Car Count Daily

Unless you’ve watched the prior videos, you’re probably wondering what the heck I’m doing wearing this straight jacket. Now, this is a real life straight jacket. It’s hot. I’ve been here for quite a while. There’s lots of lights in here. I’m sweating profusely underneath this thing, but I want to wear this and show you basically to prove a point and to give you a really good solid lesson that’s going to help your shop.

The reason why most people get into their entrepreneurial straight jacket is because when they got into business in the first place was to have unlimited time, money, and freedom, be able to do what you want when you want with whoever you want at a moment’s notice and have plenty of money to be able to do that. As you probably realize, you probably put on a straight jacket. This is kind of metaphorically what you’ve done. It’s like somebody snuck in over all the years of you owning a business and slipped one of these babies on, and now you’re stuck. You’re held hostage to the business. The business owns you versus the other way around.

We talked about how to escape from the straight jacket on previous videos. You can try all you want to figure it out on your own, but unless you’ve escaped from a straight jacket before, you’re never going to get out on your own. When you’re owning your shop and when you’re looking for advice, a lot of times, you try a lot of things on your own. It’s what we call the scientific wild-ass guess, or a SWAG. That’s not going to get you anywhere because you’re only guessing.

Then you go look for outside advice, so you ask the shop owner down in the street, or you go to a seminar and you ask another guy what he’s done. Well, you don’t realize that he’s probably wearing a jacket just like this, and he doesn’t have the answers either, but because he’s going to be a good Samaritan, he’ll be willing and able to give you plenty of free advice. Well, chances are, he doesn’t know how to do it either or else he would’ve escape from the straight jacket, so you wind up wasting a lot of time, money, effort doing something that didn’t work in the first place because he doesn’t have a proven track record of being able to do that.

My advice at the end of that video was go find somebody that’s been there, somebody that’s done that that has a great track record of being able to help other shop owners to get out of the straight jacket, or they’ve actually done it themselves for real. Don’t listen to what they say. Watch what they do. Very important you do that.

Then our next video, we talked about when you have really great advice from somebody, a lot of times, shop owners, and business owners in general, like to put their own special spin on it, their own special sauce where you got the right information, but you’re going to do things a little different because my customers are different or that didn’t exactly apply to me, so I’m going to put my own spin on it. Guess what? They find themselves still in the straight jacket. You can’t get out of the straight jacket unless you do things the right way.

I talked about hiring a magician, spending a lot of money and time and training and learning how to escape from the straight jacket. I went home, and I put my own special spin on it, and guess what? It didn’t work. I couldn’t get out of the straight jacket.

Ultimately, the lesson on that video was all about making sure that when you have a good, competent coach, somebody that is giving you the rock solid advice that has proven to work time and time and time again that you don’t make changes on your own. You do it exactly the way they told you and look at the results at that point. Most of the time, that’s where the problem goes awry is when we put our own special spin on it. Same thing happened to me.

Without further ado, on this video, I’d like to have a little fun, and I’d like to show you exactly what happens when you get yourself into a pickle, so you get yourself in a straight jacket, and you struggle and struggle and struggle. You ask for all kinds of advice. You finally find the person that’s going to be able to do that. You spent a lot of money and training, and they tell you exactly what to do, and then you put your special spin on it, and you can’t get out.

Let me show you what exactly happens when you do exactly what you’re supposed to do because getting out a straight jacket, there’s one way to do it and one way only. I can do 50 different modifications to it, and guess what? I’m never going to get out of this. Just like making all those modifications to the great advice you’ve already gotten is not going to get you out of the straight jacket that you’re in with your business.

Without further ado, here we go. Watch the video above to see my escape!