International Truck Coronavirus Update 5

Welcome everybody to Service Drive Revolution. We have a very special guest today, but not to be outdone by Jeremy and Adam, but introduce our guest today. Jeremy.

Well, coming over from the great state of Virginia is Carl east, one of our high performing service managers over on the international network. He is a member of Highway Motors. He's also one of our early adopters of our action plans of our, of our uptime program and generally a pretty nice guy, I'd say. He's also one of the early adopters of international 362, so. And he has a pretty good net to gross performance from our service manager training. So he kind of wanted to pick his brain a little bit, kind of see what's been working over at Highway.

Motors lately, what's really happening on the front line. So Carl, why are you out protesting every night?

Not protesting, just sitting there, taking it easy.

Just taking it easy?

Yep, taking it easy.

Okay. Adam, why are you protesting every night?

I'm pro. I'm protesting because I want to be back out there in the front lines and working and visiting all of our service locations. I want to get out there and be exposed to everything that I could possibly take.

So you're taking it to the streets. You're standing up for your right? Yeah. That's awesome.

So Jeremy, you kind of want to go through and set Carl up for the things that.

You think our viewers and listeners would really, really take away from his wisdom and knowledge and just his execution overall?

Yeah, sure. Basically, one of the things that we like to talk about a lot, we like to talk about two things that my group does. We do personalized dealer visits where we go through your operations, your process with you and make recommendations that might make you more money and.

Drive customer satisfaction and basically make the repairs go a little bit faster. Carl was one of our earlier adopters of that program.

Before we even call. I think you were a member of Project Confirmation, weren't you Carl? Or did you come on with uptime?

Yeah, I've been a member of this group for three or four years now and I've known Carl for a long time and he's always been one of the guys that kind of, he takes the ideas and runs with them. And we brought Carl on because a, he's a higher performer, he's got a really good mindset and he knows where to find the tools that all dealers can find to drive performance as well. So I wanted to bring him on and, you know, pick his brain a little bit and kind of see what's been working for him right now, as well as what's been working in the past for driving performance. And he always had a ton of good ideas in the service manager training. I should mention that as well. Pretty much a master class. So thanks for coming on, Carl.

You're going to make me blush.

It's working, right?

That's right.

So as a little bit of a preface, like, what kind of, when did you start with the Project Confirmation program and what kind of things did you put in place early and what have you done over, over the last couple of years to put your, put your dealership at the forefront?

Basically we started even before Project Confirmation came out. We had consultants come in and basically put some, some things together and, and started to build on those. And anyway, Navistar, when they brought the teams out, you know, we're coming out with the teams, but they had taken the same concepts that we had already seen and really had really polished. And the first team that came in, it was a little bit roughy, a little rough. We got, we got through it. But the second team that came in, Brandon and Pradeep and, oh, shoot, Bill came in and the biggest thing that I picked up from them was their coaching. Okay. They came into us and brought the ideas in and said, hey, this is what it is. This is what you're doing. They looked at what we were doing and said, hey, this, this is pretty good stuff. But then they started going in and says, what if you do this? And, you know, they, they taught me something about the coaching side is that it can't be my idea. It has to be your, your people's idea. They have. You want to be successful, then you've got to go at them. You've got to coach them to the point where it's their id. Give you a point. One of my texts, been after him forever. Son said, son, go do it this way. Go do it this way. You'll get your proficiency up. Do it this way. Couldn't get it. Finally he done. He done frustrated me to no end. And I sit there and I said, william, I said, what, what is it we can do to help you? He said, well, you know, I've been thinking about this. He said, if I go in and start doing this and taking my clocking off and getting on this job and doing it the same thing that I had already been talking to him about three or four weeks ahead of time. Then it was his idea. He bought it. He's been good ever since. But it wasn't, it wasn't his idea to Start with, it was my idea. Now, when he took it on himself, he was, okay.

Can I ask you a. Can I ask you a question about that, Carl? Why do you think that some. Sometimes managers get in this mindset that their markets different, their situations different, they. Their automatic response to things is that won't work here without ever trying it, without ever really being open to it. Why do you think that happens?

I think the reason that happens is.

We'Ve all taken on the job coming in.

Going to make it happen. I've got goals to get done, and if it can't get done, then I'll just do it myself. And you have to get past that. You've got to go to the point where you got to be able to teach the people to get them to bring on the.

How.

I'm gonna try and say this. It's their idea. It sinks in. It goes in better. But like I said, when we all first start off, I know when I started off as a service manager, young service manager, but though some 25 years ago, you know, I was all hellfire and get it done, and we're going to do it my way on the highway, you know, and that don't work. It took me several years to figure that out. But then, you know, you start to. You start to change and the heartburn starts to go away. And you've got to get your people to sit back and go on board with you and be able to sit there and say, know that you're behind them, too, and you're teaching. If you go in.

