How To Make The Most Out Of 2023 In Your Automotive Business | SDR #223

Welcome everybody to the big show. Today we have an announcement about a diagnosis that I have. Would you call it psychological?

For sure.

Psychological diagnosis. We're going to talk about the leadership thing that we have coming up. Christian works in two jokes randomly. You were not going to expect them, but they're really good.

Most importantly, what we're going to talk about today is how to ensure 2023 is your best year ever. So that and much, much more. Coming up right now on Service Drive Revolution.

I know that I have seemed out of sorts and it's because I'm suffering from deep postpartum depression.

From what?

Deep postpartum depression.

Chris. It's bad. Christian.

I'm not a doctor. Play one on tv, but I'm pretty sure that postpartum depression is what happens to women after they have a child. I don't know that you have the equipment to have postpartum depression.

Okay, well, maybe I haven't had a child, but I've had a huge life changing disappointment and that I wanted to do this. Leaders. All I wanted for my birthday. You only turned 51 once. All I wanted for my birthday was to do the leadership thing here. We've been building this library. We've been working towards this. I thought, hey, if I say it's my birthday, everybody will rally. We will figure it out. And then we didn't rally and we didn't figure it out. And now my. Here's the other thing. I had a new tradition. You know what my new tradition was on my birthday?

You somehow missed your birthday. Yeah.

So you fly to Europe and I was gonna fly to France this time, which is even further than London. So I'd miss more of my birthday. Last time I left here on the 12th. For everybody that doesn't know my birthday's the 13th. I left like at 11pm on the 12th. You're on a flight. I landed in London at like 5. So it's like dinner time. Right. So I missed most of my birthday. Yeah.

Portion of it.

France is a couple hours further. So I would have, I would have like landed at bedtime, you know, I would have completely missed my birthday in the air.

I was committed to that as being a new tradition. And then I thought, no, you know what would be really, really fun is to actually experience this leadership thing that we've been working on here at home in the venue that we've been building just for it, the library. And I kind of let go of the idea that I was gonna miss my birthday and I embraced it. Like, no, we're gonna celebrate it, which isn't something I really like to do. I think birthdays are kind of odd. Do you like celebrating your birthday?

When I was a kid, but yeah.

The older you get, it's tough care. It's a reminder. It's not a celebration. It's a reminder that you're gonna die, basically, is what it is. Like you're just inching closer to the.

Let's have a party.

Yeah.

Almost in.

Yeah. It's terrible. So, that being said.

Whether I've had a kid or whatever you're trying to say, as a doctor, I am. I was very depressed about the fact that it has to be pushed back and we're not going to be able to do it because there was no physical way that we could have it complete. By then, we've had a bunch of issues.

This has been a challenge this last nine months or so.

It's funny, we thought we would, at the latest, we would be done with it in November.

Oh, I remember at one point we said, like, July or August. Remember when we. How optimistic we were when this thing started? That was really tough. But it reminds me that it's kind of that time of year. I made a New Year's resolution really early on at the end of last year, which I don't think is gonna pan out.

But I've made a New Year's resolution. I'm gonna stop procrastinating. I'm gonna start that tomorrow at the latest, next week or the week after. But that's my New Year's resolution.

Let me know how that goes.

That's funny.

We have a mutual friend that went and did hypnosis. It's a pretty funny. Pretty funny story. Guess what? He went to do hypnosis for.

Dating.

No. He should have. Do you believe in hypnosis? Do you believe that somebody could hypnotize you? You do.

I'll take anything.

But you believe that if, like, if I hypnotize you not to eat carbs anymore, that you would no longer eat carbs?

Yeah.

Really?

I'm down, too.

Okay. Well, he did it for sugar to cut out desserts, so we'll see. But that made me think of that. We'll see. Okay, so the leadership thing is postponed. I would love to thank everybody that emailed us. Got on the list. You're on the list. We will let you know when we are going to do, which probably now looks like February will be the first one, but we'll let you know and try to give you plenty of notice when we know if you want to get on the list to come experience it. It's three days. I'm not sure what we're going to charge for it yet. It was great that a lot of people.

Wanted to come and they didn't even ask how much. They were just like, they're just ready to go.

Please sign me up. Save me a spot. It was so fun.

So info at Chris Collins Inc. Jenna Chuck checks those. She will put you on a waiting list and you will. You'll be first in line for that. I'm of the kind of sense. My sense is that after we do about four of these, they'll start selling out because it'll.

I think four. Four of them, probably word will get out and then.

I think at the most, I feel like two is going to change.

So you might want to get in early because.

It'S going to be bigger than us when it goes or. That's been the feedback when we've done it remotely. I'm pretty excited about it.

So.

Infohriscolinsinc.com I am sorry that everybody ruined my birthday.

We'll get better.

