Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / The Servant Leader: How Shane Taylor is Transforming Auto Sales Culture | Auto Industry Series

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The Servant Leader: How Shane Taylor is Transforming Auto Sales Culture | Auto Industry Series · The Inspired Stories Podcast

• 0:04
  Welcome to another edition of Inspired Stories, where leaders
• 0:07
  share their experiences so we can learn from their successes,
• 0:10
  how they've overcome adversity, and explore current challenges
• 0:13
  they're facing. Welcome to another edition of
• 0:18
  the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their
• 0:21
  experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired
• 0:25
  by how they've overcome adversity.
• 0:27
  My name is Anthony Kotaspodi and today's guest is Shane Taylor,
• 0:30
  partner and operator at Kraus Auto Group.
• 0:34
  Founded in 1991 and headquartered in Alpharetta, GA,
• 0:38
  they operate 22 dealerships across South Carolina, North
• 0:42
  Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. They represent over 10
• 0:46
  automotive brands and focus on treating customers like members
• 0:49
  of the Kraus family. Whether you're looking for a
• 0:51
  sporty coupe or a luxury sedan, there's simple financing process
• 0:56
  and commitment to excellent service keep customers
• 0:59
  returning. Shane has over 30 years of
• 1:01
  experience in the automotive industry, starting from washing
• 1:04
  cars and moving up to executive positions in family run
• 1:08
  automotive businesses. He has completed online courses
• 1:11
  from Harvard Business School and NCM Academy, demonstrating a
• 1:15
  commitment to ongoing learning and leadership.
• 1:18
  His passion for building effective processes and helping
• 1:21
  teams succeed makes him a key player at Kraus Auto Group,
• 1:24
  ensuring top notch service and a supportive environment for both
• 1:28
  customers and employees. Now before we get into all that
• 1:31
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• 1:34
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  To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at
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  AD back benefitsagency.com. Now back to our guest today,
• 2:03
  partner, Kraus Auto Group, Shane Taylor.
• 2:05
  I appreciate you making the time to Share your story today.
• 2:08
  Thank you, Anthony. So many people wouldn't realize
• 2:13
  that you got your start in the Automotive World by washing
• 2:16
  cars. Yeah, early hands on experiences
• 2:19
  shape your leadership style and approach to Business Today.
• 2:22
  Yeah, I don't know that washing cars actually did it, but the
• 2:25
  path and the journey to where I am now definitely has formed me
• 2:29
  not only as a businessman, but also just as a as a human being.
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  So, you know, I think at the time it was just a job right in
• 2:36
  91 trying to figure things out. I'm, I'm 18 years old and, and
• 2:41
  just kind of want to get, get some money in my pocket to, to
• 2:44
  do whatever was going on that following weekend.
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  So, you know, it did put me elbow to elbow with some some
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  organizations that where I saw what business look like and what
• 2:55
  success look like and got me kind of chasing that quite a
• 2:59
  bit. So take us through a little bit
• 3:02
  of the journey that got you to where you are today.
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  What were some of the key stops along the way for you?
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  You know, so in washing cars, again, I always ground myself
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  there. And then from there was kind of
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  working in dealerships, seeing guys and, and they work elbow to
• 3:19
  elbow with guys and technicians we call Lube guys, which are
• 3:23
  guys changing oil. And, and I saw there was an
• 3:26
  opportunity there and, and quickly jumped into that after a
• 3:30
  short stint of washing cars and, and especially in the, in the
• 3:33
  Northeast where it was cold. So washing cars and working with
• 3:36
  water wasn't always fun. So jumped into a situation where
• 3:39
  I started working what we call fixed operations in our business
• 3:42
  and that's, you know, getting changing oil filter stuff like
• 3:46
  that was not very good at it. I'm not the guy that takes
• 3:49
  things apart and can put them back together very good.
• 3:52
  And after leaving a couple tires loose on cars and making some
• 3:56
  major mistakes, they said, well, why don't you seem like a sales
• 4:00
  guy? Why don't you sell the service
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  instead of working on the cars itself?
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  So I, I, I, I was gracious there and, and took that opportunity
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  and learned how fixed operations.
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  I didn't. I, I talked about this as a key
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  point because so many leaders in our industry have never had
• 4:19
  anything to do with fixed operations and really don't have
• 4:21
  an understanding of it. Most of them are retail oriented
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  guys. But this really gonna gave me a
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  grounding for how it operated in the back from parts and service
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  and working with technicians and selling that service, you know,
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  after doing that. Fixed operations is what you
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  call the the service side of the business.
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  It is so that would be everything from riding a car up
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  that comes in with troubles to working on that car parts is
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  going to be considered fixed operations as well.
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  So I'm learning just a basic understanding of how that
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  functioned helped me later on in my career dramatically.
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  And then, and then watching, you know, sales guys come through
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  with Rolexes on was, was tempted me into that, that realm where I
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  was a, a natural talker at that time in my life.
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  And so jumped into sales and, you know, expedited my career
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  really, really quickly in the beginning, becoming a number one
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  sales guy. Probably some faults I had was I
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  thought that I started taking the shortcuts instead of going
• 5:21
  back to the basics that got me where I was.
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  So I, I, I, after about 90 days of leading a, a sales board
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  early on in my career, I became to the bottom two or three for
• 5:33
  probably a six month period, kind of ate some humble pie and
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  figured out that, hey, all these things I was doing the first 90
• 5:40
  days was just out of excitement. So kind of getting excited back,
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  me teaching myself how to sell cars and then spent a long, a
• 5:48
  long time selling cars. You know, in today's industry,
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  we, we see that jump happening within 2-3 years.
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  I was closer to about 8 years of what we call pounding pavement
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  and, and greeting customers on a lot walking around, whether it
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  be cold weather or hot weather. So really kind of getting, I
• 6:09
  have a good understanding of what that, what that entails.
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  I certainly didn't take any easy roads or quick roads to where I
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  am right now. I took every single obstacle
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  and, and took every mountain that was out there.
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  I, I climbed the hard way. So shortly after that I was
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  given an opportunity to go into the finance and where we
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  finalize paperwork, we sell products in the back from
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  insurances, set up loans for customers.
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  And this was great. I was, I was like a fish in
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  water for the first couple years there and did really, really
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  well. Again, guys typically will
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  spend, you know, three to four years in there.
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  I spent closer to nine years in there just grinding it out.
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  I was my own worst nemesis though.
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  I, I was cocky and very self-serving at that time in my
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  life. So I held myself back by my
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  attitude and it took years to, and, and, and I was always
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  chasing the next spot. You know, it took me years later
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  to realize that any, anytime I've ever moved forward in my
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  career, I focused on the task at hand.
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  I accepted that what I was doing was what I was going to do for
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  the rest of my career. So I accepted that in sales at
• 7:27
  one time I was like, well, I'm just going to be the best
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  salesman there is. And shortly after that I got a
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  finance opportunity. Trying to get out of finance
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  after three to four years can be really grinding in what we call
• 7:38
  in our industry, the box or the finance office, chasing to the
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  next level and just couldn't get there.
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  And it wasn't until I said, you know what, I'm going to be a
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  finance guy the rest of my life and this is what I'm going to do
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  and I'm going to be the best I can at this job.
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  Shortly after I kind of wrapped my head around that, I got an
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  opportunity to get into a store at a leadership level as a what
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  we call general sales manager. General sales manager kind of
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  overseas, the sales department underneath the general manager.
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  Still chasing of the role of a general manager is, is kind of
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  what I, I found myself doing again.
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  Finally one day kind of sat myself down and said, OK, you're
• 8:16
  going to be the best years is where you are.
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  This is, this is the best your career is going to get in this
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  position and and you're just going to be the best general
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  sales manager there is. It was within less than a year,
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  I was tapped on a shoulder to become a general manager.
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  Now in our industry, becoming a general manager is like being
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  made in the mafia. So it, it's a, it's a really big
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  deal And it's, it's, you're talking about the top two to
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  three percentile in our industry over, you know, hundreds and
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  hundreds of thousands of people. So it was super exciting.
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  I did all this under one organization.
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  It was a guy named Tom Cody, just outside the Washington, DC
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  area who was primarily in the Ford business.
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  He had some great people under him, ACFO named Mike Cellini,
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  who who was teaching me things I didn't know he was teaching me
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  and a great mentor. Greg Basilico worked underneath
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  him, was not only a good friend now, but a a really good mentor
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  and gave me some future opportunities as well.
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  And then after as a general manager, I worked for them for
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  the next couple years and, and worked with a with, worked with
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  a friend there under a friend, you know, people in our industry
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  or in business in general say that that doesn't go along with
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  each other. There's a guy named Steve Raley
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  taught me, said, Hey, when you go to work with a friend, that
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  doesn't mean you can see what the least you can do, but it
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  makes you work twice as hard. And I've always used that
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  philosophy and I've got a lot of friends I work with now and I
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  teach them that same philosophy and it, and it works out even
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  better than you'd think. So working with them for about
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  20 years, I guess another shift would be that, you know, I, I
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  ended up leaving them. I was recruited into the Georgia
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  market by a guy named Vernon Krauss.
