International Truck Coronavirus Update 6

Welcome everybody to Service Drive Revolution in our international truck Update. Coronavirus crisis Number six. Can you believe it's number six, boys?

Half a dozen.

They've flown by. We have a very special guest today, Joe and Ergy and of course Jeremy and Adam. Do you want to do the introduction, Adam?

Will do. So, guys, just want to welcome you guys to our little video. Since we're in quarantine. I know you guys are out there in the front lines and still keeping America moving. So thanks again for joining in with us from Hill International. We have, as Chris just said, RG Herman and Joe Mazur and want to take some opportunity to. I screwed it up, didn't I? Didn't I? Jeremy? Go ahead.

All right.

I'll just never get it, man. You guys have three locations for Hill International. We have East Liverpool, Wheeling, and then we also have in Washington, Pennsylvania. So we really just want to invite you guys to the video and just really kind of, you know, see what you guys are doing differently out there and maybe shine some light to the rest of the folks. Rest of our dealer network, you know, and some, you know, share some best practices of owning the outcome. Some certain things with continuous improvement and just constant communication stuff. Some of the stuff that you guys are doing, I really don't want to kind of exploit it out there, but I want to hear directly or we want to hear directly from you guys. We know that you guys have been focusing on uptime. Uptime uptime for the last several years. Right. And actually owning this. And we really just want to kind of hear what you guys all have to say from the front lines as far as, you know, what are some best practices? How do you implement some of those? And yeah, welcome.

Yeah, we kind of. So the idea was to profile some leaders that are really, really achieving, you know, at the front, like really progressive and getting results uncommon from everybody else and way above average and share what. What they're doing, their mindset, all that. And we kind of. When we were. When we were talking about you guys before you came on, we kind of came up well. I kind of pulled five, five things out of Jeremy and Adam that they thought were different from your approach to. To everybody else, which we'll kind of go through and get your. Your thoughts on also. Hey, you. So you got a haircut. Is that what's going on there, Adam?

Yeah, I got a haircut.

So isn't it illegal to get a haircut?

No, not in front of your friend's house.

Outside.

I think Pritzker said you can't do that in front of your friend's house.

So I've been trying to get a haircut. Like, I cut my beard a little bit, but I've been trying to. And it's, you know, not only is it the illegal, it's just socially not acceptable to. To do something like that. To break quarantine.

What if I was wearing a mask?

Would you believe me if I said I was wearing a mask?

No, I just think you're a rule breaker. That's what I think. You're going against the Drain.

He's a renegade.

He is a renegade.

Part of the haircut underground.

I think we should call him the Outlaw.

Here's our. Here's our hacker Zoom.

Hacker.

Christian.

I've been working for weeks on this one.

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

A little old lady.

Who.

Oh, we've got a yodeler in the house.

I still don't get it.

It's a very low bar. I don't either.

Does because he's laughing. Joe's getting ready to leave. Look, he's like, forget this. I didn't sign up for this. Okay, let's. Before. Before we get to energy and Joe, in. In our kind of list there. Are you guys reading any books?

Yes. Yes, I am reading. David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell. There it is. Excellent book.

Genius positioning. The thing like the Gladwell thing is that he takes something that you have thought to be true your whole life and twists it and he's like, you know, actually, David wasn't the underdog. David had a gun. Yeah, right. He was actually the. He was actually the one in charge. Like, he flips things on, you know, makes you think about things in a different way.

Yeah, it's one of the premises of Almost. The Art of War is basically understand your landscape attacks your attack your opponent's weaknesses rather than their strengths. Too many people make that mistake, whereas they focus on the strengths of their competitor. No, you attack their weaknesses. And that's the thing with David and Goliath. Goliath didn't have a shot in the world because he didn't realize that a slingshot at that time was equivalent to a handgun.

Yeah, he was hunting lions and stuff. Right. Or protecting his herd from lions with it. In the age of velocity, Goliath never had a chance.

