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Fixed Ops Leadership Lessons Service Managers Can Use in 2026

January 12, 2026

As dealership leaders look ahead to the next year, many focus on forecasts, budgets, and market conditions. But the biggest opportunity for growth in 2026 won’t come from external forces. It will come from Fixed Ops leadership decisions made inside the service department.

In Service Drive Revolution #341, the conversation explores what strong leadership actually looks like in today’s service drive. Topics range from unapplied labor and minimum standards to intentional planning, technician development, and preparing for increased demand. The insights apply directly to SERVICE MANAGERS, SERVICE ADVISORS, and Fixed Ops leaders who want sustainable results—not short-term wins.

Why Fixed Ops Leadership Must Be Intentional

High-performing service departments don’t succeed by accident. Every outcome—good or bad—is the result of intentional or unintentional leadership.

Strong Fixed Ops leadership focuses on:

Clear expectations
Consistent systems
Measurable standards
Daily execution

When leaders rely on hope, motivation, or “working harder,” results fluctuate. When they rely on systems, results stabilize.

That principle shows up everywhere in the service drive.

Minimum Standards Drive Maximum Improvement

One of the most impactful leadership tools discussed is the use of minimum performance standards. These standards protect the shop from inefficiency while giving technicians a clear target.

Effective minimum standards:

Sit just above the bottom third of performance
Are written, visible, and enforced
Apply to both flat-rate and hourly technicians
Increase efficiency without creating fear

Raising the floor gradually lifts the entire shop. Even small improvements in the lowest performers create major gains in overall productivity and profitability.

This leadership approach connects directly to reducing waste and improving systems, as outlined in
Unapplied Labor in Fixed Ops: What Service Managers Must Fix Now.

Why Tracking and Visibility Change Behavior

Anything tracked improves.

Many service departments review technician performance only after payroll runs. By then, it’s too late. Strong Fixed Ops leadership brings performance forward.

Posting numbers daily:

Creates awareness
Encourages self-correction
Reduces excuses
Improves accountability

When performance is visible, indifference disappears. Gamification further accelerates improvement, especially when leaders reward both top performers and the most improved team members.

Systems First, People Second

A recurring theme is that systems outperform talent.

When shops struggle, leaders often blame people. In reality, unclear systems create most performance issues. Strong Fixed Ops leadership builds structure so the right behavior happens automatically.

Examples include:

Clear dispatch rules
Defined efficiency expectations
Consistent inspection processes
Daily communication rhythms

For a deeper look at how leadership discipline starts with structure, read
Intentional Goal Setting for Service Managers in Fixed Ops.

Developing Technicians Through Clear Pathways

Technician shortages remain a challenge. However, leadership still controls how technicians grow once they’re hired.

Effective leaders create:

Defined onboarding plans
Clear skill progression paths
Training milestones
Performance benchmarks

This approach reduces frustration, improves retention, and prevents stagnation—especially among entry-level technicians.

Leadership isn’t about swinging harder with a dull axe. It’s about sharpening the axe before the work begins.

Preparing Fixed Ops for 2026 Opportunities

Looking ahead, several trends point to opportunity:

Increased vehicle sales compared to recent years
More personalization and accessories
Stable or declining vehicle age
Increased travel and usage

Service departments that prepare now—with staffing, standards, and systems—will be positioned to capture this demand. Those who wait will struggle to keep up.

Final Thoughts: Fixed Ops Leadership Determines Results

The core lesson from SDR #341 is clear:

Fixed Ops leadership—not market conditions—determines performance.

Leaders who:

Set minimum standards
Track what matters
Build systems before blaming people
Plan intentionally for growth

will outperform those who rely on forecasts alone.

As 2026 approaches, the question isn’t what the market will do.
The question is whether your leadership is intentional enough to capitalize on it.

FULL VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Predictions, Unapplied Labor, and Taylor Swift

Welcome, everybody, to the big show. Today, we are going to talk about our predictions for 2026, the episode we did on unapplied labor, Taylor Swift, and much more. I’m Chris Collins. Hogy and Adam are here. We have a really fun conversation and much more coming up right now on Service Drive.