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  Vernon was successful guy owned, you know, probably at that time,
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  I would say 8 or 9 dealerships, maybe 7 or 8 dealerships at that
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  time. It's back in 2016 and moved down
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  to Georgia. It was a, it was a big shift, a
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  big change in my, not long in my life.
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  I'm 42 years old. I've been doing this for over 20
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  years. And I thought I was in a company
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  that I was going to be with forever.
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  And we end up retiring in an area that I, I actually grew up
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  in, in, in Maryland. I learned later in my career
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  that without the pain that comes with change, there's really no
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  growth. So, you know, I look back on
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  that and I, and this, this opportunity became really,
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  really big for me. So I, I recruited for a Hyundai
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  store in Kennesaw, GA. Now there's a couple things
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  wrong there. One, it was a new company that I
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  didn't know. And I, but when I did my
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  research on the guy, he had a store, a really big Ford store
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  in Alpharetta, GA, which is a well known area super.
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  It's, it's growing like crazy. And I was really familiar with
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  Ford at the time. I've been with Ford majority of
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  my career, so I'm thinking he's calling me recruiting me on
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  this. We'd had over an hour on the
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  conversation. I said, hey, listen, Alpharetta,
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  I have a brother that lives in Alpharetta.
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  I'm familiar with Alpharetta. I'm excited about talking about
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  this Ford opportunity. He said, Oh no Ford Alpharetta.
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  No, no, no, I'm talking about a Hyundai store I have in
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  Kennesaw. And I was like, well, you got
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  the wrong guy. I don't Hyundai is not me and
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  Kennesaw. I've never even heard of
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  Kennesaw GA. So a best of luck.
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  You know what's what's pass? So we ended up staying in touch
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  and talking for the next couple months and then I come down to
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  see the store down in Kennesaw, GA.
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  I guess I talked so much about this because this was a super
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  big ledge for me in my career and taking over the store.
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  The store was could have been the best Mercedes facility in
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  the nation. It was just a beautiful facility
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  he had built. It was in a growing area after I
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  did my research. So it was a, it was an OK
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  performing store at the time I came in, became partner with him
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  fairly quickly. And then within about eight or
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  nine months, we were the number one store in Georgia and the
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  surrounding states outside of Florida.
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  And I'll explain why that is later, but did a bunch of work
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  for him slow quickly became he said, hey, if you can do this in
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  another store. So we had a Ford store down the
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  street, ended up taking over the Ford store.
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  He had ended up working with the Alpharetta Ford store that I, I
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  actually was hoping to go and be a part of down there.
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  It's kind of their mothership there.
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  And then just a second, Shane. Sorry, sorry to cut you off.
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  There's been so many. I've been furiously writing
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  notes because there's so many good things that I, I want to
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  dive into. So let's stick a pin in this
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  part of the story. We'll get back to it.
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  But I, I want to review some of the things that that you talked
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  about. So what so far?
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  So you became, OK, so you had this this background in fix
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  operations, this helped you a lot later on.
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  And I think we're going to get to that at some point.
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  But then you get an opportunity to go into sales because they
• 13:16
  said, hey, he's not so good at fixing things, but he's got a
• 13:20
  good personality. Let's put him out front in the
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  customers. Sure.
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  Wasn't that you so quickly became the number one sales guy
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  in those first 90 days. What was it that you were doing
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  that was so effective and different from everybody?
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  You know what what happens in our industry is we get too smart
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  for ourselves and we start pre qualifying customers before they
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  even get out of their car. When they pull up, we start
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  thinking we're good enough to skip steps.
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  So they showed me, hey, here's a road map to the sale.
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  And I was just excited to be up front there.
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  I was excited not to be working in the back anymore and, and,
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  and grinding out washing cars and, and 20° weather that I was
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  just so and, and I could wear a tie, you know, every day.
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  And I, I just got super excited about it.
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  I followed those 10 steps to the to the T and was just kind of
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  personable enough where people liked me.
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  And then so it just, it just kind of exploded and I was very
• 14:14
  hungry and I was wasn't afraid to work the hours.
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  I would say that was just, dude, it was just, you know, almost
• 14:21
  flying enough, but just kind of following enthusiasm and
• 14:23
  following the steps of what they showed me.
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  They said do AB and C and I did AB and C The problem is quickly
• 14:30
  after that you start saying, well, maybe if I did BC and then
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  D in the skipped a. So that was a real growing
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  experience early in my career to say no, there's the structure is
• 14:41
  there for a reason and a purpose and it really did.
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  They didn't do a great job of telling me why in this company
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  for over 20 years. They they taught.
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  I learned so much of my fundamentals from this company
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  but wouldn't explain to me. I didn't understand why until
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  later in my career. This is why they did this and
• 15:00
  light bulbs started kind of going off and that's really when
• 15:02
  my career started accelerating. OK, so you did great.
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  You were at the top of the heap very quickly.
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  Then you started looking for some shortcuts, cutting out
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  steps, partially because you didn't understand the why, and
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  partially because you're like, hey, maybe I can accelerate this
• 15:17
  growth even more. And then you quickly came to
• 15:20
  find out that, OK, you ate a little bit of humble pie because
• 15:23
  you dropped to the bottom of the heap now.
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  And so when you went back to following those 10 steps, were
• 15:28
  you back top of the heap again? Yeah, I was able to build, build
• 15:31
  a business model that was sustainable long term and not
• 15:35
  just built on just inertia and excitement.
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  So I really started learning some of the skill sets, you
• 15:41
  know, and became a student. You know, school was never
• 15:44
  really my thing. I, I became bored very quickly.
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  But I've always been a student in something that I'm interested
• 15:52
  in and where I study it almost compulsively and, and try to
• 15:56
  master it. So I, I became, I started
• 15:58
  looking, working on word track constantly where I was never put
• 16:01
  into an uncomfortable situation. And, you know, a lot of
• 16:05
  memorizing and a lot of working and a lot of drilling that and
• 16:08
  then became a great sales day. Wordtrack.
• 16:12
  Yeah, you know, we train Wordtrack.
• 16:14
  So you know, when, when a customer comes in and throws up
• 16:18
  an objective of some sort, where do you go?
• 16:21
  You know, so that's, that's a big part of any kind of sales,
• 16:25
  even outside of car sales. You, you got to be prepared
• 16:29
  instead of just kind of looking at them dumbfounded on and not
• 16:32
  being able to answer their question.
• 16:34
  You know, you said something else that was interesting.
• 16:37
  What was it? You didn't take the easy path.
• 16:40
  Basically, you you found every mountain obstacle along the way.
• 16:44
  Say more. About that, what is that?
• 16:46
  Yeah, I, I mean, the example of just trying to take shortcuts
• 16:49
  was my first stint there, you know, and I really, I really
• 16:55
  became, it was, it was really about chasing the dollar for me
• 17:00
  in the beginning. You know, I was excited for the
• 17:03
  fact that, you know, I had buddies that were, you know, a
• 17:05
  couple years in were coming out of college and making, you know,
• 17:10
  not less than 1/4 than what I was making as a sales guy.
• 17:13
  So that that became my drive. But it also became short lived.
• 17:19
  You know, I spent a good portion of my career trying to separate
• 17:23
  myself from the bottom from a financial standpoint.
• 17:27
  And then also just in, in title. It wasn't until years, years
• 17:32
  later that I realized that closing that gap created better
• 17:36
  connection with employees and I could actually do more and, and
• 17:40
  be just better at what I do. But I, those small things became
• 17:45
  big obstacles for me. And, and, and you know, from a
• 17:48
  general manager looking down at what I was doing, he, I was very
• 17:51
  self-serving again. I I I was interested in what
• 17:54
  benefited me and not trying to help other people.
• 17:59
  So then you get an opportunity to move into the finance side of
• 18:03
  things, which for me as an outsider, seems a little
• 18:06
  unusual. You've demonstrated the
• 18:08
  personality and the skill sets to be out in front of customers.
• 18:13
  Now you're going more to what I'm envisioning is the back
• 18:17
  office. Is this a normal sort of path
• 18:19
  for folks to take in the car industry?
• 18:22
  It's certainly the healthiest path and there are guys that
• 18:26
  skip it and there are very, very few greats that don't have some
• 18:30
  sort of experience in that office.
• 18:32
  So I, I mentioned earlier that a lot of successful car guys in
• 18:37
  our industry are retail oriented.
• 18:40
  So you learned that early on as as in selling cars, we call the
• 18:45
  sales part looks like we call the back end fixed operations,
• 18:48
  we call the front part variable operations.
• 18:51
  So they majority of the leaders that come into our our industry
• 18:57
  are have come from just the variable side.
• 19:00
  So you learn how to you learn the retail and the problem on
• 19:02
  the retail end is you can run pretty sloppy and be successful.
• 19:09
  What the finance office does is it, it creates detail in your
• 19:13
  life. So, you know, looking back, as
• 19:17
  miserable as I was probably the last four years in that finance
• 19:21
  office, the skill set that I learned on how to slow down,
• 19:24
  organize things, build relationship with other banks
• 19:28
  that I could get, things I could get paper hung or bought, what
• 19:32
  we call that other guys couldn't, became invaluable
• 19:37
  later in my career and making stores successful.
• 19:41
  And why were you able to get paper hung or bought?
