Latest / Crossroad Conversations with the Lewis Brothers / Ep.47 - Why Leaders Fail — And What Smart Ones Learn From It

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Ep.47 - Why Leaders Fail — And What Smart Ones Learn From It · Crossroad Conversations with the Lewis Brothers

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I think at the core here, what we're talking about is not failing the same way twice.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: So you're a fool if you think that if you don't address an issue and unpack it, that it's going to fix itself.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: It's just going to keep failing and you're going to blame it on everybody else.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: You have to take time and unpack it.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Hey everyone.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Hey everyone, welcome to Crossroad Conversations with the Lewis Brothers, where we aim to share real stories about running a successful family business while working through adversity and pouring back into our community that keeps our doors open every single day.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: We're your hosts, shelby, matt and Taylor, and we'll be bringing you real, relevant, local business advice, maybe some automotive insights that are sure to change the way you look at running a business or buying a car, and maybe even throw in a plug for you to do business with us here locally.
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: Welcome back to episode 47, crossroad Conversations with Lewis Brothers.
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: We're your hosts, shelby, matt and Taylor, bringing you what we think is relevant, what might need the attention, or just what we're going to talk about today.
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: And today is why leaders fail, and smart ones learn from it.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: Right, it's not okay to fail.
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: It's just what you do with it, what it looks like.
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: Sometimes you fail harder than other times.
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: Sometimes it stings more, sometimes it's in the background and sometimes it's 100 in the foreground and everyone sees it, and so we'll break that down.
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: What leaders face every single day, all the things that go into that decisions that didn't work, hires that went sideways in moments that we flat out completely missed man, that's going to be a fun one to dive into.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: But before we do that, let's go back to episode 46 last week.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: In case you missed us, last week was the cost of chasing trends.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: We really dove in there and talked about when to pay attention to trends, when to let trends maybe simmer a little bit to figure out if you should take action on it, and the cost of not paying attention to trends or paying too much attention to trends without doing your due diligence.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: So if you want to learn more about that, make sure to go to CrossroadConversationsPodcastcom and check out that episode and many more.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: But on to this week.
• 2:11
  Speaker 4: On to this week.
• 2:11
  Speaker 4: Hey, always check us out online at LewisSuperstorecom.
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: We've got all of our inventory over a thousand units on the ground.
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: A transition when we drive, and this is on both sides.
• 2:20
  Speaker 4: Okay, I love this technology.
• 2:22
  Speaker 4: We've kind of talked about it before, but I want to bring light back to it because we have an off-road segment.
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: We also have it one of our our second best selling nameplate vehicle, talking about the plug-in hybrid technology.
• 2:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the plug-in hybrid technology that gives you takes away that that fear of range anxiety, yeah, of only plugging in.
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: Yes, so it allows you what it does.
• 2:46
  Speaker 4: So we have in four by ease that are in, uh, wranglers and grand cherokees.
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: We have it over in fordside in the escapes.
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: That allows you to be able to put the vehicle in your garage, charge it every night and you can drive 25 to 30 miles purely electric you know I can talk about this a little bit because my life's van for multiple years was a plug-in.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Yes, so what we saw is we plugged it in at night and 90 or 80 of our driving we did on all electric.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: We put maybe one tank of fuel in there a month, but if we wanted to take off and drive to dallas or tulsa or oklahoma city or kansas city, we just use the gas, no worries there was no range anxiety but we got the benefit of the other and I think when you look at the stats right now, what's trending and growing in new vehicle sales, it is that plug-in hybrid.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Yes, there's more excitement about like hey, kind of give me the best of both worlds because when it is running on gas it's still a hybrid system.
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: So there's a piece there, it's a, it's a hybrid vehicle which is gas and electric.
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: It works simultaneously.
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: You don't realize it's transition.
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: And then it's the plug-in version of that, so that we have plenty of hybrids on the ground that aren't plug-in, but these happen to be that we're talking about.
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: You can plug in, so then when you are in non-powered, plugged in electricity, you're still getting.
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: You know, our f-150 power boost is probably roughly five to seven miles per gallon better than what the standard 3.5 equal boost is, and then gives you cool like pro power on board and stuff like that.
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: So that's kind of like a swiss army knife.
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: It is pretty cool really cool technology.
• 4:23
  Speaker 4: You got to come check it out and drive it because really you won't know the difference.
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: You think you will, but you will know.
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: No different than your regular vehicle.
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I have to point that out before we go any further, hey, with the big bill that just got passed, september 30th is the end of ev credits and, as you were saying that, I was thinking the jeep wrangler 4xe gets up to 3750.
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: You say I don't want anything to do with electric Cool.
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: Do you want a new vehicle for less money?
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, jeep Wrangler 4xe you can get it in a Rubicon style, you can get it in a Sahara style or all different types of styles.
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: And that 4xe gets you some off-road and throw the charger out the window.
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: I mean I'd keep it so you can trade it in.
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: But it's initially going to give you additional savings because it's a growing segment and manufacturer says sell, sell, sell, and then you get the 3750 tax credit, but that ends september 30th.
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: Don't miss out on that.
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: That's a good point right there, absolutely so good, good uh features there.
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: Make sure you come and check it out all right, solid.
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: So jumping into this core subject failure.
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: Failure is not final.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: You know we talk about why leaders fail.
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: Failure is not like well, we tried, we gave it all we could, we invested all that we could.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: It's feedback right, it is.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: But I'm going to say this you know, as a human being and we all, no matter how much we say, we all have feelings and we all care about our success.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: None of us like admitting to go man, I just failed on that all care about our success.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: None of us like admitting to go man, I just failed on that.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Now, looking back after we get some success on it, we might say, hey, I had to go through these failures to get to that success.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: But nobody's posting on social media hey, this last weekend I just failed, you know, today I just failed.
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: The thing is like, if you're talking social media and you want to talk engagement.
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: If you share some tough things that you're going through, it'll engage a whole lot more than be like hey, killed it last week, close x amount of deals like people don't love your success right.
