Are You Hiring a Babysitter or a Manager?

Jan 27, 2026

The answer will sting. But it might save your next hire.

"I had a friend who shared his numbers with his GM. The guy learned everything, then went out and started his own shop."

The shop owner said it like he'd just confessed to a crime.

I was on a call recently—one of those auto service podcast-style roundtables where shop owners swap war stories. The topic turned to general manager compensation. Someone asked about structuring pay. Base plus bonus? Bonus off gross profit?

I mentioned that any performance-based bonus tied to gross profit requires financial transparency.

That's when he pushed back. Hard.

Before I could respond, a veteran multi-shop owner dropped this bomb:

"Are you hiring a babysitter or a manager? Because those are two different things."

The Zoom went quiet.

Fourteen business owners. All successful. All running profitable auto repair service operations.

All silent.

And in that silence, I realized something uncomfortable: Most of them had been hiring babysitters their entire careers.

They just didn't know it.

The Fantasy vs. The Reality

Here's what I hear from shop owners all the time:

"I want someone who owns the results."

"I need a manager who can make decisions when I'm not there."

"I want to step back three days a week and have the auto service business run without me."

Sound familiar?

But then the conversation turns to compensation. To bonuses. To profit sharing.

And suddenly the brakes get slammed.

"I don't want to share my numbers."

"What if they learn too much?"

"What if they leave and open their own shop?"

Here's the uncomfortable truth that nobody in the automotive aftermarket wants to say out loud:

You cannot expect someone to manage outcomes they can't see.

You can't hold someone accountable to a scoreboard you've hidden.

And you definitely can't pay someone a bonus on gross profit while keeping gross profit a secret.

The veteran on that call put it perfectly:

"Why would you hire a general manager if they're not going to manage the numbers for you?"

That question should haunt every shop owner who's ever complained about their manager "not stepping up."

Maybe they're not stepping up because you never gave them the stairs.

The Fear That's Almost Never the Real Issue

"But what if they learn everything and leave?"

I've heard this fear from hundreds of shop owners. It sounds legitimate. It sounds like prudent business protection.

It's almost never the real issue.

After hundreds of conversations about automotive hiring and hundreds more onboarding calls with auto repair service operations across the country, I've learned something:

The fear of "they'll learn and leave" is a smokescreen.

The real reasons are uglier. And harder to admit.

Reason #1: The books aren't clean.

One business owner on that call put it bluntly: "A lot of people don't even have their numbers right."

If you're not confident in your own financials, you're definitely not going to show them to someone else.

You can't be transparent with numbers you don't understand.

And you can't expect a manager to manage what you haven't figured out yourself.

Reason #2: There's "funny stuff" happening.

Is the shop owner buying personal items through the business?

Taking distributions that aren't accounted for?

Running expenses through the company that have nothing to do with the company?

If you're doing things you'd be embarrassed for your manager to see, that's not a transparency problem.

That's an integrity problem.

And no automotive hiring strategy in the world can fix that.

Reason #3: Greed.

Another shop owner said it plainly:

"The only reason you don't want to share is you're being too greedy. If you're not taking care of them and you're taking an excessive amount, they're going to be upset. If you're being fair, they're not going to be."

Ouch.

But he's right.

If you're afraid of what your manager will think when they see the numbers, that tells you something important.

It tells you the numbers are indefensible.

How the Best Shop Owners Actually Do It

Here's what separates the business owners who successfully scale from the ones who stay stuck:

They stopped treating financial transparency as a vulnerability.

They started treating it as the only way to create real accountability.

One of the most successful multi-shop operators in our community shared exactly how he structures it:

He builds his owner's compensation INTO the model. Openly. From day one.

Here's how he explained it:

"Between rent and my salary, I'm taking 20%. 10% goes toward the real estate side, 10% goes in my pocket. That's before anybody else gets anything from the net."

"So if we do two million dollars, I make $200,000 out of that store before anybody else gets anything. And then 50% of the leftover net stays in the company. The rest gets split between the people who got us there."

Read that again.

His team knows exactly what he makes.

They know exactly what they can make.

There's no mystery. No suspicion. No resentment.

And here's the kicker—his managers are MORE motivated, not less.