• 19:45
  Relationships, it was all about relationships, which, you know,
• 19:48
  in that part of my career, I started just tipping the iceberg
• 19:52
  of understanding what relationships really meant in
• 19:55
  our industry. And now it's everything.
• 19:57
  So everything I do is trying to build relationships and
• 20:00
  strengthen those relationships that some point or another,
• 20:04
  those relationships can be super beneficial to you.
• 20:07
  But that's not the only reason to do it.
• 20:09
  But that's a a major reason. So in the parts of your story
• 20:14
  that we've heard so far, there's certainly, you know, repeating
• 20:17
  themes here, right? Shane, you were chasing money,
• 20:21
  you were chasing titles, You were chasing what was good for
• 20:24
  you. And in your words, that kind of
• 20:27
  turned you into your own worst enemy, right?
• 20:29
  That's right. And there were realizations
• 20:31
  along the way, it sounds like where you were like, man, well,
• 20:35
  I'm here. I'm in this spot.
• 20:36
  I'm in this role. I am just going to buckle down
• 20:39
  and make the decision that I'm going to be the best at this
• 20:43
  that I possibly can. And it seems like in the
• 20:46
  instances we've heard so far, it seems like once you did that,
• 20:50
  the new opportunity, the new door opened pretty quickly
• 20:53
  afterwards. Yeah, it did.
• 20:55
  It did. And there was a that trend still
• 20:58
  happens today. So, yeah, it's it's a really
• 21:02
  about focusing what's on what's in front of you and what's on
• 21:05
  your plate and just being the best you can and what's in the
• 21:07
  tasks that are in front of you at that at that time I think to
• 21:10
  to propel in anybody's career. OK, so now let's skip forward to
• 21:14
  kind of where we left off before there was an opportunity down in
• 21:19
  Kennesaw, GA, a place you'd never heard of.
• 21:21
  Before. Hyundai, Which I'm not a Hyundai
• 21:24
  guy, I'm a Ford guy. So you're like, Nah, I'm gonna
• 21:26
  pass something kind of brought you back to it.
• 21:29
  You went down, you checked out this beautiful dealership and
• 21:32
  you're like, all right, let's do this.
• 21:33
  You became a partner and how was it that you quickly became, what
• 21:37
  did you say, the number one store in the state?
• 21:40
  #1 Hyundai store in the state, in the surrounding states
• 21:43
  outside of Florida. So every state that, that, that
• 21:46
  surrounded Georgia, we were the number one Hyundai store there.
• 21:50
  Volume, volume, volume wise, you know, everything that I had
• 21:56
  learned in my previous group, I, I, it was, it become almost
• 22:00
  mechanical and I just, I plugged in all those same practices.
• 22:05
  I, I did have some things open up.
• 22:08
  So Vernon was big on education and he always has been.
• 22:14
  They are a part of a institute called NCM and they are out of
• 22:21
  Kansas City, Missouri and they are strictly automobile
• 22:25
  schooling for every aspect. So within three to four months
• 22:31
  he sent me to NCM schooling where I accomplished, you know,
• 22:36
  financial management and understanding one and two,
• 22:39
  general manager one and two. It did service more fixed
• 22:42
  operation classes. I spent a good portion of my
• 22:46
  first year traveling out to Kansas for three to four days
• 22:50
  stints on trying to understand it.
• 22:52
  When this happened, a big light bulb went off.
• 22:57
  They use what they call a composite where they dissect
• 23:01
  every single penny that goes through the dealership from a
• 23:05
  sale standpoint to a how it converts to a growth standpoint
• 23:09
  and your expenses thereafter. This was all new to me and I
• 23:18
  started understanding through these numbers why the group I
• 23:22
  was with were doing certain things that they did and kind of
• 23:26
  shed light. And then when I had a better
• 23:27
  understanding of it, it became, I became a better operator and I
• 23:31
  could teach people. I was, I've always enjoyed
• 23:33
  instruction and training and that classroom setting.
• 23:37
  I, I feel like I, it's probably one of my gifts is being able
• 23:40
  just to communicate well with especially variable or sales
• 23:45
  guys. So I was able to implement that
• 23:48
  and then, you know, with the work ethics that I had learned,
• 23:52
  you know, through my 20 year career with the Cody
• 23:54
  organization, plugging that in, getting an arsenal of
• 23:58
  understanding the numbers in depth.
• 24:00
  Now all of a sudden I was becoming not only a good retail
• 24:03
  guy, but I was also starting to become a good businessman as
• 24:07
  well. And that's what I should be
• 24:09
  really our success in that store was.
• 24:12
  And then quickly after that, within about a year, I
• 24:15
  understood I never had a store that I couldn't really figure
• 24:18
  out within 12 to 16 months. I've been plugged into a few
• 24:21
  different stores and could usually turn it around with
• 24:23
  definitely within a year and a half, but most, most of the time
• 24:26
  inside a year, just plugging in things that I had.
• 24:29
  I had been trained over the last 20 years, so I could almost get
• 24:34
  bored after a year in a single store.
• 24:38
  So I think Vernon sensed that a little bit and started plugging
• 24:40
  me in the other stores very quickly where I'd implement the
• 24:43
  same things I did in the Hyundai store.
• 24:45
  I started implementing in the four store and helping the
• 24:47
  organization grow at the same time.
• 24:52
  And so does that bring us to present day?
• 24:55
  That does not bring us to present day.
• 24:57
  No so full circle there. The an interesting part of the
• 25:03
  story outside of business is that Vernon had a amazing
• 25:07
  daughter named Jennifer Kraus that I met in my stint in
• 25:12
  Georgia, fell in love with and started having a pretty serious
• 25:18
  relationship with which put a little strain on Vernon and I's
• 25:23
  relationship respectfully. We during that strain I had a
• 25:31
  group called Morgan Auto Group which is based out of Florida.
• 25:35
  Morgan is a the second largest private auto group in the nation
• 25:43
  and they kind of saw some of the things that were happening in
• 25:46
  Georgia and became they started trying to recruit me to come
• 25:49
  down and be an executive for their group.
• 25:53
  They were about to, they were growing fairly quickly.
• 25:56
  I think at that time they had 34 stores and Jennifer and I felt
• 26:02
  like it was kind of best at that time to separate from the Krauss
• 26:07
  Auto Group. So sat burning down and just
• 26:10
  kind of explained everything and, and, and left everything
• 26:14
  right. We we'd always talked about
• 26:16
  potentially getting back together, but at that moment it
• 26:20
  was a good opportunity. Florida was always been the
• 26:22
  ideal destination for me. It's the Mecca and the car
• 26:25
  business. It's you'll see some of the
• 26:28
  largest stores in the nation coming out of Florida.
• 26:31
  They don't put the dealerships very close to each other.
• 26:34
  So you're serving a larger demographic area and the weather
• 26:39
  is awesome, right And the golf is good so and fishing.
• 26:42
  So and those are my other two hobbies when I when I'm not
• 26:44
  working. So being in Florida was always
• 26:46
  the opportunity. Larry Morgan and their CEO, Tom
• 26:51
  Moore after long talks, I ended, we Jennifer and I decided to
• 26:56
  move to Florida. We got married in Florida and
• 27:00
  then so I started kind of going to family functions with, with
• 27:04
  Vernon and we became, we became more than than just business
• 27:10
  associates. We really became friends.
• 27:13
  He became my father-in-law. He's a mentor of mine and we
• 27:17
  stayed and we grew. Our relationship really
• 27:20
  blossomed over the next three years.
• 27:22
  He happens to live in Jupiter, FL, a mile away from where I was
• 27:25
  too. So we were, we saw each other
• 27:27
  frequently. I bring this, I bring this up
• 27:31
  because it was an important, it was important part that my
• 27:34
  personal life that affected my career in a positive manner long
• 27:38
  run. You know what I what I learned
• 27:40
  in Morgan was invaluable. Larry Morgan is just a he's an
• 27:46
  amazing guy and he's got a really, really good people
• 27:48
  around him. He only had, I think at that
• 27:50
  time, 3 or 4 executives at 30 some stores and cover and all of
• 27:54
  his model is all in Florida. So to be a part of that really
• 28:00
  stretched and pushed you want to talk about going above and
• 28:04
  beyond and outside of my thresholds and comfort zones.
• 28:08
  That was probably one of my biggest steps there that I found
• 28:12
  that I could do things that I had no idea that I could do when
• 28:15
  when applied properly. So after about three years of
• 28:21
  that, I realized that I wanted to get back into a little bit
• 28:25
  smaller setting. I was managing and with Morgan,
• 28:27
  I was managing 12 stores that round from Clermont, FL, which
• 28:35
  is just north of Orlando all the way down the East Coast all the
• 28:40
  way to South Miami. So I stayed on the road a lot
• 28:45
  and the expectations with that company are are large.
• 28:48
  What what was really cool was probably something that we'll
• 28:52
  never we may never see in our industry again.
• 28:54
  So as a private dealer in this market, he took that from 34, I
• 29:01
  believe the number was 34 at that time.
• 29:03
  And when I exited, he had 75 dealerships.
• 29:07
  This is massive. I mean, we'll probably never see
• 29:11
  that growth spurt in a private company ever again in the
• 29:14
  history of the car industry. And I happened and I happened to
• 29:17
  be an executive to be front row on this thing and be a part of
• 29:21
  it. What was?
