Bunch: Why So Few Shops Break $3 Million, & Why That Number Matters More Than You Think – Part 2

First, I want to thank you, my readers, and the team at Ratchet+Wrench for their grace last month. I didn’t submit an article because I was grieving the sudden loss of my son in a car accident and dealing with the logistics of his passing. What followed was a flood of messages, texts, emails, phone calls from shop owners, friends, clients, and people across the automotive world offering condolences, prayers, and words of support. To each of you who reached out, I want you to know how much it meant to me and my family. Nobody ever knows what to say—that is okay. Knowing people care is everything. 

Moments like this have a way of stripping everything back to what really matters. 

When my son was young, I was that typical shop owner grinding out 60 to 70-hour weeks, trying to build something, but not really knowing how to get there. I had a coach, I had the ambition, but I didn’t have the roadmap. I didn’t know how to build a business that gave me time and money. I thought I had to choose. And by the time I realized I didn’t, there were things I couldn’t get back. 

That’s part of why I care so deeply about this three-million-dollar conversation. The further I go into these interviews with high-performing shop owners—the ones who’ve built real, sustainable businesses—the more I see the same pattern emerge. Somewhere between 1.7 and 2.3 million in annual revenue, things start to break.

Not all at once, but the systems start straining. The shop gets too big to manage with hustle alone. You’re still profitable, but it feels like you’re working twice as hard for half the progress. One owner told me, “It felt like I was running a two-million-dollar shop using nine hundred thousand dollar processes. It’s too much for one person to keep everything in their head.”  

Another said, “We weren’t broken, but we were out of sync. It felt like the business was moving faster than we could organize it.”  Every day, they had a new problem; mostly due to a lack of communication, but everyone is too busy to slow down and fix the root issue. It wasn’t until they took a year of mandatory meetings did things change for the better. 

There’s a phase in every shop’s growth where success starts to become the enemy. You’re busy, the numbers look good; but under the surface, everything is chaotic. People are unclear who does what. You’re pulled into every decision. You start asking yourself questions like, “Why do I still feel stuck?” or “Why is everyone waiting on me?” and  “Why am I the only one with common sense?” 

That’s the moment I call the “chaos point”. Some owners sit there for years. They white-knuckle it, hoping things will get better with a few more good hires or better marketing. Others pull back completely. They say, “This is as big as I want to get,” even though deep down, they know they didn’t stop growing because the dream changed, they stopped because the stress became unbearable. 

Few owners take a third path, where they stop managing and start leading. They realize that their business is outgrowing its original design and begin the hard work of redesigning it. They stop trying to be the hub of the wheel and start building a leadership team that can carry weight. They systematize what used to live in their heads, give away control with intention, and in return they get something back that most shop owners never experience: freedom, baby, freedom! 

Freedom to step away without fear. Freedom to open more locations. Freedom to attend their kid’s game without checking Slack between innings. That freedom doesn’t show up magically at three million—but it becomes possible around that number, if the right foundation is in place. 

The chaos point isn’t a sign that something’s wrong. It’s a sign that you’ve outgrown the old version of your business and maybe of yourself. And what you do next determines everything. In my next article, I’ll share some of the tactical shifts these owners made to break through and how they restructured roles, rethought pricing, and finally let go of doing it all themselves. 

But I don’t want to wait until next month to give you something to work on. If this feels like the season you’re in, where you’re stuck between “doing well” and “being maxed out,” then here are two places you can start. 

First, look at your structure.  Just get a blank sheet of paper and write down every name in your business. Then draw arrows. Who reports to who? Who’s responsible for what? And be honest, how many arrows point back to you? If you’re the hub of everything, that’s a problem. It may have worked when you had four people, but once you hit eight or ten, you become the ceiling. 

A good shop doesn’t need a hero. It helps in the beginning, but it will turn into your ceiling.  Use your chart of accounts as a reference, every line on it needs someone who is responsible for it. 

I coached an owner last year who was hovering at $2.1M in revenue, and every time he hired someone, it just created more stress. His phone was blowing up from open to close. The team was talented, but nobody knew what decisions they were allowed to make. Once we mapped out his accountability structure, it became obvious: he was still approving every purchase, chasing every upset customer, and pricing every big job. There was no delegation, and his identity was wrapped up in being the problem solver (sound familiar?). He still thought of himself as the shop, and the business couldn’t grow until he stepped out of that role and let his team take on more responsibility. Within nine months of restructuring his team, delegating and training, he crossed $2.9M. 

Second, track your chaos. Take the next five days to write down every fire you put out. Every time you get dragged into something you didn’t plan on. Every issue you have to personally fix. Every tech-to-service advisor miscommunication. Every part that got ordered late. 

At the end of the week, look at the list and ask yourself: what system could I put in place to prevent this from happening again? What expectation wasn’t set? What handoff wasn’t done? Most fires can be eliminated by a simple checklist. 

I know this sounds like boring stuff. But the $3M shops obsess over it. They know that success isn’t just about car count or gross profits, it's about reducing friction—internal and external. It’s about solving the same problem once instead of ten times, and building a business that doesn’t rely on you to hold every piece together. 

Life is always shorter than we think. If your shop is running you and your business feels more like a burden than a blessing, don’t wait for a tragedy to change course. Build something now that gives you time, energy, and margin to live a life you won’t regret. 

That’s what this series is really about. 

Write this down: “The more my business needs me, the less it’s worth,” and read it every day if you have to! 

As always, email me your thoughts at: [email protected]