If you'd rather place an order by talking to one of our cheerful order desk clerks, please call 1-888-232-4444 (USA and Canada only) or 250-383-6864. From Europe, ring our UK order desk clerk at local rate number 0845 230 9601 (UK only) or 44 (0)1865 722 113.

Making the Vehicle to Reach Your Dreams

by Phil Fournier and Kenneth Stark

234 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #03-2493; ISBN 1-4120-2014-X; US$22.50, C$26.00, EUR18.50, £13.00

What defines success? It's more than a profitable business and a secure life. Making the Vehicle describes Phil Fournier's journey from a chaotic company to a well-run and profitable firm.

Read more!

About the Book      About the Authors      Excerpts      Catalogue info

About the Book What is your Why? What defines true success in your business, career and life? It's got to be more than money, more, even, than secure and satisfying relationships. It requires continual growth... taking well-considered risks for greater rewards. And that means making a vehicle "career or business" to give you the freedom and resources to control the What, When, Where, and How of life. Making the Vehicle to Reach Your Dreams gives you means to do so. This is not your typical management tome. It's a brisk and entertaining read. Phil Fournier's experiences as an owner, the "Bigger Picture" observations of his adviser Ken Stark, and their contrasting life stories provide valuable insights and information. Owners and managers will smile in recognition at Phil's Business Vignettes. His business development diary and progress reports trace the journey from a small, dysfunctional auto shop to a successful business that essentially runs itself. Some of what you'll learn: That strong spiritual beliefs can help to create lasting success Essentials for designing and running an excellent business vehicle How to manage yourself better How to solve people problems more effectively How to produce positive change How to manage frustrations and setbacks Techniques for better pricing, selling and communicating That your business is its own ultimate product Practical tools to improve your working and personal lives That having fun is a key to success Making the Vehicle will help to build the skills you need to create the company, career and life you love.

---

About the authors

Philip Fournier is a partner/president of Phil's Auto Clinic in Hemet, California. He is well known within the auto repair industry as the 1997 Napa/ASE Technician of the Year, a contributing editor to Motor Service magazine, Motor Age Magazine, and Net Profit Garage (an online magazine). He has taught automotive technology for Mt. San Jacinto College since 1988, as well as teaching seminars on both technical and management subjects nationwide. He is respected as an authority on the use of the lab scope in automotive diagnostics. He holds an Associate's in Automotive Technology from Mt. San Jacinto College and an AAM (accredited automotive manager) certificate from ASAMI (Automotive Service Association Management Institute).

Kenneth L. Stark is a nationally renowned business consultant and executive coach. Since 1988, he has advised and written for over two hundred businesses in many industries across the U.S. and Canada. He is also a cognitive/behavioral counselor and certified hypnotherapist, helping individuals to build life-affirming insights and change self-defeating habits to self-actualizing behaviors. After leading a nationwide consulting firm's Professional Services department, he launched his own consulting practice, combining business and personal development services. He holds a Masters in Counseling Psychology from The International University of Professional Studies, a Bachelor's in Liberal Arts from Arizona State University, and certification in clinical hypnotherapy from the American Council of Hypnotherapist Examiners.

---

Excerpts

PART I - ABOUT PHIL FOURNIER

• Lifetime Highlights
• Philosophy of Life
• Shaping Experiences
• An Influential Teacher
• The Story of Maria

PART II - ABOUT PHIL'S AUTO CLINIC

• Why Are You In Business?
• What's It Like to Own a Business?
• Four Critical Issues
• Business Vignettes

PART III - THE BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

• What Enables Change
• Designing Your Business Vehicle
• Phil's Early Frustrations
• Phil's Business Development Diary
• Progress Reports - Excerpts
• Diagnostic and Planning Tools
• Dynamic Selling System

PART IV - APPENDIX (tools)

PART V - ABOUT KEN STARK

• Profile and Mission Statement
• Correcting Cognitive Errors
• About Ken's Practice
• Speaking and Workshops

From PART I:

ABOUT PHIL FOURNIER

How Does Competition Affect Your Philosophy?

It's a double-edge sword, competition and cooperation. People fear what they don't know, and I scare some people who don't know me. I was Napa Auto Parts 1997 ASE (Automotive Service Excellence) Technician of the Year, and people see my ads on TV and my articles in trade magazines.

I'm high profile in the auto community, and as such I probably intimidate some owners, but I lessen that by interacting with them. Guys at my shop get frustrated with other shops calling Phil's Free Hotline Service for help with tough repairs. It can be time consuming and how much direct benefit do I get? Some referrals, but I do it more because I believe in cooperation.

