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What comes to mind when someone talks about budgeting? Corporate mumbo-jumbo, complicated, unnecessary, and I’m sure there are plenty of other colorful adverbs to add to the list. I’m also pretty sure that when most people think of budgeting, they view it in terms of managing expenses. I like to view budgeting from a revenue and profit perspective, with the purpose being to create a revenue plan for wealth.

Budgeting gets a bum rap and it’s not just useful for large companies to keep expense in check. Any business person that views their company as an asset and understands that their asset must create and deliver a return on investment, probably agrees that budgeting is important. However, what they say and how they behave are often much different. Hey, I get it, just the thought of creating a budget is not very exciting in general. On the other hand, I do think it can be exciting, especially if you are doing something that can create substantial wealth for you over time. Maybe it becomes something that you look forward to?

You don’t have to do this alone. Your CPA can easily do this for you at very minimal cost and if your are using Quick Books, you can probably do it yourself.

Here are some reasons to budget

1) Creates a financial expectation for your business
2) Allows a means to measure growth and activity
3) Provides warning signals for decision making
4) Creates predictability in your business
5) Allows you to allocate money for the best use to grow your company
6) Creates guidelines for employees
7) Enhances the value of your business

How do you set up a budget?

All accounting systems have budgeting capability, all you will need to do is determine how the money you plan to earn will come into your business and how it will be allocating across your cost of goods and expenses. In order to create an effective budget, the first thing you will have to do is make sure your P&L and Balance sheet are lean and mean. I walked you through this process in the first week of the series, so if you need a refresher check it out here.

Assuming your financials are ready for budgeting I suggest the following:

1) Identify your gross operating margin and work backwards (see P&L video for help)
2) Look at historical expenses and validate if all expenses are necessary and cut those that are not
3) Allocate your net profit margin first
4) Allocate your sales/marketing dollars second
5) Allocate all other expenses

By creating your budget from an overall gross margin, net profit and sales/marketing investment, you have steered your business towards a path of wealth creation. This is planning and as you all know and understand, most of the time things don’t go fully as expected; however, that is precisely why you do it. It will take the guess work out why your outcomes are not delivering what you expect.

When is the right time to do this? How about now!

Thanks for stopping by: Collaboration is the new currency!

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I rarely hear people say that they really enjoy meetings. On occasion however, I do hear about the ‘odd’ repair facility that holds dynamic meetings. I’ll be the first to admit, when the idea of a meeting comes up, I’m  not jumping up and down to attend.

Why is it, that meetings are looked down upon? I believe the people that are organizing the meetings don’t have a good understanding what the purpose of a meeting is. The typical shop meeting is about how to put out fires: what parts are missing, what story has to be told to the customer for the delay, can we sell that, and a myriad of other emergencies. No wonder, nobody wants to go. Who wants to be a part of that?

I’m not insisting that ‘hot issues’ are unimportant, they are very important. What I’m suggesting is that the meeting needs to be centered around how the organization is functioning as a whole, and how the individuals are contributing to ensure that commitments made to the customer are being kept. By using the meeting time in this way you can reinforce process, praise what is working, identify the stop gaps, and most importantly engage the employees to contribute based on their role.

When people are invited to a meeting or have to attend a regular scheduled meeting, and they know they are contributing to a cause, they have a voice, and their contribution is valued, they tend to want to show up. The biggest battle to having effective meetings is having a culture where people want to show up and are excited about the opportunity to leave the meeting with additional knowledge that can help them succeed.

I wrote a blog post some time ago that explains the role of the meeting attendees, in it I discuss briefly how critical it is for the attendees to understand how important it is to leave the meeting with clear objectives. All parties have to be very clear as what to expect before, during and after the meeting in order for value to be realized.

