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Most businesses fail for one reason, and it's not a bad idea. It's the wrong person steering the ship. Last year, one of my businesses was practically dead. It was losing money and on life support. And then we made one change. And suddenly $73,000 of profit in just 120 days. No price hikes, no marketing overhauls, no new products. The only change we made was putting the right person in charge. Today I'm going to give you a brutal reality check that you need to identify if your business has a, a leadership problem like mine did, and the solution. So I bought this auto repair franchise years ago for just $25,000 down because the previous franchisees struggled to make money there. And for years we also struggled to make money there. And from January to September of 2024, we'd lost over $7,000 in those nine months. At that point, we had enough. We knew we had to change management. And in a service business, success is 80% based on the quality of the team and specifically the quality of the leader. So we fired the, brought in somebody new. And sometimes you make one of these changes and it takes months to see the effect. And other times it's like a light switch. And all of a sudden, overnight, the business overturns. Then over the next four months. So from October 1st to January 31st, we profited over $73,000. And if we continue on this pace, it'll become one of those profitable stores that I own simply by changing one person. This is the magic of a service business. It's that every day you can wake up as the owner and, and you can make an impact. You can change leaders, you can inspire people to do better, you can train them right. There's a lot of things that you can do. It's hard for business owners to make the necessary changes because some of these employees that you need to change have been with you for years. They show up every day, they're friendly, you may know their families, they try hard, they want to improve, but they simply don't. It's really hard to make those changes. So what I've done is created this four part framework that I use to determine if I've got the right leader. First thing we look at is values. Alignment skills can be taught, but core values cannot. If someone doesn't share your fundamental principles, it's not going to work. So for me, my values that I look for are people who are driven. They show up every day and they want to win. I shouldn't have to need to like rah rah cheer them on in the morning. They should want to win and crush it every single day. Number two, I look for high accountability. Like, I need people in my world who are going to do the things that they say they're going to do. It's as simple as that. Someone with low accountability who requires constant following up to see if they did the things they said we're going to do steals a ton of my energy or other people in my company's energy. It's a waste of time because we could be using that time, effort and energy to actually grow the business and not fill the gap that someone else has. We also look for people who are team players, right? Business is a team sport and someone with a big ego who only cares about themselves isn't going to work. I want people who want to help others and we all can grow together. And finally, high integrity. We are in a high distrusted industry with auto repair. So we need people who have an extremely high moral standards and understand that no amount of money is worth breaking those standards. So you're welcome to steal my values or come up with your own, but those values should align with you and your best performers in your company. I know sometimes this can be all like corporate speak and stuff, but it really does matter because if you boil it down, great people who have these values can grow with you. They can learn, they can progress. But if they don't align with these things, if they're lazy, they have low accountability, they only care about themselves and they have low integrity. No matter how good they are, it's never going to work in the end and it's going to bring down everybody else in your organization to that level. Number two is we want people who are coachable and show progress. I am a lifelong learner. I'm constantly learning new things and trying to put them in tests and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I'm looking for that in everybody that is on our team, who welcome feedback, who welcome constructive criticism and actually put it to use. Because this creates a culture where everyone's constantly looking to improve. Even today. I was at a store, one of our over 2 million hour stores and a manager from one of our lowest volume stores. It was his day off and he had went to visit the $2 million store on his own just because he wanted to see what he could pick up that day and what he could learn, what he could bring back and implement at his store. He was doing that because he wanted to improve. And that to me is a really great sign. When someone is struggling, do they make excuses? Do they have every reason in the world? While that idea will won't work with their customer base, that won't work because of X, Y and Z. Or do they say, you're right, I'm going to figure this out? Do they pivot? Do they try new things? And like I said, I don't expect perfection, but I do expect people to make progress, because I am looking to progress every day, and I know I'm not perfect. But people who consistently improve get better. Those results will compound. But if someone is consistently resistant with you and they're not performing and they don't want to get better, like, it is never going to work out. So that's a person automatically. We got to cut ties and move