Taylor Swift’s Leadership Docuseries

We had a lot of comments on the unapplied time episode, which was pretty popular, and I think it sparked some good conversations, and we’ll talk a little bit about that, but I’ve had zero feedback on Taylor Swift’s documentary about leadership. Not one person has brought it up. I know Hogi, you’re a father of some Swifties, and you’ve watched. Did you watch it with your daughters? Everybody’s watching it. I don’t believe him. I think everybody’s watching. It’s like Trump voters. They do. I bet you Adam’s not watching it. You don’t think? I did listen to it. Yes.

I made the college try. I went through three episodes, and I was done. The rest of the family, the girls, watched it. I did make the first mistake, clicking on the wrong one. For the first 20 minutes, I watched the concert, and I was like, “This is not it. I am super upset.”, I go, “This cannot be it.” I go, “This is not what we’re doing right now.” Then we found the right one. I got feedback for you all, I thought I got it, I got the point, I thought it was great.

Leadership and Intentionality

I’m a little worried girls becoming Swifties, but I will say it definitely beats the alternative of what else is out there. I want my girls to follow in her footsteps with the leadership for sure. That’s all I got. We’ve gone from where Taylor Swift maybe wouldn’t have been my ideal example for my daughters because she externalized control so much. She was writing all these songs about how it was the boy’s fault. All of the breakups and everything was the boy’s fault and never her fault. I feel with this documentary, you see another side of her that isn’t that.

She’s exactly the opposite. She owns the outcome, is very intentional, and works really hard at creating something out of nothing in that way. Adam, aren’t your daughters too young to be Swifties, or is there no age for? They were. They were both watching it. Marin, our youngest, definitely still, but she sat still in the music. They both loved music. I’ve got trying to make-ers, but Payton definitely loved it. I see future in that piece.

Opportunities for Dancers

I will say this. I came back to watch at least the end. What I really value, or one of the things that I do value what she does, is that she gives her employees or her dancers opportunities. They try so hard for her and for this intentional outcome for all these various customers or attendees, right? I really like the fact of—God, I can’t believe the name of the gentleman—but he’s trying to make an impression in a dance. He’s been practicing for so long, and they kind of have to run it by Taylor, but they already know that he’s probably going to be approved to do the last dance in the tour or whatever.

She’s given a shot. It’s this whole buildup of the type of people that is casting in her entire tour. I learned so much more about this than I probably am willing to admit, but I’m admitting it here. The whole choreography of that, it’s magical in the piece. There’s so much practice. It’s insane how she’s given her own people the opportunity to really step up. Everything is planned out to the max, and then it’s having fun at the end of it.

You can tell they’re all having fun. It’s really not work to them. Not only have they said that multiple times throughout the series or whatever, but it’s quite fascinating for how big of a production and all the various songs. She’s consistently always practicing. Everybody else is too. I didn’t watch the whole thing, not every piece of it. Sorry. It was definitely a good, solid watch.

Transcending the Audience

One of the lessons there, too, is the casting. She’s recruiting the best of the best, and maybe they don’t feel like they’re working, but watching them, they’re working harder than anybody. Did you watch the last episode, number six, Adam? Bits and pieces of it. I think it’s in that one, I could be wrong, that they literally believe that they are changing the world. Yes. For the people that attend that concert.

They talk about how we’re politically divided, and there are all these other things going on in the world, but when the lights go out and that show starts, they are transcending people into another world that is a happier place that they’re welcome, and people are united and together. They really believe that, and I think that they achieve that. The feedback I’ve had from people that attended that were like, “Oh, this is nothing you ever have experienced.” It’s like a modern-day revival where people are all getting together with one commonality, which is worshiping Taylor Swift.

