Latest / Crossroad Conversations with the Lewis Brothers / Ep.50 - Real Leadership Q&A: Honest Answers to Tough Business Questions

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Ep.50 - Real Leadership Q&A: Honest Answers to Tough Business Questions · Crossroad Conversations with the Lewis Brothers

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Look at the head coaches how many of them won the Heisman Trophy?
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: How many of them played in a Super Bowl?
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: So just because you have a top person in your business, now maybe they are, maybe they are, but more than likely there's somebody else that may just be doing average in a position, but they've got great leadership, great communication skills and they're going to help you out more in that area.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: So take the time to invest to make sure you're putting a leader in a leader position.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Hey everyone, Welcome to Crossroads Conversations with the Lewis Brothers, where we aim to share real stories about running a successful family business, working through adversity and pouring back into the community that keeps our doors open.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: We're your hosts, Taylor, Matt and Shelby, and we'll bring you relevant local business advice and automotive insights that are sure to change the way you look at running a business and maybe even throw in a plug for you to do business with us.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Lewis Brothers Crossroads Conversations.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: This is the 50th episode, Five-oh, 50th episode of Answering.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Questions Week after week, we've almost made it, almost made it Real world stuff happening.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: This is really us two.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: It's not AI.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: No, this isn't live.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: No, 50 episodes, let's go.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: Somehow we get along and it all works really good.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Always showing up, always good, always together, talking about what works.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: So welcome back.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: In this special episode.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: We're answering real questions from our own Lewis Automotive team.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: Ooh, this could be interesting.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: Everything from leadership and business challenges to what we wish we'd known sooner.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: No scripts, no filters, just honest answers and real conversations.
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: Before you go any further, let me tell you how this format happened.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: We talked about a little bit last week like, hey, we always ask at the end of this podcast, hey, drop it in the comments, let us know.
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: And we continue to grow our audience.
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: Each week I get the metrics of of all the views and the downloads and somebody's seen relevance or lapdice or something.
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: But so we said, hey, let's see employees, wise, 260 employees.
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: Okay, what questions they have not necessarily for podcasts, just for us, like if we slowed down and held still for a second, okay, what would they want to know?
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: It's like a real q a.
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: So then the the team actually went around and said no, you have to ask a question and ask a good handful of employees.
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: And that's where these came.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Do we have the recording of them asking the question?
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: I think they wanted to be anonymous.
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: We have a solid, and that's a good point.
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: This is not on the script.
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: We have built this outstanding marketing Dang, marketing Dang From social media people to double video, people to graphics, people to events, people to coordination of all of it, and so yeah they did a lot of that.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: I just got to say, when you're saying that, I know we're getting off topic here, but this is exciting, whatever, you might be driving down the road and you saw the buildings and you've seen all the inventory and you're like, dang, what's next?
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: We're always looking for the next level and what you're going to see in the next six months coming out social wise, our interaction wise, how this podcast, our Saturday morning meeting will be next level.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: We're so excited about it, yep.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: Hey, matt, but what happened last week?
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Recap last week, episode 49.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: If you missed out, go check this one out, and I think every leader out there.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: If you've not experienced it yet, it's only because you just got started and it's coming, so you might as well go earmark this one.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Burned out and still in charge.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: You know, as a leader, as an entrepreneur, you can feel burned out but you can't give up.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: You got people who are like, okay, I'm back in the corner, I'm whipped up.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: You got people who are like, okay, I'm back in the corner, I'm whipped, but what do I do?
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Because I got to come out of this corner fighting.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: I can't give up.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: My family depends upon it.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: You know all my employees depend upon it, so on and so forth.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: So we unpacked all of that on what's called the dark side of leading under pressure.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: You know we unpacked all that, gave you some real-world advice on how each of us has been able to go through that and how we have the tools to be able to go through it again in the future, because it is a cycle that will happen.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: I don't care how many positive podcasts you listen to.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: I was going to say cassette tapes.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: You can listen to them all Cassette tapes, podcasts, videos anything, but you still need the tools in place to help you through all that.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Hey, as always, go to LewisSuperstorecom.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: You'll find over 1,000 vehicles in stock, all during our Trade In Trade Up event, where you can get an additional $2,500 in addition for your trade value, plus our Lewis guarantee.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: And then all these podcast episodes are on CrossroadsConversationPodcastcom.
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: So what did we drive today?
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: It was a good one.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: We specifically didn't all drive this together.
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: That's because it's only a two-seater.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: But I want to point this out this is a pre-owned vehicle.
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: We always feature a breed.
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: We sell pre-owned, we do.
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: We sell a good amount of pre-owned.
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: A matter of fact, we sell probably 1.25 to 1.5 use to new ratio.
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: So if we sell 200 new, that means we sell around 300 use.
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: That's right, right, um.
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: And so I'll tell you our feature and tell you how we come across this stuff.
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: So you know that we're ford guys, you know that we're mopar guys.
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: It's our core product, it's what we've grown up around.
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: But today's feature is a 2020 Chevy Corvette Stingray C8.
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: Mid-engine, 4,700 miles.
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: It's torch red with adrenaline red interior, so it's red on red.
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: It's a 2LT packagelt package 4700 miles.
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: Z51 performance package.
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: It has all the options.
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: Uh, 3lt z51.
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: Uh, it's got the upgraded front lift.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: Okay, it's got the interior comfort package, engine appearance package, the personalized plaque, the bright red calipers you want to show.
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: But how do you know this?
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: Well, one we took a look at it, but to our website shows that.
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: Okay, pretty cool thing there, lewis superstorecom, the cool thing that you're going to love about this, because non-core product, it's not a ford or cgr, it didn't come from the manufacturer, the used car factory suggested retail everything that everyone looks at ke Kelley, blue Book, ada.
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: All the online sources says this should sell for $73,000.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: With our Lewis exclusive trade assistance Got that $2,500.
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: You can buy this car for $68,000.
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: Wow, so saves you a bunch of money.
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: Five grand less there.
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: This is just one of hundreds.
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: Bunch of money.
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: Five grand less there.
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: This is just one of hundreds.
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: This morning, I think, we looked at it and had close to 470 pre-owned cars on the ground, and I need you to know that we don't buy these at auction.
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: I think that's the important point, right there.
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: We buy majority, majority of our used cars come from trade, yeah, right, but things that we acquire comes from private collections, from for sale by owners, from local people.
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: Because what happens at an auction?
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: Let's say the three of us don't work together.
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: We all work at three different places.
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: We go to an auction because we have to have used cars, because the ratio says we need to sell used cars.
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: Sure, we go to that auction.
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: There is generally 100 times people per car of cars to buy there, and so that means we're all going to be focused on this car.
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: We all like it, it has the right options and we're going to raise our hand.
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: We're going to bid against each other, the guy with the last hand up, gets the car, it's going to be above value.
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: Plus, they're going to charge you an auction self-fee.