on. Number three is the 75% rule. When a location is struggling, we will bring in a proven manager to run that store for like a week or maybe two. And they usually blow the current numbers out of the water with the exact same core team with no additional marketing. They just bring this new energy and effort. And, you know, they are intentionally there to show off. They want to look good for us. And it also gets everybody excited, and it breaks limiting beliefs that people have that my customers don't have the money, my techs aren't good enough. Like, all these things get blown out of the water when someone comes in and they set the ceiling. After that week, we set the expectation that 75% of what they just did is the minimum expectation if they want to continue their job. So, for example, we have a store that has been averaging $18,000 a week in sales. Another manager comes in and does $29,000 in a week, and they set the new ceiling. So then we take 29,000, we times it by 75%. We get 22,000. We go to that manager, say, listen, I know you've been doing 18,000 for the last number of weeks. We have proven that the store can do 29,000 with one of our best guys. Now, we're not expecting you to get there overnight, but we are expecting at least 75% of that 22,000 to be done immediately based on the things that hopefully they learned by working with that manager. And if they can't do it, we got the wrong person because we're leaving, in that case, over $10,000 a week, over half a million dollars of sales on the table because we don't have the right person in charge. And so we set the CEO in 75%. And if they can't Meet that standard, we move on. Number four is the 3630 rule. When we've come to the realization that we must move on, it can be a very tough decision, especially when that person has been with you. And I have found that There is a 36 hour window of pain where I'll feel it for 30 hours leading up to that conversation that I have to have that person. My stomach may be in knots, I can't sleep. I run through the conversation in my head multiple times. You're like, what if they say this? I'm going to say that. How am I going to sit? What are the first words I'm going to say? I'm sure you've done this before when you had to make a tough decision. And so for 30 hours leading up to the conversation, it will weigh very heavy on me. But then it happens, we have the conversation. Sometimes it's only 15 minutes, right? Sometimes it's quick because they know it's coming, they know they've been struggling, they've been kind of waiting for this. And sometimes it's a weight off their shoulders too. Sometimes when people are struggling and they need to move on, they know it just as much as you do. But they don't want to resign because maybe they feel that they're going to put you in a bad place, right? That has happened to me many, many times. And sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it's a surprise and you know, sometimes you feel bad about it. But we have the conversation, then it weighs on my mind for another six hours. So we're at 30 on the front end, six on the back end. Then it clears, the weight has lifted. And often we see a 30% increase in sales immediately after changing the manager. So for example, here's a store was doing 25k a week. We had to fire the manager due to a breaking a company policy. The sales immediately cut in half with the temporary manager who's been in place. And then we hire somebody new and immediately it jumps back up. In this case, we got 100% increase back to 22k that week and it's continuing to grow. Sometimes, like it's tough to make that decision and you go through those 36 hours of pain and the person's disappointed and all this stuff. But then the next week you double sales. Like you don't feel as bad. The decision becomes, man, I should have done this weeks ago because it clear wasn't the right fit. So sometimes you just have to rip the band aid. As tough as a conversation, it may be with that single person, you got to remember that as the business owner, there is a lot of people that rely on. It's more than just that one person. In my case, we have over 200 employees. They all have families. We have lots of vendors that we buy from. There's lots of customers whose cars that we fix. And there is a lot that rides on me and my leadership team and everybody that works for us. And so sometimes, yeah, we got to make changes that are tough, but ultimately, it's better for the business. It's better for the customers, is better for everybody else in the world. And sometimes the person that we fire, in this case, we don't always fire them. Sometimes it's, hey, you're just not ready to run this store, and we have a better opportunity. Maybe it's a demotion back to be an assistant manager who sometimes then can go under the wing of a more seasoned manager. They get up to speed, they start to learn it, and then they're back in a store, taking over again as a store manager maybe a year or two later and having tremendous success because they knew that what it was like before. They knew where they struggled. They. They seeked advice and coaching, and they got better, and they wanted it now, and they knew what to do. Like, we have done this many, many times where we have given somebody a chance, we pulled it back, they learned, and then they got a second chance, and they crushed it. You have a lot of options as an owner, but you just got to remember, you need to keep an eye out for the health of the business over the long term. If you've got to make a change, my advice is to rip the bandaid off and then move forward. You will be happy that you did it in the long run. So that's all I got on this video. I'll see you on the next one. Cheers.