• 29:22
  Happening that was able to fuel that kind of rapid growth.
• 29:28
  I think it was always his vision, you know, from a
• 29:32
  financial standpoint he did, he did some syndicate loans through
• 29:36
  an outside company where he had this had availability of some
• 29:40
  funds. But his vision really and just
• 29:42
  growing and becoming bigger and better was something that I
• 29:47
  learned. I mean Larry's over 80 years old
• 29:50
  and outwork most 30 year olds that I know have ever met in his
• 29:56
  right hand of his son is Aceo and Tom Moore is ACEO and became
• 30:00
  a friend of mine and just a phenomenal guy that I have the
• 30:05
  utmost respect for and mentored me over those three years.
• 30:09
  And what I learned in those three years was probably bigger
• 30:12
  than any 10 year stint I learned in the automobile automobile
• 30:15
  industry. So at some point along the way
• 30:19
  you began, I'm going to assume you began to realize that Shane
• 30:25
  chasing the money, chasing the title, that's not really the way
• 30:28
  to go about this. Maybe I should take a different
• 30:31
  approach. When, when did the light bulbs
• 30:34
  start to go off there? And what did that transition
• 30:36
  look like for you? So, yeah, you know, I heard a
• 30:39
  phrase one time that said if you only worry about being rich,
• 30:42
  you'll never be rich. You know that because the, the,
• 30:46
  the, the, the bar always moves up.
• 30:48
  So you never accomplish it. I, I made really, really, really
• 30:53
  good money with it's the Morgan auto group.
• 30:55
  It's one thing they do is they take care of their people.
• 30:59
  But at the end, I, I felt like there was something that I
• 31:02
  wanted to do above and beyond that.
• 31:05
  You know, I've, I've embraced schooling in specific areas
• 31:10
  that, that really excite me. Like I mentioned earlier, I went
• 31:14
  through a year college, it's accredited course called
• 31:18
  Spiritual Leadership College. And this was eye opening for me
• 31:25
  in the sense that I, it got me in contact with kind of a
• 31:28
  spiritual path that I was starting to go down, but from a
• 31:32
  leadership standpoint and then the impact that I can make on
• 31:35
  other people's lives. So my wife did it with me, Jen
• 31:37
  and I did this course over a year.
• 31:41
  It was in person. It was not an online course, and
• 31:43
  it was a lot of memorizing, a lot of studying, and a lot of
• 31:47
  reading that really kind of formed what we wanted to do to
• 31:54
  help impact other people's lives.
• 31:56
  So we kind of came up with a model that we wanted people, we
• 32:00
  wanted to help impact people's lives, not only from a financial
• 32:03
  standpoint, but a spiritual standpoint and help them
• 32:06
  experience some of the freedoms that we were experiencing
• 32:08
  through our spirituality, and that's through God.
• 32:13
  And then as this idea formed about that time, I believe God
• 32:18
  put an opportunity in front of me with Vernon to buy a couple
• 32:24
  stores with him, buy one store in a store that he was already a
• 32:29
  part of what they allowed me to buy into that store in the
• 32:33
  Venice, FL market. And that's kind of been our
• 32:36
  model. We started that December 11th of
• 32:39
  last year, so just over a year. And our goal again is to, is to
• 32:44
  really kind of change some of the negative traditions that are
• 32:48
  going on in the automobile industry also to really make a
• 32:53
  difference in people's lives in a positive way, in a spiritual
• 32:56
  way as well. So we we spent a lot of time
• 32:58
  just kind of witnessing and helping to people that are that
• 33:02
  are in need. Say more about your goal being
• 33:06
  to change some of the negative habits that go on in the car
• 33:10
  industry. What are those?
• 33:12
  How do you want to shift them? Yeah, You know, we've all seen
• 33:15
  the movie Wolf of Wall Street, right?
• 33:17
  So, you know, that was there was a there was a real correlation
• 33:21
  and some of the things that were going in and those bullpens that
• 33:24
  are happening on showrooms when customers weren't around.
• 33:28
  A lot of bullying, a lot of talking down to people, a lot of
• 33:36
  just things that are overall kind of negative and a way to do
• 33:39
  business that's not real healthy for the customer.
• 33:42
  So we kind of set that aside and said, hey, let's, let's talk
• 33:46
  about what the customers needs are.
• 33:48
  Let's work on a more transparent way to do business with
• 33:52
  customers that are a little non traditional from the the car
• 33:55
  business as a whole. And then let's see, let's make
• 33:58
  our legacy how that we can positively impact these people
• 34:02
  again, not just financially but in a spiritual manner.
• 34:06
  So what did that transition look like?
• 34:09
  Because you've got folks in the team that are accustomed to
• 34:12
  operating a certain way and you want to come in and teach them a
• 34:16
  new way. Not everybody's receptive to
• 34:19
  change. Was there a lot of turnover that
• 34:22
  took place during this transition?
• 34:24
  Yes, yeah, there was a lot of turnover which is one thing that
• 34:29
  we work hard on not doing is turnover because you lose a
• 34:32
  little traction every time that you have turnover in your
• 34:35
  business. But we did have a hard time
• 34:38
  finding people that have the intensity on the business side.
• 34:42
  So as soft as what we're talking about our drive and intensity
• 34:46
  was was furious. So it was it was move at quick
• 34:49
  pace. But understand and, and we had,
• 34:55
  you know, this was we were investing a lot of our own
• 34:58
  monies in this majority of our portfolio.
• 35:01
  So we had that stress on top of it as well.
• 35:04
  But but we believed in it. So we had budget set out for
• 35:08
  ourselves that we said, you know, not hitting these marks
• 35:11
  are are not going to work. So find the right people that
• 35:14
  were that were willing to do that was definitely tough.
• 35:18
  So yeah, we had we had a lot of turnover across the stores over
• 35:23
  this last year. We have stabilized that in the
• 35:26
  fourth quarter. We have great people working for
• 35:29
  us right now, great leaders in in place and the culture as a
• 35:33
  whole is really turning to where what we want and in a in a store
• 35:38
  atmosphere. Shane, I'm kind of curious to
• 35:40
  hear from folks who were part of, we'll call it, the old guard
• 35:44
  that did successfully make the transition to the new way of
• 35:48
  doing business. What can you say about how those
• 35:53
  folks evolved or what was helpful in kind of coaching them
• 35:57
  into a new way of doing business?
• 36:03
  I think kind of letting them know where we come from from a
• 36:06
  moral standpoint and what we wanted for our, not only our
• 36:11
  customers, but the employees that fell under that management.
• 36:16
  You know, we, we, we really try to edify our people, lift our
• 36:19
  people up and, and make them, make them better and get behind
• 36:23
  them. Servantry leadership is
• 36:27
  something that we focus very, very high on.
• 36:32
  And you know, in this industry as, as it did for me and I
• 36:37
  explained over my 1st 20 years, your, your head gets a little
• 36:40
  bit big. It's hard to be a servant when
• 36:42
  you're when your chest is puffed out and and you're full of pride
• 36:46
  when you have big successes in here, that happens a lot.
• 36:50
  So just getting behind our people and, and teaching the
• 36:54
  culture of, of being a servant for them.
• 36:56
  You work for them, they don't work for you.
• 36:59
  That was probably the biggest keynote there, you know, and I,
• 37:02
  and I'll mention too that even with the turnover, there's not a
• 37:05
  person that I don't stay in touch with.
• 37:08
  It didn't work out for us in our particular situation.
• 37:11
  There were some really, really good people there that I still
• 37:15
  stay in contact with. There's a couple general
• 37:18
  managers that that ended up parting company with and they
• 37:21
  one left and one one we left the part with, but are just really,
• 37:25
  really good people. I think at the end of the day,
• 37:27
  they would say that it was overall good experience even
• 37:31
  though it didn't work out for everyone.
• 37:32
  I think that they, I would think they would say that they learned
• 37:35
  something about servantry leadership at the end of the
• 37:38
  day. Where can for people listening
• 37:40
  to this, who their ears are kind of perked up about servantry
• 37:44
  leadership, it would be a good place for folks to start to
• 37:48
  learn more about that. You know, the example of Jesus
• 37:52
  in the New Testament is the best example that we have a servantry
• 37:55
  leadership. Here's the best leader, best
• 37:57
  coach, best mentor in the entire world ever.
• 38:01
  And he always took the back Rd. or the second row when it came
• 38:06
  to getting behind his people and was always humble.
• 38:09
  So, you know, I've got several, several of the mentors that I've
• 38:13
  mentioned do similar things and I've taken those roads and
• 38:17
  showed me how, what that looks like for me to be able to find
• 38:20
  it for myself. But yeah, that's, that's where
• 38:24
  I'd say, I'd say, you know, if I had to bring 2 guys up that are,
• 38:28
  that are big in our industry, you know, there's Andy Elliott
• 38:31
  who's just on fire for life and, and specializes in auto
• 38:35
  industry. And this guy is, you know, he's
• 38:38
  ripped the core and he's, he's just go, go.
• 38:41
  And then another one of my, my big mentors is John Maxwell.
