The Best Top Dog 2022 Takeaways | SDR #218

Welcome, everybody, to Service Drive Revolution. On this episode today, we are going to talk about our top five takeaways from our annual event that we just had that also, coincidentally, is called the Top Dog event. So five takeaways. Mine and Christians, different lists, separate. Might be the same, might be different. We don't know what each other wrote. Also, we're going to talk about the news and just bring you up to date on what's going on around here at Chris Collins, Inc. So I'm Chris Collins, and this is Chris Joan.

Hello, everyone.

That and much, much more coming up right now on Service Drive Revolution.

We've been gone for a while. We missed. We definitely missed you. We missed you probably more than you missed us. And I. I think there's a lot of people that don't know what to do on a Monday.

I think that's the thing is that, like, you know, when you think about it, like, SDR is the Monday anchor, the drive by, and Friday is like, the way we close it. Like, I think we're vital to people's weeks. At the end of the day, when.

You really think about it, we're in our conference room in our office, which we think might become the new set for sdr because we don't really need a conference room once the library is built. And the library, as we sit here today, is.

Probably a month away, like, from being ready for people to come and participate in something. I will also tell everybody that in the last month, I have probably bought another thousand books just because this starting a library has forced me to look at the books that I have and fill in gaps where I'm missing certain books. Like, for example, in the leadership section, in the presidential section, I bought a bunch of Churchill stuff that I didn't have before. And in the psychology, I've got a bunch of new magic.

Stuff, mythology. So I've really filled in where I feel like the gaps are. So it's more of a complete.

Collection in a sense. We'll always be adding to it. But if somebody comes here and they wanted to read about psychology, there would be more there than they could consume.

Yeah. So that's what I was gonna say is maybe how you would describe it before is you had a little bit of everything and. And now you can actually come in and learn a lot about a topic. Like having multiple books on Churchill, like, just for instance. Right. So that dude has. He was in politics for 70 years. It was like something crazy. Like, that started in the late 1800s, went to the 1950s, just in case you were wondering, I also read a book on Churchill, but there's a lot of information in there, and I think that's really cool that you're trying to build this library to be a complete learning center on so many different levels. And I think that's really neat.

You. Yeah. And I'm also noticing when I'm boxing them up, because I've been going through my library at home and boxing them up in categories. Is that like, for example, what would you put Churchill under as a category?

Politics.

Okay. I have so much stuff on Churchill. He's kind of his own.

You have a whole Churchill section. Like, it's enough to make it a section.

Same thing with Carl Jung. Like, there's a lot of.

Well, just think about the Rothko books I have.

I was thinking you can have a Duchamp wing.

Well, yeah. Well, I don't think I'm gonna bring the Duchamp books here.

Okay.

So there's a lot of books that when I do the leadership workshop, I will bring them for that day, and then I'm taking them home. I. I don't want to sleep at night thinking they're 10 miles away.

Oh, that makes sense.

There's a. There's a connect connection there. Well, there's certain books I'm not gonna put.

Yeah. So many of the. Those types. Things like, how much of your collection would you say is almost irreplaceable? Like, definitely some of those Duchamp books. Right.

And then I think irreplaceable, maybe like 5%. But it's a lot. It's. Yeah. Going through the books I have, I don't think people from the outside looking in understand how eccentric I am. In, like, for example, I got books on Churchill's paintings. Like, most people don't even know he painted.

He's actually not bad. I've seen some of his paintings. It's pretty impressive.

And then just think about different psychology stuff that I have. Magic. Hypnosis. I got more hypnosis. And then what do you think the largest part of the collection is? Which? Most people would never guess this. I have more of these books than anything else.

Hmm.

I feel like this is a layup and it's not gonna be right. But personal development.

I have very little personal development.

Yeah.

Like, even when I'm going through them and I land on one of those, I don't know where to put it. Cause I don't really. I don't. Some of those books are dog whistles, but I don't think it's something I'd want in my library.

Okay.

Like, leaders eat last or clowny stuff. Like, those aren't real books.

