development Group.”
The benefits of a peer group are endless. Having the ability to bounce ideas off other shop owners and listening to a variety of possible solutions goes a long way to helping you reach your goals.
Personally, my goal is to slow down and hand the shop off. I have been in the trade for close to 45 years and would like to see my employees take over and continue to operate the company. In fact, succession planning happens to be a major part of the discussions we have within my peer group. I guess we are all getting older.
Whether the next five or ten years will require a succession plan because you want to see your business carry on, whether your goal is to grow your customer base, or whether you plan to expand and sell franchises, getting there requires a plan. So why not take a few minutes now, sit down with the people that are most important to you and talk about your goals?
Take the time to come up with a plan and then figure out how to put it into action. Moreover, make sure to do the planning sooner rather than later. Time flies when your havin’ fun. Five years is not that long off.
Dave Redinger is a mechanic with over 40 years experience. He owns and operates his own shop in the Toronto area. Dave hosts the neighbourhood Mechanic show, heard on Chum 1050. The Neighbourhood Mechanic can be seen on Dave’s national Television show on E Channel. Both shows deal with automotive issues. | |
Dave Redinger