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: You're going to have a post-sale inspection fee.
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: You're going to happen and you're going to hope it's a good car before, before it ever shows up here.
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: So you're going to pay an astronomically high amount.
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: Yep, that's why we put this $2,500 trade assistance, because that's about the average amount that it costs to go to an auction to acquire that.
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: We want to give you that money.
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: Yep, so if your car's worth 10 grand now it has the value of $12,500.
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: So we purchase a ton of cars just locally off the street.
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: So if you've got a car for sale, bring it to us and we'll give you top dollar.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Hey, you know I like to throw the facts in there for everybody to grab a hold of.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: So, like last month, for example, of the 415 vehicles we sold, 226 of them were pre-owned 226.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: In addition to that, what you were just talking about about local vehicles that we take in trade or we buy out of collections Last month we acquired over 302 of those.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: So every single month it's over 300 new pre-owned vehicles that comes into our inventory and over 50% of those are non-core products.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: Love that.
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: So that's our feature of the day Solid car there.
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: So let's dive into.
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: We talked about questions from our employees, what they thought, and we'll see how deep this gets.
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: I haven't completely read through this whole thing, but number one question what is one thing that you can credit to being in business for 79 years?
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: Well, 79 years is a track record that has proven itself that you can't do if you don't put in the time.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: And what I mean by that is real trust in the community from generational.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: When you bake in generational trust like my dad did business with the Lewis's, my grandfather did business with the Lewis's that is something you can't go out there and buy yeah.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: So that generational trust on the buyer side, and then having the culture of a employer that you want to work for, that you're like, that's somebody that I can see myself having a career with.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: Not only are they going to give me a fair wage and support me, they're going to be there with me, they'll actually train me.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: The culture I'll go to every day is going to lift me up so I don't go home in a worse mood.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Those are a couple of things that you can't do without putting in time Now.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Once you get past one generation, it starts showing you that what they're doing is correct.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: There's plenty of businesses that can go one generation, but if you want to go four generations, like we are, you must continue to do the right thing with your employees and with your customer.
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: I think that's really good, Taylor.
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: What's your thought?
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: there.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: I think it's structure, taylor, what's your thought there?
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: I think it's structure.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: It's honestly structure from all that happens because and we've went over this in previous episodes a family of house story of how you get into the business, how you work, everything else, that all has made every family member that's ever worked in this business.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: They've had to put in the time, they've had to put the work in, so they have sweat equity in the whole circumstance've had to put the work in, so they have sweat equity in the whole circumstance of everything going on.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: So then it makes them pour out into employees where they want to work there.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: So it's structure for me of and you know we've talked about this whenever we were younger, just rewinding a little bit that it's.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: I've got a long mountain I've got to climb before I can get to where I want to be, where I can run this business, where I can own this business, whatever it would be.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: But that is one thing that has allowed it to sustain for 79 years because we haven't taken somebody in the family and thrown them into the reins and said, hey, here you go.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: They have had to work their way up through the ranks and prove their worth.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: That then pours down to all the employees, all the community, because that process that's been baked in for 79 years continues to stay in the circle.
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: I think that's really good and so that talks that business is more than business, you know, and it's not just business.
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: And so you think about that and like, okay, 79 years, what's happened?
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: I think it's having the correct moral compass of understanding what's right, doing what's right, and that's for customers but also employees right.
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: And the funny thing is yesterday in our board meeting, uncle tommy um semi-retired uncle tommy he said hey, when I was 18 years old this is funny because he doesn't always tell stories, but just like I don, tommy he said hey, when I was 18 years old this is funny because he doesn't always tell stories, but just like I don't know where he's.
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: Like, when I was 18 years old, my uncle uh told me that that would have been buck, I suppose, or it could have been her so that was second generation, herb, and he said listen, son, and I'll say this, just like he said listen, son, and I'll say this, just like he said.
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: He said you're never too damn busy to get out in the shop and go talk to the technicians.
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: He said you're never too busy to get out and go talk to the employees.
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: He said you better go find Randy, you better go find Steve, you better go find Larry and ask them how was Junior's first day of school, how's football practice going?
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: And I think that's the value that this business has been built on is hiring the right people, giving the time, tools and training, at whatever stage that that is, and then showing them that you care, because you do right, because you do care, and it's important to them that they know that you care about them.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: That's good.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: I want to say one other point that came to me, I think, taylor, as you were talking, and I think this is vitally important to say one more time is that we do not have people in positions, especially family members, that did not fund the position.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: None of us were given an opportunity.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we were given an opportunity.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: None of us came in at we were given an opportunity.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: We were given an opportunity.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: None of us came in at a management level.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: We were all given the opportunity, but we had to earn and I would say harder than a normal employee earned the ability to go to the next step and the next step and the next step, and I can remember in my mind, being frustrated, that I wasn't at the next step yet Gone.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: What else do I have to do?
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: We've broken these records, we've done this, we've done that and it was just time.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Now it's easier to see.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's why, dad, let me think about it, let me sit in that situation for a while, because it paid dividends down the road versus progressing too quick.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that that's really good and that all contributes to long term business.
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: We're not chasing the dollar right Now.
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: That's important.
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: But I think that answers that Next question how do you stay consistent with training and culture when the business is on a tremendous growth?
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: Whether we're saying hiring a bunch of new employees like when we moved to our new location, 100 plus new employees I think that speaks to the culture.
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: Or just training of making sure that everyone understands Lewis Automotive how we treat employees and customers.
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: What's your guys' thoughts there?
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: I think it is extremely important and we were all challenged on this, especially during growth and construction.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: It's extremely important to make sure you have non-negotiables and some of our non-negotiables even on our busiest day or our most hectic day, we still have our meeting with our managers.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: We still take time to train on Mondays and Fridays.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: We still do cake day in the middle of it, we still have our micro meetings.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: So when we start off our week, those are non negotiables, that those things are in place.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: And no, I can't go do this during that because I'm in meetings.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: And I had to get that through my brain early on in my career because when I was thinking well, there's a customer out there, there's somebody else that needs my time today.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Well, but Matt, you've got 40 people in the room waiting for you to train on.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: What's the multiplication factor there?
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: Because as soon as you let off the gas and you don't prioritize something, your team now thinks that's not important.
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think also that was working in the business and on the business right, A lot of those things that drag you away are working in the business, which are important.
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: But now it's next layer, working on the business.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: You're just.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: You're never no different than you were talking about Uncle Tommy saying that going around and talking to your employees.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: You're never too busy to train.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: Now, if you got people not showing up for your training, that's a whole different discussion.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: But you're never too busy to train and to be involved in your business and sometimes that means you got to cut out some other stuff.
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: That's not as important, no doubt you can't just keep stacking them in, and we've tried to do that.
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, how many more metrics can we put on a page Like I don't know.
