Getting To Know Chris Collins | SDR #196

Welcome, everybody, to this edition of Service Drive Revolution. Our final broadcast from our offices at 1010 Wilshire. We're going to be moving to new offices. And so. Christian. Christian.

Hello.

Everyone had the idea that we were going to answer a series of questions and it goes pretty deep. We drink a little tequila and we have a great conversation. So that's what's coming up next on Service Drive Revol.

Working for you. I always got asked, I'm like, do you know Chris? And I always thought that was so interesting that. Yeah, yes, I do. He hired me, I came over and I interviewed him. Flip flops and like all that stuff, right? And the.

Yeah, that happened in this building.

It happened in this building. Patricia was right up there swearing at me and I didn't even know her yet. But I.

So many great memories here. But the thing that that kind of sparked was one is I kind of want to talk today about maybe what it's like as we kind of close this door and open up the new one at the new building. And there's really just kind of like an overwhelming, like, who is Chris Collins? Thing that happens sometimes out in the field that I think that just this episode is like, I want to peel it back a little bit and I've got kind of a pile of questions that, that I had more, but I pulled them back and I think that maybe we just kind of take this time and let's reflect on like what we, what we've done here, what we've accomplished in this building, and then talking about what happens next and then let people get to know you a little bit.

Yeah, I think too.

People don't understand what a tight knit group we really are. Like when people ask Vicki that, like, you know, do you talk to Chris or whatever, how close we really are, it's kind of funny.

In that sense. And also I know if you're listening to this and you're like, hey, just can you teach me how to do walk around or whatever. Like, for us this is, you know, it's kind of sentimental because we've been in this building. I mean, just the other day when I was speaking in Arizona, there were two different people came up to me and said, oh, I've been to your office and did a boot camp or. But we've had so many people come through here. We've made so many friends, we've smoked so many cigars, drank tons of tequila.

Some of the weirdest things ever have happened here.

Gosh. I mean, I just. Some of the events themselves, like the way that the.

See, when you said weirdest things, I instantly thought about the wine stain.

Okay, that's not what I thought about, but I can't wait.

What is the weirdest thing you think?

The weirdest thing to me was? We were sitting in your office and.

Having, like, a prep meeting for, like, a quarterly, and all of a sudden, out of the sky.

No, no, we were doing a boot camp.

No, we were in that office.

Are you talking about the rain and green? Yeah, yeah, we were in 101. We were about to start the boot camp.

Yeah, but there were clients here.

There were clients in that room.

Yeah, yeah. And yeah, big, big piles of marijuana just started falling from the sky.

We have a picture of that. It was a huge. I don't know how many pounds of marijuana was that?

There's probably still some in a wood chipper somewhere. Yeah, I guess, like, it just went on forever. But the wine stain. Yeah.

So there's a mysterious wine stain from when.

One of our coaches used to stay here on the ceiling. Well, it's a stain. We're assuming it's wine. We never confirmed that.

I can only hope. Yeah, it's wine.

Yeah. So we've had some fun. Okay, let's get to the questions.

All right, so.

So I poured myself a little tequila to kind of put myself in the mood.

Yeah, this is good. So the first question I think that we probably all get, that we get asked, I would say, just universally, how many dogs do you really have?

4. So there's Lola and Bacon, which are the original. And then Lola was bred not with bacon, with somebody else. And she had five puppies, and I kept two of the puppies. So Tequila and Olivia are the puppies, and they are from. From Lola.

Wonderful. Yep. And they. They're a good looking crew. I think that. That.

Yeah, they're. They're. They're fun dogs.

Yep. All right. Ready for another one? You. You got that one correct, by the way.

There's a right or wrong. You're gonna be grading my answers.

I might be. And I was also gonna tell you too, just because that story about the. The weed coming down from the sky. So, you know, you know me like I'm in California, but I don't necessarily participate in, like, that kind of. That culture. And I don't always roll joints, but when I do, it's typically my ankle.

