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Posted on: June 18th, 2014

Why do you do what you do?

In recent conversations with both future and current operators, familiar topics always come up:

  • Free vacs or not
  • $3 car wash or not
  • Prepping or not
  • Auto cashiers or attendant

You get the idea; there are more but this gets you thinking in the right direction. While I certainly have an opinion on most of these topics, this is not about what I think is right, but rather, why would you DO it?

I was watching a show the other night called ‘Bar Rescue’ and, during the conversation with the owner, the consultant asked why he didn’t have a certain area of the bar ‘income producing.’ It’s an interesting thought about maximizing your available square footage to produce a certain result, in this case more income. The response from the owner was probably more interesting. He had no idea how that area ended up that way. You can lose fast if you don’t have a plan, right or wrong, and something to measure against. It comes down to this, ‘why do you do what you do?’

By answering this question you will be able to build a model that will allow you to measure and have conviction in your business plan. If you can accurately and verbally state your goals and why you do what you do, you will have a clear picture of your business. It starts to look something like this:

Why do you have free vacuums?
Is it because that’s what someone said do, or is it to add value to all of your wash packages and use as a marketing tool to promote on all of your print materials, website and menu board? Or because you believe a property that looks busy will generate more business, therefore, if you lay out your site so the vacuums are visible and accessible to everyone, more customers will come?

No matter what the issue or hot topic, be sure to ask enough questions from enough people to develop an opinion and be able to defend the question ‘Why do you do what you do?’