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: Let's keep trying.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's interesting in others too.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I mean when, that, when that I'm not going to say simple, because it wasn't simple.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: You know when that handoff happened where, then I was like OK, I have all the trust in Shelby and running the Monday morning meeting on training.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: Ok, then that freed me up to communicate back with the board some more to working on the business.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: And then same thing with Shelby, with Taylor going okay, well then I can be used over here, taylor can shift into this.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: So I think it takes that as well.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, most definitely.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: Taylor have any different thoughts or feelings?
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: No, I think the biggest.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: And we talk about this but as being present, present around the business, because then you really hear what you need to train on.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know that we need to train, but the only way that you're ever going to really hear and it's no different than I was in the being yesterday I'm like, hey, some of y'all are getting aggravated with me if the abcs you say I know the abcs, but I sat there and went over competitively, repetitively, over and over, and over and over, and the class finally looked at me because I kept asking the guy the same questions and he was scared and was fumbling it.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: But we did it about 10 times in a row and then I stopped and sat back and class was like, okay, all right, that's okay to do.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: I said, yes, it's okay to do, because then you get where you're confidently doing it every time.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: But we wouldn't know those things that need to be addressed if you're not sitting in different areas.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: No different than you saying, hey, you got to take the time to go talk to people.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: Go take the time to go and sit somewhere and work.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: Go talk to someone else you haven't talked to, because you're going to hear an employee that may not be treating a customer correctly and you're going to hear an employee completely drop what they should have been a walk in the end zone, but they fumbled the ball.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: So that's the only way that you'll ever know to be able to implement that in our consistent training, and you can't be mad at them first time or two, for them doing wrong, saying wrong or going through the process wrong.
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: If you haven't properly trained and like newsflash this is gonna blow your mind.
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: You will continually have to circle back to the basics regularly, continually, regularly.
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: Circle back to the basics, like it just like oh my, I just went over that.
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: You know it was funny.
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: Taylor was talking about something for service training when the three of us were talking yesterday and it was like Matt just went through a course and he's like well, but like Ford, and I was like no, it was Ford in Christ, or like a 12 week training process.
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: He calendared out an hour every single week to do this, this and this is like better fired back up again.
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: Like fire the old girl up again.
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: But it it like if that bugs you, you're in the wrong spot, right, it can aggravate you.
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: It's like no, no, no.
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: Like how much do you forget from yesterday?
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: Like a decent amount, right.
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: So it's okay to circle back to it and hopefully it just fires them back up.
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: And I love that you continued to.
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: You weren't mean and you didn't make fun of the person.
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: I was one time at Allen Ram training and I went, I was general sales manager and took a couple finance managers and took a couple sales managers and Allen Ram was very intact Military training, had really good training and he gave us the whole training meeting right from the get go and he started out with the most important stuff page one, page two, page three, and we were training the first four hours.
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: And so then he started.
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: He would say ring, ring and someone had to answer the phone and he would ask a very specific question, that it was an open book test and the answers were right in front of you and just give them to him.
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: One of our finance managers was answering it but not saying it correctly and he'd say ring, ring and then he'd say ring, ring and he did it like 18 times and I was sitting.
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: I was like, stop thinking, read the sheet of paper.
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: It was embarrassing for me and it was aggravating because I was sitting there.
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: I was like just read the paper.
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: It was embarrassing for me and it was aggravating because I was sitting there.
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: I was like just read the paper, just read the paper.
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: And so I know that was your aggravation.
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: But I can promise you he never forgot the process of how to train.
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: He didn't belittle him, didn't say, hey, you're dumb or hey, you can't figure this out.
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: He's like he finally stopped.
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: He's like it's in front of you.
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: Read the paper.
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he was like because he kept trying to just go off of natural instinct.
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: What he would say he's like no, this is brand new to you.
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: I know you won't understand it, but this is how you need to be training with your team for them to fully get it.
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: Otherwise, they'll just go through the training, check that box and go back to what they knew.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's so good.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: I got a question off of this question I'm going to ask both of y'all, because this is supposed to be real Q&A.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Have you ever been in a situation where you had a meeting, training meeting coming up, a cake day coming up, an employee event coming up, and in the back of your mind you're like I am frustrated, I got too much to do right now.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: Why are we doing this?
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: So on and so forth.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: I'd say 50% of the time.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: You, yeah, who put this on my calendar.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Yes, I got to get other things done right now.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: Now, we love doing those things, but we're human.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: I think that's what we want to get across here is it's important to us the employee events, it's important to us the training stuff?
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: But to think that it comes easy and that's what we wake up every single morning we're pulled eight different directions.
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: And I guess let me explain that and give some more context.
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: In our keg day celebration we celebrate all the birthdays and all the anniversaries.
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: For the week positive accolades and for the week positive accolades and most importantly, it's positive.
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: Never, never have I, ever, never will we get up there and speak of really anything that needs attention or anything that wasn't done.
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: Well, now, sometimes you'll be going into that meeting looking for some positive outlook when things have turned down a little bit.
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: And you're like because then you look at the hard numbers and you're like, okay, well, that was.
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: We were down $48,000 there, or we were down 38 units there.
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: Expenses were up 47% there.
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: It's like son of a gun.
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: And then you're looking at it and you got a ping from a Google review.
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: One star review is like, ah, they promised me a car but they didn't wash my car.
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: Like what the heck?
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: And it's like, hey, the salesperson was great, never called me again, they didn't follow typically used car dealership, and those things pile on.
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: And you're like now I gotta go pump my team up about how good they are.
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: Am I lying to them?
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: And I'm like, no, that's a small percentage, that's a small percentage.
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: So maybe in your office, banging your head up against the wall, doing some push-ups, dunking your head in the cold plunge, just to walk on the stage like Ric Flair and just say, hey, I found it.
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: Here are the good things.
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: And I want to say thank you so much for you actually caring and doing good.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: But you're so real that it sometimes is like whatever, and I'll pitch it over to you have you ever been frustrated just thinking?
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: I know this is important, but I got too much on my plate right now.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: And why are we meeting about this?
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: Oh, yes, like I'm going through things that I know.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: I know, especially as a manager and it probably irritates me more, not in sales, but more of a manager level that we have to meet with managers to be able to go over processes or procedures that should be done, you should know.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: That's why you're empowered, you're employed at this level.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: I'm like, come on, guys, because nothing irritates me more than to stop during the day and have to slow down to teach someone that should know.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and is to a level that they should know.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: That's when it ever really acts.
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: It's like you're on a power drive down the field.
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: Oh, you've got a fast break and you call timeout.
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: Well, now everyone's caught up to you.
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: It's like you were leading the lap in the daytona 500 and you had four seconds on the guy.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: Then a caution comes out.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: Now everyone's stacked behind you.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: But it's important.
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: You were leading the lap in the daytona 500 and you had four seconds on the guy.
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: Then a caution comes out.
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: Now everyone's stacked behind you.