But it is what it is. Well, I don't think you had anything to do with it.

Didn't make it happen.

Maybe who would we blame? And I don't know, I thought, you know what was funny is when I came up with the idea, you told me on the side you're like, that was genius to leverage your birthday to get everybody to move faster. And it didn't work.

But you did see what I was trying to do.

I thought it was pretty smart.

Yeah. The way you held it over now. So now the first event in our library.

Is going to be our boot camp coming up. So when new clients come into our family, part of their initiation after they do some online training is they come here for a day and a half. And Christian does kind of a re. Indoctrination for a lot of people that boot camp is life changing.

I was gonna ask you that. I feel like there's something interesting and maybe a little bit magical about the last few boot camps here. Like they're leaving. I always think that we kind of blow people's mind a little bit with the stuff that we do at boot camp, but there's something really magical about the way that we've got this cadence down and it's a special place to do that. So, like, I'm starting to see there.

Is an interesting vibe here. Even though it's under construction and it's a little disheveled. There is a vibe here. One is. It's like you're. It's a destination. You're here to work.

That's right.

Because there's nothing around. You're not walking across the street and going to any. Right. Like, we're pretty remote in this part of town. And then there is, like a. I don't know, there's a vibe here that is really fun.

Do you know what my favorite part is?

What? The dinner of the boot camp or.

The building the two days of the two days.

The dinner.

Yeah.

Yeah. So this boot camp, we're going to have the dinner at my house? Probably.

Yeah. So your house is also a destination, and it blends to creativity.

Yeah. When we had the elite group for Top Dog at my house, it was really fun.

Yeah.

And that's probably the most people we've had. Right. That dinner we had there, because it was our team and elite, it was pretty big.

It was over 50 people. And there were so many things. I think. I don't remember if I told you this or not. The thing that was the most impressive is that.

There was never a line for a bathroom. It was so cool how everything just kind of flowed the way through. And it was curated really, really well.

That is one thing I hate when I go to a party and there's a line for a bathroom.

Yeah. But there. There just wasn't.

Well, we pay. Yeah. We try to pay attention to that stuff. Right.

Yeah.

We think about how many parties we had as practice.

Yeah.

I don't think people understand how much we practice that sort of stuff.

Oh, yeah. I started doing keggers when I was, like, 12.

No, but like, the chef. We had the chef come, which for. For the boot camp. We should have that same chef come. So better than a restaurant. When we have an event in my house, we have this really cool chef. He's. He's big on Instagram for his desserts.

I feel like we're buddies now. He loves when I come up and talk to him.

Oh, he's super nice.

Yeah.

He's probably makes everybody feel that way.

I'm definitely.

Maybe we'll have him for the. For the boot camp. But the boot camp is gonna be the first time that anybody goes in the library. And I would say it's probably questionable how many books will be in there by then, because it is going to take me about a week to unpack. There's probably 25,000 books in storage.

Yeah. So even you have never seen all these books in one spot?

No. In fact, In a couple situations lately, it has been easier for me to order the book from Amazon than to go find it in storage, which I just did. Yesterday I ordered a book that I know I put in a box, but.

I need it for some. I need it. I need.

You already have that Bukowski book you gave me that looked like something you would have had a long time ago. That thing's.

Somebody gave me that for Christmas.

Yeah. Oh, that's cool.

You know, one thing that Patricia. I don't know. Only two people did it, and actually, Patricia's isn't complete yet, but Vicky, one of our coaches. Dear Vicki.

Sent me books and wrote me notes. So the premise of it is these are books that changed my life. And I can tell that Vicki has remembered books because just a couple days ago, she goes, hey, there's another book on its way. And then I got another book with a note. But she describes each book and why the book meant so much to her. So, like, there's the one I got.

Yesterday, I think was about Ireland.

But there's something so intimate about that. Like. So Patricia gave me her top five books that changed her life. I remember that in a really cool velvet bag. And it was cool. Now she said she's writing up why each one means something to her. Uh.

But it. I don't know. It's so very. It's very intimate.

I liken it to, like, when Vicky sends you that, and with the little notes on each book, it's literally like she's inviting you to read her diary. That's how intimate it is.

Yeah, it feels intimate.

Um, and I think it's really sweet and super thoughtful, and it means a lot to you and to her at that moment. Right?

Yeah. Now the question is, this is how my messed up mind thinks. Right? I. I'm gonna twist this now. Am I expected to read those books? Because I've got a queue of books I want to read. And now it's like, there. I'm like, oh, wow, this book meant so much. Then it makes me want to read it. But I don't want to put everything as. It just creates this noise in my head.

You've got a long list.

There's an implied guilt now.

Oh. So I don't know.

What if I see Vicki in a couple months and she's like, hey, did you? Did you. Is she expecting me to read those books?