• 38:45
  So if I had to say, I, I come into a split with an Andy
• 38:48
  Elliott and a John Maxwell, which are complete opposite to
• 38:50
  the spectrum with a similar message that that kind of helped
• 38:54
  me communicate with my guys and what our needs are and the
• 38:58
  direction that we want to go. But culture ultimately is, is
• 39:02
  something that you build and it doesn't happen overnight.
• 39:06
  And we're, we're slowly building the culture that we had a vision
• 39:08
  for over a year ago now. So you wanted to change some of
• 39:13
  the negative habits in the car industry, but the other thing
• 39:15
  you said is that you also wanted to help people spiritually as
• 39:18
  well. Yeah.
• 39:20
  What does that look like in a work environment?
• 39:23
  Well, in an environment where you try to get every penny
• 39:27
  that's on the table, sometimes it goes into a Gray area where
• 39:32
  people, when anytime you introduce money into a
• 39:34
  situation, especially in sales and Commission type businesses,
• 39:39
  it, it gets really murky sometimes about what's right and
• 39:42
  what's right for the customer and what's morally right.
• 39:45
  So we really try to push about, we spend thousands of dollars on
• 39:50
  our customers after the sale to do what's right.
• 39:54
  When, when your sales people start unseeing that and really
• 39:58
  understanding that, it gives them a confidence and a step to
• 40:02
  kind of do Better Business. And that's, that's how we built
• 40:06
  this culture is just by doing, doing the right thing every
• 40:09
  single time and then and letting that bleed down through our, our
• 40:13
  leaders. See more about what it meant or
• 40:16
  what it means on an ongoing basis to spend a lot of money on
• 40:20
  customers and sort of the back end.
• 40:21
  What is that? So, you know, a customer comes
• 40:24
  in and they say, hey, I, you know, there's a scratch here.
• 40:30
  They could be an interior situation.
• 40:32
  It could be a, hey, there's not something's not running right
• 40:36
  with my car. We're going to embrace that
• 40:38
  instead of run from it. So we take that customer and we
• 40:42
  just, we make that situation right, Whatever that looks like,
• 40:45
  whether it be something on a financial contract, whether it
• 40:47
  be a physical situation on the car, whether it be in a used car
• 40:51
  that was an as is, we're still going to get behind that car or
• 40:54
  that product and we're going to make that situation right.
• 40:57
  We do it. We do it every time.
• 40:58
  Or if a customer even had a perception, you know, often
• 41:01
  times the process gets so rushed that customers don't even
• 41:06
  realize what they're signing. And then they come out and then
• 41:09
  and then the excitement wears off.
• 41:11
  And I want to take that customer.
• 41:12
  I want to sit them back down. And if we can't see eye to eye,
• 41:15
  then I'm just going to make it right.
• 41:16
  We're going to either take that car back or we're going to say,
• 41:19
  hey, this is how you understood it.
• 41:21
  This is what we're going to do. And if they don't feel good
• 41:24
  about it, the car deal is not worth it to me.
• 41:27
  It's I would rather not have the sale.
• 41:29
  And that's, that's different in our industry from from from
• 41:35
  where most practices I think stand from.
• 41:39
  What are we talking about the 20 some dealerships now?
• 41:42
  I think 26 is what Kraus Auto Group is up right now.
• 41:46
  My, my interests are lie only in Florida and only in the Venice
• 41:52
  market. We've got some Florida stores
• 41:54
  down in the Fort Myers, Cape Coral, There's a partner down
• 41:58
  there, Mike Spinazzi is a major partner with with Vernon and he
• 42:01
  does a phenomenal job in business down there.
• 42:04
  Mine is kind of this smaller bubble right here in Venice.
• 42:08
  We're we've got some good things in the horizon looking to
• 42:10
  expand. So the reason I asked is I'm
• 42:14
  curious how you teach that different style of thinking, you
• 42:19
  know, across multiple people, multiple physical locations,
• 42:23
  because it's, you know, it's one thing if you've got a policy
• 42:26
  that's sort of black and white, right?
• 42:28
  We sell this car as is, that's what the contract said.
• 42:31
  The customer comes back and they complain.
• 42:33
  It's like, sorry, like, hey, and you've got this internal policy.
• 42:36
  It's black and white. But the policy that you're
• 42:38
  describing, there's a lot more Gray there.
• 42:40
  There's a lot more flexibility and wiggle room.
• 42:43
  And so what's, I'm just kind of curious, what's the guidance
• 42:47
  that you give people who are sitting in that seat across from
• 42:52
  the customer so that they're making a decision that aligns
• 42:55
  with both your moral values as well as your financial values?
• 43:02
  Yeah, there's definitely a training period that goes on
• 43:04
  there. I would, I would answer this in
• 43:06
  two parts. One, when you, when you, when
• 43:10
  you manage from a platform, which I'm not doing as much
• 43:13
  right now, but whether I've been through Krauss in the, in the
• 43:16
  Atlanta region or with Morgan in, in a large section of
• 43:19
  Florida, the start to change that culture comes from
• 43:26
  servantry leadership. So when you are dealing with
• 43:29
  leaders from a platform level, you're my, my biggest stress.
• 43:33
  Every morning after I did my, my Bible reading and my run and,
• 43:37
  and got in after my, my, my routine in the morning, I really
• 43:40
  worked on getting ideas to bring something to them.
• 43:45
  When they're convinced that the idea is theirs and they
• 43:47
  implement it, that's when you know you have a win.
• 43:51
  But it starts there because when you are managing leaders that
• 43:54
  way, then those leaders start it.
• 43:56
  That starts tailing off and they start understanding what they
• 44:00
  need to do for not only their employees, but also their
• 44:03
  customers. It just bleeds all the way
• 44:04
  through. We have a button on our websites
• 44:07
  just in our, just in Jen and I stores here in Venice that says
• 44:11
  talk to the owner. And that button allows customers
• 44:14
  to kind of directly communicate with us.
• 44:16
  So when they communicate with us, it's usually because
• 44:19
  something didn't go their way or they're not getting what they
• 44:22
  want. So that's a training.
• 44:23
  Every one of those is a training experience.
• 44:26
  You know, we'll, we'll pick up the phone, talk to the general
• 44:28
  manager, say, hey, listen, what happened here?
• 44:29
  They hey, you know, listen, this is, this is not, this is, this
• 44:32
  doesn't make sense. Well, I understand we've got to
• 44:35
  see a bigger picture here. You know, how many people are
• 44:38
  the, how many people is that guy going to go talk to, you know,
• 44:41
  he's going to bleed into here? And how does that, how does that
• 44:44
  contradict the money that we're spending in marketing right now?
• 44:47
  So word of mouth, when you start doing that word of mouth, very
• 44:50
  quickly, I think we've just been nominated for business of the
• 44:55
  year in the Venice market. We're supposed to find out who
• 44:57
  actually won here in the next week.
• 44:59
  But it's really just kind of through doing that and hey,
• 45:02
  doing the right thing. So it starts with a culture of
• 45:05
  servantry, leadership to your people, bringing them ideas,
• 45:08
  serving them. When they know that they're
• 45:10
  being served by somebody that's over them, they start serving
• 45:12
  the people that's under them. That bleeds through all the way
• 45:15
  through our customers and then just doing the right thing.
• 45:18
  So you know, every scenario. This is a weird industry where
• 45:23
  there's no textbook for it, right?
• 45:25
  Like there's there's no, there's no book you can read and go in
• 45:28
  and run a car dealership. I tell guys all the time, the
• 45:32
  only difference between you and I are about 2000 mistakes.
• 45:36
  It it, it is a business of mistakes.
• 45:39
  You have to live it. I mean, as a general manager and
• 45:41
  operator, you're not only managing, you know, all kind of
• 45:44
  different personalities because in the sales world, you know,
• 45:46
  you've got, you know, alphas all over the place, but you have,
• 45:49
  you know, some introverts as well.
• 45:51
  You're an HR manager, you're an accountant, you're a recruiter.
• 45:56
  You, you have to be multitasked all day every day.
• 46:03
  And there's no, there's no textbook for that.
• 46:06
  So you kind of learn as you go, unfortunately in this business.
• 46:09
  So if you can put big enough bumpers down the bowling alley
• 46:13
  rails and kind of keep them within a certain thing and teach
• 46:16
  the culture of servantry that that's the only way to make this
• 46:19
  thing bleed all the way down through our customers.
• 46:22
  You mentioned having to wear multiple hats, one of them being
• 46:24
  a recruiter. You know, and a lot of folks I,
• 46:27
  I talked to in business leadership positions, it's still
• 46:31
  a pretty tight labor market. I'm curious what you have tried
• 46:35
  and found some success with on the recruiting side and I mean
• 46:39
  maybe as well as on the retention side, which can be
• 46:41
  just as important. You know, I, I, this is probably
• 46:44
  something I, I learned from a guy named Tom Moore, the CEO
• 46:47
  over at Morgan Auto Group. He when he had a position that
• 46:52
  needed to be filled, within 5 minutes he could have two to
• 46:55
  three people on the phone for that position.
• 46:58
  So no matter how great or how small the position was, he would
• 47:04
  call that person. He would have an hour long
• 47:06
  conversation with them, just talk to him about who they were
• 47:10
  and if he liked you he would actually put reminders on his
• 47:13
  calendar to have 5 minute conversations just to stay in
• 47:16
  touch with him. Now this is probably this is a
• 47:19
  guy that worked near 80 to 90 hours a week, but he probably
• 47:23
  spent 20 hours in a work week just touching base.
