When I sit down with a garage owner for the first time, I ask a simple question and most of the time I get a pause, and then a guess. That’s not a criticism — nobody teaches you this. But it’s the number that decides whether you are running a business or a very busy hobby.
Start with what it costs you to open the doors
Your cost of doing business is every pound you spend in a year, divided by the hours you actually sell. Not the hours you’re open — the hours you invoice. The gap between those two numbers is where most garages quietly lose their money.
It is not rocket science. It’s pocket science.
Once you know that number, the rest almost sets itself. What stops most owners isn’t the arithmetic. It’s the fear of what happens next — and in my experience that fear is almost always worse than the reality.