I guard against the industry tendency to stab other guys in the back. It's hard to resist, especially when their work seems substandard, but often that's from the customer's viewpoint. I've drummed it into my techs to give other shops the benefit of doubt. That's what we want too. When we badmouth others, the image of the whole industry goes down; ours doesn't go up.

I once diagnosed a vehicle's problem and the customer got another opinion. It turned out that I was wrong but the other shop backed me 100%, telling the customer that my opinion was not unjustified. I made a point of thanking the owner, whom I'd never met, for his professionalism. Since then he has asked for advice on running his business and we have a good relationship.

The Bigger Picture

(Ken's thoughts expanding on Phil's experiences)

As a business adviser and personal counselor, I've seen many people sell themselves short. Whether from childhood neglect and abuse, or failing to develop themselves as adults, they cheat others out of the best they could give, and they get less than they are worth in return.

I've noticed that many individuals lack coherent philosophies of life. They haven't thought through the big questions: Who they are, what they want, what really matters, and what it all means. They live reactively, taking whatever comes, not proactively to create what they want.

Similarly, business owners are either predominantly reactive or proactive. The former let things happen with little planning, and their businesses suffer. The latter run firms that have problems too, yet like Lincoln they tend to turn them into opportunities.

Phil, of course, is the latter type, and his philosophy contains precepts that anyone could apply to good effect:

• Love God and bring Him glory.
• Love oneself as God's creation.
• Treat others with love and kindness.
• Enjoy life and make time for play.
• If something's worth doing, do it with gusto.
• Be motivated by desire to do better.
• Be content and live within your means.
• Build good relationships.
• Cooperate and help people do better.
• Give others the benefit of doubt.
• Expect the best and be willing to pay for it.
• Be accountable and stand by what you do.
• Respect yourself and insist on fair treatment.

From PART II:

ABOUT PHIL'S AUTO CLINIC

How Did Owning A Business Improve Quality-Of-Life For Your and Your Family?

When I complain about ownership headaches, Karen reminds me how I suffered as an employee. She hasn't forgotten the Phil who came home fuming from the blasted rock music that offended every particle of his being! Now I've been able to create a work environment consistent with my values, feelings - and taste in music. I'll tell you, soft jazz soothes me during a good day's work, while Metallica turned me into a ticking time bomb!

But I can't say that my quality of life has constantly improved. On occasion it's been hurt, or at least complicated, by dealing with certain employees' problematic personalities. They have distressed me and, by extension, my family, but the ultimate fault has been mine in not addressing problems more quickly. I've tended to avoid confrontations, but I'm learning to confront people effectively rather than avoid it at all cost.

The Bigger Picture

Perhaps the greatest benefit accruing from ownership is the ability to shape things, but it ought to be done with conscious and honorable intent... Phil said, "(Owning a business) increases my power to eliminate conditions brought on by those who want to scapegoat others..." A scapegoater does not learn from mistakes and so repeats them. Owners who scapegoat employees hurt their businesses. Parents who scapegoat each other or their children blight the lives of those they love.

But people big enough to accept responsibility can improve things. Far from diminishing themselves, admitting mistakes enlarges them. It inspires people toward greater risks and achievements.

Best Things About Owning Phil's Auto Clinic

Flexibility is tops, but it wasn't always so. I used to be a slave to the business, now it frees me to do what I want, when I want - vacations, business travel, taking lunch, or watching my kids play sports. It's also great to run the shop the way I want, confident most of the time, not by the whim of an owner who's got no clue.

Running a business has instilled fiscal discipline to augment my natural prudence. The money has been great. Phil's Auto gives me above average income for an auto technician, and Karen's and my spending habits let us make the most of it. We live within our means, avoid debt, and we've built a lifetime of memories from inexpensive vacations - like Lake Lopez in California and a camping tour from Nevada to Minnesota to the Grand Canyon. As our income grew, we stepped up to a time-share at Lake Tahoe, where we've enjoyed five gorgeous summers. We reserve extravagant trips - cruises to Mexico and Alaska, and our Hawaiian time-share - for anniversaries and such.

What Would You Do Differently?

Self-Management

First, manage your time well. That was my biggest self-management problem. Early in business development, I kept a time log and recorded everything I did for a week. Wow, what a revelation! I averaged only three minutes on each task, with constant interruptions for employees, phone calls, customers, and crisis intervention. Parceling my time into ever-larger blocks was a big improvement, accomplished much more quickly than I could have imagined. My advice is to figure out where your time is going, then work to reduce interruptions and prioritize tasks.