Here are few things to consider when planning/running meetings

1) Make sure everyone in the meeting knows why they are there
2) Make sure everyone understands how the meeting is beneficial to them and their role in the company
3) Keep the meeting as short as possible
4) Make sure everyone understands what is next
5) Allow time for everyone to contribute
6) Acknowledge what is working
7) Spend the least amount of time on failures
8) Have some fun

The Big Idea: Know WHY you are having a meeting and HOW it contributes to everyone’s success…

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In the last 2 weeks I have spent most of my time on reports, specifically, the type, the use, the value, and various other functions. I also mentioned in my last blog how delivering the results in person can be a great way to have a meaningful conversation with staff. Having strong dialogue in your business is critical for long term success.

Dialogue is more than conversation, it’s about a mutual understanding of the topic at hand, it’s about knowing the roles of the parties having the dialogue, and what to expect after. The delivery is so important, image getting a gift that is wrapped in dirty reused boxed, hmmm, what does that say? I don’t think surprises are good either, they may work for your birthday, but they don’t work in business. Both parties need to know what the meeting is going to be about, what the overall expectation is, and more importantly, they need to have access to the report data prior to having any dialogue.

You never want to box someone in the corner by catching them off guard. The last thing you want to do is email your staff a negative report and have connotations of poor performance, lack of responsibility, or simply threaten them. This will shut them down, and forget about having any production dialogue. People know when they are doing well or not doing well, they don’t need someone yelling at them via email adding insult to injury. You need to create an environment that anticipates reports and looks forward to the dialogue that surrounds the result. If you and your subordinates are always dealing with points of contention, forget about moving the needle. By the way, if the needle does move, it will be because of a band-aide not a long term solution.

How do you turn the report into a valuable tool that promotes better performance, creates confidence in your staff, and delivers a message that’s about being better not how bad you are? It’s pretty simple actually.

Here are the 8 steps to create a work environment that loves reports.

1) The desired result must be clearly articulated.
2) Training is paramount, people need to be taught ‘How to.’
3) Everyone must know the ‘Why’ and how it relates to the success of the company and the person.
4) Consequences are a part of success
5) Teach people to fail fast
6) Create a way that the dialogue is driven from bottom up, not top down.
7) Teach people to lead without a title.
8) Reward progress and celebrate the small victories

I hope this stimulates some ideas to take advantage of all the reporting capability that today’s management systems have built in. Just make sure that the report is relevant to the person, they have some control over the outcome, and have been well trained. Otherwise, the blame will fall on you!


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My post for this weeks second installment is a bit late, sorry for that. I’ve been working on a cool project and we got carried away the last few days. A few of my friends and I were chatting over a few adult beverages about a month ago, and we stumbled on the topic of hiring people and how resumes are a waste of time.

One thing lead to another and we penciled out a solution, so we think :) We’ve been hard at work putting the platform together and hope to have it ready soon. I’ll link you up when we’re done.

Back to the topic at hand. Experimenting is critical for success, and it’s important to understand the value of failure as it relates to experimenting. Improvement happens through trial and error, period. You can map out the best process in the world, and unless it goes into play with the intentions of testing modifications to determine what produces the best result, you might as well be pi_ _ ing in the wind.

What is the best way to test? During your design phase for the process you are creating and plan to implement, you will naturally create action points, which are procedures within the process, that drive the overall result. It is best to organize these action points into measurable data points, that way you can modify each procedure and measure the results independently.

Isolating the measurable action points is the key. The more isolated they are, the easier it will be to determine cause and effect. I call it the hydrology effect, because processes can be likened to a closed hydraulic system. You pull a lever and a certain action happens, and similarly, you follow a procedure and a certain outcome happens. If your outcomes are not what you desire you need to change your action point, just like you would use a different lever to make a tractor bucket rise or tilt. Same concept.

What most people do is change the person, which is not the same. I understand that operating a tractor is a bit easier than running a business, however, the fundamentals are the same.