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: I love your vulnerability and your failures, and so it's not easy to admit that, but if you're looking for something uh to post about, that's probably something pretty relevant that people can relate to, and they're like I thought no one would ever come to light and admit that they had an issue with that hey, I had a failure in doing this, but I think the hardest time to admit failure is the very first time.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: I think that's true because you know you're kind of in uncharted waters and you don't know what the response is going to be say what will they do?
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: what will they?
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: think of me.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: But then once you see that and like it's okay, yeah, and then like people got you and like what you said, it's easier than to relate like they're human, you know then it's like, okay, let's share those and let's learn from it yeah you know, the one of the things I like talking, you know, to you guys about, or the team about, is when we haven't had success in an area, I don't know, necessarily necessarily use the word failure, but when things don't have the outcome we wanted, let's unpack it.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: What adjustments could we have made?
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: You know, maybe that was still a great goal.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: We just need to adjust the path or the way we got there, and we share that with the team and we do discovery.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: You know, we've all heard the great sports analogies, but I'll remind you of this, of those failures that it takes then to win.
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: Sports is really easy to relate to, but if you look at Michael Jordan, for example, he said he missed over 9,000 shots in his career Can you imagine the headspace that that would put you in if you just said, hey, I want you to step up to the line and shoot, and you will miss 9,000 times.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: He in if you just said hey, I want you to step up the line and shoot and you will miss 9 000 times.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: He lost over 300 games.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, sounds like that.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: And now get this one you want to talk about stress.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: 26 times he took the game winning, shot the last shot of the game to win the game and missed and then lost the game because of him and then lost.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about babe ruth on strikeouts.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: You know, everybody knows the iconic babe ruth for all of his home runs.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: During his career he struck out far more times than he hit the ball or hit home runs, which is big.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: And then you go to Tom Brady.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: You talk about Tom Brady in one of the Super Bowls where he had the largest comeback in history.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: At halftime they said there's no way even for the great Tom Brady that he's coming back from this, that they had failed so much there.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: So I think it's important to remember that you must have those failures to identify where you need to grow and what you need to work on then to become successful.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: And if you don't admit that, your team never will.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: So there's some vulnerability, shelby, as you brought up that it's important for them to see that you are human, that you do fail but you're willing to talk about it, not say I'm okay with failing, but I want to figure out why I failed and what I could do to fix that going forward.
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: I think that's a really good point that you said there of admitting to failure is not saying you're okay with it.
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: There's a differentiation there of you're okay to try something and to fail but then learn from it.
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: It's not like, eh, it's okay to fail.
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: You know, like Michael Jordan didn't say, hey, I've lost 300 plus games, I've missed 9,000 shots, he said, no, I need to take X more shots and work on this and let's watch film and let's figure out was my step wrong?
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: Was my hand in the wrong place?
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: Who was in my face?
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: What was going on, and then work on that.
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: So a failure is okay, but what's not okay is just making it seem like it's okay to fail.
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: It happens to everyone, right?
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great job unpacking that.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: And I think some of the telltale signs on are you handling failure correct is are you unpacking what could be improved on or are you just justifying it by comparing it to others or other people in your market?
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: The one thing I don't want to hear from managers or management team they're like, yeah, but I know we didn't hit our goal, but nobody else did in our region either, and I'm like I really don't care about the other people that's the misery loves company thing it is and it's not like you need to know the stats, yes, so that you can be better than those stats, right, but it's not a comfort food of like, oh, it's all right, nobody really hit their numbers and that's an easy thing
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: especially when things aren't going well.
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: It's like, well, the market's down 34% and GM lost $1.1 billion because they took a hit in tariffs for $2.6 million.
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: It's like you know one of the people that I follow that during the uh, the pandemic, he created this, uh, this avatar and it was called the pandemic of positivity.
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: It was david long and he said we create our own economy.
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: Right, you can be in this hyper bubble.
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: Northwest arkansas is in a hyper bubble.
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: Yes, when you see things trend down, it's like you kind of look around like, huh, so super blessed to be in the area that we are.
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: But create your own economy and like failure is gonna happen.
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: Right, you should be reaching.
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: We talked last week about the trends.
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: If you're not chasing those trends, jumping into those, you're not gonna be like.
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: If you're just in your safety blanket on your couch, you're not gonna have as much failure.
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: But you're just in your safety blanket on your couch, you're not going to have as much failure, but you have very little opportunity for growth or winning.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: I think, when you or your team or your business has a failure or you didn't achieve what you set out to achieve, I think then that's when you see the real leader show up, and here's what I mean by that.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: Are you the leader that then the next day helps them identify that misery loves company, saying, well, look what the rest of the industry did.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Well, look at this.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Well, interest rates went up.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Well, this happened.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Well, that happened.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Or are you the leader that got everybody in the room and said, hey guys, it's okay that we didn't accomplish that goal this time, but what's not okay is if we don't accomplish it again.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Help me identify what we need to change, moving forward, so we can continue to grow.
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's always a fine line of like when we forecast for teams, each individual department, for each performer.
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: It's a fine line of finding that number, because my team at the Ford store I just keep throwing what I think potential numbers are and telling them hey, we're going to shoot for the moon, right, sure, we're going to shoot for this.
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: And I could give them a lower number and they still have success without hitting that exact number.
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: Right, they can have success and growth and huge growth numbers throughout it and at the end not exactly hit that number.
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: But if I just set a number that was easy for them to hit and they hit that, like it was kind of an empty success.
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: Yep, you know.
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: So it was like, okay, well, we just keep winning, but like what is that win and is it allowing for growth?
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: It's so important to know as well that, with failure we're talking about this on trends a lot of times, failures not hey, I set this out and I failed, like anyone thinks I'm doing A lot of times failure is, for you, looking back we talked about this but adapting whenever something happens.
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: So, if you're following a trend or anything else, a lot of times, if you're listening to this, you sometimes fail when you're not trying to go out and accomplish a goal necessarily, but whenever something comes in and happens in business and you don't pivot and you don't move on, that's failure that you really need to step back and be able to recognize, because that's something that is going to be able to help you change and move forward.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: I think that's good.
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: You know it's one of those things, I think, a random stat, I don't know it's complete validity, but there's tons of people that you know they say, hey, you think you just haven't been able to achieve your potential.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: I think the status like Donald Trump's has filed for bankruptcy like six or seven times.
