Why Shop Owners Should Stay Away From Their Shops
TRANSCRIPTION: You’re probably wondering what the hell are you doing still in your bathrobe? Well, it is right now 11:51 a.m. here on the Eastern time zone. As you can see, I am still in my bathrobe, and you’re probably again wondering what the hell I’m doing going on a Facebook live video talking in my bathrobe. Well, it is to talk about the importance of not going to the shop. Not going into your office space where you’re constantly going to be barraged with questions, and you’re going to be looking at email, and you’re doing everything other than working on probably the most important thing that you should be doing all week.
So, this morning I happened to get up really early. Got to my office, and just started crunching away and kept going and kept going and going. Here it is, like I said, it’s almost noon, and I’ve been up since about 4 o’clock in the morning just kind of crushing away on some important things that I needed to get done, and I stayed here rather than just going and doing the normal routine of going into my business office.
I figured it was most important to be right here because when you get into the zone of working on something, you don’t want to get disturbed. This is probably the longest zone I’ve been in, probably six, eight hours in a row here of getting stuff done. You know what it’s like at the office. When you’re there because you’re there, you’re like the ‘Shell Answer Man.’ People are going to be constantly be asking you questions because you’re there.
Now, if you’re not there, employees learn to figure it out for themselves. It’s best to do as much as possible away from the shop. Every 15 minutes somebody will distract you and studies show that it’s going to take you another 25 minutes to get back into the zone after a distraction, so you’re constantly being interrupted versus getting your work done and it’s probably going to result in some stress for your auto repair shop and for you as the business owner.
And I guarantee you, if you stay away from the shop, go to a library, stay home, do something other than going into the shop to work on the important things like auto repair marketing, you can get a lot done by staying away from there. You’ll get more done in a few hours away from the shop than you probably will all week, if not all month, trying to get things done while you’re being disturbed all the time. So, not that you should always be walking around in your bathrobe, but hey, as long as you’re in the zone and get the work done, and again, do the things you need to be doing away from the shop where you’re not going to get distracted.
I know I’ve kind of beat that dead horse over and over and over again. As you can tell, it’s totally unprepared. That’s the whole idea of Facebook Live. I’m just going to kind of get you thinking about something different. Whatever’s on my mind, I’m going to share it with you. So, go down below the video, like the video. It’s important you keep clicking that like button. It kind of lets me know that you are watching and you are paying attention and hopefully taking action on some of these little nuggets that I’m sharing with you. And again, if you want to hear me talk about something in very specific terms write that down below or send me a private message.
You mean I’m not the only one? I have experienced this problem first hand. I’ve learned (the hard way) to do exactly what you say in this video. I have to be alone either in my home office, or in the shop office after hours to get things like marketing done (service reminders, thank you’s, newsletters, etc). Thanks for the reinforcement.
A great thing to do on a regular basis. “Deep Work”. Amazingly productive!