You like that one? Yeah, I thought you might. The next question that I've got for you is, and you might have to give a little bit of a backstory to this too. But what lessons did you learn from your time in the art world?

Oh, in the art world, yes, because.

It'S definitely its own thing.

So, yeah, people probably don't know that for a while. Even when I was doing this, I was doing bulldog paintings, and I was in a bunch of galleries.

I had a couple art shows. I was on Howard Stern because I was the official artist of Beth Stern's Bulldog rescue event. I think I did that a couple times.

And it got to the point where the art was.

Becoming a job in the sense that people were depending on it. I had, you know, deadlines and stuff like that. I had galleries that were giving, you know, that were giving me space in their galleries, and they would. The thing that would sell the most was commission. So I would go into a weekend and have two or three commissions.

And it just, you know, it just wasn't fun. And I wasn't going to. I wasn't going to scale that at the time. I just kind of would have had to have committed to it to make it go.

And I just enjoyed it more as a fun thing. I didn't really ever think of it as a career. Actually, looking back on that, I don't know if that.

Was the right decision. I'm not sure. But what did I learn from it?

Yeah.

Well, one thing is that marketing.

Is probably the most important thing in the sense that I was, you know, I was doing a niche, and it was bulldogs, and I was the bulldog artist. And, like, even the Wall Street Journal did a piece on me, and the guy asked me, like, oh, would you paint my lab? And I'm like, I only paint bulldogs. And he's like, for any amount of money, would you paint a lab? And I kind of, like, as a joke, said, no. But that kind of became the thing. Like, I was the guy that just painted bulldogs, and, you know, they were happy and kind of fun. They were easy to look at and digest and poppy, you know. And so.

I think it's the same thing with dealerships or service departments or anything is like, you know, you want a niche and really understand your customer. But if you have a Subaru, you know, like, the best thing to do with a Subaru service drive is put in a dog wash, because they all have dogs. Or if you have a Jeep dealership, you want to, you know, you want to accessorize and have tons of options around for them to personalize and that sort of thing. So really understanding your client and then marketing to them and marketing becomes the most important thing, because many times, like, I was keenly aware that I wasn't the best artist, but I was selling way more than artists that were better than me because I understood marketing.

Yeah, that's good. Well, I think that the Stern thing was a huge propeller for you. Yeah.

But I manufactured that.

Yeah. That you recognize that Beth was a way to get more publicity and being in galleries in New York would make sense for an artist. Yeah.

And the, you know, the thing they wanted to do with me next because I was in galleries like Florida, New York, Denver, like more kind of Hawaii. More like.

Kind of touristy areas or whatever. The one thing that everybody on my team believed is that I would sell a lot more in Japan and in Germany, and they wanted me to open galleries there. And that would have been the next thing was for me to open my own galleries, too.

But, yeah, marketing, I think, in a sense, is maybe one of the most important skills. Knowing who your client is and then going right after it. Yeah.

The more you do this and the more you get to see more businesses, is there one that you found yet? That marketing isn't the linchpin?

If you think about business in the sense that what business is ultimately is solving a problem, no matter how big the problem is, you solve most of the time, you can't scale a business. Just word of mouth.

So you're gonna have to have.

Some sort of ability to market. Like, word of mouth is. Okay. Like, for example, our company. Right. We. We were word of mouth for a long time because we couldn't handle the volume.

That's right.

But when you start to scale, then. Then marketing becomes more important. And in a sense, our best marketing is a show.

Yeah. It's got the furthest reach. Yeah.

But it's marketing. Like, we. We are having a conversation with our, you know, our friends, but.

They let us, you know, they let us know, too, if we get off too far from what they want or whatever. We pay attention to that.

Yeah. It's almost instant feedback in a certain way. And I think that the marketing team is doing a good job of deciphering that feedback because it's not direct. Like, that sucked. Right. So there's other things that the marketing team looks at. I think it's fascinating. But I would say that one thing that I'm learning from you and from just the business itself is that marketing is becoming more and more prevalent. This next question is one of my favorites. I think I know the answer, but I can't wait to hear you say this. What is your biggest pet peeve?