If you want your customer satisfaction score to go up for example, you will need to understand your customer touch points and modify them over time to see what is driving the best result. It could be the person or it could be a particular touch point. Ideally, you would want two people exploring what drives the best result, and in this example the person does play a big role in the success of the customer experience. This is a very difficult metric to ‘hydraulisize.’

Here are few steps to consider:

1) Identify your action points within your process.
2) Identify how you are going to measure the action points.
3) Know what success means and communicate that to your team.
4) Pick your experiment and make sure everyone understands why.
5) The quicker you fail the quicker you succeed.
6) Celebrate the small wins.
7) Never stop experimenting.

Love to hear some feedback…good or bad, it’s all good:)

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Well-designed reports contain large amounts of useful information in a time series, making them a valuable data repository. More importantly, if the report covers the right questions, the process of gathering the information can generate valuable insights for your team to act upon.

That information also allows stakeholders to extract trends and status, and if you deliver them in person or attach a note to highlight specific issues or messages, reports can form the basis of a targeted, purposeful method of communication.

Reports in themselves have little value, there must be a specific reason that you are looking at the report and a specific action to take once reviewed. That is why I recommend having as few reports as possible to accomplish your goals.  I will give an example of a report that in my mind has very little value: The infamous CSI report. These reports are gamed to death and therefore  become counter-productive, and have relatively little value to the repair center. Please tell me who doesn’t have a CSI score of 98% or better?

If a repair center is concerned about customer engagement, they should design a survey that fits their business model and overall process of customer engagement. They should never discuss the survey with the customer, except to inform them that they will receive a call or get it in the mail and that they would appreciate their help by providing honest and candid feedback. That kind of data will allow a business to validate what they are doing and determine what works or what doesn’t work. Another bogus CSI measurement is the NPS score in my opinion. I won’t get into that here, I wrote another post on this, so check it our here.

Here is a report that does have tangible value for your bottom line and your customer experience. The cycle time report is undervalued in my opinion. I understand cycle time gets a lot of attention, but I don’t think shops are doing a good job measuring the repair timeline, and therefore they can’t determine how to improve. An effective cycle time report will have the ability to track when the vehicle was dropped off for repairs, when blueprint started, when body repairs began, when parts were ordered, when parts were received (by vendor), when paint began, when assembly began,  when detail began, and when the vehicle was ready for delivery. I know what you are saying, that is a lot of work. You are correct, but how can you expect to improve if you don’t know at what point there is a delay?

I’m sure your gut works most of time, but to really be significantly better than your competition, you need to know the details. Like Chip Foose says: ‘It’s all in the details.’  Your customer, the vehicle owner, will measure speed of repair based on what they think and what you tell them. Once they get their vehicle back they will tell friends and family and I can guarantee you that the subject of how long it took to get repaired will come up. I think you want the response of the person asking to be amazed by how fast it was repaired. Because they will measure it against their past experience, and if you can amaze them, it will drive loyalty and referral business.

It may seem daunting to collect that information, but all you need to do is train your technicians to note the time they started on the car and write it on the side glass with a posca marker. You can have someone collect the data at the end of the day and dump into a spreadsheet. I will build a template for anyone who wants to give this a go, and put on the mpoweru website for you to download free under the category of ‘Processes & Procedures.’

One last thing on cycle time. High efficiency per technician is not always the answer, you need people to fix cars and one person can only work so many hours in a day. I would get off the efficiency kick and look at how you can add more people to drive better results. I will be doing a webinar on this next month, and using cycle time improvement as an example for varied tech pay plans. Hope to see you there.

Here are the take-aways for having high value reporting in your business

1) Don’t use reports to beat people up with, they are tools to assist in becoming better.
2) Deliver and discuss the reports in person. Even if your an MSO this is important.
3) The fewer reports the better.
4) Don’t be afraid to redesign what you are doing to achieve better results.
5) Make sure you are clear about what isn’t working, it’s either people or process.
6) Everyone in the company must understand their role in the results.
7) Be consistent.