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: But it's important, you know, because sometimes we'll do a manager checkup, like we were talking about our trade-up thing and saturday, we were talking about her in the saturday before and I was like, hey, if it's this, does it qualify?
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: If it's, this is a qualify, how much to get?
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: And one of the managers answered wrong three times in a row and I was like I guess that's why we're going over this right, but that's life and people.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: The reason I brought that up is because hopefully there's some people listening that realize we're pulled eight million directions, just like you guys are.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: We have plenty of things to do.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: It's not that we needed to schedule those meetings or those events to fill our calendar.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: We're actually having to remove things off of the calendar and reprioritize.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: But you're never too busy to invest in your team.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: You're never too busy to recognize your team.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: But if you don't prioritize it, you don't calendar it, it will never happen and all the normal stuff of every day will eat all your time out.
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it definitely will.
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: So that is a good point that we're not trying to share our Instagram highlight reel.
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: We want to give you all the stuff you know, all the dirt, so that's really good, all right.
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: Last question for me what keeps you going every day as a leader?
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: What keeps you going going, whether that's just you or the business or whatever it is.
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: I'll jump into that one.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: I I love seeing.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: Is it steak?
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, oh.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: People are highly concerned, and my brother being one of them right over here.
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: My daily input of protein because like in one seating this is totally derail your head, but I want to say it and one seating somewhere from noon to three o'clock.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: A paper plate has never worked so hard we've got to get the video and the picture part going no, no, I have one.
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: I'll send it to uh the team so they can put this.
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: Please put this on there.
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: A video I videoed the other day.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: It was like three 16 to 18 ounce ribeyes stacked on top of each other, coated in mustard, like a stack of pancakes and he does this.
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: It's like this training act and it's because he's on carnivore diet and he generally will just eat one time a day.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: So I'm not just saying, hey, you're a big fan.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: No, I ain't.
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: No, he has a theory, but I'm just like I can't sleep if I eat half that much steak.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: I've never and I challenge, I'm going to make y'all do this of going through, because I know y'all like being completely healthy.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: You've never felt so good.
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: I felt, okay, let's get.
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: Before you go on the step you said you've never felt this good we got together to celebrate our birthdays.
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: We do a campaign on birthday days as a family.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: Right we did it.
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: We went out to the lake.
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: Taylor cooked 18 of these humongous rib eyes.
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: First of all, thank you.
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: Thank you, I loved it.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: So I ate it Saturday night.
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: It was amazing it was amazing.
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: And then we had a lot left, and so Sunday I put it in the microwave and ate another one.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Like for breakfast.
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: I had to turn my air down to like 66 and slept in my underwear on top of the sheets and I still sweated Like I was on the beach.
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: I was just like how do you do this?
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: What?
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: is going on.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: What's the protein?
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: All right, so on each one of the, how many steaks did he have?
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: Three?
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: Okay, there's an average on an 18-ounce steak is 126 to 138 grams of protein.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: That's a lot.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: Let's use 130.
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: Two of those gets my daily intake.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: Three of at 130 is 390 grams of protein.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: That's why I'm so strong.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: Mr Universe, what are you training for, golly?
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: All right, a lot of water?
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: No, that's okay.
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: So the question what keeps you going every day as a leader?
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: One, it's steak, but two, what was you actually going to say?
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: No, it's got to be the success of others around me, not only providing for my family.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: I love doing that, making all his brothers proud that you put me in a position that I can do good at.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: But it's not my own goals.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: It's not saying, hey, look at me.
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: What I'm doing, it's seeing my whole team succeed.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: And that's when it's like you can tell me hey, your team did this and not Taylor, you did this.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: I'd be more proud whenever you told me my team did this than saying, hey, you did good, because I don't want the credit, I don't want to stand up there and be going through everything else.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: So it is me pushing forward to try to make sure my team has the best ability to crush all of their goals.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: I'm glad to hear that.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's not that I'm copying you, but we all talk about the same culture and it just rings in my head because growing up in my dad's vehicle was a library of cassette tapes.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, not this thing.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: Come on Of cassette tapes.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: They were the old podcast and you know what One of them we regularly played on there is Zig Ziglar, and Zig constantly said if you'll help enough others get what they want, you'll get what you want.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: It's exactly what Taylor's talking about and I got to agree.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: As a leader, there's been obviously multiple different chapters and stages and there will be many more throughout my career.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: But there's one thing I enjoy hitting your own goal, and that's exciting for a short term, but then it's like who else are you going to tell about that?
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: You get an entire team to achieve their goal and the celebration on that is no different than watch a football game Okay.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: And if you get a running back that has record yards in the game, okay, but they didn't win the game, yeah, there's hardly any celebration.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: He can have half the yards and the team wins and there's a huge celebration, you know so to me that's really important.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: And I'll say the other thing that just keeps me going every day as a leader is the just constant growth of opportunities where I feel challenged and it's like man, I'm stepping into an area that I don't have a path for.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: I've got to learn.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: It's challenging me, it's taxing me, but I know if I do this then the team will be better and it will continue to project our family business and a constant growth forward.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: That's good.
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: I'd say one thing that I would add.
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: I think it's really scary, cool and rewarding to know that, not only specifically directly my family, our family, but 260 employees in their families, count on us each day to bring our best and to help them.
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: It's scary, challenging, but when it all works, when you, that's one of those things like if we ever said which was so rare hey dad, is there any way that there'd be something else that I could do to make some more money?
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: Right, when we were in the wash bay and in the parts warehouse, yeah, right, and it was one of those things early taught us was like well, figure out to be more efficient, work a little harder and help enough people hit their goals and you should make some more money.
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: Right, and so that's one of those things.
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: We know that and that's our driver of like help other people, and then you should be successful, right, and if you're not successful, you've failed all around that's not a sign you better figure it out that's good
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: oh, that's good.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: Hey, I'm gonna mix it up a little bit.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: A little fun fact.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: Fun fact quiz of the week what is the longest continuously produced vehicle model in history?
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: Okay, I've got a chevy suburban b, the volkswagen beetle c, the ford f-150 or d.
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: None of these the longest continuously produced vehicle model in history.
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: Shout out to our our team that took the answer off here.
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: I love that they do.
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: We don't know the answer Chevy, suburban, volkswagen Beetle, f-150, or none of these.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: You know I was getting ready to ask the question.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go ahead and ask it anyways.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: But I was going back to my school days on not reading the question correctly and I was going to say, well, what about the Volkswagen Beetle?
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: And I was going to say, well, what about the Volkswagen Beetle?
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: Because they had a period of time where they weren't built.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: Do we count all that?
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: But right there in the question it says continuously yeah, that would be continuous and that hints us why I wasn't good at multiple choice.
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: That's okay, we're going to be all right.
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: You made it.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: That's all right.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: Hey, rolling to another question here.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: What is one simple key to business sustainability?