Easter Eggs and Foreshadowing

I got caught up. It’s crazy how they do this. There’s some outfit or whatever that in one of the songs. Oh man, I’m probably gonna hunt for this one. They’re talking about it’s a red and black jumpsuit thing, and then there’s this huge revealing at one of the shows, and now it’s black and gold. The Robert Cavalli designed outfit. Okay, it was red for the whole tour. What was interesting: it’s got a snake on it. Everyone’s anticipation. They did this whole montage of everybody, whether you’re on a phone or seeing the revealing and live streaming or whatever the heck it was, was crazy to me about how suspenseful and how engaged people were on an outfit.

When Hogi was telling me when she did the podcast with her fiancé, and I asked him if he’d watched it, he was like, “Not only did I watch it, my daughters made me hook up the iPad so we could pause it.” I was like, “Huh? What are you talking about?” He’s like, “There’s all kinds of Easter eggs.” Then he explained the first two minutes of it, and that this number means this, and this thing references that. I don’t know, it seems like a full-time job being a Taylor Swift fan if you’re always looking for those Easter eggs and paying attention. Was she foreshadowing, Hogi, in that she had a new album coming out or something? There were all kinds of things you were telling me.

Everything is Curated

There was a bunch of stuff, and at the time she was talking, she thought she was going to do the Super Bowl, and she ended up not doing the Super Bowl, but talking about her new album. The theme color is orange, and there’s a Rothko book, and Rothko’s famous for using orange. Everything on the shelf behind her means something. There’s one of Travis’s Super Bowl trophies laying on its side, and Sourdough, they were talking about sourdough a lot, and the Super Bowl’s in San Francisco. She doesn’t do anything on accident.

I think that bleeds over into just another leadership lesson that’s illustrated all throughout that, if you’re watching for it: everything’s curated. It was funny, when I started watching it, I was like, “Oh, no wonder Chris loves it,” because you’re 30 seconds into it, and it’s her gathering her people around and talking about making sure they control what they can control.

It goes into internal locus of control. For sure. She, they think at one point, calls it agency, personal agency is what she says. But it is talk about dramaturgy and creating something, and the level of detail, and then to do that, bringing all the best together and making everybody feel a part of it. You could go on and on of the lessons you could learn from it for sure. That episode doesn’t have a lot of views or comments. Unapplied time is our target audience for sure.

Intentionally Avoiding Unapplied Time

One of the problems with the way that I think about things sometimes is I think about things logically, and it’s effective, and people are too biased to see the trees for the forest in that way. When you said Rothko, Adam’s eyes almost went closed. I’ll say this. Unapplied time is one thing, too, but the lessons that even watching this from a leadership perspective, and you were saying this a little bit ago, everything’s intentional. The amount of practice. When we talk, if we applied so much more practice to what we do day in with some leadership, some structures, we can avoid the unapplied time or the feeling of trying to hide it somewhere else or whatever. Biggest takeaway: whether it’s in life, you’re always practicing whatever, having some sort of consistency in something, and I did find it in a Taylor Swift miniseries.

It was very interesting because I like the start off and how she got into music, and I appreciate her as a musician because I’m a musician myself. Not that I’m going to go listen to a bunch of her songs or albums, but there’s kids’ movies, Sing and all that other stuff that my kids love watching, and I’m like, “Oh, I recognize that song. Recognize that song.” I can see where it blends in together a little bit. It was cool. Thank you, because you guys, I don’t think I would have watched that or said, “Hey, it’s New Year’s. We’re going to watch it.” Sit down. This is our movie night.

Leadership and Creating a Mission

If you think about shift meetings, a lot of people struggle with that sort of stuff. There are some really good examples in there of creating a narrative, how to hold a meeting, how to exploit an enemy or a cause, right? She’s really good at that. She has, there’s definitely an enemy to what they are doing, which is the outside world, and they’re trying to intentionally create an escape for people, and they have a clear mission. Part of leadership is inviting people on a mission. In the I Am Leader, I talk about a lot of this stuff. I talk about how Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift and all of these artists use this kind of tool that is hardwired in all of us: when we’re young, we all feel like we don’t fit in.

