Learn to Love Your "Lauras" - A lesson on Respect in the Workplace with Stephen Mason

Today on the show, we have a special guest, Steven Mason. Incredible conversation. You're gonna want to listen to it till the very end. We give you some tips on what types of people you want to hire. And oddly, we use Nick Saban as an example. Also, we're going to answer your questions and much more coming up on Service Drive Revolution.

Welcome to the show, everybody. How are you doing, Ms. Mia?

I'm doing fantastic.

How are you sitting in for Christian? She's gonna have lots of dad jokes for everybody, so be ready. Because randomly she's just gonna crack a joke.

Yes. But not now, because it would be expected if I did it right now.

That's bad.

Yeah. Like you. It's. I'm just gonna. It's just gonna blindside you. It's like out of nowhere.

Let's talk about a couple other things that are maybe more important than the jokes. All the time with the joking.

Top dog.

Yes.

Our annual event where I'm going to give away my jeep is coming up October 21st and 23rd. We have a bunch of incredible speakers. Robert Cialdini, who's an icon in our industry, wrote the book influence and Persuasion, is going to be there. He rarely ever speaks at an events, and we convinced him to do it. Also, we're going to have the guy from bar rescue, John Taffer. You ever watch? Yeah, I'm gonna try to create some sort of scenario where he yells at Christian.

Oh, my gosh. Yes.

You're not gonna, you know, just like, really goes at him.

He's like the Gordon Ramsay of bars, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, I'm so excited.

We're gonna get. Try to get set Christian up for that. So make sure you sign up. If you're a coaching client or on. On demand, you're gonna get a ticket automatically. You just have. If you're not. We. We are selling tickets on Chris Collins Inc. Dot com. So that's Chris Collins Inc. Dot com. You can buy a ticket, come hang out with cool kids, have a little fun, learn some stuff, get inspired, rejuvenate your batteries. Also coming up on our on demand platforms is very exciting. People have been asking about this.

Yeah.

Because we teed it. Mia has created BDC training. That's incredible. Now you. You know, when you. Well, you don't know because most people listening to this don't create training. But when you create training, if the team who's editing it and. And producing it and all that and directing it is inspired by it, then it's good. And in the meeting the other day, Our team was talking about how good it was and how excited they are. So yeah, we're going to be putting that out very soon. There's only a few more videos to do and that dude will be up. Then we got to do the management BTC. Management one. But it's like, what is it, like 40 videos?

The management one?

No, no, the BDC rep. Yeah, the.

BDC rep one is pretty, pretty long. There's so much good information.

When you do something, you do it like you went into product knowledge. Like some of the stuff that you did for BDC we actually should have for advisors in our advisor trading. So keep that in mind.

Well, I mean, they're future advisors, you know, so start, you start them early.

But really excited about that and fun, fun stuff. How are you besides coming down?

Yeah, I'm doing awesome. I just moved to my new place in Seattle, which is super exciting, which I know you've lived there, so that's kind of cool. Actually. Didn't you used to live in the neighborhood I currently live in?

Yeah, but I wasn't. So you're saying you're a mile from Pike Place Market? Yeah, I was maybe like two blocks. So.

Yeah.

On kind of first.

Yeah.

What's the one right below First Alaskan.

The one right, right on the water?

Yeah. Right after the bridge.

Yep.

There. I love that. Walking to the market, all that. It was fun. You're over your fear of flying.

I am. Thank you to you guys. I.

Well, I, you know when after I met you guys and had to take.

A two day train, she took the train down. She didn't want to fly two days.

On a train each way and it was miserable. I had a migraine every time I was on that train just because I don't know why. So I was like, you know what? My fear of flying is nowhere near as bad as my desire to never see the inside of an Amtrak ever again. So I did, I worked through my fear of flying and then I flew to LA the second time in June. And between then and now, I have been on a plane eight times.

Pretty fun.

Yeah.

You're a veteran now?

I am. And now I want to travel all the places.

So you want to kind of do something fun is if like whenever there's turbulence or anything kind of goes wrong on the plane, if you scream like we're all going down.

Well, I don't want to get kicked off the plane.

Well, they won't really know who said it.

Yeah.

It works well to create panic.

Yeah.

You'll realize how easily people are affected.