• 47:28
  Now he's running 75 stores, so he's got cannonballs flying at
• 47:32
  him 24/7. But he slowed down enough to to
• 47:36
  build relationships with guys and they loved them, man.
• 47:39
  And they would wear his phone out.
• 47:40
  His phone was non-stop. Hey, how are you got up as a
• 47:43
  spot for me, yet you got a spot for me yet it didn't matter if
• 47:46
  it was a technician, a Porter, a general manager, a salesperson.
• 47:52
  And I use that to the T where I just slow down, go through every
• 47:57
  application. I review it myself personally, I
• 48:00
  pick the phone up, have general conversations with them,
• 48:04
  asterisk the ones that I like and just try to stay in touch
• 48:06
  with those people via text or whatever.
• 48:08
  And it's been beneficial and been, you know, we, we are so
• 48:13
  reactionary in this business because it moves at such a fast
• 48:16
  pace that, you know, this the standard in our industry is, oh,
• 48:22
  this guy just quit or oh, this guy just left and what are we
• 48:25
  going to do? And so now we scramble.
• 48:27
  So trying to teach my guys the same philosophy As for success
• 48:31
  is something that we're trying to implement as well.
• 48:34
  You mentioned something about your morning routine that
• 48:38
  consists of what? What time are you getting up?
• 48:40
  So 4:30-ish, I get up, I start immediately with just God's word
• 48:47
  for me. If, if I don't start that way,
• 48:50
  the day just seems just off tilter just a little bit.
• 48:53
  So I spend an hour, hour and a half there, depending on, you
• 48:57
  know, how I'm LED that morning, some prayer.
• 49:00
  And then I, I get into a three to five mile jog where I kind of
• 49:05
  feel clear headed at that point. And then I'm ready to kind of
• 49:08
  start my day. I, you know, I, I, I spoke
• 49:12
  recently in front of a bunch of young athletes and, and I'm a
• 49:15
  big believer in what I call the pre shot routine.
• 49:17
  If you're a golfer, you know, all golfers have what they call
• 49:21
  pre shot routine where they slow down before every shot.
• 49:25
  They get their breathing in line, trying to get their heart
• 49:27
  rate in line. There's a series of mechanical
• 49:30
  movements that they'll repeat every single time so they can
• 49:32
  perform the shot exactly the same way.
• 49:35
  And I, that's what I call my pre shot routine is, you know, Bible
• 49:39
  run and then and then work. So it allows me to kind of to
• 49:42
  get my breathing right, get my heart right, get my head right,
• 49:45
  and then I'm able to attack the day more consistently, just like
• 49:49
  those golfers try to do before every shot.
• 49:52
  You said you spend 60 to 90 minutes with God's Word.
• 49:56
  What what does that mean that you're opening up the Bible and
• 49:59
  kind of seeing what pops up? I used to do that pretty
• 50:03
  regularly. Now I've I've got a a good
• 50:06
  friend and mentor, Frank, that taught me a series called the
• 50:14
  The Great 8. The Great 8 is basically 8
• 50:17
  markers all the way through the Bible from Genesis all the way
• 50:20
  to Revelation, and it's split into eight different sections.
• 50:25
  You know, I'm a, I'm a car guy. So my attention span's pretty,
• 50:28
  pretty small. I had to, to go through some of
• 50:30
  that Old Testament, just try to pound it out.
• 50:32
  I, I don't, I don't have the tolerance for it.
• 50:34
  But what the grade A does, it splits it up and it kind of
• 50:36
  looks at more stories and it's strategically kind of spread out
• 50:40
  through the Bible where I kind of get more of a flow.
• 50:43
  So I do the grade 8 every every single morning.
• 50:47
  And this is just on repeat. Yeah, it's on repeat.
• 50:51
  So yeah, it's on. Repetitive.
• 50:52
  You're just sort of reading the same things over and over again.
• 50:55
  Yeah, you know, that's the cool thing about God's Word is that,
• 50:58
  you know, depending on what state of mind or what you're
• 51:01
  asking for or where your head is that morning, it's you can read
• 51:04
  the same exact scripture and get completely something different
• 51:07
  for it. You know, I believe that the,
• 51:09
  you know, they call it God's Word for a reason 'cause that's
• 51:11
  how he speaks to us, right? So the, the Spirit kind of gives
• 51:16
  me some direction on, on, on that flow and kind of enlightens
• 51:19
  me. You know, I used to spend
• 51:22
  majority of my time in reading like Automotive News or Auto
• 51:26
  Trader or the current news via via Internet on what's going on
• 51:35
  in my market. And I found that if I replaced a
• 51:40
  good portion of that with just reading God's word, that those
• 51:44
  answers were provided for me and I was enlightened and even in my
• 51:47
  business world through those routines.
• 51:49
  So it's a, it's a really big portion.
• 51:52
  I now spend probably 20% of my reading time scanning some some
• 51:57
  some recent Automotive News that may be relevant for me right
• 52:01
  now. I mean, I mean, for a really
• 52:04
  busy guy like you, Shane, you have multiple dealerships, lots
• 52:07
  of folks reporting to you. We haven't gotten to your growth
• 52:10
  plans yet. We're going to talk about those
• 52:11
  soon. You know, dedicating 60 to 90
• 52:14
  minutes out of every day to reading the Bible.
• 52:18
  Obviously, it's important to you.
• 52:22
  I have to imagine it's hard to find the time, but can you maybe
• 52:26
  put into, I don't know, a little bit more concrete example of how
• 52:32
  you have found this so beneficial?
• 52:34
  Maybe there's even a specific story that can kind of help
• 52:38
  enlighten why this is so important and so impactful for
• 52:41
  you. Well, I will, I'll address first
• 52:45
  the the timeline. You know, I used to get up at
• 52:48
  7:00 to do that, but then I was found myself rushed.
• 52:51
  So then I started getting up at 6:00 to do it and then I didn't
• 52:54
  feel like I was able to get everything that I needed out of
• 52:56
  it too. So that slowly crept up to a
• 52:59
  4/30 time that specifically is God's time for me in my life.
• 53:04
  So, you know, I believe God's leading my life.
• 53:09
  So what Scripture does for me in not only my personal life, but
• 53:16
  in my I, I believe the Scripture is relevant, as relevant today
• 53:19
  as it was then. So there's example over example.
• 53:23
  I mean, I'm reading right now in, in first Samuel about the
• 53:26
  King David, one of the greatest Israelite kings ever.
• 53:29
  And the example that he gave of, of servantry leadership to his
• 53:33
  people, no matter how they crossed him.
• 53:35
  I think it's as relevant today as it is as it was then.
• 53:40
  So, you know, I serve a God that was God then and through all
• 53:44
  that time period and the same one now.
• 53:46
  So where people look back at it's just history for me, it's
• 53:51
  it's as relevant as it is today as it was then.
• 53:55
  Can you maybe share a particular anecdote, a story of you say,
• 54:00
  you know, you believe God is leading your life.
• 54:03
  What's maybe something particularly impactful that
• 54:06
  might be interesting for listeners to hear about?
• 54:08
  You mean a a story in the Bible that would be impactful there
• 54:12
  or? Maybe an example of you reading
• 54:14
  the Bible at a particular time in your life and there was a
• 54:20
  message there that was just what you needed to hear, and here was
• 54:24
  kind of how you put it into action.
• 54:26
  I'd say that, you know, one that I mean, there's gosh, there's,
• 54:30
  there's hundreds of them, but you know, it's easy in the
• 54:35
  business world to forget what your focus are and what your
• 54:41
  real drive is and even get sometimes foggy with your
• 54:46
  relationship with God, even though it's the most important
• 54:48
  thing in my life. You know, there was, there was a
• 54:53
  story of Peter on a boat and there was a, a storm kind of
• 54:56
  going on. And, and Jesus is where this is
• 54:58
  a story where Jesus walks water, right?
• 55:01
  And he, he tells him to come out of the boat and, and Peter steps
• 55:05
  out and he's looking at God, He's focusing on Jesus.
• 55:09
  And then he takes his eyes off 'cause he's looking at the storm
• 55:11
  around him and he starts to sink.
• 55:13
  And then Jesus grabs him and pulls him up.
• 55:14
  And I, and to me, I find myself being Peter all the time.
• 55:19
  Like, right, like my, I, I, my intent is to draw closer to God
• 55:24
  or draw closer to Jesus. And often times the storm around
• 55:28
  me kind of distracts me in a way where I take my eyes off that
• 55:32
  and I find myself sinking or I find myself in a panic or, or,
• 55:35
  or, or feeling of fear. You know, there's a great
• 55:39
  scripture out there that says God did not give us a spirit of
• 55:43
  fear or timidity, but of love, power and self-control.
• 55:47
  So you know, that Scripture kind of gets my focus back on on
• 55:52
  Jesus when the storm is kind of going crazy on around me.
• 55:56
  It allows me to to do things better and do it do it right.
• 56:00
  So those are things that you know through reading scripture
• 56:03
  that that allow me to give me encouragement and refocus me in
• 56:07
  times as need. So let's talk about what the
• 56:10
  future looks like for you and Kraus.
