When Helping Each Other Became Telling Each Other How to Run a Business

One of the most valuable things our industry has built isn't a tool, a piece of equipment, or a training program.

It's access to each other.

Independent repair businesses have always faced a unique problem: we're independent. We don't have a corporate office handing us answers. We don't all have somebody down the hall who has already dealt with the problem we're facing. For a long time, figuring something out meant figuring it out yourself.

Professional groups, training networks, online communities, conferences, and social media changed that.

Suddenly, a shop owner struggling with something could talk to hundreds or thousands of other people who had already been there.

I've benefited from that.

I've also contributed to it.

I've invested significant time and money into this industry and the communities surrounding it. I've shared what I've learned, helped other people when I could, participated in discussions, attended training, asked questions, answered questions, and changed my own thinking because somebody else was willing to share their experience with me.

I believe in what we've built.

That's exactly why I think we need to talk about what we're doing to it.

Sharing Experience Isn't the Same as Prescribing Behavior

There is tremendous value in another business owner saying:

"This happened to us. Here's what we did. Here's what worked."

That's information I couldn't have gotten without living through their experience myself.

But somewhere along the way, something changed.

"This worked for us" became:

"This is what you should be doing."

And eventually:

"If you're not doing this, you're running your business wrong."

Those are three very different statements.

The first shares experience.

The second assumes circumstances.

The third passes judgment.

And we're doing an awful lot of the third.

We Know These Businesses Aren't the Same

This is the part I have the hardest time reconciling.

We know better.

An independent repair shop and a franchise operating on the same road don't necessarily have the same business model.

Two independent shops across the street from each other may not have the same business model.

A shop in California isn't operating under the same circumstances as a shop in New York. A rural shop doesn't have the same market as a shop in a wealthy metropolitan area. A two-person operation doesn't have the same structure as a twenty-bay facility.

Different customers.

Different costs.

Different competition.

Different regulations.

Different labor pools.

Different specialties.

Different debt.

Different capacity.

Different goals.

We know all of this.

In fact, we preach it.

Know your numbers.

Know your market.

Understand your customer.

Know your costs.

Don't price your business based on the shop down the street.

Don't blindly copy somebody else's business model.

Make decisions based on your operation.

Then somebody tells us about a decision they made in their business, and suddenly we forget all of it.

With a few paragraphs of information—and sometimes a few sentences—we're prepared to tell another owner what they're doing wrong.

How?

We don't know their business.

There Is Social Currency in Having the Answer

This is where the conversation gets uncomfortable.

I don't think most people doing this are trying to hurt anyone.

I think most genuinely believe they're helping.

But I also think there is an element of posturing that we need to acknowledge.

There is social currency in being the person with the answer.

Certainty gives us an opportunity to demonstrate our knowledge. It lets us climb onto the soapbox for a moment and show everyone what we know.

"I don't have enough information about your business to know whether that's right for you" isn't a particularly impressive answer.

"You need to raise your labor rate" is.

"You shouldn't be taking those jobs" is.

"You're attracting the wrong customers" is.

"That's why you're not making money" is.

Those statements sound authoritative.

And when enough respected people repeat them, they become accepted answers.

Then other people learn them.

They repeat them.

Eventually the next generation of owners and technicians entering these spaces sees this behavior and assumes this is what knowledgeable professionals are supposed to do.

We're not just participating in it anymore.

We're training people to do it.

Advice Requires Context

None of this means we should stop challenging each other.

It doesn't mean every business decision is a good one.

It doesn't mean we shouldn't discuss labor rates, margins, hiring, customer policies, workflow, diagnostics, training, marketing, or any of the other difficult subjects that come with running a repair business.

Those conversations are exactly why these communities matter.

But there's a tremendous difference between:

"Here's what worked for me."

and:

"Here's what you're doing wrong."

The first gives someone information they can apply to their circumstances.

The second assumes you understand circumstances you may know almost nothing about.

Advice requires context.

Criticism requires even more.

Without it, we're often not helping someone solve a problem.

We're just demonstrating that we know the approved answer.

The Echo Chamber Makes It Worse

Once enough people agree on the approved answer, something else happens.

Disagreement starts looking like incompetence.

Someone operating differently isn't simply making a different decision anymore. They're doing it wrong.

And now the very communities designed to expose us to thousands of different experiences begin doing the opposite.

They start narrowing the acceptable ones.

Think about the contradiction in that.

We created these spaces because no single one of us has all the answers.

Then we created an environment that rewards people for acting like they do.

That's not knowledge sharing.

That's an echo chamber.

And an echo chamber is particularly dangerous in an industry made up of businesses whose circumstances can be radically different.

Maybe We Need to Remember Why We're Here

I don't want these communities to disappear.

I want the opposite.

I think access to other professionals is one of the greatest resources available to an independent business.

I want more shop owners sharing their numbers.

More technicians sharing what they've learned.

More people talking about their failures.

More successful owners explaining what changed their businesses.

More disagreement.

More difficult conversations.

More experience being put on the table for everyone else to learn from.

But perhaps we need a little more humility about what that experience qualifies us to say about somebody else's business.

Sometimes expertise is having the answer.

Sometimes expertise is knowing which questions to ask.

And sometimes expertise is being experienced enough to say:

"That's not how I would run my business, but I don't know enough about yours to tell you that you're wrong."

We've spent years telling independent business owners to know their own numbers, understand their own markets, recognize their own circumstances, and build businesses that work for them.

We know businesses are different.

We know markets are different.

We know circumstances are different.

So I think it's fair to ask:

Why are we pretending we're all the same for the sake of criticizing our colleagues in spaces we created to help one another?

We know better than that.