Guys, guys, guys, hold on for a sec. I don't know if you've seen the news, but I wanted to let you know, I don't know if you heard this. Did you hear about the kidnapping in the virtual classroom today?

No.

No.

Kidnapping. Yeah, like a kid.

It's okay, though. He woke up.

Every once in a while. Carl, we get hacked on these zooms. I'm sorry. I'm sorry about that. But I know what you were saying, and I think that that's an important lesson for Adam, is you can't always bring the fire and brimstone. Adam, as you get older and wiser, you calm down a little bit less of the stick and more of the honey, the carrot. Right, Carl?

That's exactly right.

I keep telling Adam, but he still. Ball and chain.

I've already chopped down trees in the back. I'm ready with the sticks and the. You know, the post.

Yeah, Taser.

I've been sharpening them up and everything. I thought we were ready. Ready to go.

What do you. What do you. Carl, I'm curious to that. The one. The one thing that surprises me is that it seems really clear that going forward in our industry.

The way that we serve the customers, the way that we become invaluable in the marketplace, is how we treat the customer and how quick we get them back on the road. But it seems like 90% of the conversations that we're having in the dealership aren't about that. It's about everything else. And you seem to have a real clear focus of what is important. What are your. What are your thoughts on that? And why do you think people spend so much time talking about the things that aren't going to really move our clients forward and move us forward in the marketplace?

Hmm.

That's a good question. You got a good joke.

It's not a joke. Like, it. It really, you know, it really. It seems so simple that if what we focus on and what we talk about is turning and how can we make our systems better, how can we. Like one thing you were saying about, it's got to be your people's idea, asking our people, how can we. How can we do it faster? How can we do it better? And having everybody working on the same narrative seems like nothing can stop us. But we talk about everything else.

But that it goes back to. We're sitting and it's that set. Nobody else can get it done. I got to get it done. All right. And you've got to. We have to break away from it, all of us managers, anybody that's going to be in the leadership, and you've got to learn to delegate.

You've got to get the people to buy in. The thing that I have learned the most in the recent past is that when somebody buys into it and it's their idea, your life goes so much easier.

The one time that you can go in there and learn to get somebody to take your idea and claim it as their own, you know, it's all good. You know, you don't have to get credit for it. Your people, you'll get your credit for it once they've taken it on and going with. And that's great. That's it. And I think that's what, you know, when you first come on as a manager or a lot of them are still out there, you know, it's. They don't want to give up the power. You know, it's like if they give up the power.

You know, I'm giving up a part of What I am. And it's better if you are able to slide it over and make somebody else do your work for you and makes your life a lot easier.

Can I say one little thing, Adam? I find that the difference between a manager and a leader is what you just said, Carl, is managers manage things, but a leader has the vision and doesn't need the credit. They provide the vision and then give the credit to their people. Right?

Yeah, right. You know, if you want something and you want it to go in there to succeed, when something goes in, you know, don't stand back patting yourself on the back or breaking your arm patting yourself on the back, Go in there, praise the people. Hey, man, you had a great idea and you know where the idea came from. But like I said, it is theirs.

Yeah, that's really good. What were you going to say, Adam?

So I was going to ask you, Carl, what was that deciding factor where, I don't know if it was an instance that you just kind of woke up or eased into it to where you thought to yourself, all right, I need to start empowering these people or my team for them to think for themselves to do this. Was it an instance or did you just wake up one day and say, hey, I'm just going to start delegating this, monitoring this and being the coach for the team. And then what advice would you give to other service managers or service directors or just people that are managing and leading today?

Well, I think it might be. I woke up when I had. When the two teams came in. The first one came through, the big thing that I saw. And it's got to be a self reflection. All right? If you don't start with self reflection, you're not going to go anywhere.

Right.

If you don't see what's in the mirror and see what's bad in the mirror, then you just might as well keep on doing what you're doing. I sat back and I saw a person that wasn't willing to change, that was just set in his ways and didn't want to do anything different. And I said, if I want something better, then we better do some change and we better be obliging to the change and move on. If we don't go out as managers.

And we're not willing to change, you're not going to change your people either. So you have to be the first one to do the job.

That's important too, because kind of what. What you're saying there is like if you, if you're making a chocolate cake and you have a recipe and you make that cake and it's terrible, it tastes terrible, then why would you keep making that same recipe over and over again? You're going to try to change it until the outcome is what you want. And so we know that the outcome of what we're doing is good or bad. We succeed in some areas and others we don't. But we got to change the ingredients. And the ingredients are our thought processes, our actions, our approach to it.

I think too, like Carl, the thing about, I love what you say about getting them to buy in and empowering your people. I feel like part of that too is you probably coming up when you were working for somebody else, felt like you had ideas and you wanted to contribute, but. But you aren't, weren't always listening. So you're treating your people how you wanted to be treated when you were coming up. In a sense. Is that accurate now?