Oh, what do you think it is.

When people are late.

Yeah. But what are people saying when they're late? Like what does that tell you about somebody when they're late?

That whatever they're late for is not important. Yeah.

That you're not important.

Yes.

Because you're not late for things that are important.

That's right.

So basically there's two parts to that. Is one, either I'm not important so I need to raise my status with this person or their. What's important to them isn't going to align with what's important to me.

Yeah.

And that in that sense. But.

I would say that, that, that probably is one. But I think people that are super judgy and close minded.

Probably are the hardest to be around. The people that are just set on something and they, they don't want to talk about anything. Like you know, I've said this many times that people say like, oh, don't talk about religion or politics. And I'm always like why? Like you can change my mind. I'm not so set on anything that I don't want to hear what your experience has been, you know.

Yeah.

But most of what.

People catch on to is the absolutes. And I don't know, there's more dualism in things.

Yeah.

And you got to be open to hearing. To me it's more interesting to hear why somebody thinks that or how they got there or what trauma happened or who didn't tell them that they loved them when they were a kid more.

Than what the answer is. I don't know.

So much stuff comes back to trauma and I think that when people put their legs in the sand. But the thing I would say is that your belief on that and trying not to judge the people that are so close minded, they've missed some great conversations in these rooms in the last few years because we don't judge. We're really just trying to understand and see or hear a different perspective. I feel sorry for the people that miss out on that because they have to take their side and, and no matter what anybody says, they can't convince them of otherwise. But that's a good one.

You lose out on a lot if you're absolute.

Yeah. If they don't know it, but they do. Great. Okay. This is kind of cool. And I feel like I might have, I should have prepped you on this, but I didn't. What are five things that you can't live without?

Five things that I can't live without.

So we're going to do we eliminate people because things aren't people, right? Yeah, things.

Let's eliminate people.

So things I can't live without. So I would say my stereo. Vinyl collection.

So music.

Well, the.

The system that I play music on.

Good.

And you know, if you ever come over to my place, I will ruin you for music. Like, I did that to Angel. He texted me in his car and he goes, oh, it's just not the same in my car. Because, you know, if you listen to music on a really good system, it. It has, you know, it almost has a soul to it in a way. It'll affect you way more than just listening to it in your car, I would say. My books. I love my books. One of my favorite things is my books. People ask me how many books I have, and it's gotta be like 10,000 now, at least.

Every day there's new books.

Yeah. And I've got a couple ones lately that I just. I'm. I just can't believe I have them. Like, I'm so excited about books. I love books. They. I feel like books have had such an influence on my life in the sense that you. You feel like you're cheating sometimes because it's like somebody put it in a book, you know, the answer is there.

So, books. What else?

Things. Things.

Three more. You're 40% done.

Things. Well, I love my away bag.

I do too.

My suitcase. So there's this suitcase called in a way that.

I don't know, I've probably bought or we've bought one for almost everybody here.

Yeah, we've bought at least so great. Or nine of them.

But what they have is they're a carry on, but they have the cinch. So you can put clothes in there and then it cinches down.

The clothes. So you can pack like twice as much in there.

Yep. And seven days.

They're well designed. So a lot of times when you would have had to check a bag, you can just walk on and off the plane, which, when you travel as much as we do, not having to wait for your bag is a big deal because it can take 30 minutes.

I was gonna say it's a. It's an hour per trip. Yeah, Right. Cause you don't have to check it and then you don't have to wait for it afterwards. The other thing that I think that's really cool about the bag is I remember when I got mine, I was really worried because it's aluminum on the outside and it's metal, so. Well, as metal travels, it gets dented. And I remember Being really worried about it. But now that they're there, they're battle scars. And I think that that's really, really cool because you've given us all. So just all the coaches have the same bag, but as we travel, it's a badge of honor to have the dented away bag.

But, yeah, I would say my first away probably is almost ready for retirement. It's pretty beat up in the inside. The. The flap thing is broken now.

