If you didn’t know Greg Buckley already, you probably do now—or at least, you will feel as though you do after reading this issue of the magazine. He’s on our cover, in our main feature (“The 21st Century Shop”), and in Rissy Sutherland’s column. (I’m clearly mentioning him here also.)
And he now gets the distinction as the first person to ever have his or her grinning face on our cover twice. We’re 77 issues into the life of Ratchet+Wrench as of this November 2018 issue, and this is the first time we’ve had a repeat cover subject. It’s not a random coincidence, either, and we don’t take that distinction lightly.
I mention this from time to time, whether anecdotally to some of you in-person at events or whether it’s formally in a past editor’s letter, but there’s a distinct reason that we put people on our cover every month. We don’t go with conceptual graphics or photos of the vehicles you fix. That’s not what we’re about. Ratchet+Wrench is a magazine for shop operators, about shop operators. It’s focused on the people who run these successful businesses because, above all else, it’s the people that make these businesses successful in the first place.
Our tagline, which we don’t reference a whole lot but you can find on our cover every month, is “Strategies and Inspiration for Auto Care Success.” Yes, you get a whole lot of strategies in our publication—we write a lot about systems and processes, leadership tactics and managerial styles. Hopefully, in each and every piece of content we produce, you can easily pick out very tangible and repeatable takeaways. At the same time, though, making changes can feel daunting. Taking that first step to improvement can seem impossible. After all, you haven’t seen that level of success yet; how do you know it’s attainable?
Well, our hope is that you know it’s attainable because you see Greg on our cover. We hope that seeing Greg, hearing his story (straight from him) and learning about his journey shows you that he’s no different than you—maybe just a couple steps ahead in his business’s progression.
And Greg would be the first to tell you that; he’d be the first to point out that he had (and still has) many of the same struggles you see each day. He’d quickly tell you that he didn’t have some magical, secret solution that no one else picked up on. He’s worked tirelessly with his family to make Buckley’s Auto Care what it is today—one of the most progressive and efficient operations in the country. Maybe you hadn’t heard about Greg before receiving this issue of the magazine, but chances are, you can see a lot of yourself in him. And hopefully, that spurs you to where you need to go.