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: Like imagine if he just stopped it.
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: You know like well, I failed.
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: You know like I put it all in line and I messed up.
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: You know, like somewhere in there, one of the founders I saw had heard 323 no's on business proposals before he got the yes and created his multi-trillion dollar industry.
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: 323 no's, that's got to be like a Ray Kroc with McDonald's or something I don't know.
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: I want to say whenever he was going through.
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: KFC was 65.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: Colonel Sanders yeah, well, hey, here's another one from the business side.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: We talked about sports, let's talk about Walt Disney.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: All right, so Walt Disney, walt Disney's first animation company, laugh-o-gram Studio, went bankrupt.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: He filed bankruptcy, yep.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: And if he wouldn't have learned from that failure and moved on, he would have never opened up the global entertainment giant, yep, you know, if you think about that and if you think about Steve Jobs with Apple, did you know this?
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: He was fired from Apple in 1985.
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: They fired him.
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: It's a good thing they did Lost his job.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: He later returned to Apple and spearheaded the company's research, because Apple hasn't always been the juggernaut that it was no.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: But they took the same person after they fired him, got him back involved, unpacked everything and said let's go with this thing again, let's figure this out.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: You know James Dyson, who you know.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: The Dyson vacuum, it's a good vacuum.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: Get this, I mean.
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: I don't know that I would have been this persistent.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: He built 5,127 prototypes of his vacuum before achieving success.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: He didn't try to vacuum 5,000 times.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: He made 5,000 prototypes.
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: That's passion, right there, that is being involved.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: That's passion right there, that is being involved.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: That's big and I think hopefully that encourages all of us.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: And you know, because we're all human beings and we have feelings, we have emotions, and when we don't hit a goal or something, we're like what am I doing?
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Am I doing the right thing?
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Am I in the right position?
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Am I cut out for this?
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: You are, and a lot of times you're just one more push away from breaking through.
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: I think that's one of those things like digging through a cave, like you're over it looking for a way out.
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: You're just looking for that speck of light.
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know what I mean.
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: And then once you can get that speck of light in that struggle, then that allows you to fully propel, like that's my direction, that's where we're going, Prototype number 5001, this is it right?
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: And so then when you see that ray of light there, I think it's important that we work on how to build our teams so they understand it's okay to try new things and fail and what that feedback looks like, to say okay and we get to unpack that failure.
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: It's a thing we talked about yesterday about employment.
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: If someone leaves the company, they get replaced, they get fired.
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: You know, whatever happens, there was a person in that job and they were removed from that job.
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: On our side or on their side, the question that you ask is do we need to replace that job?
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: Yes, you know.
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: So if something's failed, the first look and see why did it fail.
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: So the next thing is hey, do we need to change pay or structure on that job, excuse me?
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: And then the third thing was do we need to go in and change that job, roles and responsibilities.
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: So before you just say, well, that didn't work, let's find another person, put them in the same thing, pay them the same, give them the same job, roles and responsibilities.
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: The same thing goes for an idea in your business.
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: You have to create that culture so the team can say, hey, all right, we tried that in our micro business.
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: That didn't work.
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: And we say, okay, well, let's not throw everything out.
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: Let's see what was good and what we could change.
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: Did we have proper communication?
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: Did we have proper metrics?
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: Did people know when to expect, how to expect and what that looked like?
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: And so then, just knowing that, the team says, hey, we're not going to put it all on the line here, but we're going to give X percentage and try this here.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: I hope everybody understood what Shelby just went over there.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: So what he's talking about is when you have a position that is not achieving their goals or is failing and you have to part ways with that individual is, before you just replace it and say it was all that person and the individual.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: You first look in the mirror and you answer those three questions.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: You know you're just.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: What are you thinking if you think you just got to keep replacing the person in the same structure, in the same culture, in the same pay, in the same description, just saying, well, I hope one of these makes it work.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or maybe it's deeper than that.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so those are great checks and balances as a business owner to go through, going, hey, I do need to replace that person, I got to get somebody in that position.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: But let me check.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: What does their roles and responsibilities look like?
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: What does their?
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: pay.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: Look like you know what are we asking them for there and adjust those.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, adjust those, adjust those, yeah, adjust those.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: so that's super important there, that's the feedback, making sure your team understands that and how to grow and how failure is okay, learn from it and we use something.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Yep, all right.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Next up is our uh transition question here, and it's uh, you know what's one thing you've completely failed at, but would a hundred percent do again anyway.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: That's tough I agree, and I was unpacking this one and I'm going to sound like I'm contradicting myself what we just talked about, and I learn from my failures, but I also don't let them just sit there in the back of my mind.
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: And so I don't even know where you're going with that.
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: But I'll tell you that.
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: You know, sometimes my wife will ask me this and I'll say hey look, I only have so much brain capacity.
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: You know, I was blessed with what I have.
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: I am not.
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: I'm not the one who judges or compartmentalizes things.
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: So if it's something that was totally detrimental, then I'm going to say, ok, let's learn from that, let's work on it.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: I agree that and let's work on it, but I agree, I agree.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: So I got, I got a couple examples for you.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, I got a couple examples for you and and the first one is is not easy because I don't like admitting this, but I'll admit this on it because, uh, there's a lot of business, people and we're trying to be real, yeah, when one of our businesses, on a month, prints red ink, that's a loss.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's a loss for everybody else money.
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: That means that we operated the entire month and you didn't make jack squat.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: Okay, now everybody else in your business did.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, you paid them, your employees, yeah, all of vendors.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: But it and I'm not talking about losing 500 or five thousand dollars, uh, when it's when it's a large amount and if it happens more than one month, and then you're looking at going.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: What am I doing?
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: What?
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: What's going on?