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: I would say a simple key to business sustainability is this and I was talking to somebody about this yesterday, in fact slow growth, slow growth.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: Everybody wants massive growth.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: You give me sustained slow growth.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: I can plan for it.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: We can do better at handling cashflow for it.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: We can hire the right employees, we can get the structure how we want it.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: You just and I know that's kind of tough to say like hey, you don't want all this business coming at you.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: Slow growth will help sustainability.
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: We've seen that in companies that we've like vendors that we use, they're like well, this person's good, this person's good and they don't have a slow growth pattern and they don't have the support to handle it, and you become dissatisfied.
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: Yep, I would say.
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: Along with that, uh is solve the little problems.
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: You know you're never going to find the $50,000 ideas like, oh, never going to find the $50,000 idea.
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: It was like, oh, that was easy, you just flip that switch and you know.
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: But if you focus on the little things, it's no different than we say in endurance events, like how in the heck do you run a hundred miles?
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: I'll tell you exactly how.
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: You start with the first step and then you make it to the second step and then the third step.
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: You're not trying to say, hey, how do I scale a million dollar business or $ million dollar business, 100 million dollar business?
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: You're saying, hey, how do I make sure the customer that walks in the first one today gets the best experience?
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: How do I make sure my employee walks in today that they know exactly where to go, exactly what to do, that they have a very clearly written process, that they feel valued, that they have a clean place to go that they, you know all the things.
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: And so if you focus on just that very simple thing and then get that figured out and then move to the next thing, so just focusing on little things along with slow growth yeah, I think, then you're just like whoa.
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: This is a monster.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: it really is, I gotta add.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: I know they said one, so I'm gonna go onbased, and we talk about that word and we love, we love in there, and you could layer that.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: However adaptability changing with times, but solution-based, which means finding a way to not say no.
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: Let me put that in simple and easy Solution-based means.
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: When the answer is no and it's okay that the answer is no give them an option that doesn't say no, it does.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: And it means when the faucet turns off on new vehicles, we provide used solution base to keep selling.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: When the shop has got a reduced amount of RO accounts, we lean heavier on selling the vehicles.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, when used isn't selling or we can't get enough used, we lean harder on selling the vehicles.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: You know, when used in the selling or we can't get enough use, we lean harder on the new.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: You know we're just always looking for a way to be solution-based and change with the times and the molding.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: We know this.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: But just so our audience knows, do you know how much different car buying looks now than 79 years ago?
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: It's a little different.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: You know, just because you're open, 79 years does not mean you're going to be successful.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: No, you got to keep evolving with no.
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: Okay, that's good there.
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: Well, next one of rolling into how do you lead a team of people in the right direction that you want as a leader without making the team feel push obligated and make it their idea?
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: I like at the very end there.
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: That's how you lead a team of people in the right direction that you want as a leader, without making them feel pushed, obligated.
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: You make it their idea.
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: We spent a whole podcast talking about that, but that becomes a discovery.
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: It's like hey, guys, the next thing I want to work on is customer CSI or shop up time or whatever it is.
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: And so then you get that crew in there, that hyper-based crew, that micro meeting, and say, hey, here's the next thing we want to focus on.
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: Let's start whiteboarding some ideas of what your thoughts are, and you know generally what you want the answer to right, but you're going to let them and then they might throw it up there.
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: And then you get to circle it a couple extra times.
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: Sure, uh, but then if it's not there, you say, hey, what about if we offered this first?
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: Yep and no, oh, that's a good idea.
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: It's like, okay, okay to put up there.
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: And they're like, yeah, put it up there.
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: So you put it up there.
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: And so the end you circle back to is like, okay, is this good?
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: Now?
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: Like man, let's x that one, you x that one.
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: So you end up with three.
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: He's like okay, which one do you think?
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: So then your idea becomes their idea, and that's how you lead people in a clear direction, to think that they're not just cattle getting driven down the road, right.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: That's such great insight on developing it as their idea.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: I'm going to take this from a different side just to add some context to it.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about putting people in the right position.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: Here's what I do want to remind you is that if you're somebody's leader, boss, manager, whatever you want to label it employees are generally going to tell you yes, even when they're not.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: You're their boss, even if they don't mean it.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: Even if they don't mean it and let me tell you this we have seen this.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: We talked about this yesterday at one of our other stores you can put an employee in a position.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: They will make it work for about a 90 day to a six month period.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: They can put on their big boy pants and their smiling face, but at some point in time their true talent will come out of liking this position or being frustrated by it, to lack of motivation and all those things.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: But at first you'll think you made the right decision, yeah.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: But then and that's why we use a lot of personality tests now because that doesn't lie it's not the end, all be all, but it doesn't lie.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: Here's the second tip here Just because somebody is a top performer in an area does not mean that they're your perfect candidate for management level wise.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: So you got to get people in the right position.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: I'll give you a couple examples.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: In our business, a team of salespeople Because somebody is a top technician doesn't mean they should be the service manager.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: Because somebody is a top service advisor does not mean that they should be the service manager, so on and so forth.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: Look at the head coaches in FL.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: I know it's football season, so we got to talk football.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: Look at the head coaches how many of them won the Heisman Trophy?
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: How many of them played in a Super Bowl?
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: So just because you have a top person in your business, now maybe they are, maybe they are, but more than likely there's somebody else that may just be doing average in a position, but they've got great leadership, great communication skills and they're going to help you out more in that area.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: So take the time to invest to make sure you're putting a leader in a leader position and to spin off of that.
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: If you have a let's say that you have a sales manager position available and we've learned this the hard way and how to do it properly you put that ad out internally Yep, absolutely.
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: And then you give the opportunity, especially if they raise their hand.
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: You know good and well they could manage people better than they could manage a dozen eggs, right.
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: But they're really good at motivating themselves, doing their own schedule, figuring out how to handle customers, right.
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: But you know that and generally they know it.
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: But they have earned the right to be able to interview for it and you need them to let them.
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: So you have to walk them through those stages and at least give them the right opportunity to say do I think?
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: I see you don't have to offer them the job if they're not the right fit, matter of fact, you should not offer them the job, but you should offer them the opportunity for sure.
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: And so then you can walk through that as like, hey, do you want to have to control all 15 of those people when they can't hit their goals?
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: Like, what would you do there?
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: And do you want to be glued here full time?
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you can't go, run some areas and you can't go do this and you can't just hop on a plane to go here and here and they're like you need to give them opportunity.
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: They need to give them areas for growth without having to move to a new role.
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: So they still feel valued.
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: Because if you just in your mind say there's no way they could make it as a manager, there's no way they'll make it as a head coach, and you make that decision for them, then they're going to say these people don't value me and they'll go somewhere else.
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: They'll be a manager that didn't work out and then they'll fall back to salesperson in another store.
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: They'll be unhappy, but they're not coming back because that situation was never at least presented.
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: And then they get to say they offered me the manager position but I don't Right, you have to win.
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: When we've done that wrong before, we've learned that that's the proper way to do it.
