Every Business in Your Industry Leaks Money and Calls It Normal

A buddy of mine texted me about an oil leak. He was talking about cars. He was actually describing your business, and every other business in your industry.

Here's what he sent me. He said people hear what I do and their gut reaction is "thankfully, we don't have people problems." Then he painted the picture. Imagine your car leaks oil. Your neighbor's car leaks oil. Every car on the block leaks oil. Everybody has a pan or a piece of cardboard or a bowl shoved under the engine to catch the drips. Nobody calls a mechanic. Nobody calls it a problem. It's just how life works on that street.

Then a friend pulls up in a car that doesn't leak. Suddenly the whole neighborhood has a problem. But only once they see it.

I read that text and thought: this is every business I have ever walked into. This is every owner I have ever sat across from.

The way it's always been isn't always the best way

Turnover is accepted as normal by many frontline companies. You see it in refilling the same seat every eight months, the Indeed ad that never comes, the owner working Saturdays because every estimate, every customer complaint, and every people problem crosses his desk.

But none of it is normal. All of it is expensive.

You have gotten so used to catching the drips that you stopped seeing the leak. Somebody at a trade association meeting told you everybody deals with this. Your competitor down the road said the same thing. Your dad said it. So you accepted it as normal and moved on with your day.

I can say "this is not normal" until I am blue in the face and it will not land. Words don't move owners. Proof does. That's the entire reason this show exists.

Nobody wants another guru with a great idea

There are thousands of people out there telling you how it ought to look. They get you hyped up. They hand you a concept. They fill a ballroom for a weekend and disappear on Monday.

Almost none of them get their hands dirty with you.

Ask one of them "how do I actually make that happen in my shop, with my people, next week" and you get crickets. Or you get "just go have the conversation." I have never been trained on how to have that conversation either. Nobody taught me how to handle the pushback, the resistance, the rebuttal, the guy who gets defensive and shuts down. That gap is where owners quit and go back to accepting these problems as normal.

This show goes the other direction. Practical. Tactical. Things you implement right away, with the people you already have, at the size you already are.

The guy with the clean driveway started exactly where you are

I know what you're thinking. You know that guy. He just sold to private equity for half a billion dollars, and now he stands on stage talking about supporting your people through thick and thin and paying them even when there's no work. You look at him and think, I am not that guy.

He wasn't that guy either. At some point in his career he stood right where you stand. He put small pieces in place, one at a time, and he got there.

He isn't smarter than you. He didn't get lucky. He made the right decisions at the right time. He stopped playing the victim. He stopped blaming the economy, the marketplace, and kids these days. He pulled his boots up and did the hard work.

I have sat in that guy's office. Every so often I will bring one of them on this show. Not often, because I care more about getting our hands dirty together than about admiring somebody else's finished house.

The nag in your gut means you are ahead of your competition

When something eats at you and every person around you insists it's fine, the nag is the signal. That gut feeling that says there has to be a better way puts you ahead of the owners who accepted the oil leak as the cost of ownership.

And you will hear me challenge a lot of thinking here. Starting with this one: there is no labor shortage. Some of you want to shut this off right now. It's still true. We don't have a kids-don't-want-to-work problem. We have a nobody-wants-to-work-for-you problem. I have made that case in longer conversations elsewhere, and I will make it again here. Disengagement alone rips real money off the bottom line every single year, which I broke down in this conversation on how low engagement drains revenue.

I don't pull punches. I also don't point fingers and walk away. It's not your fault nobody trained you. It's not your fault the whole neighborhood convinced you the leak is normal. And it is fixable.

Your Monday move: write it down

Every episode ends with homework. I call it the Monday move. Instead of walking in Monday morning, staring at your inbox, and putting out fires, you do one thing that means fewer fires Friday and fewer fires next Monday.

Here's this week's move. Write down every recurring problem you stopped calling a problem. Every place you "slid a pan under" and told yourself everybody deals with it.

Do not fix anything. I mean that. Start pulling on threads at random and you create new problems. Take inventory first. If you don't know where you stand, you have no shot at knowing where to go.

Two tools I built help you count honestly. The W2 test: compare headcount on payroll December 31st to the number of W2s you issued that year. That gap is a pan you have been ignoring. And the hats worksheet: list every single thing you do, then mark what drains you. Most owners find their biggest leak is themselves. That's the Core Fit Blueprint starting point, and it starts with seeing clearly.

Make the list. Bring it Monday.

Want to know how much of the leak runs through your own desk? Take the Bottleneck Test at corematters.com.

New episodes every Wednesday.