The dream of most of our brothers when following the automobile industry, whether we say it or not, in the depths, everyone wants to build a factory to experience and show themselves. It may not be grandiose, it may not be too heavy on profit but it is like a turning point in life of a car repairman.
1. Recognize objectively about your inner strength in the current context
Is it time yet? Is it enough? Really ripe yet? A lot of brothers including me are eager to start and think, “Now or never” when there are only a few years of experience in capital and a little experience. And then we are easily trapped by our own subjectivity. Some people may have done a number of years at the firm understanding the processes and have been involved in important roles such as service advisors, deputy managers, and supervisors, but stepping outside to build a factory is lacking. Because I immerse myself in a too professional environment to solve the problem always fully numerical, but when I step outside, I always have to solve the problem of missing things. There were also a few doctors who worked at the big Garage outside for three or four years, seeing that my experience was also fierce, at any stage I could do it, seeing how to organize a Garage was easy, often looking at the surface of the platform. The sinking ice did not understand the hidden corners of a garage that rushed to fight right away when it was difficult, so it lost its energy, and invested a lot of money, then the merchant was miserable. Many brothers and sisters after a number of years of cultivating themselves in a big city came back to their hometown and borrowed a little capital, hurriedly built a factory without calculating and eventually paid off their debt … Hope that you will start to see the capacity before you start. I am very objective, really understand the inside of myself before going away to the world.
2. Should ask carefully the brothers first
In the course of practicing, surely your brothers, friends, and colleagues in many places and who have done many positions with those who have built the Garage successfully operate very well, so sincerely ask them carefully. If possible, come and stay with them all week to learn the steps they’ve taken, done and the difficulties they’ve experienced, don’t think things are simple and don’t make yourself superheroes. . Ask is a skill that helps us solve many problems. If you go somewhere unsatisfactory, you can go to many places to visit the model and learn how to deploy and operate to accumulate more experience and record important information from there to help them We are less wrong in the process of building a career.
3. Investigate carefully market share and customer segment
Listening to this may seem quite far away to many brothers, and we often overlook and ignore this. We just need to see the number of cars is also crowded and potential, so we just jump. Don’t take the time to complete this most important step, brother. Please understand about the market in your area to build a factory, Find out who they are? What car do they ride? Where do they usually take the car to fix it? What price do they accept? Is market share really big? What is the future like? What level of service do they need? And if there is a plant growing up in this position, are they ready to come? Many questions have to be asked and the more information is received at this stage, the operation phase of the garage will not be ambiguous.
I take the example: Before I build a workshop, I often measure the distance of rival garages, find out about the neighborhood of 5 – 10 km radius to see how many Garage they have, what they do and what kind of cars are they usually? There are times when I sit and drink coffee in densely populated areas to look carefully at the daily traffic. When we do not understand the market and the needs of our customers, we will be susceptible to the subjectivity of our products and services creating illusion.
4. Plan and set specific goals
There’s a saying that I really like “No planning is planning for failure.” Agree that never wait for perfection to get started but never start when there is nothing in your hand to fight with so many difficulties that you may stumble ahead. There are very few brothers who are willing to sit a basic plan and estimate the monthly number of vehicles and service numbers and I will deploy to establish a break-even point that leads to a very general and unspecific goal. Because the goal is not specific, when the workshop is finished, there is no move to attract visitors to achieve the desired numbers. Because of that, many garage when operating, break-even point is extended to several years or even longer.
In my experience, in a preliminary plan table there should be:
- Introduce your project briefly (this is to help you better understand your thoughts and reaffirm ideas)
- Objective and purpose of building a garage (Need to be numerical or measurable, for example: 100 cars can be repaired per year for example)
- Think of the Garage’s survival strategy (This needs to analyze their strengths, weaknesses, customer needs, market share, segment, lifetime value of customers who are able to bring from there to give produce products, service packages and build a logical path.
- Resources: Resources have many types but pay attention to people and financial figures to anticipate investment calculations.
- Building a hypothetical break-even point: Example: One car per day for service of price maintenance 500,000 gross profit is 50%. Operating cost of the garage is 20 million => every month must have at least 80 vehicles to maintain to break even. For example, building this break-even point is the basis to consider deploying services and seeking customers to achieve the expected goals.