We’re awkward during puberty. Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Kiss, when I was a kid, Kiss Army, Twisted Sister, they all do this. You aren’t understood. You don’t fit in, but we understand you over here, right? That’s the whole invitation. You’re judged everywhere else. You feel like you don’t fit in and awkward, but here you are accepted. Taylor Swift’s really good at self-deprecating and making herself human and authentic in a lot of ways that feeds to that narrative. There are a lot of layers going on there that are, I think, great leadership lessons, and if you watch it in that context, it’s really fun. Let’s talk, we can talk about unapplied labor now.

Minimum Requirements in California and Union Shops

Hogi brought up a couple good points that he got feedback on. One is, it doesn’t work in California, which it does. You are missing one ingredient. For reducing unapplied labor if you’re in California, what’s the missing ingredient, Hogi, that they need to have in place to protect themselves? Minimum requirements. You just have to have minimum requirements for what they flag or their efficiency, that sort of thing, and then that protects you. You got to have some sort of floor of what you’re willing to allow and accept, and it has to be in writing and formal. Technicians fire themselves basically in that scenario. In union shops, most of the time in a union agreement, there’s some sort of minimum threshold or requirements.

I’ve seen them a couple of times where they don’t have them, but you still, as part of your hiring, can make minimum requirements part of it if it’s not in the contract. A lot of them are there, and they don’t even know it. In Philly one time, you got to read the contract. That’s the place to start: get it and read it. A lot of times, we’re going into negotiations, and we were going to bring up something that was already there. That’s always an interesting thing. One, read it. Two, going into union negotiations, asking what the minimum requirement should be. I’ve not once had it where I didn’t ask what they were, and they didn’t come back with something that was even a little loftier than what my expectations were going to be.

Setting the Floor for Performance

Whether you’re union or in California, whenever you’re setting minimum requirements and you’re trying to figure out where you need to be at, take the bottom 20% or maybe the bottom third and set your minimum requirements right above that. They don’t have to be anything crazy. Some people get carried away with it sometimes, or even when they’re setting forecasts and things, they’ll set a forecast for a technician that, “He has to be at nine hours or eight hours or ten hours.” I’m like, “Okay, what is he at right now?” They’re like, “Four.” I’m like, “We’re probably not going to take.” When you’re setting minimum requirements, come right in above the top of where that bottom third is, bottom 20%.

They don’t have to be crazy, but you can do those little exercises that are like, “What does it do to my financials if I get a half hour per tech or per stall or whatever?” There’s a bunch of different ways to do it, and it’s crazy. Especially when you bring up that bottom third just a little bit. There’s a big percentage of the workforce today that’ll get by on the bare minimum. It’s up to us as leaders to raise the bare minimum, and it’s a really effective way to do it. It’s funny, too. A lot of those times when I’m in those shops, and we’re attacking that, I go have one-on-ones with the techs, and they don’t even know. There’s a lot of people out there that don’t even know they’re doing a bad job.

Standards for Hourly vs. Flat Rate Techs

It’s interesting. The whole time you’re saying all that, Hogi, I keep thinking about flat rate versus hourly techs, and in truck shops, right? Establishing the minimum standards, holding them accountable, getting through. Most of the truck shops out there are hourly. It’s establishing that minimum standard and setting a goal. Really, setting a goal in everything, but also understanding, I think we called it the murder line, when we were going into some truck shops. That’s huge. Some of those folks don’t know how bad they’re actually doing, and there’s not as much management in the shops. Minimize the unapplied time, and setting goal standards is crucial regardless of whether it’s flat rate or hourly, but especially if it’s hourly.

Invariably, customer pay sales will go up because the labor type that has the most efficiency in it is retail labor or customer pay labor in a sense. A lot of times when you have techs that are victims, those techs are resolved to the idea that they can’t do better, and that the system is against them, or whatever it is. What if you can convert a couple of those, and they start trying to make more time? The best way to make more time is to do better inspections. Your hours per RO and your sales go up because they’re more attentive. A lot of times you see inspections are better, too, when you’re putting in some sort of floor.