Oh, yeah. The cardboard thing that goes in there. Okay.

So my away bag. I don't. I wouldn't say that I can't live without it, But I love that Range Rover that I have. It's so funny, too, how much my partner in crime drives it over her plaid Tesla.

Yeah, I think she likes it just as much as you do.

She takes it like. And I hate it because when I.

Go to get in it, she's on the way up.

Yeah, I have that problem. But she's got that fancy plaid Tesla. And she drives Winston.

Which I've named the Range Rover. Let's say that.

Man, I've seen you through a bunch of cars. By far. That's the one that you are the most passionate about.

I. I have a collection of Albert's art.

So I kind of have three pieces that. That would be in museums. What a lot of people do is they will buy those collections and then sell them off individually because literally.

You. You can make a lot of money doing that, but then you don't have them together.

Yeah.

So I have one of them framed in my house. There's 10 of them. And then I have two that are kind of still in the. In the packaging. I haven't. The one is over 200 pieces, I think. And if you sold them off individually, you. They're probably worth a bunch. Yeah. Worth. Worth a couple hundred. You could get a thousand a piece were easy. But so some Joseph Albert's art that once again, I just.

I have a couple pieces of art like that. I have a Connor Harrington. I have that one piece that nobody's ever seen that I have in my bedroom. That would freak everybody out if they saw. But.

Yeah, so I would say that Albert's art is one. Is that five?

That's five. You did it. Nice job.

That was hard.

Okay, so. So a little thing that I don't think that a lot of people know about you, but it's one of the things that. That hits me and I'm reminded often of it is that you're actually like, a super generous person. And that you do a lot of what I would call philanthropic things. You donate money, you donate time. There's all these things. Um, what is your. What's your kind of favorite way to give back? Like, what is it that makes you so charitable?

Well.

I kind of believe that if you talk about it, then it's not really.

Doing it in a sense. Like, I feel like those sort of things should not be talked about. Like, you should do things like that and not expect any.

Reciprocation or accolades.

So that is kind of the definition of charity, I suppose, when you think about it like that is like it's giving without wanting to receive in return and maybe talking. Okay, so I probably just blew that whole thing.

I also think. No, no. But I also think that no matter what.

None of us are giving what we could give.

That's an interesting way to look at it.

We could always give more. You know, it takes time, attention, but.

You know. Yeah, I think that if you talk about it, it kind of loses something.

Okay. So I think for everyone that's kind of watching and listening, though, I would say that there's a lesson in your philosophy on charity. So maybe.

Yeah, I just. Don't you always think it's weird when people. Or, like, taking credit for helping people?

Like, yeah, I don't.

Isn't it kind of like. Doesn't it kind of.

In a sense, feel inauthentic, maybe.

I also think that it could be done with a less malicious intent. Is that I think sometimes people talk about the charitable things they do, hoping to inspire. Inspire others to be more charitable. So you could look at that a couple of different ways.

Yeah, you could. Like, I've thought about that in. In one way is that what we probably could do as a company is we probably could take a portion of our revenue and start some sort of scholarship fund where we take kids.

And send them to school to be tax and we pay for it or whatever, or. I don't know, something like that, where we take kids that maybe wouldn't be able to go to school, or if they did go to school, they'd come out with big loans or. Yeah, you know, and we could do things like that, I think. But.

When our clients are.

Supporting us, we then are. They understand that they're supporting that also. I've thought about that in that sense. I think you're right. But I think we all, as a team would have to agree to what that is, because the coaches, you, everybody would have to believe in that. It would have to be something that we would all rally around. But I do believe that that sort of thing probably should exist in the future.

Yeah. And I think we all would be on board. I haven't asked anybody, but I just knowing the team that we have.

Yeah. But I agree with that thought.

Okay. All right. That was. That got a little deep, but let's bring it back a little bit. Favorite food?

Oh, man, I just love food. No, I'd say Mexican food.

It's really good.

Isn't it so bad for you, though?

Cheese and fat.