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: That's good, that is very good.
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: Hey, last one here Best advice to someone who has started a new business or wants to.
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: Don't give up.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, don't give up.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: And let me just tell you, if you're starting in your career, or especially if you're starting a business like this is as real as I can be is it's going to take time.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: And if you're married, sit down with your wife and y'all have this conversation.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: It is going to take work.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: I don't care all the AI tools and all the technology out there, it takes work.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: You're not going to open a business tomorrow and all of a sudden take three weeks of vacation.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: This year You're not taking any vacation.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: No, none, zero.
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: Okay, you're opening the door.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: You're closing the door Now.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: Eventually, you're putting all that time in so you can layer teams in with systems and processes.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: So then you have that flexibility.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: But the next three plus years, if you're not ready to commit yourself and your wife's not on the same page, do not do it.
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: Just don't do it.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: I know this doesn't sound pumped up, but it's reality.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: Doesn't sound pumped up, but it's reality.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: Too many people think they're going to open a business and then all of a sudden sit back and work part-time and this and that the money's going to flow in.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: You got three to five years barely making payroll.
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, any podcast or any story of some of a founder or business producer.
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: They were bleeding money.
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: The first three to five.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: I love listening to Guy Raz's stuff on how it built this.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: They mortgaged their house.
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: They didn't take a salary, they didn't do.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: They paid all their employees with themselves.
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: It's a long-term play.
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: If you think that you're going to start an IPO or a dot-com and flip it for some millions right quick, like you either are a genius and somehow you'll figure out how to sell something from your basement without having to touch it.
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: But in the real world, first piece of advice I'm going to give you is listen to the first 49 episodes of Crossroad Conversations Not because we want you to watch them all, because it is 49 hours, which is just about a normal work week of things to learn and to listen, of the cash flow and figuring out the inventory.
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: Turn and don't dive in like you need to be committed with both feet, but don't just get like, hey, I've got $400,000 to spend, let's put all $400,000 in and let's buy $400,000 worth of inventory.
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: You're going to need some more cash and let's buy 400,000 worth of inventory.
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: You're going to need some more cash.
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: So you're going to need about 50% reserve there because it's a long-term play.
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: But if you fully have vetted this thing out and gone through the metrics we've talked about the questions that you asked then fully dive in and just know you're committed.
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: Communicate with your spouse, said, hey, I won't see you for 35 years Yep, and we're not going to have anything extra.
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: Beans and rice, rice and beans, yep, and then somewhere along the way you'll get a one-week paid vacation by yourself.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: You will, you will.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: Last piece of advice on that let's say your business is up and going and let's say you do have some profit.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: If that comes in the first six months to the year, my hat's off to you and reinvest it.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: Reinvest it In your business, in your business.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: If you even think about buying and we're in the business of selling cars, so I can't believe I'm saying this If you even think about buying a third car, a fun car, or a boat or a Jets, come see us.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: We'll sell it to you and say it's an awful idea.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: Or a new house.
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: You're an idiot, I'm sorry, but take that money and reinvest it in your business.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: Reinvest, reinvest.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: You live off of rice and beans and beans and rice.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: If you want it to catapult down the road, reinvest the money.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: It drives me nuts People.
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: I I've seen, I had a guy the other day and I whacked him with a louisville slugger okay, because I've got that relationship with him now because he was doing well and I saw him at the gas station with a brand new wakeboard boat and I called him and I said where'd that boat come from?
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: And I have nothing besides helping mentor this guy and I said cash it now he's like why I've had a good month, reinvest it.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: There is some type of this or that coming.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: You're going to need the cash oh lord, what?
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: not the people you want to ask for advice and that, because we're going to hit you wrong.
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: And real, yeah, maybe that was too raw.
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: No, no, no, that's 100 on.
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: No, that's 100.
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: Real because what's happened is so many people see the fun, fluffy side of owning a business, and there are multiple benefits of owning a successful business.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: Let's be real about that.
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: Okay, whenever you put the time in, whenever you have the short equity, it is great to be part of a thriving, successful business.
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: But no one talks about what it takes to get there, and even if you have small success in the first six months, in the first year, doom and gloom might be coming right behind it, and so it's so important to know that, hey, I got to be ready for that, I got to weather this storm so that I can be successful, so that's so good that you, you poured into that and said, hey, this is real, this is what you have to do.
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: It's hard work, it's great to do, but you're not going to just set out tomorrow and it'd be successful, that's good, all right, let's jump back on something fun.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: okay, what was the longest continually produced vehicle you hit me with in history?
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: Was it the Suburban, the Volkswagen Beetle, the F-150, or none of those Since 1935.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, since 1935, this vehicle has been produced.
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: Well, generally people would probably guess the F-150, but I think it was the early 40s they started this thing.
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's tricky because it wasn't necessarily the F-150 nameplate, it was Ranger and F-100 going through there.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: So it's not the Suburban.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: The Chevy Suburban started production in 1935 and is still in production.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: Pretty crazy.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: We got those for sale too.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: That is crazy.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: We do.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: Next up a couple more questions we got from our team.
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: How important is sharing your vision and goals for growth and the objectives for the company with your team?
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: I think it's so important, like it's one of those things that you know a goal not written down is just a wish, right?
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: So if you say, hey, we need to accomplish this, sure, like hey, I want to be at 120% growth.
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: Or hey, I'd like to be X amount of ROs.
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: Or hey, I'd like to hit this number.
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: Or I'd like to be in amount of ROs.
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: Or hey, I'd like to hit this number.
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: Or I'd like to be in the president's award, or hey, I'd like to, if that's just in your mind, even if you're giving them very clear direction of you know we need to do this, this and this, but you don't tell them what it's for, what you're after, they won't have that same nugget of everyone pulling in the same direction.
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: At least that's my feeling, right.
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the same direction.
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: At least that's my feeling, right?
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's.
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: It's completely a wish that you're already setting up in your head that you really don't want to happen, because you told no one you've written it, you've not shared it, what's written down or anything else.
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: You, you are saying, hey, I don't want this goal to be successful inadvertently.
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: That's how what you're relaying on, even though you may want it, you don't want it bad enough to be able to share with your team to help them hold you accountable.
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: That's the reason you're doing.
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: It is because you think the goal is too far-fetched, that it's not attainable, and you don't want to be held accountable whenever you fail.
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: And I think the flip side of that is the objectives.
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: If you don't share those objectives, then someone might think they're absolutely killing it, but in your mind you never shared where you'd actually like to be, and so that was a misrepresentation on both parties.
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: They're super excited because they had some growth at this level, but the expense, the growth and all the things that you had to go through to get that does not outweigh that, and so then you're dissatisfied.
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: They're super happy.
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: You're on two different planets and it just doesn't make sense.
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: Have either of y'all been in the situation before where you had a goal and a vision in your head and you thought that your team was on that same level with you?