Not at all. He was, like, nearsighted. He had a sword. He didn't have a shot in the world. But it took a smart person to realize that I can take advantage of what he perceives as his strengths. And turn them into weaknesses. But there's a lot of other examples in the book, like basically a women's basketball team that learned to get to the championship by full court pressing when nobody else was full court pressing. A couple other examples in there. But it's really good because it helps you reframe your mindset a lot on what we know to be constants in our environment. Like, we're not always the underdog. You can become superior by focusing on the weaknesses of your opponents as opposed to their strengths all the time.

So it's almost a choice.

I think so.

Yeah. It's how you frame it, right?

Yep.

Yep.

Yeah. How about you, Adam?

Well, mine is totally different, so in lieu of me getting my new toy, I got an SG Gibson. Actually just came in the mail today. So in light of yesterday for Metal Mondays, I've started here in my quarantine.

See, your fingers are bleeding.

No, not yet I haven't. I just took it out of the box. I haven't even tuned it yet.

They'll be bleeding tomorrow.

Yes, hopefully. I probably should change the strings as well. But I started a book. Are you guys familiar with Iron Maiden, Heavy Metal Thunder? Yes. So I started the book with Bruce Dickinson. It's. What does this button do? And did you guys know that he was a. He's. He actually flies planes.

Yep, he's a pilot.

I thought that was pretty cool.

He flew the van plane, right?

Yeah.

When they tour, he flies them around.

So I just started the book yesterday, so I'm not going to go into too much of. It's an audio biography. But what I really like about it is he starts off the book that he's trying to land the plane in. In Moscow, and they won't let him land the plane. So it kind of just starts the book off that way. So it kind of just keeps you going. So. I don't know. I've always liked Iron Maiden, some influences, played a couple songs, and I've heard that he's written his own book a while back. So I finally just took a stab and shifting from the leadership type books and exploring into some. Some music ones. And don't worry, Jeremy, I'm gonna re read the one with Neil Pert for. From. From Rush, because I heard that book's pretty good.

My hero, my hero how far we've fallen from the tree Next thing you know, we'll be reading like books with Fabio on the COVID Oh, come on. Do you want to show everybody the. You want to show everybody the guitar? Because it's a beautiful guitar.

You should.

You got to show it.

You're going to have to.

Now, the. The thing that's interesting about it to me is that that's more of a. That's more of a Black Sabbath AC DC guitar. Not an Iron Maiden. No, like that AC DC.

This is the 61. Okay. It's solid mahogany. It's beautiful.

It's beautiful.

And I always wanted the Angus Young guitar for obviously from acdc. But most of all of the great bands that I grew up with were playing something either just like this or exactly from the same time for their historical humbuckers. So I believe it or not, I've been waiting, like, about 17 years to actually purchase this guitar. So I cannot wait. I know my co workers won't be too excited, but I will be.

That's awesome.

How about you, Joe? Or Edgy? Any. Any good books you would recommend?

You did well. I recently read Emotional Intelligence, which was really, really interesting. How we. How our brains work on the emotional aspect that, you know, IQ is important, but emotional intelligence is actually probably more important. It's how we react to people and how our reactions to them is geared with our brain. And we can actually train ourselves to have better reactions to people, which will create more productivity and having better responses.

You know what's interesting about that is I was having a conversation earlier today about Bill Gates. And, like, I've had a lot of friends that are, like, really, really smart like that, but they don't have that emotional intelligence. Everything's very black and white to them. And I don't. It's. They just. They. They're not good at the personal part. Like, right now, Bill Gates gets a lot of flack in the press or whatever, and the guy's intentions are good, but people just misunderstand him because he doesn't have that empathy, I guess.

Right, right, right. And it's really, really important because we get more out of people. Not. You know, I mean, being smart is really important, but being able to relate is more important.

Yeah. So is. Can you take somebody like Jeremy and teach him emotional intelligence? Like, is it something you can develop?

You can. You can develop it. You can work on it.