Yeah.

So I was thinking dog whistles.

Like, Carnegie. Jocko's book. Like, some of those real essentials are core that. I know that you have Carnegie.

Yeah. Jocko would be on the cusp. But.

People aren't gonna come here to look at that book. They would have it already.

That's fair.

But photography and then art. I have more photography books than anything.

Yeah. He has some really cool photographers. So photography is number one. I would not.

Well, I didn't guess that it's number one by.

Number of books and also by the size.

Yeah. So I think that's another thing, too, that I'm personally excited about. Like, I've been to your house a bunch of times. I don't know the scope of your library personally.

Yeah, it'll be fun. So much stuff when it's online and you can peruse through it.

Yeah.

Your.

Your passion towards books has kind of inspired me too. So I don't know if you know this or not, but I've started painting.

So I've been spending a lot just like Churchill. Not near as I got something to do to get to Churchill level, but, you know, so I've just kind of been. There's a lot of stuff that you need in order to be a painter. So I've got the easel, I've got a bunch of canvases, different sizes and everything like that. My. What's the thing that holds the paint? What do they call that thing? Bucket palette, maybe? Is it a color palette? Right. But then I went to. The other day, I went to the. To the art supply store, and.

I went to the art supply store to get thinner.

It didn't work.

No, I get it. To get thinner. What was. In this little hiatus that we've had? What was the biggest surprise to you?

Probably, I would say, because we're talking about several weeks. I think that the whole thing that we predicted about the used car market starting to tank and everything like that, and that it's starting to happen and people are surprised.

Oh, that's a good one.

So that's one thing that's like. We talked about it months ago, and everyone's like, oh, no, the sky is falling. But know that this guy's been slowly dropping well.

And you could see it miles out. If you're paying attention, what goes up must come down.

Yeah. So that's one of the most interesting.

That's a good one. That might Be better than mine. But the most surprising thing to me was that we did a best of your comedy bits. And then my reaction.

And in the last, I don't know, three months, when we put up this is a funny thing.

This is embarrassing.

Don't get. Don't get me started on this, but when we put up our interview of Dog the Bounty Hunter, it got no view. Like, YouTube censored that thing.

Like it probably to this day doesn't have views. I haven't looked at it lately, but we looked at it every day. And we're like, what's wrong with this video?

Flatlined.

Like it didn't even make sense. Cause we have more people. I don't know. We had more people here looking at that video internally than it showed. They completely eliminated it from their algorithm. No matter what we did, which was.

Inside, into how YouTube does censor stuff. Because there's nothing in that video. All the. All the stuff that he said that would be controversial is edited out of that video. It's a very clean.

Constructive conversation. Him telling his story and why. Why it gets banned or whatever they're shadow banning it or whatever they're doing. Your comedy was the same way dead.

So I don't.

But I don't know if that happened because maybe the YouTube puts our channel in a.

Like, purgatory or something. Because the downloads on Apple and Spotify were the same.

Okay.

But it's just on YouTube, terrible. So we put up Dog the Bounty Hunter, whatever, whatever. And then that one. And maybe trying to. I'm trying to help here.

Yeah. So for those of you, most of you that don't know, there was actually a clip that was put up that was literally like just maybe over the last year or something like that. It was.

Took a tremendous amount of time to go back through and pull out all jokes.

So we did a Christian's best joke kind of like in place of a.

Maybe the best part of my reaction to your jokes.

So this is my point, is that my favorite thing is not me telling the joke, because I told the joke. I get it. Everything like that. But the genuine reactions from Chris. And the more annoyed or confused he is, the better. And that there was only a handful of people that saw that. I even got texts that people are like, they love the ones that we selected. Kevin did a great job curating that whole thing, but, man, nobody watched that video. Not a thing. Like, I just seriously question my funniness.

Yeah, you might want to work on it. I think you're funny, but maybe I'M maybe it's cognitive dissonance.

Clearly YouTube doesn't.

Convincing myself it's funny. Let's do the news.

