This is a transcript of an episode of the Independent Dealer Podcast (YouTube) featuring hosts Jeff Watson and Luke Godwin interviewing Chris Collins, an author and consultant known for helping fix businesses. Collins introduces himself (mentions authoring multiple books including one titled Gamification and his upcoming NIADA 2021 keynote), emphasizes his passion for solving hard business problems, and highlights psychology—particularly ego and people dynamics—as central to improving dealerships and other businesses. The tone mixes practical consulting insight with light humor.
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Foreign.
Welcome to the Independent Dealer Podcast with hosts Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson. A podcast by dealers for dealers. Here we go.
Hello and welcome to this episode of the Independent Dealer Podcast. Luke. Today we have got an amazing, amazing guest. He's an upcoming keynote speaker at NIADA 2021. Mr. Chris Collins.
Yeah, it's an amazing guy to get on the Independent Dealer podcast. We're super excited. Chris, please introduce yourself to the independent dealer community.
I am Chris Collins and I'm a beard model. How about that? Beautiful. I'm gonna just show up and I'm just gonna stroke my beard and then I start to have really good ideas after I do that for a couple minutes though. So I mean, I'm Chris Collins. I've, I've written numerous books, mostly in automotive, but I have one book that is for general business called Gamification that still sells really well on Amazon. But my passion in life is fixing stuff. From a very early age I went around and was fixing car dealerships and I got addicted to fixing stuff. I get bored when things are fixed. I like to solve problems. The harder and more impossible, the more fun for me to do it. And so I've fixed everything from doctor's offices to car dealerships and a lot of things in between. When you talk about fixing businesses, probably the most important part of it is psychology. It has very little to do with numbers. Warren Buffet says numbers are easy. It's the people that complicate everything. And I find that to be very true. In fact, years ago when I was single, I dated a shrink and she said that I knew more about psychology than she would ever know because of the automotive industry and what, what you know, the people have dealt with. But yeah, I'd love to fix stuff. The harder the problem, the more excited I get.
Well, it seems like in automotive we have plenty of hard problems and stubborn people to fix. Is it any worse to try fix car dealers than it is doctors?
No, no, they're the, I mean you're just, you're talking about in those situations. The first thing that popped in my mind was ego.
When you talk about dealers, when you talk about any entrepreneur.
That is, you know, really has it on the line most of the time there's, there's an ego involved because it takes a certain ego to believe that you can go out and start something from nothing. You know, there's, there's a lot to that and you have a lot on the line. So you, you have to have some sort of self esteem and ego. So most of the time. Ego is. Is a part of what we're managing, Right?
Sure. And so much. And dealers especially we're guilty of this is we think we know how to do it perfectly. We've been at it for 15 years. Or Grandpappy's been at it since he was a kid and passed all of his great, horrible, you know, ideologies down to us. And we just think we know exactly how to do it. And we don't always reach out for help. You know, we don't look around at the guys around us that are doing it different or better right now. Chris, I hope you'd be able to figure out how to solve some of our problems. Like, you know, we got problems with inventory.