Thanks for listening: Collaboration is the new currency!


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I don’t think anyone would argue that business reports are an important part of being successful. I also believe common sense comes into play also, however, without specific information, it is difficult to make sound business decisions. Here is the question: How do you take your reports and use them in a tactical way to support your companies overall vision and strategy for growth? In the last blog post I provided a short list of what I believe are the essential reports to grow your business, but don’t forget that a report is nothing more than a documented result of a particular business activity. Try to keep emotion out of it, ‘it is what is’, and if you don’t like it, change your processes to deliver a new/better aligned result.

Here is a deeper perspective of how to use those reports to achieve your organizational goals.

Gross Sales: I’m sure you have heard this before: ‘If your not growing your shrinking.’ Take it with a grain of salt, your company does not always have to grow gross sales to ‘grow.’ However, as stated in my last blog, your annual gross sales trend line should be upward over the long haul. It is completely acceptable to have periods of declining revenue, the critical point here is that you absolutely have to know why. In those periods that you see declining sales, it is importance to determine: 1) Why and from what customer base? and 2) How long do you think it will last? Answering these questions will determine how you respond to managing costs related to the decline in sales. The key word is ‘respond’ not ‘react.’ If you are looking at this every month you will not be surprised and you will be able to craft a solution that supports your companies goals.

Gross profit: I have always been an advocate of creating a profit model that delivers margins above industry average. Why be average? It is easy to define/create the gross  profit you desire, because you know exactly what your negotiated discounts, markups and supplier agreements are. Within your gross profit design, there are a few variables that push your margin up and down based on your sales mix. To get a better understanding of how your sales mix affects your overall profit performance, you can access a GP Calculator tool here, under the ‘ Financial Literacy’ section at the mpoweru website.

I think you will find the GP tool very beneficial, and if you do the exercise on a regular basis, it is very eye opening. I also show examples of how to use the GP Calculator in a video I did on P&L essentials. Once you have an understanding of how your GP flows, it becomes very clear on how to manage and maximize your profit dollars…

Net Earnings: Once you have dialed in your gross operating margin you will need to dive into your expense side of the business to see what your options are to increase net earnings. Here is one thing to keep in mind: You must invest in marketing your business and enhancing customer loyalty. Although looking at the bottom line and seeing a  net income of 12%-15% is great, you also have to make sure that you are allocating enough to growing and maintaining your customers. If you are spending less than 3% on your marketing and customer loyalty programs, I would suggest that you revisit those expenditures. It is great to take the money today, but be cautious that you don’t erode your goodwill and wake up with a declining trend line.

Statement of cash flow: I would look at this report twice a week, it will give you a quick indication of how fast you are burning up your cash. If you are on top of this weekly it becomes easy to solve cash flow problems. Having awareness is what will make you an effective cash manager. As we all know ‘Cash is King.’

Speed of Repair: The proverbial cycle time report. Here is my take on this…You can parse this report 10 ways to Sunday, but the only thing that matters is what the customer experiences. I believe the focus needs to be on managing the customer experience as the customer actually experiences their service, not how we think it should managed. I see too many people talk about cycle time in terms of approval to completion when they need to always use keys-keys as the final measure. I’m not saying that the other ways to view cycle time are wrong, they do provide insight to assist in your ability to improve, just don’t hang your hat on those numbers.

Finally, please remember to validate your report. Make sure the data is clean by ensuring all the date fields are populated and that your staff doesn’t try and game the system. Bad data yields bad decisions.

If you have any questions I can be reached via the website!

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I have to admit I love looking at data and trying to pick the fly sh*& out of the pepper. There is nothing more satisfying than identifying how you can grab a few more points. However, running your business is more than just diving into reports to squeeze a few more dollars out, it’s about building a machine that can grow, prosper and fulfill your vision.