Operations (delivering products and services)

The most important thing was to systematize our service process from point-of-sale to completion. We counted nine steps to take a customer from complaint to satisfactory completion, and none involved working on the car! Each was fraught with potential miscommunication, and one misstep could alienate the customer. With the sale-to-completion process systematized, we worked on coordinating workflow through the shop and systemized the actual work done on vehicles. I highly recommend that you write start-to-finish steps for at least your most important processes. (See examples in Action Plans.) By the way, a time-management log can help identify which operational problems to tackle first.

Dealing With the "Slows"

We take the slows personally because our businesses embody our hopes and dreams. The slows can prompt overly critical analysis. Are we too expensive? Have we angered someone who is managing to sabotage us? Should we put more flowers in the planter beds? Rarely do we attribute the slows to external forces beyond our control.

Some introspection is good, since there are always things to improve. Do piles of junk clutter the shop? Have we failed to keep up with technological advances, such that we disappoint customers? Do we have good quality control to keep the CSI (customer satisfaction index) high? But introspection-cum-flagellation is rarely good. Beating yourself up doesn't help.

Instead, let's identify external causes and deal with them imaginatively. Suppose you ferry people and vehicles across a river. You've long since recovered your capital costs for the boat. Profits are simply revenues minus operating expenses, which other than fuel are quite stable. You don't bother with marketing since you've got a ferryboat monopoly. And you enjoy the work, back and forth, chatting with customers, few problems beyond routine maintenance. A great business, right?

But what if the city builds a bridge? You've done nothing wrong (other than perhaps not effectively lobbying the city council). You've provided safe and reliable service and run your business well, yet suddenly it's obsolete! You're left with a couple of choices. You can go belly-up or remake yourself.

The Bigger Picture

Beyond immediate pain, rejection can conjure scary thoughts - losing one's business (or job) and family, being broke and lonely, an abject failure. Are such fears realistic? It helps to ask, "What's really the worst that could happen?" Better to plan for that and in the process make the worst less likely, than merely to agonize.

Is rejection the catastrophe that many make it out to be? When one of Grandma Wanda's children got rejected by a girl or boyfriend she would say, "Don't worry, they're like streetcars. Another will be along soon."

Emerson wrote, "Dear to us are those who love us... but dearer are those who reject us as unworthy, for they add another life; they build a heaven before us whereof we had not dreamed, and thereby supply to us new powers out of the recesses of the spirit, and urge us to new and unattempted performances."

In other words, rejection or the fear of it can propel us to new things. Would that all our influences were positive, but when they're negative we can still use them to good advantage...

BUSINESS VIGNETTES

The Stolen Radio

Recently we did $1,000 worth of work for Rose, a new customer. She asked us to keep her car parked inside, which is a tip-off to a nervous disposition. The day after she picked the car up, she called to complain that someone had changed the knob on her radio, because she was having to turn the volume up higher than normal to hear it.

"Isn't that interesting?" I replied vaguely, and dismissed it as ramblings. But soon she called back, accusing us of stealing her radio and replaced it with a cheap one! "Do you have video surveillance?" she asked, "Because you must have a dishonest employee."

I was dumbfounded but managed to keep my cool - no denials, no anger - and said I'd look into it. I called our trade association, the Automotive Service Council, and its attorney suggested that Rose contact the Hemet Police. After checking with the HPD, I called Rose and asked her to file a stolen radio report.

Instead she went to an arbitrator with the AAA, who listened to the radio and said it played fine. "Well," she offered, "I had a root canal on Friday and I was having trouble with my ears, so maybe it is okay after all." Then she called and very apologetically offered to buy me lunch and send everyone she knows to Phil's Auto.

Which reminds me of an incident at another shop. A woman had accused its owner of breaking her radio during a tune-up. A tune-up, mind you. He argued for half an hour that it was impossible and only then did he pushed the radio's On button. It blasted out 200 decibels! "How did you do that?!" she asked. Her habit was never to shut off the radio, just turn it down, so he had "broken" it by turning it off.

Well, he "won" the argument, but humiliated the customer and probably lost her business. That may have been his standard way of doing things, because he eventually closed his shop and sold his customer list to me.

From PART III:

THE BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

Designing Your Business Vehicle

A business is a vehicle to reach your dreams, whether that's wielding power and hobnobbing with the likes of Ted Turner, or chatting with customers and feathering your retirement nest. It can take many forms from a utilitarian barge, to a flashy speedboat, to a ponderous, oceangoing tanker, but the vast majority are something between the barge and speedboat, and most are badly designed and poorly run.

Actually, they're not designed at all. They just sort of happen...

