what up guys Adrian from YouMotorcycle.com here and just over a year ago I
found myself without a job and I had been doing this YouMotorcycle.com thing for
so many years and doing other local motorcycle stuff here in Toronto Canada
that I thought you know what I wonder if I can make a full-time living at least
for a while because it was the start of the season just doing strictly
motorcycle stuff some online mostly online some offline - and I I made a lot
of mistakes along the way so I kind of calculated eight mistakes that were sort
of the really big ones that I made with my motorcycle business this year and I
thought just for keeping myself in check and also maybe just sharing with you
guys I would let you guys know what some of my big mistakes of the year were in
my first year being totally self employed in the motorcycle industry so
the first mistake I made was definitely buying on ideals rather than my reality
and I you know you start things and you really gung-ho when you're all excited
and so I bought this really fancy DSLR and it can shoot 1080p and
all kinds of stuff and great frame rate great lens on it and I forgot that my
reality I was gonna take all these awesome awesome pictures and stuff and
all this great video footage and I think I've used the thing like four times and
I think using it took me maybe eight times longer than if I had just used a
phone or just a regular point-and-shoot camera and it was nothing but a bad
experience because my ideal was I was going to put out these beautiful
pictures in this beautiful cinematography
stuff I can't even say cinematographic that should be my first clue it was not
gonna be able to record this stuff that was my ideal but my reality was that I I
just I cannot use this thing it drives me crazy it whenever I do try and use it
I screw something up it takes me way longer so yeah first mistaking: buying on
ideals rather than reality Moral of the story is wait until you know
exactly what you need and then buy it and then that way you won't be wasting a
bunch of money for something that's gonna be like worse than a paperweight
because it just takes you longer to do everything the second lesson I learned
about what I did wrong in my business this first year was not spending money
on better quality so I thought I'd be buying based on my ideals that the SLR
but what I really should put that towards was just stuff like like
rustproofing or stuff that already was rust-proof especially being here in
Canada the rust with any kind of vehicle stuff like motorcycles rust is a big
killer because we put salt on our roads during the winter or to not have ice
form and that stuff is like dusty and it gets everywhere and it just starts
corroding everything and even with a lot of wd-40 and clean and stuff like that I
should have just spent the money on getting stuff rustproofed it's like a
Krown spray it you can you get done and I should have spent the money on just a
lot of other little things where a little bit more quality for example
stainless steel ratchets instead of just regular ratchets would have gone a long way
too so lesson learned spend a little bit more on the stuff that you realistically
need and that's gonna realistically be that much better than just the base
model alright so the third mistake that I made in my business this year was not
answering people sooner and I thought I had you know I was I was never like
super super hustle hustle I was always kind of hustling but I never felt like
someone's called me I need to call him back within 30 seconds or that's lost
business but really it kind of turned into if I don't get back to someone
within 30 seconds I need to consider that lost business that's sort of my
change in mindset before everything I was doing it was a side hustle I mean I
transitioned from side hustle to the hustle what I realized was that people
aren't willing to wait because they're gonna assume if you didn't answer
you're never gonna call them again and they'll just call somebody else and find
somebody else to do and they're gonna hire you do so moral of the story is ya
get back to customers ASAP that was one mistake that I learned luckily fairly
early on I had a customer and he said to me you know I'm glad you answered right
away because the other guy I tried to reach after an hour I still hadn't heard
from him and I thought okay so the expectation here is that within an hour
I need to get back to people so now I always try to get back people in half an
hour just to try and beat that I don't even know what number of mistake I'm on
but another one was not taking advantage of email enough so what I was doing with
a lot of my bookings and gigs and service work and whatnot was I had a
huge database of people's names what kind of bikes they had year, make,
model, and their phone numbers but I didn't collect their emails and that
would've helped me because every time I was doing a new service or new package or
new whatever I could just send out one email to all these people to be like hey
guess what got this new thing it's available you already know
business before you should check it out and I really just had these phone
numbers and I wasn't gonna go and kind of cold call or warm call
hundreds and hundreds of people but if I had collected everyone's email address
right from the get-go I would have been able to do in one click get the message
out to everybody and that was definitely a miss and I have a marketing
background so I really should have known this but I guess again it was that
transition of just a side hustle thinking versus primary hustle thinking
and yeah that was a lesson learned that was a mistake another mistake that I
made again coming from a side hustle background was not keeping not keeping
tabs and all of my customers not keeping notes on my customers so I kind of knew
who they were when it was just you know a couple bikes here and there that I was
working on or whatever it was and then all of a sudden became a couple bikes a
week and then it became kind of a couple bikes a day sometimes and then after
