Not Monday. Monday has momentum from the weekend. Not Friday. Friday has the promise of escape.
Tuesday.
Tuesday is when the truth shows up.
It’s deep enough into the week to feel the weight, but not close enough to the weekend to see relief. Tuesday is when your real feelings about your business reveal themselves.
So here's the test:
How do you feel at 6 AM on Tuesday when your alarm goes off?
Excited? Your business will thrive.
Neutral? Your business will survive.
Dread? Your business is already dying.
The Real Reason Most Shops Fail
I’ve worked with hundreds of shop owners. The ones who fail aren’t the ones with cash flow problems or staffing issues. Those are just symptoms. The ones who fail are the ones who started hating Tuesday.
You can’t see the label from inside the jar.
Last week, a shop owner called me. Successful by every metric:
Doing $75K monthly.
Full schedule.
Great team.
But he felt dead inside every morning. Couldn’t understand why.
We spent an hour dissecting his operation. Turns out, he’d built his entire business around what he thought successful shops should look like.
He offered services he secretly despised.
He served customer segments that made his skin crawl.
He employed people who drained his soul, but had great resumes.
He knew all of this, but couldn’t see it until someone outside his chaos pointed at each piece and asked him one question:
“Why are you choosing this?”
His answer to everything was the same:
“Because that’s what you’re supposed to do.”
The 10-Year Game
Building a detail shop is a 10-year game minimum.
Years 3 through 7 are where most owners quit. Not because the business failed financially, but because they engineered a prison for themselves and became the warden. They built something that worked on spreadsheets but killed them in practice.
The road is long. The problems are endless. The days blur together. If you don’t actively protect your energy and enthusiasm, the business will drain you dry. And a drained owner is a dead business walking.
The Owners Who Last
Here’s what nobody tells you:
The owners who make it through aren’t tougher. They’re not smarter. They figured out earlier that they needed people in their corner—people who could see what they couldn’t. People who had been through the same battles and could say,
“That thing you’re tolerating? It’s killing you.”
Your Resentment Account
Your hatred compounds faster than your money.
Every decision you make against your own happiness is a deposit in the resentment account. That account compounds daily. The interest rate is brutal. And when it comes due, you won’t pay it. You’ll just walk away.
I’ve seen owners with million-dollar shops hand the keys to someone else and go work at a dealership. Not because the money wasn’t there, but because they couldn’t stand one more Tuesday.
Your Assignment This Week
So here’s your assignment for this week:
List everything about your business that makes you not want to show up.
Every customer you dread.
Every service you hate delivering.
Every employee who exhausts you.
Every system that frustrates you.
Then find someone who’s not living in your daily chaos to look at that list with you.
Someone who can tell you which battles are worth fighting and which ones you've created for yourself.
Because the truth is, you already know what needs to change.
You just can’t give yourself permission to change it.
The owners who last don’t do it alone.
They do it with people who won’t let them build a prison and call it success.