Your Business As Ultimate Product

Few people think about selling their businesses when they're starting them, but they should. Why? It helps to paint the bigger picture, motivate toward continuous improvement, and get through tough times.

I had a client Jeremy who bought a drive-in restaurant called Snow Crème in a small, Midwestern town for the expressed purpose of upgrading and selling it in order to move with his wife to the Rockies. He paid $25,000 book value (assets minus liabilities) for what amounted to a run-down shack and its innards. Over twelve months, he turned it into an eye-catching magnet, smoothed out its operations, implemented a lunchtime delivery service to a nearby business park, and added profitable items to the menu. Snow Crème was the place to go for deep-fried burritos and ice cream cones with candy "eyes".

He turned a profit that year, after which he sold Snow Crème for roughly $100,000. That included the increased value of goodwill derived from strong marketing and customer service, and the value of operational and product improvements. Subtract the original purchase price of $25k and my consulting fees of $9,600 ($800 per month for fairly intensive service) and he cleared over $65 grand. He learned a lot, worked hard, had some fun, and finally moved to the mountains. His little vessel got him to his goal.

Phil's Auto Clinic also is its ultimate product. No doubt, it will bring a far higher price than when Phil and Dan bought it. Yet the greatest profits will be non-monetary. What price can you put on Phil's entrepreneurial vision? On his managerial expertise? And on the confidence to create what he wants?

PHIL'S PROGRESS REPORTS

August 26, 1988 Progress Report #1

WHY IT'S WORTH THE EFFORT

I must say that we are far from being out of the woods. We just started on time management and I can see how many things I need to improve on and I wonder about my ability to carry them out. I sometimes feel that things are vastly improved from before and then at other times I feel like chucking the whole business and going to work for someone else. But as I sit here plunking away on this computer keyboard I realize that if I didn't own this business I probably wouldn't have this computer to work on, nor would I be able to take this week off since I already have had 12 or 13 days off this year. I feel mostly depressed and restricted in my inability to confront my employees when I am unhappy with their performance. I think this is largely a personality problem with me and I hope to be able to overcome it with Ken's continued help. I have high hopes that we will learn a lot about time management and be able to implement some valuable changes that will greatly increase our productivity.

August 2003 Progress Report #19

GROWING AS AN OWNER

Looking back at early progress reports, it's amazing to see how far I've come as an owner. In human terms, I've grown most by learning to deal effectively with people, including myself. Being able to relax while away from the business, dealing with the ups and downs of business cycles, dealing with financials and projections, making rational and logical business decisions; I have improved in all of these areas and continue to enjoy the challenge of improving further.

I now feel that I could take on managing any business and do well at it. That gives me confidence that whether I decide to sell Phil's Auto and move on, or keep it with plans to change as the marketplace changes, I have the tools to insure its continuing success.

From PART V:

ABOUT KEN STARK

Speaking and Workshops

Are you interested in a presentation or workshop? Ken and Phil speak and lead seminars and workshops, individually or together, around the U.S. for organizations, companies, groups of small business owners, and the general public.

Ken Stark, MA

Ken leads participatory events that give information, insights and practical results to make better businesses and lives. Some of his topics:

• Making the Vehicle to Reach Your Dreams (Growing a business that's profitable, fulfilling, and gives high quality-of-life.)
• The Formula for Being Happy[TM] (The essential elements producing true happiness, and how to increase them in your life.)
• The Ten Dilemmas of Business and Life[TM] (The most frequent challenges that Ken has seen in his business and personal clients, and what to do about yours.)
• Dilemmas of Golf Getaways[TM] (One and two-day seminars and tournaments. Lessons that you can apply to your game, your business and your life.)

Phil Fournier

Here is a sample of technical and management classes available nationwide by Phil:

• Making the Vehicle to Reach Your Dreams (Growing a business that's profitable, fulfilling, and gives high quality-of-life.)
• Technical Automotive: Hands-On Lab Scope Usage (Advanced diagnostics using the hand-held DSO; 8 hour class.)
• Technical Automotive: Thinking Diagnostically (Avoid the flow charts: Train yourself to "think" like a diagnostician; 4-8 hour class)
• Automotive Management: Setting Your Hourly Rate (How to calculate an hourly rate based on what YOU need to earn rather than what the competition is charging. This class can be modified to fit most service businesses.)

Get in touch to discuss the best kind of event for you:

Ken: Phone: 866.396.2626
Email: kstark25@yahoo.com
Website: www.KennethLStark.com
Phil: Phone: 909.927.2102
Email: pfourn909@aol.com
Website: www.iatn.net/atn/caring.html

---

Catalogue Information

---