We Should Have Done Something Sooner

“I wish we’d reached out sooner.”

I hear some version of that more often than I’d like. Usually in late fall, when the days get shorter, the new college students have settled in, and temperatures start dropping even in the southern states. Usually after the decision has already been made.

I don’t hear it with judgment. I said the same thing to myself once. I just never said it out loud.

I bought my store in 2002. It came with inventory, fixtures, boxes of old vintage parts, and a bookkeeper named Neil. Neil was good at what he did. Every invoice and every transaction was organized in QuickBooks. He wasn’t expensive.

I also had a line of credit, and it was maxed out faster than I’d like to admit. The economy stumbled that year, and I missed every goal I set. I survived, barely.

Every quarter, Neil told me, “You’re not going to make it.”

Every quarter, I worked harder. I got the line of credit increased. I told myself next season would fix it.

That went on for a couple of years.

Then Neil quit. He knew there wasn’t enough money to pay him, so he walked away before I had to tell him. I opened the accounts and thought, where did it all go?

I made it out of the office and into the small hallway between the office and the showroom. That’s where I collapsed. I cried. It was October. Winter was coming, and I had no money to get through it or to pay my people.

The next day I let everyone go except one part-timer. For the next four months I worked Monday through Saturday. Selling and doing service during the day. The service I couldn’t finish, I did after I closed. Lots of late nights.

I hated it. I decided I would never work like that again.

Here’s the part that still bothers me. I had the data. Neil had it all organized. I had someone telling me the truth, out loud, four times a year. I didn’t lack information. I lacked the willingness to act on it while I still had choices.

Why smart owners wait

When things slip, the instinct is to work more hours. Hours feel like progress because they’re the one thing you fully control. They almost never fix a broken process.

Asking for help feels like admitting you can’t run what you built. So you wait until the problem is obvious to everyone. By then, help has fewer options to work with.

And next season always looks like the fix: a new brand, a new employee, more advertising. The pain of acting lands today, while the pain of waiting sits somewhere out in the future. The future loses that argument every time, right up until it becomes today.

What changed

The first thing I did was hire someone to help me with inventory. He tracked turns and categories, and he asked questions I wasn’t asking.

My favorite conversation with him was about helmets. I had an $80 helmet and a $120 helmet.

“Chad, you need a $100 helmet.”

“I don’t have one. Those are the price points.”

“Take the $80 helmet and mark it $100.”

I did, and I started selling a lot of $100 helmets.

He taught me what turns and margin actually meant to my bank account. I started hunting for quality products I could sell at a higher margin. Tires became one of my favorite categories. I always looked for ways to grow that margin as much as possible while maintaining turns. I used nearby distributors who could get tires to me quickly, and I leveraged programs to increase margin on higher-end tires. The tire category often ran well over 60% margin.

I started reading business books. I started watching how other industries ran their stores. None of it was magic. It was someone looking at numbers I already had, and me finally being willing to hear what they said.

Helmets in 2006 aren’t your answer in 2026. What worked for me then might not work today, and what works for the shop across town might not work for you. The math hasn’t changed, though. If your operating expenses are bigger than your margin dollars, you won’t be profitable, no matter how hard you work. And if your inventory doesn’t turn, every other problem gets harder.

Neil was right. If I saw him today, I’d tell him this story, because his warning might have been the best thing he did for me. I just spent too long treating it as noise.

It’s October again

If your service tickets have dropped, if you’ve stopped opening your financials because they make your stomach turn, or if your line of credit is doing the job your margin should be doing, you already know. More data won’t change that. What helps is someone who looks at the numbers with you while you still have options. Every month you wait, one of those options goes away.

If your bookkeeper sat you down tomorrow and said “you’re not going to make it,” would you be surprised?

If the answer is no, pick one person to call this week: a peer you trust, your accountant, or me. Then email me at chad@ratchetco.com and tell me who it is. I’ll check in with you in a week.

If you’d rather start with me, book a 30-minute call. Bring whatever numbers you have.