Transcript of a Drive By Q&A (YouTube) where Chris Collins and Christian Lafferty discuss whether working for private or publicly owned dealership groups offers better career prospects. They weigh stability, politics, pay, growth opportunities, and risks such as position elimination or corporate-driven decisions; hosts share anecdotal examples and differing perspectives.
Foreign.
To your Friday drive by. This is where we answer your questions. That's what makes this so special.
I'm Chris Collins, this is Chris Joan.
Hello everyone.
Lafferty. He will make you Lafferty at least once he's got the jokes.
Okay, so if we play your question.
On the big show, we will send you a swag bag of, I don't know, T shirt, hat, notebook. Some parts hold merch.
Coffee cup.
Coffee cup.
And the number is 8333 Ask SDR.
That's 8333-Ask SDR.
Let's go to today's question.
Hey guys, I wanted to throw a question your way. That is potentially a change in my employment as far as my career goes. Currently a fixed operations director over a couple of stores and have the opportunity to take over a bigger store that is publicly owned versus privately owned. And I was just wanting your guys opinion on the pros and cons of working for a private ownership versus a public franchise. Thanks very much.
I mean this is a, this is a simple answer. You're. In my experience, you are always better off working for a private company than publicly owned or. We know a couple people.
That are super talented, like crazy talented that have worked for the bigger public companies that literally one day they just eliminate their.
Their position or their region. They're constantly redoing things, changing things, cutting.
Back.
Asking them to do things, but they have no understanding of what it is they're asking them to do. A lot of time in these public companies, the, the people making the decisions are not car people. They have no clue.
And the, the narratives change consistently. Like every quarter. Like literally you could say one thing one quarter and then the next quarter say something completely the opposite of that. And so.
You know, the downside of working for a private dealer is that they might sell to the publics, but that's it. Like for the most part, private is always.
It'S always easier to climb the ladder in the private. You know, private dealers are always looking for talent. The politics of the publicly traded groups are pretty crazy. It's very political.
I've seen it squash the soul of quite a few people.
Okay.
I think that they, we're going to disagree a little bit on this. I, I think that they, the publics can have their place. If you're depending on your skill set, if your skill set is that you understand the politics and everything like that you can actually have a pretty, pretty good career in a, in a public group. And the other thing that I really like about that is that when you're with a public group that's scaling, they have like these teams that are just like a skill set team or reminds like that the Wolf from Pulp Fiction, where they like just kind of go in when there's an acquisition and like they do a thing. So there's some positions that are, that are pretty valuable in there. I think that.
Probably me personally, I'm way more designed for a small group, but I think that's because I came from a small group and it just. I always felt like I had opportunity and they cared about me and I wasn't a number. But I don't know that everybody cares about that as a, as a manager. Like, if you just see yourself as an opportunity, sometimes the, sometimes the public groups will pay better. But I do agree with what Chris said, only because the. I've seen it happen to people that I call friends is that they performed at like the highest level. And, you know, let's say that there's 200 stores in the group and they were a fixed ops director over 10 of the stores and they had 10 of the best performing. And they got their position eliminated because. Because somebody outside a stockholder shareholder looked at it and said, hey, this, this expense line is too high. And it just happens that the person was in that expense line. So I don't know. I. I'm kind of torn on this.
We. We know somebody who is, who is a fixer for one of the bigger public companies. And they eliminated his position.
Yeah.
Or they didn't eliminate it. They asked him to take like a 50% cut and pay. And he was raining money on them. Like he was.
Yeah.
What he was generating versus what they were willing to pay was very, very.
Before that, they wanted him to take a huge cut in pay.
Yeah. I wonder if they regret that now.
I don't know. Because the problem with a lot of those public companies is they, they're more about acquisition and growth and they don't. They're not that worried about profit per dealership. Yeah.
Do you think that there's a world where that public thing could be a faster road to a gm? If you're a fixed ops guy and you want to get a gm.
GM for those public companies that you're.
Not a gm, you're just like a gsm.
You're running reports, you're taking all the, for the most part, you're taking all the commands from a market manager from headquarters.
Yeah. Well, I'd be curious to hear what people say.
Like, even the hiring and all that is done corporately. Like you don't have a lot of.
What is that saying that parcels used to say, if you want me to make the food, you gotta let me buy the groceries.
Oh, that's funny. I like that.
Well, thanks for the question. Hope that helps. We'll see you next time on Service Driver Revolution.
Thanks for watching this week's Drive By. I hope we gave you something to think about over the weekend. We're uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so you don't miss out. If you have a question question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 8333 Ask SDR and we'll answer your question on the show. That's 8333 Ask SDR. For special deals on our books and training, head over to offers.chris collinsinc.com. now that's offers.chris collins inc.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.
It.