• 56:13
  What what are some of the plans that are in place?
• 56:17
  So the long term goal in the agreement that I went into with
• 56:21
  Vernon was to be able to buy him all the way out in the stores
• 56:26
  that I'm involved with that that'll happen over a little bit
• 56:29
  of time. But we are Jen and I are working
• 56:34
  on growing our own business and we have some other stores in
• 56:40
  site right now that'll be really, really I can't go into
• 56:42
  detail in, but are we really, really big opportunities in our,
• 56:45
  in the Florida market and then to build something for our
• 56:49
  children. We have three children and you
• 56:54
  know, part of our legacy and our our end goal is for them to get
• 56:57
  involved. They're in the business now kind
• 56:59
  of cutting their own teeth and trow stores in Atlanta.
• 57:03
  But our dream is for them to be involved in what we're building
• 57:06
  in the Florida market separate from from Atlanta.
• 57:11
  OK, so let's shift gears here for a moment, Shane, and let's
• 57:13
  talk about. Chase.
• 57:16
  His name's Chase. Sorry.
• 57:18
  It's all right. Yeah, We'll, we'll make it.
• 57:21
  We'll make it look good all. Right.
• 57:25
  Let's shift gears for a moment. Shane and I want to talk about
• 57:28
  maybe a serious challenge that you've overcome, either personal
• 57:32
  or professional, what that was like going through it and maybe
• 57:36
  some lessons that you learned coming out the other side.
• 57:42
  You know, we talked about earlier that, you know, change
• 57:46
  can often be painful. Without that change, you know,
• 57:49
  there is no growth. So every time there's been a
• 57:55
  the, the major obstacles that I talked about in in in leaving
• 57:58
  the Cody organization, leaving the Kraus organization and even
• 58:02
  leaving the Morgan organization, you know, there's a small part
• 58:06
  of every time I left there, I felt like there was some
• 58:08
  failure. Fortunately, every single one of
• 58:13
  those moves have been major stepping stones for my career.
• 58:18
  So just embracing that change. You know, the failure comes
• 58:25
  almost daily when you don't, when you look back on the day
• 58:28
  and you, you, you don't, you see that you could have done
• 58:30
  something differently. You could have done something
• 58:31
  better, you know, but but my goal is to constantly look
• 58:36
  forward, not back there, but mistakes.
• 58:41
  Gosh, I mean, again, you know, half I've got a, a 30 year old
• 58:45
  general manager where my store is right now and he's just
• 58:47
  cutting his teeth and he's, he's going to be a great guy one day.
• 58:50
  And I the biggest difference between him and I when we sit
• 58:53
  across the desk is again, a couple thousand mistakes, so
• 58:57
  full of mistakes. If you want me to get specific,
• 59:00
  I, I probably could, but there your day is full of them in this
• 59:05
  industry because again, there's no, there's no book, there's no,
• 59:08
  there's no outline to exactly how this plays out or, or or or
• 59:13
  how it works. Is there maybe a specific story
• 59:15
  that you want to talk about? Yeah, no, I, you know, when I
• 59:22
  left the Cody organization, it was mutual.
• 59:28
  I, I, I struggled with my ego and how I spoke with people is
• 59:37
  completely opposite of how I conduct business now or how I
• 59:40
  communicate with my staff is before I realized that edifying
• 59:43
  them was better than talking down to them.
• 59:45
  I was kind of still old school at that at that time.
• 59:49
  And I had several HR complaints about the way that I talked to
• 59:54
  the employees. And, you know, I was coming from
• 59:59
  a place of what I felt was passion.
• 1:00:01
  You know, I've always, I've always thought that passion.
• 1:00:06
  Supersedes skill set, but the problem if you haven't
• 1:00:11
  disciplined yourself or don't have the control or don't really
• 1:00:14
  haven't have God in your life when it's all passion, you just
• 1:00:18
  kind of leave a disaster behind you.
• 1:00:20
  And I was starting to do that as a general manager.
• 1:00:23
  And early in my, in, in that part of my career where, you
• 1:00:28
  know, people, people complained, people didn't like how I
• 1:00:32
  interacted with them. And I took it very personal and
• 1:00:37
  set out on a road when I moved to Georgia to kind of change the
• 1:00:41
  way that I was going to do that. It was like a fresh start and a
• 1:00:43
  fresh beginning. It was a painful change.
• 1:00:45
  It was an area that I grew up in.
• 1:00:46
  I knew everybody. I had long list of customers
• 1:00:49
  that just come see me and just deal with me.
• 1:00:51
  And I had to separate my pride, you know, was way it was, it was
• 1:00:57
  interfering how I communicated with my, with my people and it,
• 1:01:02
  it showed. And that was a, that was a
• 1:01:04
  really, really tough lesson. So through again, several
• 1:01:08
  mistakes, understanding where I wanted to go and far as lifting
• 1:01:12
  people up and helping change people for the better.
• 1:01:15
  I had had some major changes I had to do to come out the other
• 1:01:18
  side of that. And it was, it was, it almost
• 1:01:22
  ended my career as from my own standpoint, because I thought,
• 1:01:26
  Gosh, I'm pouring out everything I have here.
• 1:01:30
  I just needed to figure out a different way to do it.
• 1:01:32
  And that was a real, real painful experience for me.
• 1:01:35
  You know, it's commendable because you know a lot of
• 1:01:38
  people, you know, faced with a situation like that, you're
• 1:01:41
  doing in so many aspects of your career, you're doing really well
• 1:01:46
  and you are just putting everything that you have into it
• 1:01:49
  and you think that you're doing the right things.
• 1:01:51
  And then to have, you know, several people come and tell
• 1:01:54
  you, man, you, you are off the mark like this is not working.
• 1:01:57
  What you know, your approach here is not OK.
• 1:02:00
  Most people in my experience, you know, faced with that would
• 1:02:03
  get very defensive. The problem's not me.
• 1:02:06
  It's all you guys. You know, you're not keeping up,
• 1:02:08
  you're not doing, you're not, you know, pulling your weight
• 1:02:11
  here to to be able to be reflective in the way that you
• 1:02:16
  were and check yourself and say, man, I, I need to, I need to
• 1:02:21
  come up with some new ways. It's not something everybody
• 1:02:24
  would do. What do you think it was about
• 1:02:28
  you or about that time that made you ultimately so receptive to
• 1:02:33
  that feedback? That was ingrained in me from as
• 1:02:35
  a child, my dad was all about accountability.
• 1:02:39
  So anytime that something went wrong, he would sit me down and,
• 1:02:43
  and they either have me write or open discuss.
• 1:02:46
  And it was a long discussion on how we do things differently.
• 1:02:50
  He would tell me, he said, you don't do anything you don't want
• 1:02:52
  to do. You say, hey, listen, I don't
• 1:02:53
  want to do this, but you're going to find yourself doing
• 1:02:55
  this. You don't do anything you don't
• 1:02:56
  want to do. And it, and it that that message
• 1:02:59
  brought an accountability on myself of, hey, listen, there's
• 1:03:01
  always something different I can do.
• 1:03:03
  That's something that, you know, I actually have notes on that to
• 1:03:06
  talk about that because it's, it's been big in my career.
• 1:03:10
  So anytime anything's ever gone wrong, leaving pride a little
• 1:03:16
  bit on the shelf in that manner and trying to find a better
• 1:03:21
  solution has been something that's just, it's always been
• 1:03:23
  ingrained in me and, and doing better, you know, knowing that
• 1:03:29
  there's something left in the tank every single time and
• 1:03:32
  pushing yourself to the to the next level.
• 1:03:35
  How important is community involvement to you and Kraus?
• 1:03:39
  It, it's, it's big when you're talking about location, if
• 1:03:43
  you're talking about locations and where we do business, you
• 1:03:48
  know, our involvement very quickly with, you know, local
• 1:03:52
  newspapers and local local police and hospitals has been
• 1:03:57
  something in part of our outreach program.
• 1:03:59
  It, it also builds that culture that we talked about and
• 1:04:04
  becoming not just about us, but also giving, you know, giving is
• 1:04:10
  a big part of our culture as well, and trying to figure out
• 1:04:13
  different ways to help other people and give, whether it be
• 1:04:16
  financial needs or, or just advice.
• 1:04:18
  So that that bleeds in what we've been talking about all
• 1:04:23
  along, bleeds into our community, which which draws
• 1:04:27
  people to us and, and we're being recognized by that right
• 1:04:32
  now actually. Shame we've covered a lot of
• 1:04:35
  ground today, but I'm curious, what is something fun or
• 1:04:38
  interesting about you that we haven't already shared that our
• 1:04:42
  listeners don't know about? Gosh, we've covered a lot today.
• 1:04:47
  You know any? Particular hobbies, passions,
• 1:04:50
  anything in your past that was particularly unique?
• 1:04:54
  You know, I love the golf and fish.
• 1:04:57
  If I'm not even not trying to figure out how to sell more
• 1:04:59
  cars, I'm slapping around on a golf course somewhere.
• 1:05:03
  If I have time or fishing, I'm not really good at either one of
• 1:05:06
  them because I I just don't have the time.