- Make a list of scheduled jobs: Make a Dealine board to predict the types of jobs that will take place to accomplish and complete to avoid distractions. This table is very simple, you can apply Japanese kanban tool or Gantt Chart to do it very effectively (find google)
5. Carefully calculate investment items and should invest in each specific stage, do not race arms
The investment will include many items, the misery is that if you do not know how to control the rebellion of the idea, in the investment process will always arise and many times to overcome the control is normal. On paper is one thing but the fact is that one thing I built a factory with an estimated initial cost of about three hundred million, but when I finished and completed it, the number was more than six hundred. The reason is not calculated carefully or calculated, but does not control the immediate pleasure of yourself. Before planning to buy an old lift, I don’t have to whip up a few new bridges, whipping one thing up and setting up the garage to get empty and listening to the advice to whip more … Then to the equipment and tools, in general, “Professional half-heartedness” and the ” sync according to feelings” it makes people overcome all calculations. That’s why I hope you before shopping, carefully calculated, carefully surveyed and committed to what you set whether it is a tip from the heart or a sweet advice.
Another part is that we should pay attention to dividing out the stages to invest in not putting eggs in a basket and do not shop together once. Many of us spent money to buy expensive diagnostic machines from Mercedes and BMW, but the whole year had 1 car coming into the garage, eventually depreciating the machine, the whole life of the garage was not worth the investment.
Just remember : Focus on what is really needed, don’t invest to save. Many things to spend together will create a pile of dissipated assets.
6. Search for suitable premises and consider carefully design
In the field of service business, especially the selection of premises is very important. Do not be discouraged or look for a few points that have been hastily chosen, choosing the wrong ground can cost you your own career. The premises contracts for factory need to be spacious, convenient in and out, no center but easy to find, the lower the cost, the better the contract should be at least 4-5 years, because only that much time is enough to depreciate the wealth we have invested.
When there is ground, please re-draw the location of the distance, design the overall surface in detail, calculate in detail the positions to raise the bridge, set the tool cabinet, and put the equipment to avoid making it to the next place That will get tangled. You can draw on the paper then thanks to the units that draw Cad or corel rebuild for you to make it easier to visualize.
7. Legal procedures
Open garage often will entangle some of the following papers:
- Business license (Most of you do not need and do not have a license in the initial stage): When establishing a business, there are certain advantages and disadvantages. For example: There are units that they need to issue invoices such as insurance, fleet, must be a company, or a business registration unit of a tax (Considering the establishment of a company has many advantages and is also costly) The other benefit is that I am a business so ward level rarely makes it difficult and nobody dares to enter without any papers. The bad thing is that you have to report annoying monthly taxes, In the big city, there is a service that costs about 500,000 each month, but in the district, there are many difficulties, so consider it. The advice given here is Depending on your location, scale, and local circumstances, and especially in the future calculation, which you consider yourself or not.
- Environmental scheme: Since repair service business is slippery, gasoline, it is necessary to have a project on environmental protection. This is when you are big and in the city they often ask, while in the provinces, they do not make it very difficult
- Fire protection: You need to have a training certificate and buy fire protection equipment (This should buy, don’t be subjective, many of you pay for this subjectivity)
- Three-phase electricity: Some garages have many devices that use three-phase power such as lift bridges, compressors, and when using 3-phase power, it can be more stable. But if you want to be able to use this electricity, it is necessary to have a business license of an enterprise to register (I’m not very good at this).
8. Prepare worker resources
When opening a workshop, most of us are confident about our abilities and think that we can do everything ourselves or can recruit people to do or work easily. But the truth is this is the point of killing many Garage in the most remote areas of the city. Why? When away from the city, especially cities where there are no automobile industry training universities, it is not easy to find resources to serve the workshop. Moreover, the idea of a new worker always wants to stay. Big city to work and learn. Initially opened, the scene of many garage owners running to find customers, running for spare parts, looking for things … all day long lost time. There are many new people, opening up very crowded but not enough workers to do, or have workers but the level is poor so the boss has to do it all. And the ending is alone all day after month…
9. Prepare spare parts, accessories and auxiliary suppliers
Saigon has An Duong Vuong, Hanoi has markets, other provinces have to go to these two ends to buy. Nowadays, social networks and internet development are finding out the suppliers of spare parts, accessories and accessories not too difficult. The difficulty is that they are reputable enough, dare to commit, and are willing to share the risk of sending the wrong item and being able to leverage the debt for you partially. So when you get started, always list a large list of providers to look for partnerships with suppliers that have the most criteria you need.
