The crisis in financial markets, slowdown in manufacturing, rising unemployment, high fuel prices, a sluggish US economy have all posed problems in 2008. Though fuel prices at the pump have dropped since their mid-year highs, economic concerns for automakers show no signs of letting up. A bailout may keep automakers solvent, but it doesn’t help sell new cars.

What impact does all this have on our quick lube businesses and what can we do about it? The following are a few tips about what we can do about it, and how I think it will impact our businesses.

1. Attitudes Make a Difference
When I was younger I discovered the writings of W. Clement Stone, a believer in the power of a positive mental attitude. His books are full of real life anecdotes. One that I especially recall is about two butchers in a small town during the Great Depression. The one butcher did nothing but complain about how bad the economy was. The other butcher was cheerful and upbeat. Which one did the people in that town go to for meat? The more the one fellow complained, the more his customers avoided him, and you know how that panned out.  “To be happy,” said Stone, “make other people happy.” Our business space is an environment. You have the power to make it a space that is clean and a pleasure to be in.

2. Strengthen Your Team 
Hard times can be a good time to focus on strengthening your core team. No doubt your employees will be impacted if the business goes under, so use the hard times to create buy in for success. Maybe they have ideas on how to get new customers. Maybe they can use their personal networks to bring in business from wherever they hang out.
 
Help them get a vision for success and buy in. Imagine a roadmap, with Success as the destination. Have the team become involved with mapping out the route. When you reach your goals, reward them.    

3. Embrace Extended Drain Intervals
The philosopher Schopenhauer noted that all truth passes through three stages. First it is ridiculed, then it is violently opposed and ultimately it is recognized as self-evident. Premium synthetic motor oils and extended drain intervals have each passed through these stages. With the advent of synthetic oils in the early seventies there came a lot of misinformation about being too slippery to stay in the engine, among other things. Many quick lube owners, without considering the facts, believed it was impossible to make money selling extended drain synthetic motor oils.

Eventually, more and more motorists became aware of their benefits. Ironically, the opposition to synthetics came from people who should have known better, mechanics and oil change professionals. They had been steeped in a mindset that oil has to be changed every 3,000 miles no matter what.

The key thing is properly pricing your oil change. Consumers desire the convenience, as long as it is not at the expense of engine protection. They are willing to pay for value when they understand the benefits.

4. Look for Opportunities
People who can’t afford or get credit for new cars will likely want to take better care of their old cars.  This creates an opportunity to upgrade your customers to premium synthetic motor oils.
 
Hard times can be a good time to re-evaluate the way you do business. When things are going well, we tend to kick back a little and take things for granted. Our businesses can slip into auto-pilot.  In other words, a wakeup call now and then is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s true that when you snooze, you lose.

On the positive side, nothing lasts forever, including hard times.

CONCLUSION
We live in uncertain times. In fact, the only certainty about tomorrow is its uncertainty in some respects. This does not mean that everything is totally uncertain. Here are a couple things we can be sure of.

People will still eat, and they generally don’t buy their food online, so they have to drive to a grocery store to pick it up. Most people will still be employed, and a majority will continue to drive to work every day.