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: You know, I thought I had this ship moving in the right direction, but you don't give up on it because you know it's there and you see that and it's just a couple tweaks away.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: I'm not sharing all that with the whole rest of the team, you know, but we make those adjustments and we come out even better on the other side because we're better operators with efficiency and expense control and inventory and cash control.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: I had to go back and listen to some of my own advice, you know, when I talked about inventory and cash and expenses, it's like hey don't say one thing and do something different.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: So that one was pretty big.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: So now I got another one, I got another one.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: So throughout my career we have looked at different areas and I kind of picked it up from dad as I was going along in the areas of marketing and investing and trusting people in our marketing and advertising and so that just kind of flip-flopped.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: I always had this vision and we had this vision of what we wanted marketing to do, what we wanted social platforms to do, how we wanted to reach people.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: But we didn't always have the structure right and then we failed with different people along the way.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: But we never just closed that department down because we understood In fact we went from just entrusting one person to now we have an entire team of five plus people that are doing that.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: So as we started unpacking that, where we did not have the success we wanted it's, we had to go through your questions, you know, and discover what do we do to accomplish success there.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: We know that this position, this department, is necessary.
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: So it was one of those things like, hey, ok, you know, if it was something you were self-performing and there was a spin, but there wasn't the return, which in marketing is tough to always see the return on, but there are some certain factors you can look at.
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: But it was like, OK, what do I do there?
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: I'm doing what I can do, right?
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: That's one of the things like, matt, you need to give that to some more people, right?
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: And so it was like, ok, well, what's our spin?
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: Our spin needs to be more, and maybe not as more externally, it needs to be some internal to create.
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: So then, when you do spend the money, that it has some traction, don't just keep buying 22-inch tires or 24-inch tires.
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: You need a bigger tire, sure.
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: So then we realize that.
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: And then changing job roles and responsibilities, and then we've tried one person to handle three different things and we're like, okay, we need to hyper-focus on that one person to do that.
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: So that's really good there, yeah, focus on that one person to do that.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: So that's really good there.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a real one.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: That's a real one that's constantly evolving.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: All right, the next part of this we want to unpack, and this is going to be fun here.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: The real failure is not owning it.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: So think about that.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: We just barely tipped into that on the last subject, but the real failure is not owning it.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: What's that mean that on the last subject, but the real failure is not owning it.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: What's that mean Not recognizing that you failed or blaming it on everybody else?
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: So there's something before you go any further.
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: There's something that we've always trained to say at our dealership that some people love, some people say it naturally and some people hide in the closet.
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: But when a customer says, hey, you forgot to do X on my car or you said you were going to do this, now, a couple episodes back, we told you that we learned that dad says, hey, if you say you do it, you do it right and that's our thing, no matter what it costs.
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: Somebody opened their mouth and did it, you're going to do it.
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: But when a customer comes to you with that concern, or comes to anyone with that concern, the first thing would say, hey, let me apologize, that is my fault, not yours, and that's not always true facts.
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: I'm not saying you're lying to the consumer.
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: I'm just saying, if you can take that burden off of them, it puts the wall down and then we can fully unpack that.
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: But that's the number one thing that we train to say hey, let me apologize, that was my fault.
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: I take full responsibility for the lack of communication, of not delivering what we promised, of not following through, not doing exactly what we said we're going to do.
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: Let me look into that and see how I can help.
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: And once again, I apologize 100%, completely, that is my fault.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: I'm going to take that and really break some stuff down here and then relate it to a book that a couple of us have gone through and just hopefully you'll gather this.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: Okay, can I tell you that naturally human beings are.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: They have a defense up of right or wrong, of defending their team and the facts.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: Now, what Shelby is not saying there when he says, hey, that's my fault, I take full responsibility, whether it was or it wasn't.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: You know, take the person that we repaired their flat and then the next day their car didn't start because their battery was dead and they blame that we messed up their battery.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: Hey, it was probably just an end of life.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: But it's not about who's right or wrong.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: And by saying that doesn't mean we're opening up our checkbook and paying for everything.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: Here's what you've got to realize.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: It's about how does it make the customer feel?
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: How do they feel?
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Do they feel like that?
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: They're, you know, in debate class or in court?
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: You may be right, but if they feel attacked and if they feel embarrassed, guess what?
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: They won't come back and see you.
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: They're not coming back, they're not telling their friends.
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: It's not good CSI, it's just like bad news spread so much quicker than good news.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: So in the book Unreasonable Hospitality.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: This guy has a server and really, really high-end restaurant in New York you know, and person orders a steak.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: They order it medium rare.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: It came out it was part of their QC process Check the temperature on every single steak before it came out to the table.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: They knew without a doubt in their mind it was dialed in.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: It was dialed in at medium rare, dialed in.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: Customer cuts into it okay and they're like I ordered medium rare, not rare.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Server knew They'd already seen the temperature that this was a medium rare steak.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: They took the time to get the chef to come out.
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: I think so Initially, the first time they talked about that.
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: The server wasn't fully versed and trained on that Correct and they felt like they felt attacked, they did.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: They felt like that they weren't, that they didn't listen, they weren't doing their job.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: So then the next time they were prepared, chef comes out, they redo the temperature on.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: There gets really awkward with the customer on like who's right, who's wrong, who knows what.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: Medium rare is the?
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: chef, like a fool, like no, this is how you know I did it right.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: So, and then finally, the GM of the store gets involved.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: They just take the steak back and said hey guys, prepare a steak medium, not medium rare.
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: They read the defense yes, and they're like it doesn't matter who's right or wrong, it doesn't really matter.
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: You can tell that this is too rare.
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: Forget the scale, cook it a little bit more?
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so at the end of all that he's unpacking it and they had, they did damage control, but the damage was already done.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: On how they felt, because it was a whole rigmarole yeah, about measuring the temperature and this and that at the end of the day, had the chef prepared it correct?
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: Yes, did the waitress say the correct information?
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: Yes, but how did it make the customer feel?
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: They felt belittled, they felt attacked, that they didn't know what they were talking about.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: And those feelings of that customer is what brings you repeat business and referrals.
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: So then he not being a he was not kitchen focused, right, he was a customer experience focus.
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: So then he created the policy and procedure.
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: You know that, hey, when you serve that up, you have them cut into it and make sure it's to their satisfaction.
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: Right, and we're not defending what they order versus what they got.
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: And then he brought them, if there was ever an issue, they brought back two different steaks, prepared differently, and said hey, take a look and pick which one of these you like best.
