International Truck Coronavirus Update 16

Welcome, everybody, to Service Driver Revolution, our international edition. We have an exciting show for you today. We're going to talk about what we've learned in 2021. It's been a crazy year, Covid. All kinds of fun. Elections. What's the biggest lesson? It might surprise you, but we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about the training that's coming up for 2021. And we're going to share some books that we've been reading that are really fun, and I think you'll get something out of it. Little synopsis.

You know what I can't stand, Chris? I can't stand our hackers back.

Yeah, this is important stuff. Everyone's going to want to pay attention. I can't stand problems with office products. The other day, I'm walking through the office and I hear music coming from my printer. And I'm confused. I don't know what to do. I don't know anything about technology. So I call the printer guy, he comes out, he takes a look at the printer, he shakes his head and he looks at me and he says, it's your paper. It's jamming.

I love it. Christian, please welcome Jeremy and Adam. Say hello, gentlemen.

Hey, Chris, how's it going?

Are we glad our hacker's back or are we. How do we feel about it? Okay.

This is great.

Zoom, you know, with all the. All the updates to Zoom, I thought they kind of got rid of the ability to hack it, but somehow Christian still still manages Fig. Figures. Figures out a way. So we've been working very hard on the training for 2021 together, where we are excited to talk about that. Right. And.

And just, you know, talk about our lessons this year. Wish everybody a happy holiday.

And you as well, Chris.

Do you guys have your shopping done?

Yes.

Really?

Yes.

No, no. I got a couple more things.

You actually have to start shopping, Jeremy, to actually, you know, get it going.

I've been just too busy, you know, helping dealerships and helping dealerships. I just haven't been able to. Definitely nothing else involved.

Adam's been busy hunting.

Oh, yes.

I've been hunting since, like, before we met in Nashville, too, right?

Oh, yeah. And let me tell you, your freezer.

Your freezer must be full of venison. You must have enough meat for the next, like, three years. Nope.

You actually have to see something to actually fill the freezers there, Chris.

That's not taking ownership, Adam.

Well, I'll tell you, the last day. The last day. We actually got a couple dough and me being newer to the group, I got the opportunity to field dress. So that was fun.

The first season. The first season, father in law shoots the buck in the stomach. So, yeah, we had to track that sucker down for about 200 yards and bring it up from a briar patch. And then we got to. Or I got to help field dress that as well. That was fun opportunity, let me tell you. If you haven't done it, go ahead and try it.

Did it once.

Yeah. I like how Adam says that field dressing is fun, because when I think about fun, nothing screams fun more than pulling intestines out of a animal.

Yeah. It's like you're a trainer on leg day, going, oh, isn't it fun? And you're like, no, this is. This is anything but fun.

It's not.

I've done it once, Adam. Bear hunting. And.

So with dogs, and they treed the bear in a canyon, and then we had to, you know, carry the bear out piece by piece in the hot sun. Flies. And it was. It was not something I'd ever do again, honestly.

Yeah, at least. At least it's for us. It's. It's colder out, so the coyotes are howling from a distance, so it's not too bad. And, yeah, deer. I haven't done anything besides deer, so I'll stick to that. It's. It's okay.

Did you get the bear with your bare hands, Chris, or did you use a knife like Rambo? Or how did. How did that happen?

I want to know how primal you are, bear.

First of all, I was along for the experience. I wasn't.

In no way, shape, or form was I leading this operation. This was a. So my real father, I only met him a handful of times in my life, and one of those times was a dad, son, date of bear hunting. And so the whole time, he's just making fun of me, calling me a city boy and the whole thing. But his dogs treed the bear, and then he shot the bear out of a tree, which didn't seem like much of a sport to me.

To be honest. I think what Adam's doing is a little bit more of a sport. Sitting in a tree, doing your Christmas shopping.

Nope, nope, nope.

How many times did we email back and forth while you're sitting in a tree?

I can't get in trouble. Don't know. They might watch this. They'll know what I.

What was your what? What? You're working when you're. When you're not supposed to be. What we're always working Right. This is how it is.

Yeah. The. I would love to. This isn't the right show for this, but I would love to dig into the father in law hunting, all that, because there's got to be something interesting in there if we started peeling back the onion.

Oh, yeah. Then you had the brother in law in there too. And it's quite fun at deer camp, let me tell you.