It's true, they're sheep. That's probably where a huge part of my fear came from was because of everybody else's fears or the stigmas surrounding flying. And then once I. Yeah, and then once I realized it wasn't really that bad, then it was. It wasn't really that bad.

So we have a really interesting conversation coming up, but before we do it, we should answer a question because we have some questions backlogged in the queue.

Yeah.

So you want to help me answer a call or question?

Yeah, let's do it.

Remember, if you call into the hotline, get a pencil. I'll give you the number here in a second. If you call in and we play your question on the big show, we are going to send you swag. And it's not always the same swag, but usually involves a service drive revolution hat, coffee mug, notebook, shirt, maybe all that. So the number is 8333, ask SDR. So that's 8333, ask SDR does not have to be service related. Relationship advice, financial advice, whatever.

Yeah.

What? You should buy your kids for Christmas, plan early. Yeah, whatever it is, we'll help you. Okay, let's do the question.

Hi, Chris, My name's Kevin and I am a 57 year old field service technician for a copier slash IT company. I've been doing this for over 30 years. I have a pretty good rapport with my customers, so my customer service skills are there. But my question is I've been interested in doing advisor work. There's a couple positions available in my area and they say no prior experience is required. But my question is, at my age, how do you feel about going into that line of work? As you said in your previous shows, the advisor doesn't need to know how to fix what's wrong with the vehicle. That is the technician's job. Which I can totally understand that with my background in customer service and my ability to communicate with people. I'm just wondering how you feel the jump would be for someone in my situation. Again, I enjoy the show. My name is Kevin.

So a couple things, Kevin, come to mind instantly for me. Same for you.

Yeah.

So the first one I would say is when you're going out to clients, fixing printers and that sort of thing, you're usually for the most part, I know there's exceptions. You're dealing with one customer at a time. And although being a service advisor can appear like you're dealing with one customer at a time, you're not. You're Dealing with all the customers you wrote before, the, the ones that are in the shop, the ones you're writing now, the ones that want to come in and are on the phone. And so there's a lot more going on and it's harder to just be in the moment with the customer you are with. And so that would be an adjustment period. It's just different is all it is. It isn't that you can't adjust. I don't think Your age of 57 has any relevance in this whatsoever.

I'm going to be 50 and I don't, I don't think that seven years from now I would have a hard time writing service personally.

And then you kind of got the part. So you're obviously a fan of the show. And listen that the hardest part for somebody that's technical is to turn off that switch of fixing. Instead of fact finding, you're more of a private detective, investigator, as an advisor and documenting that information than you are a problem solver or a fixer. And so right now the customers are telling you what's wrong and you're instantly fixing it. You're going to have to shut that part off and retrain your mind to just document, investigate, ask questions, verify things, like if they have a noise or something, you want to verify it before you give it to the tech. A lot of times, yeah. But.

You know, being a service advisor can be very rewarding, very fun, and you're helping a lot of people if you know, if you have the right mindset. So I wouldn't advise against it. What would you say?

I don't advise against it either. I think I might have a little bit of a different opinion on the technical aspect of service advising. Because as much as I agree that, you know, if you're a service advisor, don't speak to your customers like you're a technician because they're not going to know what you're talking about. I think service advisors, whether it's the copy printer, it side or it's the automotive side, that there should be at least a base level of some sort of product knowledge because your customers are going to ask you questions. And if you have no idea what they're asking, it's not really going to help build that rapport. But there is that fine line of how much do you share with the customer or how much knowledge should you have as a service advisor before it gets to a point where you're already fixing it in your head or you're telling the customer how it gets fixed, you Know, So I think there's a balance, and it takes a very specific.

Kind of training or experience to be able to walk that line.

Yeah, that's good. Awesome. Well, good luck, Kevin. I hope you do become an advisor and have a lot of success and call in maybe and update us. Yeah. And maybe we can have you on the show after you do it for a while, and we can talk about what the transition was like and how on or off are we. Yeah, in our. In our description. And then now we have a guest coming up, Mr. Steven Mason. He is the director of operations at Kiefer Automotive Group. And he. He had a post that caught our attention called learn to love your Lauras, which was very heartfelt, vulnerable, and you're gonna love him. He's a great guest. And you do want to stay to the end and listen to the Nick Saban analogy and how we talk about hiring and recruiting, because it's very relevant to where we at are at now as an industry and the climate. So check it out. Welcome to the big show. Mr. Mason, how are you today, man?