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: And so then it became an experience that the customer was like hey, they were wrong, they weren't wrong, newsflash, they weren't wrong.
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: But without confrontation, they quickly brought me two options, they went above and beyond, and then I got to pick the steak that I like and these people were great.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: I am going to say, though, we talk about all this very smoothly and like it's second nature.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: It is a battle every day for us in our business to have employees.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: They get in there and they're like yeah, but boss, I was right, I never touched that battery.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: How did the customer feel it?
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: doesn't mean buy them a new engine, but listen to them.
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: A lot of people have a hard time of taking responsibility but then not paying for all the things.
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: Yep, let me give you an example of yesterday.
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: So we were sitting and I talked about this as a salesman and this is so fun because it goes into you saying what you're going to do and you actually follow through and you know what you're doing.
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: It's so fun.
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: So we're sitting in there on Saturday and talking Me and Matt were talking, and whenever a hot pitch comes down the pipe, you're never ready, right there with your glove.
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: You've got your popcorn and everything else.
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: So one manager was just getting some lunch and we're talking.
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: Guy walks in like who's in charge.
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: I step back and I was like, yeah, he's like, you better be ready.
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: I was like absolutely, slug me in the side of the head.
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: And he's like oh, I mean not that.
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: So I was like now, come on out.
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: So we talked about it.
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: I love talking to people.
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: That's where I'm really good at.
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: I'm just a big teddy bear that can go through.
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: So he started off real hot and guess what, I didn't get hotter with this situation.
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: I loved on.
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: Him apologized.
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: We had dropped the ball on something, but it was something that he had changed his mind on.
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: It was on a Bronco.
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: He was mad because we'd painted the fenders and they chipped.
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: Well, real world example.
• 31:11
  Speaker 4: I'd said I kind of started laughing.
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: He said what?
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: And I said, sorry, I laugh.
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: I said Broncos are so fun and he said, yeah, they are.
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: I said, sir, I laugh.
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: I said Broncos are so fun and he said yeah, they are.
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: I said I repainted my wife's fender flares eight times, eight times, and I don't.
• 31:23
  Speaker 4: She doesn't off-road, no, no, she doesn't put it in four-wheel drive, no, yeah.
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: I said she goes through the car wash eight times a day maybe.
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: And he started kind of laughing.
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: So I went through there.
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: He wanted to PPF them and where we'd had them for a week and they have to sit for two, three weeks to off gas and cure before they do that.
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: We didn't set clear expectations.
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: So I took full ownership of that, went outside.
• 31:48
  Speaker 4: But whenever I'm telling him all this, he's like OK, he's digesting everything else.
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: We walk out to the car.
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: I had told him that I'd done it before.
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: I was knowledgeable about the vehicle.
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: We walk out.
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: I'm still talking to him.
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: I don't even look at the car and I'm flipping the clips and rip it off the thing.
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: He's like oh, you've really done it before.
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: I'm like did you not believe me?
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: Because I just told you and so I'm sitting him down on the ground.
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: He's like okay, real deal.
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: And his wife, meanwhile, is like oh, you're one of the losers.
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: I love y'all.
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: This place is so great.
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: So we went through the whole thing.
• 32:20
  Speaker 4: So I was telling people in sales meeting yesterday I said it's so fun.
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: It's so fun when you get to combat a bad situation, whenever you love on them, and then you know what you're doing.
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: You're admitting you failed, you take responsibility, but then you know what you're doing.
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: You know what.
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: You're admitting you failed, you take responsibility, but then you know what you're doing.
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: You know what you're doing.
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: So that was so fun because the salesperson was there, saw how it handled and guess what?
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: I didn't even have to pull the salesperson to the side whenever we were walking back inside.
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: He's like I did wrong.
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: He said I understand that.
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: Yep, you showed me how to do right.
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: I appreciate that.
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: I'm not gonna let you down the next time.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: So it was fully on in this situation but going through there that's so good and a couple things taylor went through there is is owning the mistake and building some trust.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: The next thing that he did not do yet did do.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: So he did not hide or blame, because both of those create long-term damage.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: So if you hide and don't address the situation, if you blame somebody, else it creates long-term damage and most people's surface level.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: They can't think that deep and they're like, no, I handled it no big deal.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: I explained it to them, yada, yada, yada.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: Well, you explained to them the facts, but how did they go away from that feeling?
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: Did they feel like, hey, I want to do business with them again?
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: Do they feel like I want to come back to that restaurant again?
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: Or they're like, okay, I was wrong, but man, they made me feel like crap, like I was a dummy about it.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, it's again.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: You first talk about this but it but it's a long-term game.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: What do we do there?
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: And then, same thing.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: You know the, the model, accountability, so your team does the same.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: Oh yes, so then your team saw what you did and then you unpacked it right there.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: You train the one person on it, but then our next training session with the rest of the team, you use it as an example.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and that's some of our best training we talk about is in the moment when it's fresh on everybody's mind to use a story and to show them an example.
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: That just happens, so it'll stick in their brain yeah, that, I mean, that's the same thing of that restaurant of cooking the steak, like the whole operation was not wrong.
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: The consumer just didn't fully understand what they needed to order, because everyone prepares something a little differently.
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: Right, they're not looking up, uh, I don't know what the the high-end google is for restaurants where they're not looking at the certification level of this temperature in this bacon, uh, but it's, it's so important and, using those examples, and I think it's really important to be very vulnerable in showing your accountability of, hey, here's something that we worked on and this is what I said we were going to do, and I failed because it did not play out like I thought it would.
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: And so, if you guys are okay with forgiving me, here's what I'd like to try this time.
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: Can you guys get behind me?
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: I'm going to pilot it first.
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: I've actually been working on it for two weeks over here.
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: I fully feel like we've vetted and most of the kinks are worked out and I need your guys to help bring it to market and make sure that.
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: But I have failed and I apologize.
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: I led you into that direction and the vulnerability in the accountability that you're holding yourself accountable in front of all the people.
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: Then they realize when you hold them accountable they're not like well, what the heck Don't you think I'm good at my job?
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: It's like no, I think you are.