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: You hadn't directly said here's what we're after, but you just assumed that they saw what you were doing.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: They saw what you were talking about, you assumed that they were on the same trajectory as you were, but at the end of the month, just like you said, they thought we did well and you're like no, we way missed the mark.
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: A hundred, maybe a thousand times, and I want to go as simple and as basic as walking around, pick up trash yep, the goal and the objective was let's keep a clean area, because I've seen my dad do it.
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: It's just the proper thing to do.
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: Without me clear, it'll frustrate me.
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: I've talked about moving the whole lot of myself and I'm you know, I'm just like you fool, why are you doing that?
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: I'm like well, no one else is gonna do it.
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: It's like you if you ask anybody else to do it.
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: You know removing snow, you know when you're doing that and you assume everyone's like oh dang, the owner's been here since 4 am clearing snow.
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: It's their day off and all these things.
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: Like then they're drinking your free coffee.
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: Just staring at you at the glass.
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: Get in there.
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: Like, oh, I didn't know it was jeans day.
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: It was like, well, I didn't know you were going to be a slacker today.
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: You idiot, right, that's what you feel.
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: That's not what you say, but that's totally my fault.
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I know it is, and it's like hey, hang on, stop being the doer, be the teacher.
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: Right Process implementation procedure that was.
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: I've failed at that a million times.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's good.
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: How do you separate one individual?
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: Now think about this how do you separate one individual that you know is good for business man?
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: They leave a negative impact on the team.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: So they've got great numbers, but every time you see they are just trying to drag others down.
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: That's a tough one.
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: We went through this recently of you have to be hard on of going through it, hold them accountable, because a lot of times you find yourself you allow, um, high performers to get away with things that you're not going to hold the guy that's just starting accountable to, and a lot of times you've got to reset them and say, no, we got to remember how you got to being successful and we've recently done this with salesman.
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: He's started to taking it constructively and started to move in the right direction.
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: But you have to have that unfun conversation and say this isn't working and we have to change this if we want to continue to be in a business relationship together.
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: And I think that's probably best case scenario.
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: If you can make that work and that top performer, a technician, someone in the office, whoever it is, it's just really efficient and does really well Generally.
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: They know that right, and the rest of the team knows that as well.
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: And so then they start kind of dividing the team the underperformers and the overperformers and they're like, hey, they get special rules even if, no, like they're, they're just performing that well.
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: Um, and so you have to be very careful that it's clear expectations, communications and it doesn't get out of hand, because this is so important with that.
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: The three of us could not operate this whole thing by ourselves sure I could not do this on my own.
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: You could not, you could not, and the three of us couldn't do it without everyone.
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: So this is 1000 a team event yeah and so you have to realize that no one is above leaving a negative end.
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: And so sometimes and it happens more often than not that you have to part ways and realize you just lost a top performer.
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: But what they were, the detriment they were doing to your team was none.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: It wasn't.
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: And you know this, callie.
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: This is a tough one because it's really hard to coach that top performer and you guys know what we're talking about.
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: Out there that might be the toughest person to have a constructive conversation with things.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: I've found that help is if you will find something they do outside of work, because usually a top performer is not good at sitting around at home.
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: So they're involved in the things.
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: They might be involved in their church, they may lead a group, they may be a coach for a kid's team or involved in some type of philanthropy, work in a nonprofit.
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: And if you'll spend that and you'll talk to them, say, hey, have you ever had anybody in your XYZ team that just didn't have the right attitude and wasn't bringing it up?
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: You know, and like you put them in that role.
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: So how do you handle that?
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: And then you can come back and say, hey, I'm having the same situation here at work and let me explain to you.
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: I know your numbers are great and you sold a lot of cars last month and I you know I understand you're giving everybody else a hard time and and you're trying to get them out of the way so you can get more lot ups or more opportunities.
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: Can I share something with you?
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: If you made a more positive and I'm not asking to hang out with them all day, but a more positive impact and they were more successful, you'd have more trade-ins to sell.
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: If we sold more cards, we'd have more trade-ins.
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: So then you could put more of your deals together and you start spinning it like that.
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: We'll work a hundred percent of the time, but if you can put them in a scenario there, we had one of our employees the other day and I called him straight out on that and I'll say their name.
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: But I was like hey, do you do this same thing when you're leading people?
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: yeah yeah, and it's different than just say, hey, you got a piss poor attitude.
• 55:23
  Speaker 3: No one likes you.
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: I know you do well, but you're gonna figure it out, we're gonna cut away.
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: It's like it eventually can come down to that like, hey, we've talked about this seven or eight times.
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: You want to know the funny thing that you're sitting here talking about this and I think this and you wonder, is this important?
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: This is a question that one of our employees asked.
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: It said how do you separate one individual that you know is good for business, but they leave a negative impact on the team?
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: One of the employees asked that.
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: So you know that's relevant, right, so that's how you handle it.
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: If you're listening out there and you ask these questions, that's how you handle it.
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: And if you didn't ask this question but you might be on that side and if you're a bad performer, you're negatively impacting the team as well.
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: If you didn't listen.
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: Last week, on episode 49, one of our questions was what percentage of employees say they left a job because of poor leadership?
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: 75%, three out of four, 75.
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: So is this question relevant?
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, 75% of employees leave because of poor leadership.
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: All right, how do you guys handle an employee or a process that doesn't align with a position or the company?
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: So think about that.
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: How do you handle employee or a process?
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: I guess the process is probably the easier thing to talk about here first, how do you handle a process that doesn't align with that position, what you're asking about that position or with a company?
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: So I think and we've talked about this before but an employee that's not aligning with the current position, whether it's the process or the position we look and see, never mind the role tell us about the employee.
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: Do they have a good attitude?
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: Are they a team player?
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: Do they treat others the way they want to be treated?
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: Do they greet customers?
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: Are they on time, are they presentable, are they respectful All the things you would say of a model person, right?
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: So if the answer is yes to most of those questions, or all those questions, then you slowly start discovery with that employee and say, hey, what's changing?
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: Is it a lack of me giving you responsibility to not be able to do your job?
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: Do you not have the time or the proper tools and stuff to be able to do your job properly?
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: And they might say, yes, like I've asked for this, I need these tools, sure, and you haven't and, like my bad, didn't know that.
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: I don't know who you ask.
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: Please tell me.
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: Without telling me, so I can make sure this doesn't happen again.
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: Let me get you the tools.
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: And they're like no, no, no, I've got all the information.
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: I've got all the tools I need.
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: This isn't working.
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: I'm having another kid.
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: Life changed my life.
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: I'm having another kid, I can't work as late.
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: Or hey, my wife's schedule changed, I need to do this.
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: Or my husband's schedule changed, I need to do that.
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: I'm like, okay, so if you have that person that doesn't align with the current role, then I mean right now we have 19 job openings available.
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: That's not spots.
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: We probably have 35 spots open, right, and we're not just filling them with just people raising their.