Defining 100% Efficiency

We should probably unpack that just a little bit, Hogi, in the sense that you’re saying bottom third. Let’s say you have a shop, and your technicians are averaging an efficiency of 80%. Now I know in truck and car, efficiency and proficiency are two different things. Let’s also get on the same page there. You’re working an eight-hour day, and you flag eight hours. To me, that’s 100% efficient. Forget about proficiency. Forget about anything. There’s an eight-hour day, and the technician flags eight hours; that’s 100%. The opportunity was eight hours, and they took advantage of that opportunity fully, and it’s 100%.

I know somebody’s going to say, “That’s proficiency.” That’s fine. Call it whatever you want. The opportunity is eight hours. What do we do versus the opportunity? Let’s say you have a shop that’s averaging 80%. Basic understanding of our industry would tell you that 100% is where the average tech should land, right? 100% is pretty conservative if you’re doing a lot of retail or customer pay labor, or half of it is. You’re going to run pretty tight on warranty work, but still you can be at 100%.

You should really be above 100% on retail work. If your shop is at 80%, what’s going to happen is you’re going to have a bunch of techs that are 120, 130%. You’re going to have some techs that are around 100, and then you’re going to have a handful of techs that are 60, 50, and then maybe a couple that are 40.

Gradually Improving the Bottom Tier

Those are the techs that we want to fix, right? Those are the techs that are going to be affected by a minimum requirement. What Hogi is saying is don’t come in at first and say, “The minimum requirement is 100%,” because you’re going to lose 30% of your techs because they probably aren’t good enough to run at 100%. You’re going to need to provide them training opportunities and recruit other techs probably all at the same time because some of them might not make it.

The point being is, if you got two techs at 30% and one at 40%, if you put the minimum requirement at 50, what will happen is those three techs will hit 50, and you’re going to be flagging more hours in the shop. Then six months later, raise it to 60, and watch how they’ll come to 60. If you put it at 100, they’re going to give up, and you’re going to have to get rid of them. If you put it just a little bit above where that bottom group is and keep inching them up, they can improve their efficiency by 20% just by paying attention. They don’t have to be any more talented. They don’t have to have better work in order to do that, just by paying attention and being more intentional and having a clear measurable that they have to hit.

Tracking, Posting, and Gamifying Results

Often times, like we were alluding to a minute ago, in shops where that’s an issue, we aren’t posting the time. Nobody really knows what their efficiency is until they get their paycheck. It’s way in the rearview mirror instead of a daily thing. Anything tracked improves exponentially. If you’re posting the numbers, and you’re making it a focus, and you’re rewarding the techs at the top, there’s zero chance that the numbers aren’t going to go up just by the fact that you’re tracking it and talking about it.

Having those minimum requirements and inching them up over time will dramatically improve the indifference in the shop and those bottom techs because they don’t have to do a lot to hit 50% or 60% or whatever it is. But in the scope of your overall shop, that’s going to make a huge difference. More cars or trucks are going to get done, better inspections, all of that stuff. All ships rise. I think that’s what you meant by that, Hogi? That’s exactly it. That is the backside to it: posting it. Like you said, a number tracked automatically gets better. You’re posting it, and then gamify it. Put a big carrot out there for the number one in the shop.

Rewarding Top Dog and Most Improved

Something that’s really important when you’re posting numbers and you’re trying to bring that bottom third up: put a carrot out there for whoever wins, right? The winner is the winner, and they should get a carrot. In a lot of shops, that’s one or two guys over and over again every month, and that’s not a lot of fun for everybody if it’s the same two guys. If they’re top dog, they’re top dog. What’s equally as important is have two big carrots. One for the top dog, and the second big carrot is for the most improved. If you’re working on that bottom third, you make a big deal out of whoever is most improved.