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: It's like I was going over with our parts manager this morning.
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: I was like hey, here's how we rank here, here and here.
• 35:49
  Speaker 4: He's like yeah, we're pretty good in a lot of those areas and I was like you're doing amazing I said I apologize.
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: I'm not always the best at you know, I tell that to my wife.
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: Last night I'm sugarcoating things.
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: I said, no, no, you're doing amazing, I'm just thinking there's more opportunity and he was like right on, you know he's like I'll always try for more right.
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and so it's one of those things of just having vulnerability and your accountability knowing that it's across I'm gonna say that I have all these things I'm talking about.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: I haven't been the best, and, especially early on in my career is that when I was not patient, I felt like I was attacked by maybe a customer, an employee, and I needed to defend what the rules were.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: There's been times that I've called a customer back and said I just need to call and apologize to you.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: I didn't handle that situation correctly.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: You're really a valuable customer to ours and I really respect you and I thank you for your business and I just want to apologize to you on how I handled that, and some people are like you did what I'm in the longterm game.
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's never been somebody.
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: You know the thousands of times that we're blessed Michael Jordan, 9,000 missed shots.
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: We're blessed with thousands of different times that something's messed up right where it wasn't prepared to the level that they thought.
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: And every time that we can remove responsibility, take that responsibility.
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: Like I remember one year for Halloween, taylor was dressed up asansas city chiefs uh fan with a full headdress and his face was painted.
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: His customer was trying so hard to be so mad and he's like can you be serious?
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: The customer was like, can you please be serious?
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: Like I'm trying to do this you got.
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: And he's like sir, have we not, uh, exceeded your expectations?
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: like yeah, but I'm trying to get a better deal.
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: He's like, sir, have we not exceeded your expectations?
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: He's like, yeah, but I'm trying to get a better deal.
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: He's like, sir, are we not delivering an experience?
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: He's like, yes, this is great, like this is so simple and easy.
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: He's like why are you upset?
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: He's like I don't know, I'm just trying to be upset, but I can't because you guys are over the top taking responsibility for all things, and there wasn't a problem, he was just wanting to back and forth, and back and forth, sure, and there's never been a customer who's like you know what?
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: We've had people that are like no, I want you to argue with me, but you're like oh my gosh, I can't believe how nice you are about this, after they just MF'd you and after they just Sucked you right in the on hey, I apologize, you know I would be way more upset than you were.
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: I'd probably drive a car through the front door and you're like what?
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: Once, then, and we talk about that verbiage now, but once we learn that verbiage of just taking that pressure off and apologizing first, you started seeing it.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: It sounds goofy, as can be at first, and some people were so hung on right versus wrong.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: They are but once you do it, it opens up this world, and once you apologize to somebody and say I apologize, I take full responsibility for that.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: In fact, I want to thank you for being so calm about this situation.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: I would even be more upset.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: It lowers that down and then you can start moving.
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: It's so ingrained into our brain.
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: I'm not kidding.
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: We were with some friends out the other night and they were talking about we talk about things all the time and I think it's just natural.
• 39:08
  Speaker 4: We talk about how our wives are like, can you be real and not be positive, like I don't care if the kid's hand's cut off, we're going to fix it and it's going to be okay.
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: It's going to be okay, I'm not going to.
• 39:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, at least he's still alive.
• 39:24
  Speaker 4: So the positive side of it going through it.
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: But they were talking about HR.
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: That is like, oh, I just always have this one, this person's so negative and I said, hey, try this whenever you do it.
• 39:29
  Speaker 4: Next time you need to step back and say, hey, I apologize so much for the treatment.
• 39:35
  Speaker 4: I'd have been so much more mad than you had.
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: She said, but I probably wouldn't have.
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: I said it doesn't matter and I went through people outside of this whole circle.
• 39:47
  Speaker 4: We think it's so normal, it's not and it is so deadly strong to be able to step back, say these couple little things that we think is so normal.
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: But but no one's ever heard it before.
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: No, that's good.
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: It makes it easy to win there, absolutely.
• 40:04
  Speaker 4: Well rolling into the Myth Buster segment.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: It's back, here we go it's back better than ever.
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: A myth great leaders don't fail.
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: They just win differently.
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: I like that.
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: Okay, you know Okay.
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: So that's the myth.
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: Great, I like that.
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: Okay, you know Okay.
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: So that's the myth yeah that's the myth, don't fail.
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: So the winners, the people that are killing it.
• 40:22
  Speaker 4: They just win differently.
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: They just win differently.
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: That's like I don't know.
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: That's just saying like they never fail and there's never any setbacks, or they don't have to step back and they just always win.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: Now, I like that optimism there.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: Okay for being a positive person.
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: But we've got to look at the myth itself.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: Okay, the facts of it.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: The great leaders don't fail.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: It's like the great leaders don't fail and I think we've already kind of talked about that through the sports analogies and the Walt Disney, steve Jobs and all the rest of that.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: I've got to go with busted on that one.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's.
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, go with busted on that one.
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's.
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you're busted.
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: Even the best leaders fall short.
• 41:02
  Speaker 4: They just don't hide from it.
• 41:03
  Speaker 4: Real leadership is built on scars, not perfection.
• 41:04
  Speaker 4: I like it, you have those battle scars in there.
• 41:07
  Speaker 4: Plenty of them that'll go in there.
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: Hey, roll into the next segment.
• 41:11
  Speaker 4: We've talked about owning it, being in the middle of it, but this is so important to go off of, so failing the same way twice now.
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: Now that's the problem.
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: That's what really starts to hammer down on a lot of different situations.
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: I think that goes back to what we started with on when there is a failure, you come up short from your goal, what you do with it.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: Yes, you know, we don't just buy everybody donuts and orange juice and talk to them about what the rest of the region did and said, well, if the whole industry is down, y'all are OK, you did good, you know it's not your fault.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: That will equal failing twice in the same area.
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: If you take the failure and you sit down and you say and you unpack it and you figure out what we could have done better to prevent it from happening the next time, you never, don't ever, miss the opportunity of a failure to catapult you to the next level you want to go to yeah, you fully unpack that.
