Success never comes from doing things “good enough.” 

There’s value in going beyond the call of duty. Fortune always favors the hardest workers– the ones who make a habit of consistently giving even just a little extra effort than what their job calls for. But, for all you managers out there, it goes both ways – you have to show appreciation for someone who consistently gets the desired results if you want to keep that fire going. 

So, as I’m sure you’ve already heard, we have a Service Manager Challenge going on where I’m giving away my brand-new suped-up Jeep pickup truck to whoever tells us the best story of how they applied the strategies from our OnDemand platform or Coaching program to increase their net gross, effective labor rate, and customer satisfaction. 

I mean… you’ll be in a better place regardless. Our programs are tested and proven to help hundreds of Service Drives all across the United States and Canada (That’s right… Chris Collins is international, baby!), but if you participate in the Challenge and tell us about your journey you can win a tricked-out Jeep Gladiator!

But I wonder: is it better to be the manager that wins the challenge, or the coach of the manager that wins the challenge? Because we also have an internal prize for the coach (No, it isn’t a 2020 Jeep Gladiator).

I’ve been thinking a lot about that, because I have so many things I need to get done, but I have nobody I trust to hand them to. I even have a list of things I’ve had to ask my staff more than three times for. I assign these tasks to people and a week later, guess what I have to do? I have to ask again and again whether they’ve gotten done.

I’m starting to wonder, so much so that I made it the title of this week’s Service Drive Revolution episode: Is it worth it to just pay a personal assistant $100,000 a year? Because maybe that’s what it takes for someone to get something done, no questions asked.

Right now, I’m going on this two-week tour where I’m going to be gone speaking all over the country. Let’s say, while I’m on the road, I want a gym that’s outside of the hotel (because, let’s face it, hotel gyms usually suck). 

Would a good assistant find me a decent gym within the area? Would they check ahead and make sure they’re not sending me to a hotel that has bedbugs?

I literally just need somebody in the office that’s a bulldog like me – someone I can give projects to and who won’t take no for an answer. 

For example, I was speaking in Chicago one time, and I had a layover where I was stuck there for a whole day, so I ended up going to the Art Institute of Chicago. 

I was blown away by a short film they played there, and I really wanted to show our video team that. After I got back, I ordered it – it was expensive as hell, but I didn’t mind because the guy who made it is an artist. 

The next day, they call me and they’re like, “Hey, are you a library or a school?”

“No, I’m Chris Collins. I’m kind of a training company.”

“Well, you have to be a library or school in order to buy this.”

“Oh, c’mon! Sell it to me! There’s got to be a way.”

“Well, here’s what you should probably do: go to your local library and tell them you’ll donate it. They’ll order it from us, and then you can check it out.”

So I ask somebody here to do that, and guess what happened…

They went to the Los Angeles Library down the street and asked the person at the front, who said no. 

I’m like, “Okay. Did you ask anybody else?”

“No.”

So I called them myself, and asked for the person who’s in charge of ordering stuff. Done.

How much time did that take? How much money could I make in the time it takes for me to make a list of things I’ve asked for more than three times?

That’s why I’d gladly pay $100,000 a year for someone who can be more than just an assistant – they can be an assassin. Not literally, of course, just several echelons higher than an assistant. 

I have a couple friends that are really affluent, and their assistants – or assassins – are making like $70,000 or $80,000 a year. If I could just give something to somebody and it was done, that would honestly be worth $200,000.

For $100,000, would you still clock out at 4:30? Would you answer a text at seven at night if there was something that needed to be done? If there was a lot going on, would you work more than eight hours a day? How many extra miles would an assistant go?

There are some badass service managers who don’t even make that much. Once you get to six figures, the balance and reciprocity moves in your favor. Not only will you have water and stuff, an assassin will have no problem finding you a gym.

And that’s what leads us to the topic of today’s Service Drive Revolution: what do we see out there when we’re coaching managers? What do we have the most difficulty with?

The issue that most people have is that they just want a cheat code. They don’t want to do the work to get to where they want to be.

They might dip their toes in the water and even see some success from it for a little bit, but there’s always reasons that keep them from doing it consistently. You’ve got to make the necessary behavior changes to make it the new norm. 

Imagine doing $70,000 in sales when you could be doing $140,000. Look at what behaviors you have to change to double what you’re doing now. 

One of the things you have to do is embrace complexity. Everybody wants it to be easy. 

How strong are you if you double your sales? Can you have the best techs in the market? The best advisors? Can you have one more car washer and one more shuttle driver than anybody else? 

It’s life changing to have that sort of freedom. You can dominate the market if you’re not getting micromanaged to the point where you run into a deficit. 

I liken it to weight loss. Let’s say you’re 300 pounds and you want to weigh 150 pounds – there’s no magic pill for that. But at the end of the road, what’s it going to do for your health and quality of life?

When something wears out and causes something else to wear out, techs call it consequential damage. For example, oil leaking into a coolant hose and making it soft before it goes, the coolant hose would be consequential damage. That term right there is what gets some warranty claims paid.

Understand that when you’re dominating in the marketplace, people are going to want to know what you did. The truth of the matter is that you want it to be complex because if it wasn’t complex, everybody could do it – and not everybody’s going to pay that price. 

If there was a magic pill, any average Joe would take it, and then you would have no advantage in the marketplace, right?

Obviously, to lose weight, the first thing you have to do is work out. I know that I won’t show up all the time unless I have a trainer. Why?

Right now I have two trainers, and I pay to meet them for cardio and weights six days a week when I’m in town. I know it’s expensive, but I’m investing in the fact that I’ll be there because I won’t want to waste that money.

The food is the hardest part for me. Abs are made in the kitchen, right? A couple times, my trainer would come in with a garbage bag and throws away all the cereal, cookies, stuff that shouldn’t be there – the stuff that makes you feel good but is ultimately bad for you. If I have a couple glasses of tequila at nine o’clock at night and I know there are cookies in my cupboard, I’m going to go for them, but I’m sure as hell not going to get in the car and drive to the grocery store if there aren’t any.

You also don’t want to ask yourself, “What’s the best thing I could have for lunch right now,” That’s a mistake because you’re not eating for fuel, you’re eating for entertainment. You have to put yourself in a scenario where you’re not making a decision, which means you have to meal prep. If someone asks you what you want for lunch and you already made a chicken salad beforehand, you’re having that damned chicken salad. It just showed up, right? You have to trick yourself out of the decision that doesn’t move you towards your goal or else you’ll end up getting the burger and fries or whatever it is. 

So how is it any different for managers? 

That’s it for this week’s Service Drive Revolution. Remember – don’t just do the bare minimum when you could be worth $100,000 or even $200,000. Thanks for reading, watching, and listening, and we’ll see you again real soon!