Maybe when you're done, you can send him the book.

Absolutely.

You got to want it, though, Jeremy. You can't just. You got to want it. I'm not a. I'm not. Well, okay. So I got a book in the mail today that I ordered, like three months ago, Mark Lanegan's memoir, which is a lot like yours, Adam. So Mark Lanigan's a singer. He was in Screaming Trees and Queens of the Stone Age. It's funny, when I was flying to Chicago once, I sat next to Josh, the singer of Queensland the Stone Age, and the first thing I said to him after, like, we took off is, I go, how's it feel to kick the world's greatest singer out of your band? Because he kicked Mark out of Queens of the Stone Age because he's a drunk and crazy. And he was like, oh, man, we're still friends. I just worked on his last album, the whole thing. But I'm excited to read that. But the truth is, I'm not reading a lot of books because I'm finishing this book, Pet the Dog on Customer Service, and I finally, like, have had this book almost done. You know, Malcolm Gladwell says something Jeremy says, when you think a book is 90% done, it's 50% done. But I've written two more chapters that I think. Because my worry about this book is that the younger kids won't relate to it because they don't have this sense of obligation to companies. And so if I think about somebody giving this to a cashier, giving this to somebody that interacts with customers that's younger, the things that motivate us to give customer service aren't the same motivators because they're not as loyal to the company and they're more introverted, where their idea of communication is more digital. Yeah. And so I've come up with a couple chapters that I think address that, that I've been working on really, really hard. But this has been my. I don't know, be the death of me. You feel like that every book you write takes a piece of your soul away.

But that's really cool.

Yeah. What do you think of that cover?

I like it.

I like puppies.

Chip Kidd did that.

That's cool.

Okay, should we get into this?

Jeremy?

Just want to let you know, Intelligence, you can't just throw a blue sheet over your dirty la.

Yeah, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know. That's. That's. That's a mountain.

What. What was the sudden. The sudden concern for aesthetics?

What do you mean sudden? It just looked really bad, that's all.

We're on episode six.

No one said anything. Chris, he just.

By episode nine, he's gonna. He's gonna actually fill in the roof.

I was gonna say the blue sheet really brings out the rafters.

That's never gonna happen. No, the roof is the Way the roof is. I like, I like.

Does your wife not let you upstairs?

Tell us the truth. You know, honestly, she does. It's just I want to be down here to insulate our audience from the children who, who would recognize the children.

Though later when they're in therapy, when they're in their mid-30s and they're in therapy, they're gonna be like, I never saw my daddy. He was always in the basement.

That's the future Jeremy problem.

That's awesome.

That's good.

Okay, let's get to our five characteristics that we thought that Joe and Air G kind of like represented. So the first one that we talked about was constant improvement. That they're constantly moving forward and constantly improving, right?

Yeah, it's. It was interesting to me because we were on a call like last week or the week before with you two, and it's just. I don't remember what subject you were talking about. It was something about the environment that we're in. And it's just. It shocked me how, how willing you both were to just go out there and just do it and make and adapt to the situation and flourish in this situation, in this situation. And that's an amazing thing.

But that's one of the reasons we really wanted to bring you on is because your mindset is so great with the spirit of always wanting to be better, that we really wanted to pick your brain a little bit and kind of see some of the things that you do to continuously improve that you consider important, that maybe we could spread out to the network and maybe inspire some other service managers too.

You mean, do you want some examples of some of the things that we've done here?

Well, more like the mindset of, you know, you know, the average leadership out there. Why do you think that you've developed a different way of thinking and a different approach than what everybody else has when it comes to, hey, we can get better. There is, there is a way. Instead of making excuses and saying, well, my market's different or that won't work here. Where did you develop that? Like, how did you come up with that different approach?

It's just because we're like minded and very aggressive. You know, we started out many years ago when Erzi and I, when I come over here and started working with erg, we literally wrote our own.

System that we're doing. Life of an RO is what we called it. And it was a living document about every step along the way so that we did not try.