Car Count Daily | Edition #85

Hey shop owners, welcome to this edition of Car Count Daily. My name’s Ron Ipach, but you can call me Captain Car Count, because that’s all I’ve done over the past 20 years, is help thousands of auto repair shop owners, just like you, to get and then keep all the top-quality customers that their shops can handle.

As you could probably notice, I’m driving in the car in the video above. Yes, I know it’s not the smartest thing to do, but I figured I’d shoot you this video because I had a thought on my way into the office today. Every time I leave the office I am listening to audiobooks, and I’m listening to the audio of videos, things that are going to help me learn, things that are going to help me earn, things that are going to help my business grow.

It got me thinking, what are you listening to when you’re on the way to the auto repair shop every day? Are you listening to the news? Are you listening to the bad news of the day, or what rapes or murders happened last night, or are you actually using that time to be very productive? I’m talking on the way to the shop, and on the way from the shop.

More specifically, I want to talk about what you’re doing on the way to the shop, because what you listen to and what you put in your mind the first thing in the morning is going to affect your day. Not only it’s going to affect your day, but it’s going to affect everybody around you. It’s going to affect their day. If you have a really piss-poor attitude when you get to the shop because something that you heard on the radio put you in a bad mood, well guess what. It’s going to just spread like wildfire. You don’t want to have that happen. You want to make sure that you’re feeding your mind every single day with really, really good-quality stuff.

For example, this morning, as you know, I work out every single day. This morning was my day to get on the stationary bike. I could’ve turned on Netflix and watched a television show, and the one that I almost watched was Law and Order. Let me close these windows here just so we have a little bit better sound. I know I’m in a convertible so I apologize for the sound if it is not the greatest. But I could’ve watched that, and watched all about the rapes and murders, and all the really bad stuff that they cover on that TV show, or instead I opted to go onto YouTube and listen to some motivational business videos. I had that choice this morning. I could’ve done one or the other, but I made the conscious decision, admittedly almost by accident because I was kind of in a good mood and I thought, “You know, I don’t want to watch something that’s going to take me out of that good mood,” so almost by accident I went ahead and watched those YouTube videos.

There are a lot of them, and we try to bring you the best videos that we find on YouTube, or at least get one of those videos to you every single week as part of the Car Count Daily. But I could tell you, I don’t know whether it was the combination of the workout and the message I was listening to, or just simply the message I was listening too. I could pretty much tell you it was the combination, but I got off that bike and I felt like a million bucks. I was ready to kill the bear. I was just energized and ready to hit the ground running. Then when I got in the car, I listen to a lot of audiobooks. I subscribe to a service called Audible.com where you can download audiobooks and just listen, have somebody else read the books to you. I’ll tell you, when you fill your mind with really good stuff on your way to the shop, especially in the morning, it just spreads like wildfire and everybody around you seems to be elevated.

That’s what you want to do is you want to have a good day every single day, not just when somebody else is having a good day and kind of feed off of them. You want to be that energy. You want to be that person that’s introducing that. Plus also, something weird happens. When you’re listening to instruction on how to make your business better it puts you in that frame of mind that you start thinking, “Wow, I need to make my business better,” and you get lots of ideas. A lot of times it’s not what you’re listening to, but it’s that fuel that you put in your mind that all of a sudden you’re on the right path. You’re starting to listen to the right things. You’re starting to think about the right things, and instead of being the same old day, day after day after day, you go in energized with a new outlook, something new that’s going to help propel your business forward.

Please, don’t underestimate this valuable time that you have in your car when you’re going to the shop, because you can make yourself tear it down in the dumps by listening to the wrong stuff, or you can elevate it to the next level by listening to the right stuff so you walk in and it’s just an amazing transformation that you can get simply by feeding your mind during this very valuable time. I think Zig Ziglar used to call it “the marketing university on wheels.” Never let an opportunity go by that you’re in the car going to and from the shop, or going anywhere, that you’re not putting really good information into your mind. You can watch these videos. You don’t have to watch them, but it’s the audio. You don’t have to watch me, just listen to what I’m saying every single day, and by the time you get to the shop, a transformation’s going to happen, you’re going to be in the right state of mind, and you’re going to get your business moving forward, and you’re going to be focusing on what you really need to focus instead of focusing on the fire of the day.

I really hope this helps, and I really hope you take this to heart, because I could tell you this has put tens of thousands, or if not hundreds of thousands, or maybe millions of dollars in my pocket over the 23 years that I’ve used the opportunity to be in the car and listen to good stuff instead of listen to the bad stuff, or just listen to music. Look, I’m not here to knock music. Music can put you in a great mood as well. However, the best thing you can do for your business is put good business content into your head and maintain a good mindset.