After a couple drinks, come follow our.

Side podcast, Hunting with the in laws coming out next month.

We'd have three listeners. That would be great. His father in law, his wife, and his brother in law. That'd be funny. Okay, should we start with the books that we're currently reading?

Absolutely.

Man. I've. I've had a run right now of books that I've got so many good ones going. I go back and forth on audible.

They're really good.

But I am. I'm like listening while I'm taking a shower. I'm listening in the shower. Like, I can't. One of them I can't stop listening to. So what. What is your. You want to start, Adam?

Yeah, sure. So.

I hate to admit this, and I know we're tying it back to hunting, but I've got these, these walker earbuds where you can actually. It's for shotgun. When you can actually hear yourself shoot and hear the. The ambiance around. Well, I actually had a little audiobook first thing in the morning when it's super dark. So I got a little catch up on some of my books. And also traveling down, I listened to a couple, actually a couple within a matter of like four or five days. So it's pretty cool. But the book that stuck out the most to me was Failing Forward by. You corrected me earlier, Pastor John Maxwell.

John Maxwell.

Yeah. But no, you know, this book really resonated with me because Christian and Chris, you know, we met, you know, a couple weeks ago and shamed me a little bit. And actually I appreciate that because you guys kind of caught me into thinking a little bit about myself and seeing the success of failure, or what is it? Failure of succeeding. And so I kind of did a little Google search and trying to look at just like books and do a little bit of fact finding and kind of a little resonating about myself. And so I found this book and just kind of listening to it and I actually think I'll actually want to buy the book to actually read it as well and not just listen.

Oh, nice.

But, you know, I think failure and one of those things I think is more of A mindset with people. And what really resonates to me is that people are so.

Have this fear of failing that they don't even try to do anything to actually fail and learn from those mistakes. And some key things. He's got several different points in there and I'll just go over a couple things that really stuck to me that if you don't even try, how will you even really know on the failure side to where you can learn from your mistakes and truly succeed? Right. To me it's just, it's such a simple concept and I think if we were to have an analogy in sports, you know, like just pick baseball. I think with baseball we see we can look at stats of so many good teammates or players that are out there and we only focus on their achievements and what they've made their achievers. And he has a whole segment of achievers and obviously people that are non achieving kind of playing that victim role. But when we look at baseball, you think of all the greats, well, look at their statistics and how many they struck out and how many times they did fail. And if they would just have sat there looking for a better batting average or whatever in order to achieve that success, they really had to fail so many more times to try to get that. I couldn't help but thinking a little bit about 10x too and this massive action to driving to results and failing to succeed. I mean, I know for our Cubs fans out there, you know, especially Jeremy, you're one of them. I mean, how does that feel as, as a long standing fan? I know it hasn't been, you haven't been around for 108 years or you're showing age very well. But you know, all of the, all the fans are going to hold on to that 2016 man, and look at how many times had to fail to get there and, and now they're just, you know, they're achievers and we're going to hang our head on like we do in Chicago and sports.

Right.

And, and the Cubs fans are just, they're long standing and they're achieving out there. But all seriousness, I, I, that really stuck out with me. And then he also has a segment in there talking about, you know, really not pointing fingers. And I think it's really easy when you do fail to point fingers at, you know, everything that's around you besides looking at yourself and seeing, okay, how can I learn from this to pick myself up and keep moving forward and not pointing the fingers. So taking ownership, not playing victim and really I Think we're all challenged in this, especially in our current environment, when. Whether it's economy, whether it's, you know, people coming and going, instead of just taking this complacent attitude, figuring out how can we learn from this to truly grow in whatever aspect, whether it's personal or in our professional, you know, careers. And it just really kind of resonated with me. And, yeah, I could probably talk about it for hours. That and hunting. Right.

Yeah, it's.

It is.

The baseball stats are funny, right? Because if you say, like, somebody's a.300 hitter, that's out of a thousand.

Yeah.

I mean, so there's 700% failure in that calculation, however it's calculated.

But even more interesting is the failure rate of okay to great is 70% versus 75%. Yeah, yeah. Like, if you fail 75% of the time, you're in danger of not being in the league anymore. But if you're failing 70% of the time, you're an all star. It's crazy what the failure rate difference is.