When I first started, I took on the same role as the people that had mentored me, you know, and I was, I was the exact image of the person that I had worked for. You know, you're going to do it my way or the highway. You know, I'm not going to listen to you. It's my ideas, don't worry. And you know, wasn't successful.

More military.

Yeah. And I've got them. And it. That's a hard one right there because I got a Marine Corps background, so I know where it starts from. But you know, there's, like I said, I even go back to gunnery sergeant that I had and he was, he was one of the best. And I tried to lead like he did. He said, you know, the Marine Corps manual is something that everybody, all the ones that are around him, you've got to go black word for word. No if ands bush about it. He said, but the manual, he said, it's a guide, not the Bible, and said, you've got to go in there and that's what you've got to do. And what we do in our dealerships.

With the things that we put in place, a lot of them are guides. You know, some of them are fast, fast, fast, set rules. But for the most part it's a guide. And everything that you put in place, there needs to be a positive that comes out of it. If there's not a positive coming out of it, then it needs to be scrapped for sure.

I had that same journey when I started out on the project confirmation team.

Carl.

I remember because I went on the team and I'm like, I had my PC 2.0 manual, and I go to the dealership and like, you're doing this wrong, this wrong, and this wrong. Here's a list of things that you could do to make it better. And surprise, surprise, Carl, it didn't work out so well for me. A lot of dealerships didn't take the recommendations because first of all, I wasn't properly putting those processes into the end of the context of the dealership I was at. I mean, different areas, different amounts of staffing, different majors, different psychologies, and I just didn't have that. I didn't have that kind of context. I went in like a consultant, and that really wasn't the way to get things done. So I think the teams that went in, that went in later, they did a great job. And I really like the. And we're starting to have that approach. As a team, like myself, Adam, we want to work with dealerships. We don't want to work in spite of them. To basically get everyone to go on the manual. The idea is throughput, whatever it takes.

Well, that was the same thing with the first. First team that came into us, came in with the same approach. It wasn't you. Okay. But they came in with the same approach. And I'm gonna tell you, hard head meant hard head. So we butted heads real hard.

Yeah.

And it was. Got through it. I was sitting there going, now let's just scrap this and get away from it. But I had to take a deep breath, walk out, and then take a look at some of the things that they said. And I made changes right at that point. And then I went back in and said, go in there. But now your second team. Yeah. I learned so much from them. As far as the coaching, you know, making it your people's ideas. I gleaned a lot from them.

Where do you think it's headed, Carl? Where do you think our industry's headed?

Well, if we can get past this coronavirus, I think we can keep on coming back to the top. Yeah, I've got a.

I've got a no fail built in mechanism. You know, it's got. We've got one direction, and that's to go to the top. And we have to do it, but we also have to empower our people so that we can get it done. And if we empower our people, we will get it done.

Well, I got to tell you, your approach in your, in your mindset is refreshing and in inspirational. Is there anything, Jeremy, that you want everybody watching and listening to this to take away from Carl that we didn't cover.

I think Carl pretty much nailed it. But I will say that a lot of the stuff that we put into place, we have gone through with the ear, with the ear of dealers. We've had dealers look at it and see, does this work for you? Does it not work for you? So if you want some help with these processes, by all means, contact my team. We've got all our action plans on the Diamond Edge site. We will help you work through them in the context of how your dealership functions. So by all means, reach out to us. Carl, thanks a lot for your perspective, man. It's really been a good experience and I appreciate you going through kinds of things that have been motivating you. I think that will help out other dealerships a lot.

I think it's important too that everybody listening to this understand.

Two things. One is, I've worked with a lot of manufacturers and I've yet to work with a manufacturer that cares as much about their clients as you guys do and have empathy. And it isn't, you know, it isn't this hierarchical, take it or leave it. And then you really treat people like they're part of the family. Then the second part of that is we're stronger together than we are apart. If you're not reaching out just to be a part of the conversation, like, it isn't about being consultants, it's about being a part of what's going to move us forward and everybody getting better and you contributing too. It isn't a one way. You know, Carl has contributed a lot to the, to the overall narrative because he's participating in it. And so he has, you know, it's everybody together in your ideas and trying things, but coming in with an open mind and saying, you know, we're at no point as an industry where we're going to put our feet up on the desk and say, we won life, we can all get better, and we have no idea what's coming in the future. So let's get together and be stronger as a community, as a team, and not just, you know, us against the world, because us against the world isn't going to work. It's a lonely place. So, I mean, there's never been a better time or a better environment to come into where your, your input is welcomed. And we're all, we all have the same enemy. We're all going after the same thing. It is, you know, it's not, it's not disjointed that way. So join the Conversation and be a part of it. Right.

I'd like to join the conversation. I know that I've got a tip here that's going to help.