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: You have the right person right and so quickly we're going to say who's in this dealership that might be looking for advancement or might need to completely, because we'll take somebody that's barely making it.
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: And I'm not saying financially but just like doesn't love showing up to work and doing what they do.
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: And we have dozens of these currently still in our business that move to another store or just a different department.
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: That is a twinkling stock.
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: You know, we just talked about that just yesterday, yeah, and aboard me just just that they were a good person, they'd been with the company for a while and and they did well the first six months in that position.
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: But then the new war on and we saw like hey, they're really just not, it's not aligning with the process of that position didn't challenge them, but they, you know, the fit wasn't there, so I'd say that was.
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: That's the first thing that we would do as an employee.
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, what we would do.
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: There were your thoughts your thoughts, yeah, going into there.
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: It's just so important to know and realize that whenever it is happening that you see that they're not aligning it's and this is reiterating what y'all have just went over and said it's so important to grab a hold of them and say, hey, let's make this change, let's do this, let's dive into it At that time, whenever it needs to be done, because one either you're going to let it go too long and you lose the employee, or it's going to negatively impact someone else in your family or not in the family, yeah, in the work family, but affect them so'm glad you said it because I was going to jump in is that you need to have that conversation center.
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: The farther it gets along, the more damage that's been done and the less likely that you'll be able to recover and adjust to keep that employee.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, most certainly there.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: And then think about a process that doesn't align with the position.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: You need to look and see what was the process for.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: Is it a process that we even need?
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: And the answer is yes, that doesn't align with the position.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 3: You need to look and see what was the process for.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: Is it a process that we even need?
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: And the answer is yes.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: It's like, okay, well, what does it accomplish?
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: Or what is it trying to accomplish?
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: And so once you get those things like hey, manufacturer said we got to be at 96% satisfaction, whatever it is and you're like, well, the process does it help with that and does it align with that position?
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: Like, should another position help with that?
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: You know, forget the employee for a second and just process some position.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 3: Like, okay, maybe we could still have that process, but maybe we need to rework that process, maybe the verbiage isn't correct, maybe the timing isn't correct, and so if that's still needed the process in that position then you just like rework at that.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: And then you put a little bit of with them.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: What's in it for me?
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: Right, adjust a pay plan to compensate them, to help you do that, because employees are products of their pay plan.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: And so if you can help incentivize them to help make it make sense, to help things align once again going up to the top a little bit about having clear goals and communication about what the expectations are, then I think that helps align.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: All three of those people process empathy.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: That's good.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: That's really good.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: That's an imperfect world Exactly Right.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: That's good, all right.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: Mythbusters time Leaders have all the answers.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: You want the answer or do you want me to explain myself?
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: Oh, whatever, oh, absolutely.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 3: It's your show, you do whatever you want the answer.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: Or do you want me to explain myself?
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: Oh, whatever, I don't know.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely, it's your show.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 3: You do whatever you want.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: Mythbusters leaders have all the answers?
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: No, they don't.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: No, they don't, and I think that's supposed to.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: So you have all the answers.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're out of your mind and as soon as you think you have all the answers you're farther away from it.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: What that tells me is you're not open to outside influence.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: You're not open to productive criticism.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: Leaders don't have all the answers.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: Leaders leaders identify areas of growth and they work to find those answers.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's something that we're struggling with some of our leaders right now.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: And we ask, hey, what's this on this RO?
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 3: Or what's this on this account, yep, and they just knee jerk.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 3: And so this is like okay, that was fast.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 3: Are you sure that's across 2,000 ROs?
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 3: What's happening here?
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: Or in all these car deals 500 deals a month are you sure this what's happening?
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: It's like, yep, that's exactly how it's going, is like, and so then I asked the office.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 3: I'm like hey, what are you seeing?
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: They're like no, it's directly getting close to this line.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: It's like, no, we never do that.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: So that's a sign of not a good leader.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: Like how many times do you want to put your shoe in your mouth and have to take it out and look silly or sit there and chew on it because, nope, that's my decision I made.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: And so the answer, of course, is no.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: But it says leaders don't have all the answers, but they know how to ask the right questions to finding the answers.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 3: That's like the age-old game when somebody asks you a question you don't want to answer it or you don't know how to answer it, you then ask a question back to that person, say hey, in reference to tell me specifically what you're asking.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: Right, and it's not dodging the questions.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 3: Hey, giving me some more context and then say you know what?
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: That's a really good question and without me just vomiting out something that might not be 100 true.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: I need, I need to dive deeper into that.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: Tell me specifically some references of example so I can help us all understand the good leader slow down, listen and ask the right questions.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: The person that wants to take all the recognition, like Taylor said, that says I'm not trying to get my name all over everything, I just want my team to win, and that makes me feel like I won.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: The guy that says, yep, I got it.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: Yep, I know the answer.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: The person, the lady, the whoever that says, yep, I did, yep, I did like I'm on.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: So I got to be good.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: Here's a pro tip for you If you're the quickest one in the room to answer a question, okay, this isn't a game show the quickest one to answer the question, you're probably the one that is least likely to improve and progress your department.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: Because you didn't listen or learn anything.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: So back all the way to and of course we have kids now, so this is all resonating.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: But back to even when you were a kid.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: If your parent asked you if you cleaned your room, what does that mean?
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: That means they went and looked at your room and it's not clean.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: It's not clean.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: So if you have an owner or a manager that asks you something, you better pause for your answer, because they're probably asking because it hasn't been done.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: Is there a nice way of saying you haven't done your?
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: job.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: I was going to say that's their nice way of saying if I say, hey, what's this still doing behind the shopper, hey, do you know what's going on?
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 3: That's the nice way, because generally someone's not going to be like, hey, you fool, this has been parked back there for 18 days.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: It hasn't moved.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: It's been checked off on this, this and this.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: You haven't done anything with it.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: That's not how I want to be managed.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 3: Generally we don't, but when they ask that, they know it hasn't moved or they know the answer.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: So don't just verbal vomit back at them.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: I agree.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: And what a great conversation today on our 50th episode.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: 50th episode pretty solid.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: That's almost a year.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: That's almost a year.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: We look forward to the next 50.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: So you guys, keep the great questions coming, whether it's employees or from the outside world, and let us know.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: And if there's anybody locally you'd like us to interview to get their insight on business, let us know that as well.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you can get ahold of us directly or on any of the social channels.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: I think we got 55 of them.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: Send a message over there, hey.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: But, as always, check out our inventory on lewissuperstorecom it is our trade-in, trade-up event this month and then find this episode, episode number 50, and many more on crossroadconversationspodcastcom.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, thanks for joining us today and we hope you enjoyed this episode.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: Make sure to give it a like, share it with your friends and family.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: Visit our website and send us some questions.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: We want to know what you'd like to hear, who you'd like to hear from and what you want to see, or maybe even some questions for us to answer about either the automotive industry or just business in general.