Before I share with you my top 5 reports to run your business, I first must predicate it with a warning. In order to be able to use fewer reports you have to have a pretty deep understanding of your company data, and how it flows into your reports. You will need to perform a few audits to validate the numbers to ensure that the information that you are looking at is ready to translate into something actionable. Keep in mind, these reports will tell you a story of two tales: 1) whatever you are doing, do more of it, or 2) whatever you are doing, do something different because it’s not working. It either works or it doesn’t, right?

Just in case you missed the first two posts in this series:

Plan, Predict, and Perform…A new blog series to drive Value and Performance!

Here they are:

1) Organize Your Financial Statements: 4S Your Balance Sheet

2) See How Easily You Can Clean Up Your P&L

By following the steps in the first week’s segment you are well on your way to having clean reporting, and it is uber critical to have clean numbers. Remember, you are making financial decisions.

Here are my recommended reports:

1) Gross Sales Report: This is pretty obvious and I don’t think there needs to be a lot of explaining. Here are few things to look at: 1) Look at your trend line for a rolling 12 months and YTD. It should be upward, if not WHY? and 2) Look at prior year to see how you compare. Is there anything that seems off or does it seem typical. Always be asking questions.

2) Gross Profit Report: Gross profit maximization is absolutley critical, and is the foundation for how money will flow in and out of your business. A business should be able to predict their overall gross profit margin with a 98% accuracy. If your number is off, then you have a leak somewhere. I recommend reviewing your GP report every week, and filter the report based on your revenue categories. Labor, parts, material etc… I also recommend reviewing your GP by customer as well. You will be surprised to find that are are certain people that you probably don’t want to do business with. Sometimes, less is more.

3) Net Earnings: Lets face it, it’s all about what you make when the dust settles.  One word of caution, I would advise you look at this number after debt service is calculated in. A business can be profitable and go broke at the same time, make sure you are looking at the real bottom line.

4) Statement of Cash FLow: I recommned looking at this mid-month and month end, it will give you sense of how well you are managing your recievables, payables and debt obligations. Cash flow can solve any problem, so keep a real good eye on this. I tell my clients that their A/R should not exceed 10 days, unless you have extended credit terms to your customers and have factored in those terms in your pricing to carry their debt. Something to consider.

5) Speed of Repair: I don’t like sounding like a broken record, but speed matters. People have a better experience with your sompany the faster they get their car back, plus you make more money and free up space for a new job. If your not producing 3.5 hrs/day or better your competition is. I would make this report visable to your entire team, and make it clear how to move the number.

There is 1 more report that I would recommend, but I would guess that for most people it would be hard to get the data. It is a report that tracks your true customer experience rating. The only way to know if your are really making a connection with your customers is if they are referring friends and family. How do you know? You ask every customer that comes in the door or calls you: ‘How they came to visit your shop,’ and track it. If your management system can do that great, if not, do it on a spreadsheet. You are only concerned how many customers are referring other people as a percentage of your customer base. This number should be trending upward, if it is not, then do something differnet. If your customers aren’t telling someone about you, you need to get them talking. Word of mouth markeing is the holy grail.

Good luck and thanks for tuning in…

Bill

P.S.

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In the first post of this series on: Financial literacy, the path to increasing your profits by 30%, I discussed how to use some basic lean management principles to clean and organize your balance sheet. In today’s post I will cover the same principles as it relates to your P&L statement.

Just in case you missed the first post you can check it out here: http://bit.ly/q5Hh2U

The purpose of the P&L is to organize and categorize your various income streams and cost centers for a defined period of time. The typical periods are monthly, quarterly and yearly. The essence of the P&L is to provide management with an understanding of how they are making or losing money during the defined time period. It also provides a way that management can tweak and adjust revenues and expenses to maximize net operating income.

Here are the steps to clean up your P&L

1) Sort: Organize your P&L in such a way that you are able to understand and predict your overall gross profit and separate the non product related expense to keep your margins clean. It is critical to have a deep understanding how your company makes money. 

