POWIP Piece of Work In Progress – Former Abode of Dan Collins

I grew up at a beer distributorship. I was able to run most aspects of it by the time I was 18. By the time we sold the distributorship, I was handling the marketing, the tech, the office, and ran two presell routes. One of the classes I had to take in massage school was Business; there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth on my part. My classmates said, "With your business experience, shouldn't this class be extra easy for you?" I said, "No. Because one thing I learned actually running a business is that business theory is stupid." (Possibly interesting side note: of everyone in my class, I am the only one who started a business.) In my first year, when business was close to nonexistent, a friend of mine said, "See. Maybe you should have paid more attention in business class." (I'll leave it to you to guess whether we are still friends.)

But my problem, the cause for my crappiness, isn't something I could have learned in class.

My tragic business flaw is my insistence on perfection.

Right now I work two jobs: I'm a massage therapist and I detail cars. Both are doomed. Doooooomed, I tell you!

When I first started detailing to make extra money (I say "extra" but really, it was to make ANY money at all) my mom drove me nuts. We have a checklist for each car, and a certain price and a certain per hour wage we try for. Long after I thought a car was "finished" my mom would still be nitpicking, fixing this or that, vacuuming this one last time, polishing just this one little thing. This meant the customer was getting more than what they agreed to pay for and we were also making less as a result. But now I do the same damn thing. I hate to let a car go that isn't "perfect." Shitbox cars ruin my day because they are either ruined beyond help, so no matter how much work you do they still look like crap...or you'd have to work on them for days which means I'd make about $5/hour (or even less). Or we could charge $500, which would give our customers a heart attack.

Today we finished a 1989 Jeep Cherokee that we actually started last night. Between the two of us, we had at least 10 hours into it. Scrubbing. Steaming. Vacuuming. Extracting. Over. And. Over. We finally had to make ourselves quit because we were so tired of the stupid thing and so angry because while it looked "better" it still looked like crap. Now, here's where Shitty Businesswoman comes in: even though we had way more time into it than a "standard" vehicle, we were so disgusted with the result that we ended up knocking $20 off the bill.

I might be even worse when it comes to my massage practice. More than once I've felt a session just wasn't up to my standards and so gave the client a $10 discount. Sometimes it's not even the quality of the session-maybe it's a customer service issue like I'm running a few minutes late or the session has to be paused because a different customer comes in (to ask questions, buy product, or pick up a car from our detailing shop next door) and I'm the only person in the building. And if I'm not giving discounts because something went wrong, I'm giving them because something went right. I'm constantly doing free or half-price sessions for my regular clients as a perk for their continued business.

It's not that I don't believe what I do has value--I do believe an hour massage is worth $50. Even so, if I were in my clients' shoes, just because a massage is worth $50 doesn't make it easier to pay that every week or two. But by sympathizing so much with their perspective, instead of making "a living" I'm not even making ends meet.

Due to several recent experiences (one of which almost ended a bloodbath at my optometrist's office) I've ended up talking with people about the death of customer service. How it seems to be something no one cares about anymore, as if these people are "entitled" to my money and I should be happy to hand it to them regardless of how poorly they treat me. These conversations end up with one of us saying, sadly, "Guess one thing they aren't teaching in business classes these days is the importance of customer service."

Hmm. Maybe there's something I could learn in business class after all.