I would play offense, not defense on that. What I would say is, I opened up every book and I read every note that said why they were so important. To you. And I think it's amazing that you shared that. Thank you so much. And it's, you know, I've got a list of 100 books I need to read. It's on the list. And as soon as I read it, I'll get back to you.

And you don't think that that's. That's off putting?

No, I think Vicki would.

Somebody like is vulnerable.

I know Vicki like I do. She would understand. I think that it means more to her that you would read the notes about why it was important to her than reading the book. Not everybody's like that.

Vicki's special good news is Patricia, probably it'll be a year before I get her notes on Patricia's.

Patricia's books collection surprised me.

Yeah, they're thin.

Yeah.

Vicki's. Vicki's got some big books in that stack also. I think I'm up to seven. She keeps sending them to me.

How many Franklin Covey Planners did she put in there?

Oh, my gosh. I remember that. She still uses it.

I saw a picture of it not too long ago.

Every quarter she takes out.

And puts in the new pages. She's so.

She's got.

I remember when Franklin Covey had all that stuff online. You know, she wasn't into that.

I love that. So she has a. She is arguably, she has a really, really good sized client base. She's been. She's my longest tenured coach and she does a really, really good job of the coaching portion of it. And this won't surprise you at all. So we have CRMs, we have all the things to kind of keep data on clients online. Vicki has a file folder for every client and she keeps all the information and papers, everything like that. And I'd be like, what's going on with this client? I look at her, I'll be on a zoom with her and she'll go, oh, let me check. And she's got it alphabetical and everything like that. Then when she's traveling, she takes the folder with her and then when she comes back from the visit, she puts the folder back. Like there's nothing that would surprise you about what she does, because if it was 1994, she would do it the exact same way. It's so funny to watch. But like, she's thorough. It's pretty neat.

Were you ever a service advisor when you'd have to go pull the paper file?

Yeah.

And then it was never updated because ros were stacked up and hadn't been filed yet. So then you'd have to go find the RO and a stack.

Yeah.

Like if a customer was in a month ago and then they came back.

Yeah. So. And you know it right away. Right. So our files were like. So we had our service drive and then we had a little office right behind it, kind of like behind the scenes. And then all of our files were in that office because it was locked and all that other stuff. And it was all vin. It was all like a library, Dewey Decimal system thing. Like, they made that into the vin. So it was actually pretty easy to find the VIN numbers thing. But I would go back, let's say it's 2019, and I would go to the folder and like, the newest RO was 2016. And then you just look up and there's just mountains and mountains of ros just sitting everywhere.

And you're like, what a disaster.

You're like, oh, yeah. So what I would do, secret. I would pay our receptionist 20 bucks to find the ros for me.

Smart.

I never did that.

Yeah. Because I knew that if I was looking for file folders, I wasn't writing ros.

Such a mess.

Well, the. The other thing, when it comes to the leadership topic, because we are launching leadership training and it will come with books and all kinds of other things. We have a Facebook group, and if you're interested, it is called the Leaders Syndicate on Facebook. And if you ask to be accepted in there, they'll do a background check on you. And except you, they probably don't do it back.

Are only certain blood types that we allow into that too.

No, we're letting everybody in right now. We should. We should. What if somebody doesn't know their blood type? That always surprises me.

Out. Out. Yep.

Yeah, I agree. No, right now it's just. You gotta ask. That's it. It's called the Leaders. The Leaders Syndicate. Yeah.

It's pretty cool to see organically what's happening in there already, so. And it's in its infancy, so I.

Don'T know what, there's 300 people in there already or something.

362 with the last I checked.

So they went out 500 this week, right?

Yeah. So the marketing team is writing down, they've got their goal and then they keep updating the number. It's really fun to watch.

Now let's talk about how to ensure 2023 is your best year ever, which I like. This list that we put together. So Christian and I sat for a little while and we kind of came up with this list.

It was funny how we had similar but different things.

It's just funny that you word things different, but they're really. The spirit of it is the same most of the time. Okay. So number one, and I don't have these numbered, but the first one on the list that I think is the most important. And this comes in two parts. And it's clear. Like this seems like common sense, but it's actually not. Because you got to have a clear goal and vision of what good is.

That's right.

And so you got to have a clear idea of what would. What would be.

Something special. How can you make this year something very special? And then the thing that I see most people do when you talk about this is they focus on all of their fears, their what they think is going to happen in the market. Basically just a series of ideas that dumb down the one thing. And if you just focus on this one thing, all that goes away is your full potential.

That's right.

So when you're thinking about goals and your vision for 2023, let's not do it from a context of excuses or fear. Let's do it from a context of what's our full potential most of the time. I mean, it's rare, but most of the time when we go into a parts or service department, you can usually double what they're doing. But if you told them that they would.

They would not believe.