I. I believe I gained, like, 60 pounds in eight months just eating Mexican food. Yeah, it was so good. It's so hard to get away from, too.

My old doctor used to say, limit yourself to Mexican food once a week at the most. It's bad.

Yeah, but. Oh, it's bad, but so good.

Let's see. So now we're gonna kind of. We got into, like. That's kind of the personal Chris. Now we're gonna start to transition into business world Chris. And I think that I'll start this off with. What is one thing about you that people would be surprised about?

One thing about me that people would be surprised about?

Well, I've asked a lot of people this, and I've yet to find anybody.

That, you know, remembers it the way I remember it. But I remember being born.

Like, I remember a light coming on.

Wow.

Like, most people's earliest memory is like two or three, but I literally remember the light coming on. Like, I couldn't see anything, but I was conscious. I remember consciousness, and I remember light.

That's pretty amazing. I've also never heard you say that before.

No, No. I thought. I don't know. I've asked people that before.

But I've never met anybody who.

Remembers that. But to me, it's pretty clear.

Yeah, that's pretty amazing.

Weird, right?

It is really weird, but it's. That's fascinating. That's cool. What have you. What have you learned from turning businesses around?

This could be an episode all in itself, but.

Well.

There'S a lot of parts to that. So.

I would say that the way that my progression with that went, especially when I was younger, is I was lucky in a sense. The thing that made it the hardest for me, actually, is what kind of gave me this unique skill set, and that was that I was doing it on commission, and if I didn't fix the business, I didn't get paid. So, like, we see a lot of guys out there, consultants or whatever, they get paid for their advice, but it's like a weatherman if your advice doesn't work.

You'Re not giving a refund. Right?

Right.

But if you're. If your stuff doesn't work and you're on commission, you are giving a refund in the sense that I left home, I flew to Dallas. I've been there for weeks on end. I've spent months doing this turnaround, and then it doesn't turn around. I am losing money.

Like, you know, your skins in the game.

Yeah. And so you have this. This thing that happens in that scenario that you. You are very.

Aware of what the idealized version of things are and what is effective. And you also become very aware of the hardest thing is executing not ideas. Like, you know, when we go into a store, a lot of times people say, oh, we thought of that, or we tried that or whatever. And I was like, okay, well, we're actually gonna do it.

It's a huge difference.

And, you know, maybe you tried it and it didn't work, but, you know, it's gonna work this time in that sense. And so I remember, like, early, because I was really young. I remember not making money a couple times and being devastated. And then. Then I started, you know, batting 100 where I wasn't, you know, that there wasn't any real errors to that degree. Even if they started slow, I still was. Was making money. But then the. The thing that I kind of, like, started playing, Playing a game in my head is like, how can I fix something in 90 days? Like, how can I turn this around quicker? And.

What happens, right, is, is you go in and you do this assessment.

And you. You just listen and.

You just let everybody kind of dump all of. All of their negativity, trauma, whatever, on you. Then you devise a plan. You got to trick the people into the plan. So you got to do a little bit of a sleight of hand. Because if you. If you come in and you're like, hey, we're going to change your pay plan and we're going to do this and whatever, people tend to leave. Or it just creates chaos. When you're trying to create order.

If.

You do it wrong, you create more chaos, so you have more turnover, more volatility or whatever in that sense. And so.

Then. So then you do a sleight of hand. You get it going, and you fix it. And then what happens is that the same people.

Then end up believing that it was their idea in a weird way. And there's very little. Like, the results will be incredible. Right? Like, you take something from losing money to Making a ton of money in a really short period of time, which oftentimes, like, we deal with this, we don't tell people our results because they don't believe it. They think it's impossible. Right. So you can't tell people like, hey, these are, these are the numbers. Because in their head they're like, that isn't possible. And I think to some degree they think like, if that is possible, I'm so lost that I don't even want to, I don't even want to open that gate.

They have no choice but to not believe that it's possible.