You got to learn how to keep Christian out of this thing, Chris.

He's a hacker.

Jeremy, this is for you, buddy. This is going to change your life. I know that a lot of wives are getting worried because they can't do their hair, their makeup, and nails. I found a guy, he's my mortician, and people are just dying to get in to see him.

Oh, my God.

Morticians are doing hair. I'm almost. I cut my own hair. Can you tell?

I trimmed up the bead.

I wasn't gonna say anything, though.

Boy, I don't. It's. It's a little uneven. I don't know if you can tell, but I did my best. Okay. Carl, do you listen to podcasts? Eh, not that much.

Not that much.

Okay, well, we. We've been doing this thing, I don't know if you've been watching, where we read a book a week and then we're talking about the book, but we actually moved up the date of this, and we didn't.

We.

We didn't really finish books. So Jeremy had the great idea of sharing our favorite podcast. And so do you want to go first, Jeremy, or you want me to go first?

I'll go first. My podcast actually isn't business related, per se, but it is called behind the Bastards.

We have a guy that wrote for Cracked. He was actually a conflict journalist, but he went back through. He's a really good historian. Historian. He does excellent research. So he goes through all, essentially the bad people of history. Goes through, like, their whole life. Not only, like, what they did, but also their childhood, what motivates them, and, you know, their early lives. Kind of to give a whole picture of these people. Like, he'll go through, like Frederick Wilhelm, he did one. He did a bunch on Stalin, that kind of thing. And I think it's really. It's really fun podcast because. Because he puts a lot of humor into it. He cites all his sources. But what's enjoyable to me is I like to really get inside the head of some of these people to understand what motivates them and what motivated other people to follow them.

I think there's something to learn from everybody, and there's a lot of personality traits that they all shared that was kind of interesting about it. So I highly recommend checking it out. It's behind the Bastards again. It's on all the podcasts. Things.

So you recommended that one to me, I think about. Was it about Hitler? We were talking about something.

I don't know, I don't remember if it was that one specifically. But yeah, I definitely.

I went and listened to that series. I think it was three and it was great.

Yeah, I think it was my. It might have been Stalin's childhood. That might have been that one. He's hilarious.

Yeah.

I don't know if you remember, it was when we were supposed to be in Phoenix, but we were in northern eastern Canada and it was too cold to go outside, so we were talking about. I don't know if you remember that, but I do, I definitely do. What's yours, Adam? What's your podcast?

Well, probably the one and only that I'll be honest, that I probably listen to and it's not very frequent, is Joe Rogan's podcast. I started listening to some of his podcasts actually after I went and saw him in St. Louis with one of his stand up comedian shows. Just hilarious. And I think right off from the bat, I just started, you know, listening to some of his podcasts and some of the people that he had on there. I just like his overall approach where he kind of will ask anything and everything and sometimes addresses the elephant in the room. And I just appreciate the insight. And it definitely was. It's a different take from his norm of like, people know him from mma, right? Or. Or what is it Fear Factor? I never watched the Fear Factor shows or anything. Not a big fan of spiders, but no, I really just enjoy some of those podcasts. That's okay. That's all right. I don't get.

I love, I don't get back.

I just get even.

So there's this, there's my. Mine that I've been obsessed with lately is this kid from mit, his name is Lex Friedman and he has a podcast that he does from MIT and Harvard. And there's a couple. There's one, there's two that he did with Eric Weinstein that are incredible. Like, incredible. The one, the second one with Eric I've watched twice because it's really, it's really dense. But Lex's kind of specialty is AI, so he's kind of at the head of AI. And then he did two interviews with. With Elon Musk, and those are insane. Like, insane. Like the stuff that they talk about in, in Elon's approach to things and what they, what they talk about AI and what's coming is.

You know, it's just crazy. So that's the one that I've been obsessed with lately is Lex Friedman from, from mit. And I've only watched the Elon and the Eric ones. I haven't done delved into all his other ones just because it's pretty dense, it's a little over my head. And so I have to watch it a couple times to let it absorb when they're talking, you know, when they're talking about the really, you know, deep stuff. Because I'm a little, you know, I'm a little slow, Adam. I don't know if you noticed, takes me a little while. I'm more kinesthetic. I like to get my hands dirty. I'm not, I'm not so good with the textbooks.

I think every time on this, on.

This video would agree with you that we're more kinesthetic.

Yep.

That we're not so tech smart. We're street smart. We're not school smart.

I. I'm not.

You're out in la, you have to be street smart, right?

Either one.

Yeah. Everybody's running for their lives in Beverly Hills. It's a real, it's real hand to hand combat here.

Okay. Well, this was, this was great, boys. That was really fun, Carl. Thanks so much, Carl.

Huge inspiration.

All right, we'll keep killing it out there and yeah, we'll keep in touch. Thank you again.

We'll see you next week for sure.