It's a perception, man. I really think that we need to redefine what we perceive as failure in order to succeed. He has an example of Chick Fil, A, you know, up north here. We just recently got them, what, in their last probably five or six years. But I. And then while traveling, I knew more about, you know, Chick Fil a was there, but I never really truly knew the story. Not going to give it away because I really believe that people should check out, you know, fail forward. But it's really kind of interesting. People have to have a goal set in mind and fail several times to consistently pick and achieve that goal. Right. And I think that if our service managers or service departments or, you know, our dealer owners, if they have these goals, you know, being accepting, to fail failure and fail fast, really, and learn from those and keep trying things and seeing what works. Can you truly achieve a true success and a good environment, really, in that depending on how you. You work within that realm.

That's awesome. Yeah, I'll check that one out. I actually, I have a lot of Maxwell's books, but I don't have that one, so I'll check it out. What is. What's your book, Jeremy?

My book is Extreme Ownership by Jocko Wilnick.

Oh. One of my top five. It's one of the best ever.

Yeah, it's. I've been. I've been kind of saving it to read it until recently.

But.

Why are you saving it? Out of curiosity.

You know what? I couldn't I wasn't in a situation where I could listen to an audiobook for a long period of time, and I wanted to save it till I was on a long drive so I could just listen to the whole thing.

And commit to it and kind of really get into it.

Exactly.

So it's so well written, too, that that book, once it starts, you don't really want to turn it off, right?

No, not at all. It's. I didn't think that Jocko would do such a good job translating battlefield knowledge into, you know, lesser important things. Like how is. How is.

Right.

How is a Navy SEAL commander going to scale down a battlefield battlefield experience into, you know, me trying to sell more service or me trying to take care of customers better. But he does a great job of that. I love the format because what he does is he goes into a battlefield example, like something that he actually experienced. Then from there they kind of explained the concept and then they do a business case. So it's. They really do a good job of relating that experience and that concept into the. Into, you know, the business world. And I think that's really valuable. But the concepts he talks about there, it's. It's simple, but it's very important in that you, as a leader, as a manager, you have to embrace the concept that you are responsible for everything that happens, whether or not it's actually your responsibility. You need to take ownership of it anyway because essentially that's the only way that you can control the outcome if it would happen again. Like an example that he used from the book was a blue on blue to wear a ba, which is basically friendly fire, a friendly force attacking another friendly force. And so what happened was, is it wasn't a situation that was in Jacob's control. He was the commander of the operation.

An outfit that he was working with. The Iraqi army he was working with, they went off mission, they went to a different place they weren't supposed to go in. A bunch of different protocols failed that should have been in place, communications failures, none of which were the fault of the commander. But regardless, when it came time for.

Responsibility to be assigned, Jocko, like, he walked. He walked around. He asked everybody who was involved, and then when he delivered his report to the higher ups, he basically stated who was responsible for this blue on blue. The answer is, I am. Myself, as the commander, I am responsible for this. He had nothing to do with it, but that was the only way that he could put in solutions into place to make sure it didn't happen again. That's the only way in the concept of ownership that you can actually move forward with making your business better. Making anything better, you have to own it all. And it's a difficult thing to do, but you have to do it. Like, for example, even in the service world, there's so many outside influences.

That are in play right now. Technician shortages, the pandemic, the shortage of business. It's harder to make money. Customers are more stringent now than ever. But as a manager, if you own those concepts, look at them all individually and say, I manage. This is my fault, then from there you can work on changing it, you can work on solutions. But if you create this, if you look at this like it's just the environment I'm in, then you're not gonna try to solve any of these problems, and they're only gonna get worse from there. So that's one of the things that I took away from that book, and I think it's a great book, and I think everyone should read it.

I really like that point, Jeremy. I really do. Cause I think if we take that, that towards the tail end of what you were just saying and just kind of be complacent and just kind of wait. And I know we keep calling it as the victim card and not taking ownership of that, everything will just ride by. Our customers will drive by to the next person to the next, you know, shop, our technicians will go to the next shop, you know, and service advisors, service managers, any type of potential. If we don't take ownership and control of this monstrosity that will be passed by and we won't make it. And we're in hate sitting all different businesses.

I don't care what market they're in. We're kind of seeing that in some cases, right? I mean, and it's just, wow. I think that's pretty powerful.