Because they can see the scoreboard.

They can see how the machine works.

They can see that when they drive gross profit up, everybody wins.

Another shop owner added: "We've got our managers looking at the P&L. It's helped tremendously to keep their eye on the score."

This isn't theory. This is happening right now in auto repair service operations across the country.

The shops with the most loyal teams? The hardest workers? The managers who actually act like owners?

They're the transparent ones.

Every. Single. Time.

The Difference Between a Babysitter and a Manager

Let's make this painfully clear.

A babysitter:

Shows up
Watches the kids
Goes home
Has no stake in the outcome
Can't make real decisions because they don't have the information to make them

A manager:

Owns outcomes
Drives results
Makes decisions when you're not there
Sees the scoreboard
Understands how their work affects the numbers

Here's the brutal question:

Which one have you been hiring?

Because if you've been hiding your P&L, keeping gross profit a secret, and expecting someone to "step up" and "take ownership"...

You haven't been hiring a manager.

You've been hiring a babysitter and wondering why they won't act like a parent.

A babysitter shows up, watches the kids, and goes home.

A manager owns the house.

But they can only own it if you give them the keys.

The Identity Shift Required

If you can't share your numbers with your manager, you don't have a manager problem.

You have one of three problems:

A trust problem — You hired the wrong person
A greed problem — You're taking too much
A bookkeeping problem — Your numbers aren't clean

Notice what's NOT on that list?

A transparency problem.

Transparency isn't the issue. Transparency is the solution.

The shop owners who successfully scale their auto service business past themselves—the ones who actually take three days off, who go on vacation without their phone buzzing every hour—they've all made a fundamental shift.

They stopped seeing financial transparency as giving something away.

They started seeing it as the ONLY way to get what they actually want.

Think about it:

You can't hold someone accountable to numbers they can't see.

You can't expect someone to manage profitability if they don't know what profitable looks like.

You can't ask someone to hit a target they've never seen.

And you definitely can't pay someone a bonus on gross profit while keeping gross profit a secret.

The math doesn't work.

The psychology doesn't work.

The management doesn't work.

Something has to change.

And that something is you.

The Fear That Never Materializes

"But what if they leave and start their own shop?"

I hear this constantly from business owners in the automotive aftermarket.

Here's the truth:

It happens. Sometimes.

But not as often as you fear.

And here's the part nobody wants to admit:

If someone has the ambition, drive, and skill to start their own auto repair service operation...

They were going to do it anyway.

Your financial transparency isn't the thing standing between them and entrepreneurship.

Your secrecy isn't protecting you from competition.

It's just creating resentment and turnover in the meantime.

Here's what I've seen over and over:

If you're treating them fairly—and they can SEE that you're treating them fairly because you showed them the numbers—they're MORE likely to stay, not less.

The ones who leave after seeing your numbers?

They're not leaving because of what they learned.

They're leaving because of what they saw.

Fix that, and you fix the retention problem.

One shop owner told me: "You know what, I was a little worried about it. But as soon as I brought this individual in and showed them everything—what I do, what my job is—they said, 'Oh, I don't want to go start my own shop. That's too much stuff. I just want to clock out at 5:30.'"

Transparency doesn't create competitors.

It creates clarity.

And clarity creates loyalty.

The Question You Need to Answer

Before you hire your next general manager...

Before you have your next compensation conversation with your current one...

Before you post another job ad hoping to find a "rockstar" or a "unicorn"...

Ask yourself one question:

Am I hiring a babysitter or a manager?

Because those are two different things.

A babysitter watches. A manager owns.

A babysitter follows instructions. A manager makes decisions.

A babysitter clocks out. A manager stays invested.

But here's the thing:

You can't hire a manager if you're only offering a babysitter's job.

And you're offering a babysitter's job if you're hiding the scoreboard.

The shop owners who win at automotive hiring—who build teams that actually run without them—they've figured this out.

They've made peace with transparency.

They've cleaned up their books.

They've structured their compensation so that everyone can see how winning works.

And they've stopped being afraid of their own numbers.

The question isn't whether you can find a great manager.

Great managers exist. I talk to them every week.

The question is whether you're ready to give them what they need to actually manage.