10. Consider the risks
Any project, no matter how carefully calculated, will be at risk. If the risk is anticipated, there is nothing too worrying, just being afraid of everything is too sudden.
The common risks when opening Garage are:
- Burn money, not enough to run for at least 3 – 6 months
- Do not find people who do or initially pull some brothers but when working for a few months, they break up and separate, and start a shortage of people constantly. There is also the phenomenon of living with the flood, the whole day he was tortured by the whole mechanic, on his face, headache, toothache …
- Without cars to work, every car must do, including trucks, tractors (in the district) and when the trucks are many then you must accept the risk that small car will avoid you.
- Mastering is not like you thought, which is the salary, which is the car, which of the counter-suppliers … in general there are many things to face.
- Only good at the job and not good at the surrounding work, leading to operating and operating difficult Garage.
11. What difference do you have?
It is difficult to distinguish between the numerous boatmen we all want to open the workshop. There are many brothers who just think that just beautiful workshops, hanging up monumental processes, real slogans will make a difference. However, that difference is not really enough to create a highlight in the hearts of customers. The difference here is my poison, so that the customers always remember me. It can be as simple as a service attitude, a professional style like always wearing a white shirt that fixes the car without being dirty, or making cool air conditioning, or adjusting the machine smoothly. Those are the things that make us different enough.
We often want any car to do well, electricity, roar, the paint copper anything can do, in short is anyone he also greedy. However, there is the fact that many brothers who specialize in an array such as air conditioning live very well or specializing in abc cars, live fine also. In the provinces we are rarely given the right to choose or reject customers but surely there will be a phenomenon of customers who talk to each other when doing electricity then come to this A guy and do this, when doing air conditioning, go to this B guy and do it, so on a signboard the Electric Machine Repair … Should add a red line “specialized something” sometimes to be effective difference for our brothers?
12. Future Garage operation scenario
When it comes to perfecting everything, it is also time for us to rethink a basic operating scenario for our garage. Don’t try to be dangerous with a series of unrealistic service processes, don’t be too sketchy to be superficial and everything gets messed up.
According to my own experience, I always take customers as a center, I do not follow the model of the company but simply draw a customer route that the technical term is called Customer Jouney (find google) please apply Simplify types such as:
Imagine a customer come to our Garage until leaving the Garage will go through how many stages, how do we need to behave at each stage? Need any process or business? Who will be responsible for each stage? And how to train employees to receive each stage like that for simple and most effective?
For example, the stage of a customer from the street to the garage will pass:
- 1 intersection A (I will place the ad right here to direct visitors to our garage) Then the customer will go into the garage (We need 1 person to greet and get information, so what kind of action is needed? What is the ticket like? How is the uniform?
- After that, there will be a technician to examine and make repairs (What kind of repairers do we need? What kind of paperwork do you need? What kind of skills? What kind of dress? Need to say what? What process is follow?)
- After the repair is completed, the customer needs further advice (Who will advise? What is the advisory scenario?) Then the customer will pay (Who will do the contract, the invoice? And how is the form? Under what process? How to solve when customers owe money? …)
- After that, the guests leave and go to after-sales mode (Who will take care? What content? How is the script? How long once? How long is duration?…) That, I only do that simply. All made from reality, do not have a model to apply to us because it will not be suitable when we first start.
Dear all brother, all preparations are never redundant. We come from technical people and we have a capacity that many startups don’t have is the core competency, it is both the strength of our brothers and it is also the weakness. It’s hard to be good at both career and management and good at building strategies. But I personally think, everything is a skill, but it is a skill that can certainly be achieved through the training process.
Wishing you success on the road to starting with your passion!