Five Monkeys (Service Drive Revolution Drive By)

Foreign.

Welcome to your Friday drive by on service Drive revolution. I'm giving you a little something to think about over the weekend. Some food for thought and some inspiration. You're really going to want to pay attention to this one and take some notes. So what I was thinking about the other day is I have a unique skill set because most of my career I went into dealerships and turned them around. And oftentimes in very extreme situations when they were losing money. And if a dealership's losing a lot of money, it means that a lot of the people probably aren't the right people or they're not trained. The culture is bad, the pay plans, the customers hate them. Like, you got to fix a lot of stuff really, really quick, and you don't have an opportunity to make a lot of excuses. You have to succeed no matter what. And so I've developed a unique skill set and a unique way of looking at things because of that experience. And I wanna share a little bit of that with you today. Now, in the environment that we are in as an industry with COVID and if you're in a dealership, your sales department was probably closed down. And even when it reopened, they're kind of limited on how they can interact with customers and sell. Some dealerships don't have inventory to sell. And so it's a unique time with a lot of challenges. And it requires us to be really, really good leaders and think different. And it's catching a lot of people off guard that kind of always thought the same and were a part of the herd. And most of their skill set came from tribal knowledge and was handed down. And also a tendency in these situations is sometimes we tend to look at everybody else around us to see what they're doing instead of blazing a path and leading from the front. And that's really what I want to talk about today. And it's this experiment called the five monkey experiment. And it's really, honestly hilarious if you think about it. But it's so true and it resonates in so many ways. So they did this study on monkeys, and they put five monkeys in a cage with a ladder, and at the top of the ladder were bananas. A basket of bananas. Now, what could you want, if you're a monkey, more than a banana? That's like an Irishman wanting whiskey or a bulldog wanting snacks. Like, there's nothing you want more than a banana if you're a cheeky monkey. So the trick was, as soon as a monkey started to climb the ladder to get to the Bananas. They would spray all the monkeys with water and scare the living crap out of them. And so what would happen over time is if a monkey started to go up the ladder, all the other monkeys would jump on that monkey and pull him down and beat him and fight because they didn't want to get sprayed. And the consequences of getting sprayed with the cold water was worse than the idea that they could get a banana. And they were like, wow, that's really interesting that they're like, you know, it's like locker room management. They're managing themselves and they're keeping each other from going up the ladder. And they were like, well, what would happen if we swapped out the monkeys? And so that's what they did. They swapped one monkey out for a new monkey that had never been sprayed with water. And as soon as the new monkey tried to go up the ladder to get to a banana, because he's like, hey, I'm a monkey. That's a banana. This is what I do. I'm getting a banana. The other monkeys jumped on him and beat him and didn't let him go up. And eventually they swapped out all five of the original monkeys, and the five monkeys that were in the pen were completely new. So they'd never been sprayed, but they had adopted the culture of, you don't climb up the ladder to get the bananas because everybody will beat you and jump on you. And that's how tribal knowledge works, is it becomes everybody else's fear, their anxiety, their terrible leadership skills become the culture. If you think about just humans in general, and you think about average. So if there's 1,000 people.

50% of people, in just about any situation, any hierarchy of performance.

Just talk about wealth. For example, 50% of people are broke. They're broke. And, you know, you get down to the bottom 10%, they're beyond broke. But out of a thousand people, if you take them and average them out just randomly, 50% of them are going to be broke right? Now, just think about the next 20%. So now we go 70%. So the 20% over 50%, they're just above broke, right? And that's kind of how performance is. That's how leadership is. If you take a thousand leaders, 50% of the leaders are terrible. The other 20% are just okay if barely getting by. And you're going to have your top 1% and your top kind of 10, 15% that are actually real leaders, you're going to have. Same thing with performance, with wealth, with anything. It's just how human nature Works so that five monkey culture ends up being average people are average people are always trying to pull you down to average. So if you're looking around for guidance and you're looking for everybody else around, well, there's a pretty good chance that everybody else that you're looking to is a terrible performer. I, I remember when I ran a dealership and on Mondays when we'd have a bad weekend, the sales managers would call around to everybody else in the auto mall or everybody, all the other BMW dealerships in town and they'd be like, oh, well, they, they had a terrible weekend too. And they did. And they would just be looking for justification, justification for our terrible performance. And that's the five monkey experiment to a T. It's the same thing like if you hire a porter and the porter goes out there with another five car washers and he starts washing cars and vacuuming and really going at it because he's new on the job and he's super excited, the other ones around them are going to be like, hey, slow down, you're making us look bad. Your union leader is going to talk to you like, hey, you know, we don't, we don't need to be that aggressive. We don't need to perform to that level. Slow, slow down. That's, that's what happens. It's human nature what happens. And so I'm going to give you some tools that help you avoid being one of the five monkeys and being a part of that culture. And I want you to get the banana. I'm going to teach you how to get the banana, right? And so the first one is you have to step back and look at the outcome. Not the emotions and not the words. Don't listen to the words. And don't.