I'm doing fantastic. How are y'?

All?

Pretty good. We saw in the. In the presume here you were signing a bunch of checks. You doing payroll?

Yes, I do.

You were doing payroll?

I was, yes, sir. I was just signing off looking. Y' all may think this is crazy, but I'll sign off and I'll just write little notes to employees who are really performing well, you know, takes like one minute to let them know they're appreciated.

Nice. That's sweet. I love that.

Yeah.

That means a lot to them. That's great. So you came to our attention through our. Our network of spiderwebs on social media for everything car related in a story that you posted about learn to love your Lauras caught our attention. So could you just maybe start off by telling the story, and then we'll kind of unpack it and talk about it? Because it's. It's a great story.

Sure. So the young lady's name is Laura Roy. Years ago, I was a floor manager at River Chase Kia, and I was promoted to finance, and Laura held a position of a biller. And what that biller was is that is the person to wear when I. When I contract a customer, I make sure all their documents are together and I take it into the accounting office and before it goes out to the bank. Laura's job was to make sure that it had everything in there that I said it was. That said was in there. Excuse me. And on a consistent Basis, I would turn a deal into Laura, and she would bring it back to me because it was missing things. Well, you know, one day I just couldn't take it anymore because I was so tired of. I turn in five deals, five deals come back. Then I run three more deals, and now I've got eight deals. I turn in eight, seven come back, I run five more. Now I've got 12 deals, and 11 of them are in my office. And it was just constantly Laura bringing me deals until one day I just lost my cool and she gave me a deal back. And I took the deal and flung it against the wall, and all the papers came out and. And I.

Said to her, you know, and I won't use the explicatives, but I said, here, you know, I'm done. Why don't you. You figure out what to do and clean this up? And like I said, I'll back away from the explicatives, but we get. We get the point. Laura.

Chose to close the door and slow me down a little bit and stand me up, say, hey, listen, you know, there's a lot of things that are going to go on in this dealership, but you will not disrespect me or my position.

And at the time, I didn't take it overly serious. I mean, I took serious that she was not backing down from me, because all of a sudden I realized that I had. I had the wrong chick. You know, she was tough. She was great at her job, better than anybody I've ever seen. And.

Months after that.

My wife calls me from the delivery room or the hospital, and she says, hey, I was here because I'm getting checked out. I'm 25 weeks pregnant. My stomach hurts a little bit, but they're sending me home. And I'm like, okay. And right when we get off the phone, she calls right back and says, you won't believe it. My water just broke. So my. My wife's at the hospital, her water breaks. I've got another son at the time who's scheduled to get off a bus. There's nobody there to get him. I'm on my way to the hospital, and I'm thinking to myself, how do I get to the hospital and get my son when he gets off the bus?

And Laura, I called her up. She took the rest of the day off of work and went and stayed with my son, stayed the night with my son, made sure my son got a bath, made sure my son got to school and on the bus the next day.

And it speaks Volumes for Laura. First off, it speaks volumes for Laura, but it really speaks volumes for what your people really represent if you allow them to. And it just was, you know, it was one of the more valuable lessons of my. My entire life. And I have to tell you something, and you know that that's back when I was a floor manager, slash when it getting into finance. But now I'm a general manager, and I've got, you know, 106 employees. And if y' all were to sit there and ask me who have been instrumental in me getting to where I'm at, I would have to say Laura's in the top three.

She.

She absolutely refused not to let me do my job properly. And at the same time, she really taught me a valuable lesson in just how important your employees are and how people deserve to be treated. And I'll tell y' all something, you know, and. And I saw the other day where she posted on LinkedIn that she got engaged. And. And I don't mind telling y' all something.

And I'm very, very open about this, whoever she's marrying, because she and I haven't got to speak in years. You know, you leave the car business, go somewhere else, people just. They don't talk as much. But she and I have stayed in some communication. But I have to tell you that the dude that she's marrying is, like, maybe one of the luckiest guys in the world because her character as an individual just stands out above hardly anybody I've ever seen in my life.

