I was fairly glum sitting there in the body shop, waiting for the owner to show up.

I had just bashed in the back of my truck, otherwise detailed in the post ‘Five Finger Discount.’

Now, I had a bashed in truck and I was way behind on my schedule on top of it all.

My eyes hardly took anything in as they roamed over the dusty waiting room, but they eventually rested on a plaque that stated the owner had been in business for over 20 years.

And that plaque looked to be close to 40 years old.

I was a desperate man in desperate circumstances.  As the saying goes, “Beggars can’t be Choosers.” 

When the owner walked in, I spoke up without any preamble whatsoever to a man I didn’t know from Adam.

“So John, it says you’ve been in business here for over 20 years.  I’ve a question for you.”

“Go right ahead.”

“Have you ever burned out?”

“Yep, sure did.  It’s been well over 20 years ago I did.  Had to find some answers and find ‘em fast.”

“What’d you come up with for answers.”

“Came up with 3 of them.”

“Do you mind sharing them with me?”

“Not at all. 

The first is, ‘You don’t need that work.’”

“What?”

“Yeah.  You are a typical man.  You do exactly what every other typical man does when the phone rings and there is work on the other end of the line.  First, the macho/ego part of you seizes what you think is a good opportunity; you don’t want to lose it or lose any image that you hold of yourself.  So, even though you are currently, say, 3 weeks booked out, and the job is a two day job, you tell the potentially, soon to be disappointed customer on the other end, ‘I think we can work it in by the end of this week,’ if you are at the first of the week, or, if at the end of the week, ‘I think we can get to it by the first of next week.’

And you say all that, having no idea how you are going to work it in, but you are already juggling customers in your mind to make way for this one, even though you promised those customers you would be there this week also.

You have a scheduling bankruptcy on your hands at this point.”

“Okay,” I said, “You are right so far about how I’ve scheduled my work.”

“I know I am. I’ve been there.  That’s why you have to get really stern with yourself when the phone rings and say, ‘You don’t need that work.’

What you are going to need to do, once you leave here, is go home and personally contact every customer that you have hanging and tell them you aren’t going to get to them anytime soon.  Clear the slate; start over.”

I took his advice.  The way I remember, I had 9 customers that I had no plan, really, of getting to their job. 

It was a bitter task.

The second–

“Now,” he said, “take this approach whenever someone calls and wants your business to help them.  Don’t even tell them when you can get to it while you are on the phone with them.  You will waffle every time; and you’ll always short yourself on time.  So, tell them you need to get to your schedule, and you will call them back within an hour to let them when you can get to their job.

Look at your schedule in cold blood.  When you have decided, realistically, when you can get to them, add another several days to that and call them back with the date.”

“But hold on,” I said, “we might be talking 3 months in some cases.  Anybody knows you’ll lose that business if you ask them to wait that long.”

“No you won’t,” he said, looking at me steadily through 20 years of experience. 

“No, you won’t,” he repeated. 

“Go one farther and tell them that you have their name on the date you can get to them, and that if it seems too long, then they should find someone else.  Tell them you will call them a week before that date to see if they have found someone else.

Ninety-eight percent of the time, they will still be waiting for you, and you better be ready to snap on their job just like you said you would, maybe even sooner.

The two percent that didn’t wait on you, aren’t customers you want anyway.  They hire who they can when they can and will treat you the same. 

And . . . here’s something else.  Let’s say it was a $5,000 job you had scheduled for that date. When you call them a week before they tell you they have found someone else, you can count on it, within a day or two, another $5,000 job will call and will fit into that time slot of the one you lost.  It almost always happens.”

“But . . .” I stammered.

“And the third—”

He looked at me, with that firm gaze of his, and said, “God made our bodies to work 8 to 10, maybe 12 hours a day.  It’s okay to work beyond that when the situation demands it, but if you are consistently working more than ten hours a day, you are exceeding what your body/family can handle and you’ll have the same problems at home that you have with your customer base.”

I pondered it all, and realized that probably God had put this man in my way for a reason.  I thanked him for his helpful words, left my truck there, and got on my way home.

I was about 5 miles away from his shop when I thought of it.  I just about turned around to go tell him what I was thinking, but I didn’t.

Several weeks later, when I went back to pick up my truck, I told him, “John, I was 5 miles away from here last time when I thought of something I wanted to tell you.”

“Yes, I’ve been thinking about you and wondering how it’s been going.”  (This said despite the fact that we were complete strangers when we met last visit.)  “What did you want to tell me?”

“You’ve never been poor.  If you had been, you wouldn’t have said some of what you said last visit.” 

“Yes, I’ve been poor.”  And really, no further words were needed.

*****

I’ve used his advice for close to 15 years now, and it holds true; every letter of it.