It’s just as big a deal as the guy that’s top dog every month. If everybody’s drinking the wine a little bit, you’ll watch it, and those conversations. What I find with the bottom third a lot of times, it’s funny, even when people don’t necessarily have as much drive or competition as some of their peers, a lot of times they’ll do for the group what they won’t do for themselves. I can’t tell you how many of those minimum requirement conversations that I’ve had where I’m talking to them, and they’re like, “I see that I can probably do that.”

Working Backwards from Shop Goals

Those conversations got a lot different when I started at the end and worked backwards. What I mean by that is, having one-on-ones with the techs at the beginning of the month and giving them their goal for the month is a great idea. You’re inviting them in and saying, “My boss has a goal for me for the service department of $800 million in gross profit, or whatever the number is. In order to have $800 million in gross profit, I have to have 3,433 hours.

If the shop’s going to hit 3,400 hours, then each stall has to average this. Now, Bobby over there, he averages 14 hours a day. I don’t expect you to get to 14 hours a day, but it’s my job to grow you to that point. Right now, you’re averaging five. If we have a chance at 3,400, I have to figure out how to get you to seven. It’s mathematically impossible for us to get there if you’re at five, but I have a really good chance if you’re at seven, or whatever it is.” You’re doing that over and over and over again.

Recruiting Better to Maintain Competition

When you’re doing that, what it does to you subconsciously as a leader in the intentionality to have a road map to where you’re going. It all starts to come together. Getting the bottom third up, it’s crazy how you can flip a shop on its side in production, and a service department on its side in profitability. We do a lot of things in service, but getting a little more out of the shop and being a little bit more intentional back there, the math gets really crazy really quick, right? One thing we hear often is when you talk about gamifying the top, people say, “We did that, but the same tech or the same advisor won every time, so we quit doing it.”

That’s more of an insight into you and your leadership: that you can’t recruit better people over time to beat that person, that you’re so lazy and so indifferent about who’s working for you that you’re allowing the low performers to exist, or you’re not training them and working with them, whatever it is. There’s no competition for somebody at the top, because those people at the top, they usually thrive in a world where they can win awards and compete against somebody. I wouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water. I would try to see if you can’t recruit better people over time that will fight for the first place.

The 2026 Economic Forecast

It’s crazy how when you do that, how quickly it levels up, right? A lot of times people are performing at that level just because it’s what we allow, it’s what we tolerate. It’s interesting. What do you, now let’s talk about 2026. What are you guys predicting for ’26? I will give a little bit of the lay of the land. The big, beautiful bill is going to dump billions. I think it’s close to a hundred billion into the middle class. What does the middle class do with money when they get it? Usually spend it.

What do they spend it on? Cars, trucks. Usually TVs and Nintendos, and then lift kits. They accessorize their vehicles. There’s going to be a huge opportunity in the next couple of years to be aware of people accessorizing: wheels, tint, that sort of thing. That part will come back, and also on the new car side. We sold more new cars in the US than we have since 2019. I think it’ll come in around 16 million, up from a low of under 14 million. That’s a pretty big number.

Personalizing Vehicles and Average Age

They’re projecting 2026 will be about the same. I don’t know that the deduction for Buy American will make a huge difference in our service drive. It might help volumes for certain brands, but the tax deductions, I think, will make a huge difference. I would be looking to help people personalize their vehicles, I think we will see the average age of the car on the road either stay the same or go down, I don’t think it’ll go up this year, I think people will buy new cars, and they will buy newer cars, and they will want to accessorize them and personalize them, I think my opinion is going to be a really good year for the service drive.

Better than last year, I think better than 2025. It is interesting. The average age and mileage of a vehicle has been creeping up naturally as new vehicle volume has been down. The average age, because I remember for years, for 20 years, no matter what store I was in, or what meeting I was at, if you ran the average age and mileage for a service department, it was almost always six years, 60,000 miles for the longest time, and it’s been creeping up.