Yeah. Did you tell her that?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's so. So I will send Laura a random message about once every other month, just telling her how proud I am of her. And.

You know, just the fact that.

Just, you know, people like that and they humble you to a place where you realize that you're only really as good as the people around you. You know, when you finally get to the place where you're going, if you. If you're not smart enough to look back and say, who got you here? Then, boy, you're living a shallow existence. And not to get too deep, but, yes, I never have a conversation with Laura ever, where I don't get off the phone and she doesn't know that. She's one of the most instrumental people in my life. No doubt.

That's really sweet. So now that you're a general manager, if you had somebody in finance that had a problem getting all the steps and their paperwork, you know, being clean, and they. They did that same thing, how would you, how would you react now?

So, so the, the one thing that I fall back on with my story with Laura, and this is important, and I, I say all along, you know, what has my journey been? And there's. It's a twofold answer. Number one is that with no disrespect to some of the people I've worked for, a lot of times in the things that they've allowed and the way they've acted, they taught me how not to be. That's. That is in no way me slinging mud. I wouldn't do that. You know, just as there are things that your mother and father did that maybe you don't agree with now that you're a parent. Yeah, it's the same thing.

Two things. Number one, and this is super important, when I did that to Laura, in my personal opinion, I should have been fired. I should have been fired.

That type of behavior was somewhat allowed and that's unfortunate. But I can tell you that in my story wouldn't exist. And when I say it's a twofold answer, you know, first thing I have to do is I have to identify why is a finance manager a finance manager who can't get his paperwork together. Because the job is just not making money. The job is protecting the store. The job is our last line of defense. What are we doing to make sure that we are securing the loan and making sure that we're perfecting the lien and that all of our paperwork is in place? That's number one. Number two is if we can't take direction from somebody who's ultimately trying to do the same thing without losing our cool, then I have to ask myself, are you the right person for the position? I can tell you, in my store, it would be.

It would be pretty severe if that happened. And when I say severe, that job from a finance manager who most finance managers make a pretty good living in the United States of America, it would be an immediate three day suspension. Immediate. And it would be, you know, it would be.

A serious talk when they came back in regards to. It would not be a 1, 2, 3 strike offense. It would be, if this ever happens again, you're no longer employed here. And I'm sorry, that's the example we have to set. Whether it's Laura as the biller or whether it's James Wilson as the biller, because you can't really draw a line in regards to the treatment of your employees. You have to be the same across the board. And I'm emphatic about that. And it's been life lessons that have taught me that. But nobody within the four walls of the dealership is allowed to disrespect another person. And listen, I'm in the car business. I've been in it for a long time. I've seen it my entire career growing up. But I just absolutely won't. Won't accept it. And just as I'm not afraid to sit here and tell y', all, hey, listen, I should have been fired, the person who doesn't. In my store, it's going to be really, really difficult for them. And the person it happens to is going to have a serious talk with me, because I have to ensure that they're okay. I have to make sure that, hey, listen.

We'Ve all had situations in our life, sir, where something happened, and then we had a tough time getting over it, and nobody really talked to us about what we were going through. They just assumed we got over it. I don't want to be that guy. I want to make sure that anybody who feels violated at all within my wall, within the walls of my store, that I address it myself as the leader of the store, and we try to fix it and move on. And I think that as leaders, and I speak for myself and hope, I hope everybody is listening. You can fix a lot of problems by just getting out in front of them. If you do what I'm saying and you address the person who was out of line, and then you address the person who was violated, at that point, you're out in front of it. What we do a lot of times, and I hate to say this, just my opinion, is the person who violated someone, we slapped them on the wrist and say, hey, don't do that again, without documenting anything or putting it on paper. And that's. That's. It doesn't work. But then we don't really address the person that was violated other than having the person who disrespected them. Say, make sure you tell them you're. You apologize. No, you have to be the father of the family if you want to sign up for it. The father or the mother, you know, with.

With. With the responsibilities of running the store, you have to be able to handle any problems that come with it. And those problems don't suggest pawning off apologies on employees. That. That's all you're doing. You know, it's got to be tough love.

And that's just where I'm at on that. I hope you can appreciate it.

So who. So what do you say? To the person who is violated.

What do I say?

Yeah.

You know, as weird as this sounds.

I have a very, very serious conversation with them in my own.