Here is a sample P&L:

Income
    - Body Labor
    - Paint Labor
    - Frame Labor
    - Mechanical Labor
    - Sublet
    - Paint & Material
    - OE Parts
    - LKQ Parts
    - A/M Parts
    - Reconditioned Parts
    - Storage
    - Haz waste fees
    - Misc (avoid this at all cost) I don’t like misc income, it has no meaning!

Cost of Goods (these are expenses incurred for producing your product)
    - Body Labor
    - Paint Labor
    - Frame Labor
    - Mechanical Labor
    - Sublet
    - Paint & Material
    - OE Parts
    - LKQ Parts
    - A/M Parts
    - Reconditioned Parts
    - Misc (avoid this at all cost) I don’t like misc income, it has no meaning!

*** notice the COGS mirror your income accounts for the most part, there are some income accounts that do not have a direct related cost. (storage fees is a good example)

Expenses
    - Insurance
    - Admin wages
    - Payroll taxes
    - Owner salary
    - Rent
    - Office Supplies
    - Benefits
    - Utilities
    - Advertising
    - Interest Expense
    - Software
    - Professional Services
    - Rental car Exp.
    - Maintenance
    - Vehicle Exp.   

2) Scrub: The same principles apply here as does the balance sheet. Audit each account and make sure it is categorized properly and that the entries in the category belong there. Once this is done and verified in the scrubbing stage, you will still need to validate each and every month in order to confirm your margins. You will have a much easier time predicting your ability to grow your gross margin if this step it completed.

3) Standardize: Follow the same process you created for the balance sheet and create a cheat sheet for the bookkeeping staff to make sure that each transaction is allocated to the proper account. This will make your month end review really easy, and it will be easy to spot anomalies.

4) Sustain: Here is where the rubber meets the road, you are going to have and do that monthly review and be the final validation. Once the P&L is clean this shouldn’t take you more then 30 minutes a month to do. The rest of your review time will be thinking of ways to squeeze out more money:)

Here is a video I did about P&L fundamentals and how to use is as a tool to increase your gross margin: http://youtu.be/voZZwrN9KMA

I hope you find this valuable.

P.S.

Remember I said stay tuned in for the mpoweru launch? We have launched, come check it out and I look forward to some feedback….

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The balance sheet is the ultimate scorecard, it keeps track of the companies assets, liabilities and equity. In other words, it keeps track of what the company owns, owes and how much the shareholders invest in the business, as well as, how profitable the company is over time.

Here are some steps to ‘go lean’ with your balance sheet:

1) Sort: Make sure that each of your GL-accounts are coded properly. Here is a sample:
Assets
    Cash
    Savings
    Investments
    Accounts receivable
    Goodwill (If applicable)
    Equipment/furniture/websites etc
    Undeposited funds
    Inventory
    Security deposits
    Accumulated Amortization
Liabilities
    Accounts payable
    Payroll liabilities
    Sales tax payable
    Pre-paid discounts (paint deals)
    Notes
    Upfront customer deposits (money received prior to work completed)
    Shareholder loans
Equity
    Capital stock
    Paid in capital
    Shareholder distributions
    Retained earnings
    Net income

2) Scrub: Audit each account and reconcile any discrepancies. This is ultra-critical and absolutely necessary. You have to be able to trust the information so you can make good business decisions. If your balance sheet is not calibrated to reality you will make decision that can jeopardize your cash flow and overall profitability. The tax code is your friend and the balance sheet manages that. You will need to do this exercise with your CPA, if your Balance sheet is really out of whack you may have to amend prior year returns.

3) Standardize: Once you have sorted and scrubbed your balance sheet you will need to create an SOP for monthly reconciliation of your balance sheet.  I would suggest creating a large 3-ring binder that is organized by month, that will become your audit trail for the SOP. Every GL-Account will need to be reconciled and have the appropriate documentation to support the accuracy. You will need to have an amortization schedule for all notes payables and note receivable, in order to account for proper allocation of interest expense or interest earned. Your CPA can advise you on the monthly allocation for depreciation and amortization, or you can have them make those adjustments quarterly. I like monthly.