• 1:05:10
  But those are a couple things that I'd say that, you know, our
• 1:05:13
  children are very important to us and we have them in mind with
• 1:05:19
  every step we take up the mountain that we're on now that
• 1:05:23
  we've been over many times before.
• 1:05:25
  That's a true thing. Shane, I've just got one more
• 1:05:28
  question for you. But before I ask it, I want to
• 1:05:30
  do 2 things. Everyone listening today, I know
• 1:05:32
  that you love today's content. Please hit the like, share or
• 1:05:35
  Subscribe button on your favorite podcast app.
• 1:05:37
  Shane, I also want to let people know the best way to get in
• 1:05:40
  touch with you. What's that?
• 1:05:43
  You know, you can my phone's always open.
• 1:05:46
  I don't, I don't hide the phone number.
• 1:05:49
  I can share that with you 301-753-0175 to six 638.
• 1:05:57
  And then my e-mail address is staylor@krauseauto.com KRAU
• 1:06:03
  se.com and my my mom always open to communicate with people and
• 1:06:09
  and love love making new relationships.
• 1:06:12
  That's terrific. So last question for you, Shane,
• 1:06:14
  I'm curious, what do you see the big changes coming to the car
• 1:06:18
  industry in the next couple of years?
• 1:06:21
  Gosh, you know, EV is probably electric vehicles is probably
• 1:06:27
  something that's, you know, it's been being chewed on over and
• 1:06:31
  over and over again. There's a little bit of a battle
• 1:06:35
  between, you know, we don't really have the infrastructure
• 1:06:38
  to implement the electric vehicles that we thought we were
• 1:06:42
  going to three to four years ago.
• 1:06:46
  You know, the dealer body is kind of spoken up over the last
• 1:06:48
  year, year and a half where you've seen some little less
• 1:06:51
  Taco VV and probably more about hybrid.
• 1:06:55
  But running better, cleaner cars is probably the biggest change
• 1:07:01
  that we're going to see in our industry.
• 1:07:02
  You know, there's a lot of platforms out there right now
• 1:07:06
  with online buying. We encourage it, but I don't in
• 1:07:12
  my lifetime see it changing. People still want to come in,
• 1:07:15
  look somebody in the eye, you know, customers still want to
• 1:07:19
  negotiate. It's easy if we try to make it
• 1:07:22
  in most situations. But I'd say between that and you
• 1:07:30
  know, AI is, is quickly changing our industry as well, from how
• 1:07:35
  we describe things online to how even sometimes we're interacting
• 1:07:38
  with customers. So the two biggest changes I'm
• 1:07:41
  probably the most resistant on and that that I bring up, but
• 1:07:44
  they are, they are they're heavy topics and you and you have to
• 1:07:48
  have some self-awareness about them for sure.
• 1:07:50
  Let's let's pull on each of those threads that you bought up
• 1:07:53
  for a second 'cause I'm curious to get more of your perspective.
• 1:07:56
  Right. EV, you know, and it seems like
• 1:08:00
  it was not that long ago we were hearing that, you know, several
• 1:08:04
  countries were making rules where they're going to
• 1:08:06
  completely phase out, you know, gas powered engines by your such
• 1:08:10
  and such auto manufacturers were making big pushes towards
• 1:08:15
  electric vehicles. Seemed like it was the right
• 1:08:18
  thing to do, good for the environment.
• 1:08:20
  You know, more opportunities to power the cars with renewable
• 1:08:24
  energy. And, you know, you're a car guy,
• 1:08:27
  so you've got a better perspective on this than I do.
• 1:08:29
  But the articles I'm reading now is that people are really
• 1:08:32
  pulling back on that. You know, part of it is the lack
• 1:08:34
  of the infrastructure. The cars are more expensive than
• 1:08:38
  gas powered cars, at least for now.
• 1:08:42
  How do you see this unfolding in the next several years?
• 1:08:45
  So what? So what?
• 1:08:47
  What stemmed that? Was the government really
• 1:08:50
  putting a lot of money on the line for the OEMs and other
• 1:08:54
  manufacturers to go EV and there was so much money that they were
• 1:09:01
  forcing the hand of the dealers saying, hey, listen, to be
• 1:09:04
  compliant, right? There's there.
• 1:09:06
  Every OEM has a has a circle of what they call compliancy,
• 1:09:10
  whether it be building or maybe EV in this situation that we're
• 1:09:14
  talking about now. And they were telling the OEMs,
• 1:09:17
  hey, listen, you've got to have this, oh, you got to have these,
• 1:09:21
  these charging stations. And what's going to cost
• 1:09:24
  hundreds of thousands of dollars to put this in.
• 1:09:28
  Well, what we found is while some guys are starting to put it
• 1:09:31
  in that when you, when we had to contact the electric company to
• 1:09:36
  figure out what that was going to look like, a lot of electric
• 1:09:38
  companies were saying, hey, listen, we can't, we can't power
• 1:09:41
  that and we don't even know when we can power that.
• 1:09:44
  So we're having these OEMs tell us as dealers, look, you have to
• 1:09:48
  spend this money in order to get X amount of monies back, right?
• 1:09:51
  Is worth really what we live on. There's no margin and, and the
• 1:09:55
  actual car itself anymore. It's just kind of what we get
• 1:09:58
  back from OEMs is, is, is primarily that money.
• 1:10:01
  So the dealer body about a year and a half ago, really they went
• 1:10:04
  to DC and lobbied on this and, and we made some, the voice was
• 1:10:08
  really heard. We did a really good job as a
• 1:10:11
  dealer body saying, Hey, listen, hold on.
• 1:10:13
  We're not ready for us to make to make them spend this money.
• 1:10:16
  We got to slow it down on this EV talk.
• 1:10:18
  So it's not out, but that's what created that slow down.
• 1:10:22
  And then when you look at, you know, the benefits of hybrid
• 1:10:25
  versus versus the EV, it there's just so many more benefits in
• 1:10:30
  my, in my opinion, I'm still a little bit maybe old school and
• 1:10:32
  that, that thinking, but that's, I think that's, you know,
• 1:10:37
  hydrogen's another conversation that's, that's on the cusp of
• 1:10:40
  the future. You know, we're, we're not doing
• 1:10:43
  our, our, our self any favors to our planet by what we're doing
• 1:10:50
  to, to sustain these EV batteries.
• 1:10:53
  So looking for a healthier manner.
• 1:10:55
  We're definitely moving in that direction.
• 1:10:58
  Some form or fashion. EV talk slowed down and that's
• 1:11:02
  why it slowed down over the last year.
• 1:11:06
  But but we're, we're, we're on the cusp of doing something
• 1:11:09
  cleaner for sure. We just got to, we just got to
• 1:11:12
  allow everybody to swallow that pill slowly.
• 1:11:16
  AI is the other one I want to talk about real quick.
• 1:11:18
  How are you guys using it now and what do you think you might
• 1:11:21
  be doing with it a year or two from now?
• 1:11:24
  You know, when we look at one thing that's very time consuming
• 1:11:26
  for us is putting descriptions online for every single car.
• 1:11:30
  So if you've got 300 cars in the ground, you got to do a
• 1:11:33
  description on every one of them.
• 1:11:35
  You know, AI has got some really cool tools out there that kind
• 1:11:37
  of save us tons of time. Where I'm starting to see it,
• 1:11:42
  we've been interviewing some companies.
• 1:11:44
  You know, we have what we call business development centers or
• 1:11:47
  BDC centers inside stores. So typically when a customer
• 1:11:51
  calls in or does an Internet inquiry about a car, we have got
• 1:11:56
  a person that's live and they they, you know, respond back or
• 1:12:00
  they'll pick up the phone and have conversations with them.
• 1:12:03
  That's still kind of a practice that we're using right now.
• 1:12:06
  I'm watching some guys in our industry right now go to AI
• 1:12:10
  companies. They don't have the overhead of
• 1:12:13
  personnel and these IAI companies are getting really,
• 1:12:17
  really good at responding in a more natural way to the client.
• 1:12:22
  So haven't fully bought into that talking to several people
• 1:12:26
  right now, but I still, you know, in my stores are at A, at
• 1:12:31
  a smaller point as of right now where I still think we can give
• 1:12:37
  that personal engagement, you know, all the way through with
• 1:12:40
  good training. It's going to supersede, it's
• 1:12:43
  going to beat that, that AI tool.
• 1:12:46
  But that is that's a big conversation.
• 1:12:48
  When you look at stores that are selling, you know, 67800 cars a
• 1:12:52
  month, you know, those business development centers sometimes
• 1:12:55
  are 253035 people. You, you look at that on an
• 1:13:00
  hourly rate and then insurance on top of that.
• 1:13:03
  I mean, the AI tool is less than 1/10 of what you're going to
• 1:13:07
  spend. It's really affordable.
• 1:13:10
  So for those guys, it's super attractive.
• 1:13:14
  Yeah, I could see that. It's going to be interesting to
• 1:13:16
  follow how that's all unfolds. It is.
• 1:13:18
  Shane, I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing
• 1:13:21
  both your time and your story with us today.
• 1:13:22
  I really appreciate it. Anthony, you're a great man.
• 1:13:25
  Thank you so much. Enjoy watching your podcast.
• 1:13:28
  Folks, that's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories
• 1:13:31
  podcast. Thanks for learning with us
• 1:13:32
  today.