What's, what's. One of my biggest takeaways from that book is that everything that Jocko talks about is life or death. And in business, it's like, you know, we're not gonna die.

Yeah, that's true.

When you talk about hiring techs or whatever it is that we need to do, like, even if you failed at it miserably, you're not, not only you're not gonna die, but your, your teammate isn't gonna die, right? So over there, like, what's worse than being responsible for one of your teammates or soldiers that are fighting alongside you dying, right? Like, that's heavy. And like, we can't, we can't. Like, we can't figure out simple stuff every day. Sometimes it's just, you know, we're so lucky and we have so much opportunity and, you know, we just get paralyzed but for the wrong reasons, basically.

Yeah. I just had a. I had a friend call me yesterday, and he just got fired from his job at the orange juice factory. He couldn't concentrate.

Oh, God.

I didn't know if that was a joke.

You can't laugh at your own jokes in the middle. I was like. I was focused. I was focused. I thought this was legit until you said orange factory.

Oh, my God, that's so good. I thought you were serious.

Yeah, me too.

You had me focused. I was like, oh, man. I felt really bad. I just went on this, you know.

Saying, yeah, I blew it with a laugh.

Which book should I. Should I talk about.

Man? I don't know. The one.

I think that's really got me going right now is one called Happy by Darren Brown.

Okay.

It's only on audible. So you know how you were saying, Adam, you wanted to order the actual physical copy. When I like a book, I do that, too, and I'll listen to it again and highlight. And this is only audible because I wanted to. I wanted the physical copy because there's so many great things in there. Do you guys know who Darren Brown is?

I do not.

No.

He's the illusionist.

So, I mean, you know, being an illusionist and understanding NLP at the level that he does, you know, he goes into some, you know, pretty. Pretty cool stuff about stoicism and happiness and people's perception. The part I was listening to this morning is he was talking about when stoics are being tortured.

The thing that a good stoic will do is say, they're torturing my body. They're not torturing me.

And really, that's the only choice you have left at that point, Right. Because it's the only thing inside of your control. Although it's morbid and it's crazy when you talk about extreme ownership, that's the only thing you have left in your control to say, well, it's my body. It's not actually me they're torturing. It's just my body. Like, it's pretty. Pretty heavy, but powerful, right? Yeah, it's. It's nuts. Okay, so the. I wanted to talk about the thing that I think I've learned in 2020.

That has stuck out this year more than any other year.

Because of the pandemic, because of the elections and the economy and such extreme things going on in the media and. And.

Everything else is. I have learned this year beyond a shadow of a doubt. Like, if I suspected it before.

I know now that it's true, is that success has nothing to do with the economy, your market, the news, the politics, or whatever, because we've had. We've had service and parts departments literally increase by numbers you wouldn't even believe if we told you. And we've had other departments that have done just what they would normally do, just kind of stay the same. And we've had. Departments have gone. Gone completely backwards, and there is no connection whatsoever between the. The economy and Covid. The connection is their mindset. That's it. That's it. Some looked at it as opportunity and doubled down and didn't expect that everything should go okay, right? They didn't. They're not sitting around going, oh, well, it's too hard. They expected that it would be hard. And they showed up and they ended up coming out way ahead. And then they were the victims and the ones that were like, oh, well, I can't do anything. Can't do anything. Really can't.

Wow.

That's the thing that sticks out to me more than. Than anything thinking about next year and our goals and everything.

In 2021 is that no connection whatsoever.

Between any of the noise and actual results. The results came from mindset and not feeling entitled. And also, I think your two books, like, I don't know, that there could be a better connection between owning the results and your locus of control and fear of success and fear of failure. And I think fear of success actually is worse than fear of failure because they're connected in a lot of ways, but it's that locus of control. So locus of control is, do you blame the outside world for what's happening? That's an external locus of control, or do you have an internal locus of control that you own the results? And then there's three layers to that, right? So if the first layer of your internal locus of control, a lot of people can achieve the first level. The first level is I control what I say, what I do, where I go, that sort of thing.

Right.

That's a pretty easy thing to accept responsibility for. And then the next level, level two, would be, well, I accept responsibility for Adam and the people around me. Right. And their results. Now, that's leadership, right? Because a leader, you're leading people, so you got to get.