Just look at the outcome of somebody's performance, right? If they're performing and they're leading the pack, they're the best in the country at something, they're performing at a very high level. Then start to listen to their words. But oftentimes if I would go into a dealership that was losing money, the people that talked the most and were the most opinionated, were the least helpful, the most clueless and the biggest waste of time. And I'm sure you can relate to that. So I remember my very, very last 20 group meeting that I attended when I was running that BMW store. There was this guy, literally he was in the New York, New Jersey area running. He was a, he was a son in law. He wasn't even, he was a son in Law and the dealer said, hey, you know, run this BMW store and join a 20 grid. But he didn't know what he was doing. He. So we're number one in the country. We were the most profitable one in the 20 group composite. And we did, you know, we did an overall pretty good job. We cared. We were always getting better. We had a great team. He's in last place and he's losing money like you own a BMW dealership in that area. It's like a license to print money. He was losing money and he was lecturing me for 45 minutes in the 20 group meeting in front of everybody about my new car pay plans. Now I'm number one in the country and new car sales and my gross profit per car is $500 more than anybody in my market. And in fact, I think our region. And he's lecturing me on my new car pay plans because he thinks he had a better pay plan. Avoid those kind of people, right? Those are the ones. They love to talk, they love to tell you their opinion. They're an expert on everything, and they're very convincing. But the outcome of what they do is zero. Settle. They have no results. So pay attention. Step back from the emotion, step back from what everybody else is doing. Step back from the politics, and just pay attention to the outcome of somebody's performance, the outcome of their actions. Are they wildly successful or are they not? Right. Most of the time you will find that the people that are the most successful are the quietest ones that have the least amount to say. Because one of the tricks to being successful is to shut up and ask questions and listen. Everybody I know that's really successful listens. They ask questions. They're curious. They want to. They want to know how to get better. They're not the ones at the front of the room talking, right? So that's number one. Number two, and accept them. That isn't the game. The game is you want people to like and accept you because you get things done, because you're a performer, because you listen to, because you're ethical, you're fair. Because you show up every day and set the tone. You work hard. That's what you want. You don't want to be a part of the crowd. You want to be out in front. You want to be the leader. You want to be setting the tone. So when everybody else says it can't be done, it can be done. You don't want to be one of the five monkeys, right? The next one is you want to focus on what you can control. Oftentimes, that first example where I said, the guys that they're the experts on everything, they talk about everything, those also are the guys or gals that talk about everything that can't happen. It's the market, it's this. We're a victim of that. But meanwhile, right in front of them, customers aren't getting helped. Phones aren't getting answered. There's no system in place. There's a million things that are in their control that they're not doing right.

And the other one, they'll be the ones that'll say, I don't know. That's just how we've always done it here. That's not their responsibility. Results aren't their responsibility because they're just here doing the best they can. But that's how we've always done it. We've always underperformed here, basically, is what they're saying. So you have to focus on the things that you can control. When you start focusing on the things that you can control, you start to realize that the opportunity is untapped. It's huge, right? And then this is the last one. You start to see your full potential and stop following what everybody else says, the Five Monkeys. And think. Just think for a minute, sit by yourself with a cup of coffee in the quiet for a minute and go, what's the full potential here? In this business.

It'S probably pretty big.

But the Five Monkeys beat the crap out of you every time you go up the ladder. And so you've given up on having the banana, but you can have the banana. You got to get away from the Five Monkeys. You got to be your own person. There's my favorite book title ever, and it's probably not a book any of you want to read, but it's also actually one of my favorite books. It's called the Blind man in the Dark Room Looking for a Black Cat that isn't there. The blind man in the Dark Room looking for the black cat that isn't there. And that's what it's like. So think about that. Make a decision to lead from the front in these times. Don't be one of the five Monkeys. Don't buy into that culture. You can have the banana. There's still people in this environment performing at a very high level, having record months. I don't know how many calls I've been on in the last week where our clients had one record months. They blew the previous records away. And I keep reading in the paper and hearing, oh, it's terrible. The industry's terrible. Well, it's not. The opportunity of a lifetime comes once a day and it's everywhere. Don't be one of the five monkeys. And do me a favor, stay tuned and watch this preview of what's coming up next week on Service Tribe Revolution.

Next week on Service Drive Revolution. Monday Monday Monday. It's the battle of a century. The shop showdown.

I really feel like you stacked this against me.

Dealerships versus independent shops. Who has the advantage?

We have bicycles. We have scooters. We have tricycles. We have red wagons.

Who will win the fight for supremacy?

Let me even just kick you in the cojones one more time.

Find out the answer only on this special two part Service Drive Revolution event.

That's pretty good. Thanks for watching this episode of Service Drive Revolutions Drive By. I hope it gives you something to think about over the weekend and inspires some new ideas and hopefully some new results. If you have any questions for the big show, go ahead and post them below in the comments. We'll be looking out for them and we'll answer them on the show. Make sure you subscribe and hit the bell icon so you're notified when you when we post new episodes. I'm Chris Collins and you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Chris Bulldog Collins and I'll see you again on the next episode.