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: It's kind of like shame on, shame on me, fool me once.
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, right.
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: So it's okay to fail one time, but unpack it, yep.
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: Why did we fail?
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: Was it a failure in process?
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: Was it a failure in people?
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: Was it a failure in execution?
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: Yep, you know, generally it's going to be one of those three things, and then learn from it and so then teach on it with your meetings, create new processes or procedures, adjust roles and responsibilities or any of those tasks, and then you can say hey, and you're going to have to follow up with it a lot.
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: You are Right, Because it's going to be the trend that they say, hey, I just looked it up and the customer's like, you never called me back and you're like, oh look, I called you nine times.
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: You're the idiot.
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: You know it's like well, that doesn't work.
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: It goes like number here it's going to be xxxxx, and they're like yeah, I was like you know, let me update my records, I think something was off there.
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: Let me go ahead and shoot you a text, verify that you got it.
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: You bet.
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: And they're like yeah, I got it.
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: It's like okay, perfect.
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: Well, here's what I'm gonna do.
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna send you an update here and by noon I'm gonna set myself a reminder and I'm gonna follow back up with you and you're gonna have to do that constantly.
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: And let me give you a quick example, because I like stories rather than just talking about random things.
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: When we opened this dealership, one of the things that we created was our automatic car wash, and I heavily negotiated the lease on it to have an astronomically high this is inside tips an astronomically high wash total usage per month.
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: It was way higher than we ever thought we needed, but I thought I knew, if I negotiated up front, that we'd be okay rather than have to ask for permission and forgiveness after the fact.
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: So if we blew past it, I knew they'd charge us more.
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: So then I said every single customer that comes through here gets a car wash offered and no charge, complimentary, going to take an additional two to three minutes and they get to leave here with a clean car, because I know it's a better experience.
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: There's no hidden fees, it is a compliment.
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: And then we threw it to sales that you could wash anybody's car you wanted that.
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: It became like a club, because there's car washes everywhere.
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: People like clean cars, right, and so stay in the art facility.
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: But what I saw was it was not part of their normal habit, because we just came from the dinosaur that didn't have automatic car wash.
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: I was like what the heck that didn't have automatic car wash.
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: I was like what the heck, why aren't they offering this free service?
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: And it was just another step that they had to take, but they weren't doing it.
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: So then I created the accountability and a decal that I put on the windshields of the cars, that I had them put on the windshields so we could spot check.
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: And so then I would quickly run through service, especially the oil change area, and I could look like, hey, lower that down, let me look at that like, has a car wash, doesn't, doesn't, doesn't.
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: And so then I run back inside and I was like, hey, who's working on the explorer out there?
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: Like, oh, that's me.
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: It's like perfect.
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: Whose car is that it's?
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: Mrs smith is like is she here?
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: Like, yeah, she's here, no, she's not here either way.
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: So, hey, let's go talk to her real quick.
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: And they knew what was coming right, but I'd created the process, we had fully gone through it.
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: Why wouldn't we do that?
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: We have the car wash, we have the washes in place.
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: We get to deliver a higher level experience.
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: So then I say hey, mrs smith, hey, I apologize, I didn't.
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: I wasn't able to greet you.
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: I'm saying, larry, do your job I'm not saying it that way, I'm not saying larry failed yeah saying hey, mrs smith, I apologize, I wasn't able to greet you when you came in and new thing that we just rolled out.
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: We've been doing it for a year now.
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: A new thing we just rolled out is our VIP complimentary car wash club.
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: This sticker here.
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: If you're okay with it, I want to go ahead and put it in the corner, knowing that you're okay with any time you're here that we'll go ahead and wash your car for you without even have to ask you.
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: Would you be okay if we wash your car for you for free today and put this lifetime membership on there?
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: And what does she say every time?
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: yeah, put it right by the seven bro sticker.
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: Right, I'm in, put me in there and they'll even say, well, I got a car wash things, like well, it's okay if we wash it too for you, isn't it like yep.
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: And so then I have the person beside me who should have asked that question and I go back and like hey, I go back.
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: I'm like hey, do you have enough stickers?
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, got the stickers.
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: Like okay, were you the one that wrote it up?
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: Yes, I wrote it up.
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: Okay, do you have any questions of why we should or shouldn't have done that?
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: No, I'm good.
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: It's like okay.
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: Do you need anything else from me to help make sure that you do that every single time without fail, no exception?
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: No, I'm good.
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: It's like okay, perfect, I'll be back next week to check on it again.
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: That's right, pressure from the customer.
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: You didn't dog cuss these people, but you're gonna.
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: I still have to do that.
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: Yesterday I was through there just double checking stickers you have to and it's just one of those things like learn from your the failures and then create a process that allows failure to be less of an option and you gotta, you gotta, come to grips with that is.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: That's something that you're gonna have to continue to manage that's one of the managers and coaches.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: That's why I mean, in even sports team, you'll never see them show up for the game without any coaches they got a lot of coaches, you know, they got a lot of coaches seeing it from different angles that's right and making adjustments.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: Um, I think at the core here, what we're talking about is not failing the same way twice.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: So you're you're a fool if you think that if you don't address an issue and unpack it, that it's going to fix itself.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: It's just going to keep failing and you're going to blame it on everybody else.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: You have to take time and unpack it.
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: Which is not easy.
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: It's not easy, it's confrontational.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: It's not easy, but let me give you a couple tips on that.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought that up.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: So when you set everybody down a management team you're not sitting the whole dealership down to unpack this, but you've got three, four, five, six people in the room.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: The first thing I want you to talk about so you can put your team's mind at ease are the wins you had, like what let's first talk about, because even in the biggest failure there were some wins in there, and you don't ever want to not recognize those wins.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: So you bring the wins out and then you maybe go around the table and say, hey, share with me somebody or something that was a win in your department the month, and then everybody gets to talk and then you start talking because, okay, the walls come down.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: Then you start talking about here's what happens we fell short of our goal, we fell short of these surveys that came back in.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: What are some ideas we can do to prevent it from happening in the future?