The Need for Tech Recruitment

That’s interesting. Volume, that’s the record since 2019, because a bunch of them were talking about they’d never get back to pre-pandemic volumes, right? It’s so funny. Here we are. I agree. I think it’s going to be a—there’s a ton of opportunity going into 2026. We’re not a political show, but I find it fascinating that Trump’s policies really are more like the Democrats used to be in the sense that he’s doing a lot of really good stuff for the middle class. When you do that, the economy really starts to roar. I think we’re going to see the economy really go. I think he’s smarter than everybody’s giving him credit for.

The manufacturing. I’m not sure who’s going to do all these jobs that are being created, but you guys got to have more kids. Something. Also, we’re seeing when we’ve been bringing on new coaching clients, we’re having to hire a lot of technicians in the beginning in order to rightsize the ship. The opportunity to be good at hiring techs is there still. That’s always a narrative, but that’s a skill set you got to have. You got to recruit tech. Not to circle back to minimum requirements—I know we passed that by—but usually that’s the biggest resistance I’ll get for implementing minimum requirements: “Techs are hard to find.”

Building a Pathway for New Techs

If I could have one superpower as a service manager today, it would definitely be to understand that hiring techs is within my control. It’s harder now than it’s ever been. I think we’re up to, I think last time I read it, it was eight techs leaving the field for every one coming in. That sounds bad. Just a few years ago, it was five leaving for every one coming in. The one coming in isn’t exactly replacing the baby boomer that’s retiring or whatever. They’re not staying as long either. People will change careers way more often than they used to, and that’s compounding that issue. So many of those things are tied together.

A piece of minimum requirements and bringing people along is having a pathway for them and being intentional with that piece of it. As you’re starting to look at 2026 and look out into your shop and, “Where do I start?” I think it’s a great place to start as you start figuring out how I’m going to get these increases, how I’m going to meet these objectives, how I’m going to grow this year: minimum requirements, setting goals for these techs, and then the new ones coming in, having a pathway for them and building that out. I think it’s a great place to start. It doesn’t have to be anything super complicated.

Sharpening Your Axe

Literally start with your lube techs and have a detailed plan on what it looks like to be a lube tech at my store at XYZ Chevrolet in the first two weeks of working here. You know how to do an oil change and tire rotation the XYZ Chevrolet way, or whatever it is. Start super simple. What I see so often, and where we end up helping people the most, is by planning that out, because they start to look out there and they see. They try to eat the elephant in one bite. They see how big of a task it is, and instead of taking it on one bite at a time or whatever, they go back up front, and they’re not procuring anything.

They’re not investing in anything. I’m famous for using that Abraham Lincoln quote where he says, “If my life depended on it, and I had to cut down a tree in six hours, I’d spend the first four sharpening my axe.” It’s funny when people start looking at the shop, instead of taking a step back and doing some of the work you need to do, they try to do other things.

Do you do that? That’s for 2026. Probably not. You got to start. What would Taylor do? Think about it: 2026. That’s good stuff. Thanks, you guys. You guys are here next week, which will be fun. We’ll record SDR here live, but we have a new customer boot camp next week. Everybody’s coming to beautiful Los Angeles where we like higher taxes and broken infrastructure. Always a good time. We have tacos, there’s tacos. Can you imagine if the mayor of LA ran a shop? Actually, there’s probably a lot of.

She might do better than some, which isn’t saying much. Pretty fun. Cool. I’ll see you guys soon. Thanks, everybody, and have a great week and a great 2026. I am super excited about this year, and I hope you are too, and your excitement will be contagious to everybody else. What you think is going to happen, you intentionally go after, probably will. It’s good. Thanks. We’ll see you next time on Service Drive Revolution.

Thanks so much for watching this episode of Service Drive Revolution. We’re uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so you don’t miss out. If you have a question you’d like us to answer on the show, call 833-ASK-SDR, and we’ll answer your question on the show. That’s 833-ASK-SDR. For special deals on our books and training, head over to offers.chriscollinsinc.com. I’m Chris Collins, and I’ll see you in the next video.

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