You will also need to have rules in place for your bookkeeping staff so they don’t have to bother you every time they have a question on how to allocate a non-automated entry. This will happen when they balance the check book. Create a cheat sheet for them to make it easy.

4) Sustain: You are now well on your way to a lean Balance sheet. Once you have gone through these steps the only thing to do is make sure it happens month over month, and I can guarantee you that if you do that you will see your cash grow. This requires discipline and commitment, and it requires staff that know what they are doing. This is very important, so If you have to pay someone a few buck more to get this handled for you, it is well worth the investment. Another benefit is that your CPA’s job will really be easy and his services will shift from doing tax returns to planning and generating wealth strategies.

Here is a video I did on understanding the balance sheet: http://youtu.be/Tfdghi0wl_k

I hope this helps and stay tuned in for the launch of the mpoweu site, there will be more resources available for you!

Collaboration is the new currency!

Bill

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Over the past several months I have been working hard on finishing up my website, www.mpoweru.co, which by the way will launch in the next few weeks. During the development and content creation I would have random thoughts and ideas that turned into my blog posts. Ironically enough, know that we are on downside of the site development, my random thoughts are not so frequent. In order to get back into the thick of things I thought I would create several  blog series that will focus on specific topics that will range from 3 weeks to 6 weeks in duration. I will post every Monday and Thursday, and each post will be relative to an ongoing series. I may post a random not related post on other days, so look for those also.

My goal is to add some meat to the bones, I want the blog series to provide an immediate benefit to you. I believe you can benefit in 1 of 2 ways: 1) The content itself assists you in creating a better circumstance for your business, or 2) The content validates what you are doing and focuses you in a way that enhances your business outcomes. Either way, it’s a win.

Here are the topics I will be blogging about:

Series 1: Financial literacy, the path to increasing your profits by 30%
       
Week 1. Organize your financial statements
        - Getting your balance sheet in order
        - Getting your P&L in order
Week 2. Determine the financial reports that make your business the most profitable
        - Here are the 5 reports I would recommend
        - Going deeper into your reports
Week 3. How to use the reports to craft solutions for increased profits
        - Specific outcomes and how reports measure results
        - Test and experiment for the biggest gain
Week 4. How to incorporate positive feed-back to your team to capture more profit
        - Reports are tools, not sticks to beat people up with
        - Monthly meetings that create action and keep people engaged
Week 5. Pulling it all together: predict your profit and grow wealth
        - How to use budgeting to grow wealth
        - Create future demand with customer base mining
Week 6. How to sustain and grow
        - Turn your additional profit into capital to grow your business
        - Invest in your people

Series 2: How to use Time, Transportation, and Money to increase sales.

Week 1. Time
    - How to respect time and satisfy all parties involved
    - Turn people’s lack of time into a sales advantage
Week 2. Transportation
    - How to overcome objectives to no rental or a second vehicle
    - How much does it cost to solve their transportation problems
Week 3. Money
    - How to overcome I don’t have the money right now
    - How to use appearance allowances, and partial repairs to print your own currency

Series 3: How to increase your speed of repairs  up to 100%

Week 1. Know where you are today and why you are there
    - Baseline your current rate of production
    - What to measure and how to measure it
Week 2. How to manage your resources
    - Are you staffed correctly
    - Are you equipped
Week 3. Create urgency
    - Do it immediately
    - Parts management, no more excuses
Week 4. Incentives
    - Technician pay incentives
    - Staff pay incentives

I look forward to some dialogue through the series and hope we can all reach our goals of becoming a little better at what do each and every day.

Collaboration is the new currency!

Bill Park

www.mpoweru.co
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