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: The other piece I want to talk about there too and I'll tell department managers about this in our manager meeting if they didn't hit their goal whether it's a sales goal or a service goal let's talk about those two, I said hey guys, but before you just absolutely come down on everybody, there is somebody that exceeded their sales goal, there's a technician that passed their hours turned goal.
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: You go find them, even though you didn't hit your goal, and thank them and tell them great job last month, because if you don't guess what happens to them, they're like nobody even noticed.
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: They're like hey, I overperformed, I can't control that.
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: Other people didn't overperform.
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: No one even noticed.
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: We all got whipped.
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: Now we all go to work saturdays yeah, why should?
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: I have to do that.
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: When I busted it, yeah, I was pulling the whole load, so if you miss that, you will run good people off.
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: So always put yourself to the side for a second and identify those that did win, even if your entire business didn't win, and go thank and congratulate them.
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: And they should not be in the same meeting as everybody else that didn't achieve their goal.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: Don't drag them through the mud.
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: That's so good.
• 49:18
  Speaker 4: Just remember, failure is a teacher, but only if you actually learn from it.
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: That's right.
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: You have to learn from your failure and don't let it happen again.
• 49:27
  Speaker 4: So yeah, so, so very good.
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: There, hey time for some frequently asked questions.
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: Have you got anything good?
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: What is one leadership fail?
• 49:36
  Speaker 4: You've had to learn the hard way, like crash and burn style.
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: Let me tell you like a few of them yeah, there's plenty of them, not keeping track of all of them uh, learning on the processes and really focusing on that.
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: But matt was talking about it.
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: Uh, I'm gonna say early on in my career and I've gotten better at it, I don't like confrontation.
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: I know right from wrong, I know what needs to be done, and so initially I wouldn't always take it out of my brain and my thoughts of how we could have done better what was supposed to be done, and go to the people that are driving that department or that ship and say, hey, this, this, this, this, this and this here's kind of what I'm looking at.
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: What's your thoughts?
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: Here's what the goal was.
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: Here's where we ended up at.
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: These people didn't generate any income.
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: What's going on here?
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: I didn't fully.
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: I would beat myself up of going through that and how to make it better, but I would not take the time and go and confront the issue and say, hey, do you need help?
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: Do you need some more structure?
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: Do you need help moving through some people, whatever it may be?
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: I would just assume that, dadgummit, I can fix this without communicating with them.
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: You fell short.
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: You weren't here when you're supposed to be here.
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: You didn't do what you said you were going to do.
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: You know all those things just early on.
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: Confrontation, confrontation is still not my thing, but I've just very quickly learning business is business and if I come to you, it's not because I don't like you and it's not because I want to fire you and it's not because any of those things.
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: It's just because I've been hired to manage you and you've been hired to manage this and this isn't doing what needs to be done.
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: And so figuring that out, of just how to properly confront that and have success and learn from that failure.
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: That's good, that's something I've struggled with for a long time to keep working on.
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I kind of talked about mine earlier.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: You know where I've crashed and burned on.
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: You know whether it may be overreacting to a situation, or we talked about marketing, or the store just lost money.
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what I mean?
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: The store just.
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: I mean you want to talk about crash and burn.
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: Nothing's worse than crash and burn when you work a million hours and paid everybody else out in the dealership and then the other business owners out there, they're gonna, they're gonna resonate with us.
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: You might be chuckling.
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: It's like hey, you look up and you made less than anybody else in your business because it didn't make any money.
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: You know, um, and you talk about crashing and burning.
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: You just got to recalibrate and that's a tricky thing that you're generally usually almost always in your own boat.
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, right like you're all in the same boat and then somehow you got it's like, hey, I'm gonna go down with the ship, yeah, right, like you put air belts and lifeboats and you're like I'm gonna go down with a ship and, unlike everyone watching you go down on the ship, they generally don't know that's behind enemy lines, uh, and it doesn't help if you share with the team, like, hey, well, jack wagon, figure it out.
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: You made twice as much as I did last month, you know that doesn't solve anything but what you can do is refocus on that.
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: It's like, hey, let's dissect, let's hyper dissect your department, yes, and let's off anything extra that we don't need like.
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: I think that's important and I think if you ask any of the managers, I don't know that they could tell you which month we lost money in, because I never had a meeting and said hey, just to let everybody know, we lost money last month and y'all got paid more than I did.
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: So fix it.
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: That wasn't the leadership style.
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: That's not how you unpack it when you crash and burn.
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: You get back up, dust yourself off and figure out how to improve on it, absolutely.
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it becomes a new challenge and it's like, okay, let's figure out how to win here, because you put so much effort, you know, you figure out what your break-even number is and everyone else just sees it like the people who don't see it think you're making good jillions.
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and the people that you come across that are closest to you think you're just rolling in the deep.
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and because they look at what they've made and they're like, if I've made this, they had to have made, yeah.
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: And then the people close to you, like in the dealership.
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: They're like well, you generated 1.2 million dollars in income and they have no clue what the expenses are expenses 1.3.
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: They didn't see the expenses 1.3 or 1.4 million and they're just like oh gosh, they just made 1.4 million.
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: And they're just like oh gosh, they just made $1.2 million.
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: We just got everything for free and didn't pay everybody.
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: Hang on, Harry and Larry.
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: Listen, but you're not going to.
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: You know, at certain levels you're not going to hear that the CEO of you know Boeing is not going to say well, our import tariffs are just astronomical.
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: Now, if they're public, they do have to share that.
• 54:15
  Speaker 4: Even if you did, they still wouldn't understand.
• 54:18
  Speaker 4: They wouldn't believe you, they wouldn't believe you.
• 54:21
  Speaker 4: So a whole lot of good things rolling through there.
• 54:23
  Speaker 4: Make sure always check us out at lewissuperstorecom and go to crossroadsconversationpodcastcom.
• 54:29
  Speaker 4: Hit like, hit, subscribe and give us some content feedback there of what we can cover to be able to do in the future.
• 54:39
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• 54:42
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• 54:43
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• 54:45
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• 54:48
  Speaker 2: Tell us about the automotive industry, family business in general.
• 54:51
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• 54:52
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• 54:56
  Speaker 2: But make sure you tune in next time where we bring in another guest and