Yeah. They would immediately find reasons they couldn't double. Yeah, that's a really good point. Focus on full potential.

I don't like that.

I have the word commit written next to that too. Where if you're going to do it, let's do it. Let's not mess around. And there's no reason you can't reach your full potential.

Most people are guided by their fear of the past or the fear of the unknown.

More than anything.

Yeah. It's so funny when people do that. They do the. They do the here's my goal and then they go through. Here's my list of backup excuses when that doesn't work. I remember you talking about that they're.

Already planning the excuse.

Yeah. Do you remember that? I've heard you say that a few times. It's like when you'll be talking to somebody and like we're talking about our program or whatever it is or the success of someone. And they'll do those crappy questions like, what do you do when it doesn't work? That's what that reminds me of. When people do goal setting and then the excuses right next to it. It's like, what do we do when it doesn't work?

Yeah.

We should call those people fatalists. Because many times I've had. So let's say I go into a service department, we hire techs, we add desks, we hire a couple advisors, we rearrange. The way the drive process is, we have new pay plans. Like, we've done. We've done a year's worth of stuff in 45 days. And then you're sitting there with the manager who's done all this work. Right. So he's really the one that's done a lot of the heavy lifting. And he will say, so what are we going to do when this doesn't work? And it's always like, oh, my. I never. I never got. We were so busy. I never. God got it. That you don't believe in this.

Yeah. Like, even after they do it, then they still think it's not gonna work.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's super interesting.

But I guess if you listen, people tell you who they are, right?

Yeah.

We want fatalism.

We want it so badly that we ignore that stuff.

Then the next thing that I had, how to ensure 2023 is your best year ever, is upgrade your team. And Christian talks about this all the time, and I love it when people repeat this back to me. Is the time to be recruiting and hiring is always. Not just when you need people.

That's right.

You should be. You should make 2023 the year of constantly running ads, constantly recruiting. And heaven forbid we go into a recession when people are laying off good people. You'll be the first one with a net out there. So always be recruiting and upgrade your team in 2023. That's the best way to do better, is to have better people. Yeah.

Yeah. I was so funny. I was just on the phone with. With somebody yesterday, and he was. He had a thing. It's a smaller independent shop, and they have five techs, and.

They ran an ad for.

A sister location. And somehow the techs that were there got up in arms about the ad, thinking that the grass was greener at the other location or whatever. The truth is, the pay plans are very similar between the two places. So what a tech was making at spot A was the same as spot B. But essentially, at the end of the day, two of them decided they didn't want to work there anymore. Then I started to look at the data. These are technicians, been there for years, working on cars for a long time.

I looked at their efficiency for the last month, and one of the ones that quit was 56% efficient, and the other one was 65%.

When I was talking to this guy, he. He's like, man, I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'm like, you're gonna party? Cause you just got a lot better all of a sudden. And he stopped. And he's like, you're right. Cause I've only got so many stalls. But just thinking about that, like, if you have a technician that's 50% efficient and you bring someone in, that's 100.

You literally bring somebody in the 75.

You won the lottery, but at 100, where it should be doubled, you doubled that stall. One stall. What if you did that to all eight that you have? And it was over the phone, but I could, like, hear. I could hear the click. And he's like, you're right.

You mean the click in their brain.

Yeah.

Like, there was, like a.

I love that. Okay, next one is have a daily tracking number that tells you if you're winning or losing. Like, whatever your goals are should be reduced down to. We're open 21 days or 22 days or 26 days. Divide that goal, that number by that and have a daily goal and post that every day.

You and I are also pretty good examples of that. So when we don't get those, what do we both do?

Where is it? Yes.

It drives me nuts not to have a daily scoreboard. The other thing that I wrote down to that is that reassess if needed. Because sometimes I think what happens is we set goals and. And we undershot our full potential. So don't be afraid to raise that bad boy too.

Then the next one is, though, that goal should then be divided down to your people. Right. So many times we'll have a manager that will set a goal, and it can be wrong up or down. But if, like, let's say they have the goal of we want to do 100,000 in labor. Right. And they have four advisors. So you're like, okay, so you want each Advisor to do 25,000amonth. Like, that's ridiculously low potential.

Yes.

Or the other way, where they'll say, I want to do 400,000 and they have four advisors. You're like, okay, you want each Advisor to do 100 in labor and 100 in parts. Like, so your goals need to have some sort of thought and responsibility applied to the people that are performing the work, not some intangible number that you're chasing. Yeah, it's got to really break down into a daily number. That then each advisor and each tech is responsible for that amount of gross or whatever it is. So it needs to apply to the actual team that you have, which goes back to. When you do that, you might.

Understand that in order to hit your goal, you need to upgrade your team.

It kind of forces you into that. Right?

Well, I think that it goes back to the whole if we do everything the way that we've done it, the results aren't going to change.