Confessions of an Entrepreneur: When You Have an Old Car—or Business

I have always been a car guy. Old cars, new cars—even cars that we built from the ground up, building an entirely new chassis and steel body—and using a 320 cubic inch Buick Straight-8 engine.  In total, I have owned somewhere north of about 400 cars over the last 48+ years. 

Old cars are kind of like old businesses. They need constant attention. My current daily driver is a 1999 Rolls-Royce Silver Spur—one of the last 70 “real” Rolls-Royces hand-built at Crewe, England. To say it always needs something is a vast understatement. While not that expensive to buy—at least compared with what it cost new— it’s VERY expensive to keep going. And there are always many little chores to attend to if you don’t want problems to get out of hand. 

When I think about businesses that I owned and operated for many years, they, too, have many chores to attend to if you want to keep them on the right path and continually improving and operating profitably. They take maintenance, in other words.  Some of that maintenance includes:

1. Checking in with key clients or customers.

I can’t tell you how many small business owners I have observed over the years who don’t do this. They get isolated from what their clients’ or customers’ needs are and lose touch with how well their business is meeting those needs. Then they lose interest in their business as a result. Pick up the phone and make some calls. Get on the customer service desk. Talk to customers on the floor if you have a retail business. Reacquaint yourself with your customers and their wants and needs. 

2. Getting out on the floor and talking to your people individually. 

This is another common failing of long-time business owners. They take their people for granted. These owners lose touch with the problems and frustrations their people are encountering as they go about their daily work. That isn’t good. Not only that, but when you go to your people rather than tell them to come to you, you are showing them a level of respect that opens them to communication and makes them more receptive to you. This is critical to you as a manager and leader.

3. Talking to your bank.

Banking relationships need periodic attention too. Keeping them informed of what is going well and what isn’t going so well is critical if you want them to be there when you need them. Of course, I have written before that all banks are not equal.  In spite of banking being a highly regulated industry, local community banks will be much more tuned into your needs and better able to assist you because you can have real relationships with their top people. These relationships, like all relationships, take maintenance. That means you have to spend some time on them and make sure all lines of communication remain open with them. Banking is more critical than ever because debt capital is the most affordable it has ever been and should almost always be your first source to go to. 

4. Talking to your accountants. 

Staying in touch with your all accountants regularly is crucial to your ability to make good decisions that will greatly impact your success in business. A great example of this was a loan we took out in the name of our company vs personally, even though the loan was secured by personal assets. The net effect of that decision cost us over a hundred thousand dollars in taxes we wouldn’t have had to pay had we chosen a different path. That path would be known to any competent CPA.  But our own ignorance, combined with not regularly communicating with our outside accountants led us to making a very costly error. Maintenance of the relationship with our CPAs wasn’t handled very well. 

5. Looking at your facilities. 

I find that business owners somehow frequently develop a blindness toward their own facilities and workplaces. They let things run down, tolerate situations that make people uncomfortable to be there, and don’t continuously evaluate the use and functionality of their space—in all kinds of businesses—be those office, industrial, or retail.  It takes a “fresh eyes” inspection periodically to keep the facilities evolving or at least maintained.

6. Reviewing what you are paying your people. 

I have never been a fan of regularly scheduled pay reviews for employees—at least the way most organizations do it—which is once, or maybe twice, a year. I think a better approach is to make pay changes with employees continuously as needed. The whole notion that someone gets hired into a job in a company and then gets 0-7% annual raises is archaic. That’s like setting sail and never course correcting due to different wind or current influences. What individuals get paid—if you truly want to be fair with them and recognize their contributions and worth to the organization—takes continuous monitoring and maintenance. 

These are just some of the things that take regular maintenance. Like my old Rolls-Royce—and dozens of other old cars I have owned—your business is more likely to run as it is capable of doing—if you constantly and continuously care for it.  And that is your job as the owner.