that it was people say hey you know it's me so-and-so and I would have no clue
who they were and I felt terrible because I would have no clue who they
were until I saw them face to face I'm like oh it's you right I know you you're
the guy we worked on your and then I'm still drawing a bike because I can't
remember what the hell they were on so the moral story is yeah definitely keep
notes on all your customers not just what you did for them but also keep note
of like what they wanted to do next hey did you ever like get that thing problem
sorted out that upgrade that you wanted those tires whatever it is because it
just it helps you so much whether it's just building that one-to-one
relationship or actually being able to upsell them or whatever just keeping
track of where they're at goes such a long way and it really
creates that personal touch and I wasn't doing that at first and I really read it
and I'm really glad him do it now all right when I first got started I was not
like self promoting at all I just was kind of I was in the background and my
friends knew to recommend me and stuff like that but I wasn't actively trying
to network I wasn't actually trying to make connections with people or network
with people and I think not networking enough is another big mistake that I
made versus now it's like now I got a bunch of it's really cool when you have
your peers recommending me not your peers is in like your friends or your
family your mom whatever but when you have business owners within your
industry saying hey you know who's really good at that call up this guy Adrian
he'll solve your problem and I'm Adrian and when I hear that a business owner
who's well respected and has good standing in the local industry
is saying you should talk to this guy to me that's
not only a huge compliment it's a nice little bump to my business and it just
makes me feel like wow this is this is cool this is something I'm really
excited about because that guy says I'm good and it's not a matter of not having
the internal confidence it's just a matter of, it's a nice like slow
clap that you feel for half a second then you get on you do your job and it
it's awesome so everyone recommending me: thank you and to everybody watching this
who is a small business owner or wants to be a small business owner definitely
network network network because it totally pays for itself
okay it's like 600 degrees in this garage so I'm gonna try and wrap quickly
the last two things one of them is I didn't have a strategy for collecting
tips at first it was no, nothing, it was like I don't even think that people
thought to ask themselves do I even want a tip this guy and that was a big
mistake on my part I should have been kind of thinking
about that like I worked 6 years in a bar so I really should have been
thinking like how do I make it easy for people to tip me because when I worked
the bar I had a glass and I had I would pre-tip myself so by the time even if
you were the first customer in the building you got to my you got to my bar
you saw I already had glass of money in there maybe it looks weird whatever it
worked so I set up my point-of-sale system so now it actually when you when
I do a transaction it actually prompts you do you want to leave a tip that's
one way to I have a little sign about tipping whatever so just little subtle
things I never ever ever ask for a tip verbally I also never try and be like
when they see the point of sale ask them for tip I'm always like four steps away
looking that way you know I've never point on my position where like are you
gonna put the tip button you gotta click that like I never ever do that so I
don't recommend you do but having a little subtle suggestion it made such a
difference so some of you guys to think about and the very last one and we'll
try and rush through these coz I'm time here is basically putting off things
putting off buying things that I would buy eventually anyway there were some
stuff that I knew that I needed and I knew I was gonna need them sooner or
later and then kovat hit and I don't know
about where you are but where I am with Canada Post having stuff shipped around
just made everything take like months so I got caught a little bit flat-footed
where I knew I needed things and it was just no
longer a question of being able to get it within 24-48 hours it was like you'll
get it in like four weeks and when you need stuff for business
you can't wait four weeks right so luckily I was smart enough that I always
had backup stuff like straps whatever but I like to have backups so that I can
use my backup so why have you been backups right away i order new backups
and they're there the next day and when I can't count on this be the next day
because kovetz got shipping all my stuff that's when I start get a little nervous
so moral of story is start with what you already have it's probably good enough
but if you know you're gonna need something sooner or later anyway just
hurry up and get now anyway first year for a new business is always a lot of
growing pains luckily for me there was nothing really terrible or bad had
happened there was one customer I need to kind of do a correction with that was
like a one-off one time everything else went really really well I learned you
know those eight mistakes those are kind of rookie common-sense things but once
you're in the field you're kind of just focused on whatever it is your next task
you have to do when you're not really always it hasn't become routine yet
right so hopefully these little things that I kind of make mistakes on will
help you not make the same mistakes and I know that I've already kind of
corrected all eight of these things and I'm sure hopefully maybe you're from now
I'll have eight more things that I screwed up but until now hopefully that
was good if you guys please hit that like button if you liked the video
please subscribe for more content thank you guys so much for watching and
helping me grow my youtube channel it was really awesome of you guys I do
appreciate it thank you ride safe peace