Yeah, I get it way easier because whatever that is, if, if I can't imagine it, then I must be so off, I don't even want to touch it. Right. It's just, it's too big of a, of a suspension of belief for them. So then what happens, though is when it does happen and the results are huge, they, if you do it right, they believe it was their idea. You're trying in the process to make the manager look good and, you know, gain confidence. And there's a lot of things that we're doing there to build self esteem, team building all, you know, there's a lot of things going on that people don't perceive, but create that outcome in that recipe. But if you just came out and told them, they would want to fight it or they, you know, they wouldn't understand, it would, it would confuse them. And so at the, at the end of the day, the thing I think that I learned from all that is that it is psychology more than anything. So, you know, when I, when I'll interview people for potential coaches, like, I'll ask them, like, what's the recipe to turn something around? Because we'll get managers that, you know, the ideal candidate for us is somebody that goes somewhere for five years, fixes it, gets bored, goes and fixes another one. Or some of these public companies have guys that go in and fix and I will ask them, so if you're baking a cake and you're fixing something, what is, what is the most important ingredient in there? And.

Most of the time people say it's the people, but it's not the people, it's the systems and the psychology. And most of what we do is psychology.

It's not, it's not the, you know, the people are going to have the psychology imposed on them, but it's not the people. If we do it right, they don't really have a choice. They're just coming along in their own self interest because we made it, we made it worth their while in a way, you know, So I would say that it's psychology. The other thing I think that I, that I have learned is that if, if something, if a business is losing a lot of money.

Most of the people there are not going to make it. If a business is breaking even, a very small amount of people, if a business is making money, that's where you can have the biggest impact. Because they have systems, they have people, and we can come in and just fine tune that to the degree where it scales really fast. But to go from losing to breaking even is like giving childbirth. I've never given childbirth, but the analogy of it's very painful, you're giving a piece of your soul basically away to do it. And so.

You know, whenever we're looking in stores like that, like, we always, we always.

Assume that it's worse than it is in that scenario because we don't want to get caught flat footed. And if it's losing money, there's a good chance that there's bodies buried somewhere, there's people stealing. The culture is bad.

All of that, no one gets there.

By accident is people misunderstand culture. They think culture is making everybody happy.

That's right.

Yeah. But I would say psychology, it's all psychology. And it's closer to magic than management.

I stole a line from you the other day.

Somebody said that to me, mi line is Souline.

Thank you.

You know, they say that in Spanish. Mi casa is my house is your house. Me line is Souline.

It's perfect. But somebody said to me, they're like, wow, you should be a psychologist. I'm like, well, I wouldn't have had to read as many books.

That's by the way, not a joke. That's real. That happened. But yeah, I mean, the brain part is. I think it's also the most addictive from the coach perspective because you can fix that. And I think that the best thing about what we do for a living is that I truly believe that we make better people. At the end of the day, it's not just about the business.

Well, no, the best, the best part of what we get to do is we get to.

We get to make people feel good. Yeah, they feel good about themselves because we're. Once they. It's like a funny thing, right, because you gotta trick them into trying some stuff in the beginning. So you give a jeep away, get whatever it is, and then they take a leap of faith. A couple of things that they do work, then they gain confidence, then they want to try new things. And so. And that's the other thing, too, is like, we.

We in the role that we play, we can't be looking for validation. We have to be able to give all the credit away and be happy with the outcome without the. Without the praise. Yeah.

Invisible.

We want to deflect. We want to deflect that as much as we can, because if it becomes about us, we ruined.

We ruined the. The illusion kind of, in that sense, super selfless.

Yeah.

Which is.

It's hard to do sometimes, especially when people are, you know, the more difficult ones coming around.

Yeah. That you want to say, gosh, got it. We did it. And then they look at it and they forget that you were there a little bit. But that means we're doing our job. Yeah. Good. That was an awesome question, by the way. That worked out pretty well. The next thing I would like to ask you a little bit lighter question.

Do you have a favorite place that you've gone to? Fix a store. Like, someplace you're like, oh, wow, okay. This is pretty cool. It can be location, store.