Garage Owners Network (UK)

Return on investment (ROI) is a financial metric used to evaluate the profitability of an investment. It is calculated by dividing the net income from an investment by the cost of the investment. This training topic examines how garages can: 1. Predict Future Income 2. Calculate the ROI of Training 3. Use ROI to make informed decisions

Long Term planning can be a bit daunting, and feel a bit too abstract. This training tries to overcome the reasons why you do not have a long-term plan, by asking you to write just 2 sentences and 3-5 core values. This is the basis of your BIG Vision Try it for yourself, it is much harder than you think. Explain 1. what your business does and who for, in one sentence (Goldmine Statement) 2. the lo...

Culture is a crucial aspect of any Business's success.   Here are the three most important things about business culture: Defines the values and beliefs of an organisation Impacts on employee engagement and motivation Shapes the organisation's reputation and brand It is essential for leaders to create and maintain a positive and engaging culture that supports their employees and aligns with t...

More Money and time freedom are the big motivators for starting a business. However, what are you doing with the time and financial freedom that your business is providing? Are you enjoying really nice holidays? It's not just garage owners, data from many small business forums suggests that most small business owners or self-employed people actually don't take the statutory holiday requirement. Sm...

Sometimes confused, they are different metrics although they are derived from similar data. Utilisation refers to the extent to which a resource (such as a machine, labour, or time) is being used to produce a product or provide a service. It's a measure of how much of the available resource is being utilised. Efficiency, on the other hand, is a measure of the extent to which resources are being us...

Long-term planning for your business and your personal life. How you can use your big vision, your 10-year plan, and your long-term goals, as long-term planning tools. Using examples of business and personal goals based on some very quick research. That took about 20 minutes for the personal example, and not much longer for the business example. How to work back from instead of working to your goa...

What is the marketing paradox? There are many marketing paradoxes, but the two I'm going to focus on are it's never been easier to be able to reach your customers, but the paradox of that is, so can everybody else. differentiation versus amplification This is the more common paradox spoken about. Using fancy marketing terms Differentiation is generally considered to be the longevity of your brand...

 A sales funnel is a visual representation of the journey your customers take from prospect to sale. The idea is to visualize that journey in the form of a funnel that starts wide at the top, where you have lots of hopefully prospective clients and narrows down to the bottom where you get fewer and fewer until you get to the sale. The sales funnel has taken your clients from cold to warm to h...

A recent survey asked Garage Owners, ‘If they had a business plan?’ Only 2 out of 10 businesses had a business plan, which is startling. Some of the respondents who did have a business plan said they only had a business plan to attain some sort of finance, the bank required it, or when they went to get a grant they were required to put a business plan together. In most cases, they did not have a b...

Fix This Next.  Download the worksheet so you can see the questions that I've put together to assess your business with regard to finding out what to fix next. https://drive.google.com/file/d/13_DRbDdk5oCdfeQike-wctiCBlPppryF/view?usp=share_link It's about finding the lowest level need in your business, and then putting together a plan to fix it. The Atomic Success Program is about finding yo...

Turnover for vanity profit for sanity, but cash for reality. Also known as where did all the money go. This topic is all about the different types of profit, and where does the money go in your business and how do you account for it? One of the questions I ask people is why they measure the size of their business or the success of their business based on the turnover. It is a useful measure in fac...

Cash flow is the absolute foundation piece of all business, without positive cash flow businesses quickly start to struggle. Cash Flow can be thought of as the oil in your machine that is your business.  Cash Flow can be negative as well as positive. So what do we mean by negative cash flow?  Negative cash flow is when there's more cash flowing out of the business than in this is where b...

This training topic examines the importance of WHY in your marketing message. You must use stories and how to build those stories, to have the maximum effect.  I have reviewed what Garages normally do in their marketing messages, and this is no criticism,  I'm not picking on anyone, but when I look at what garages (including my own), tend to do, we list our services. Imagine paying for a...

Based on the excellent book by Mike Michalowicz. In this training topic, we cover the 3 most important aspects of Profit First. This is something I have used in both my business and personal life. Bank Balance Accounting Parkinsons law Target Allocation Percentages BANK BALANCE ACCOUNTING   Most entrepreneurs don’t have the time or gumption to read the different accounting statements necessar...

Before you can fix your business, you must ensure you are fit and well, both physically and mentally. If you don't make a bit of time for your health now, be prepared to give it a lot of time later. It's the age-old principle of putting your own mask on, before helping others. In this training topic, I look at the 5 F's of Fixing yourself First. Fitness - both mental and physical, health and wellb...

T he marketing Brief. The interesting thing about marketing briefs is very few people I speak to have one or use one when they go about their marketing, and for that reason then becomes a bit woolly or ad hock. Why do we need a marketing brief?  Basically, it provides the focus for your marketing activities. The marketing brief sets out the aims and objectives of your marketing campaign. How do we...

NLP This is not voodoo or witchcraft, but choosing your words wisely, but I have called it neuro-linguistic programming because I can't really think of anything better to describe the subject.  If you've done any research into NLP, you'll realize that there is no clinical or scientific evidence to suggest that NLP works.  This subject is more about what not to say when communicating with...

What is your labour rate based on? This training topic suggests a method of setting your labour rate to ensure your garage remains profitable. In this episode we will also look at: How to deal with inflation What the government thinks an hour of your time is worth Self limiting beliefs

When is data a metric? When is data a KPI? What you should use as a comparator? Why are metrics an important part of your data suite? What is data? Data is anything that we measure within our business, data is the raw numbers. It is simply anything we measure within our business. What gets measured gets managed, and what gets managed gets mastered. Collecting data within your business is vital, ho...