This is more of a public service announcement than anything. And it's actually, it's not a joke. It's serious because Jay Leno seriously burned in a car fire with gasoline. So he, he's out of the hospital, he's okay, but this is literally like a. Please get back, get well. Jay. I think that he's a huge fan of the automotive industry and I wish nothing but the best for him. So he is, you know we were talking about this earlier is that, you know, the way that, that guy, his, his ability and like his curation of cars and the museums and museum and the way that like it's, you just watch him on some of those videos where he's driving and you just see how happy he is. And I'm a huge fan of that.

Did you see when he got out of the hospital, he was right back at his garage.

Yeah, he TMZ filmed him getting gas and stuff like that. But speedy recovery. I'm glad he's okay. But that was, that was cool. So that brings us to our next thing, which is GM announced that Corvette is to launch as a brand, its own brand, in 2025. And they're going to bring out a Corvette four door. Because everywhere Chris and I go, everyone says, man, I'd love a Vette if only I could get my 6 year old in the back.

Is this like when Ford made the Mustang into an electric suv?

Yes. So it's going to be an EV spinoff and, and it's going to distill the essence of Corvette in terms of design and driving dynamics. So it says here 2025, they're going to have a Corvette four door and an SUV. And then just to keep in line with them, you know, turning this into a family thing. 2026, we expect that there's going to be the Corvette station wagon followed the next year by the Corvette minivan. And they're in talks, they're going to do a, they're going to do a version of a scooter and call that.

Corvette like a Vespa.

Yeah, like a vest.

So like you think moms want to pull up to school in a Corvette minivan? Like, oh, that hot mom over there in the minivan.

Look at her. She's got the vet.

The vet, yeah.

That's so funny.

That's so weird.

It is really weird. I don't understand it.

So my, my opinion of that is that it will do as well as the Mustang, little suv, electric car. It just. It's irrelevant. I don't think people care, you know, what GM is. Do you feel like GM is getting lost?

Yeah, I think you could make that case.

They really haven't rebranded Cadillac the way they want. Right.

I think they're getting rid of Buick.

I feel like the bigger problem here is that they're grasping at straws because they're. They're trying to use everything that they have, like throwing the kitchen sink to try to see what works, but they don't really have a clear idea of the customer.

Want. Like, business is about solving a problem in the marketplace. And I don't think they are. They are making cars because that's what they do, but they don't understand that they're not really solving a bigger problem in the marketplace. If I was gm, I would like to talk about Jay Leno. I would hire Jay Leno as a vice president and have him tell stories about cars and do social media and market. And if they were paying Jay 40 million a year to do the Tonight show, pay him 40 million a year to go out and create stories and experiences with General Motors, old and new, and help he.

I think Jay Leno has more of a grasp of. On what's cool out there. Like, I never would have considered buying a Corvette until I saw Jay with the engineer of it, talking about it. Right?

Yep.

That's a way better idea than having a Corvette suv.

Oh, that's a really good idea.

Like, start making some cars that solve problems, and maybe those problems are that they're shareable or that the technology is better. You know, something like that. Do you know. Do you know on Missy's Tesla that now you can do zoom?

Really? Like, how cool is that?

Like, think about sometimes when I leave here and we have a zoom meeting, and I'm in my car holding my phone for a zoom meeting, but in the Tesla, zoom is on the screen.

It's just right there.

And all the cameras they already have and all that. Think about that.

That's funny.

I did not. Isn't that a better idea than making a Corvette suv?

I feel like there's a lawsuit, Pat. Pending. Going to be pending. Like, someone's getting in a wreck, they're gonna blame their zoom.

Okay, do you want to go through your top five? These are top five lessons takeaways, things that stuck with us.

Yeah.

From. From the big event.

Okay, so my number five takeaway is that our clients are not vegetarians.

We had thousands, if not millions of pounds of leftover salad.

Yeah. The salad bar was not popular.

Yeah. And unfortunately, if people had given it a chance, it was quite delicious, actually.

I thought that there was actually chicken in there.

The food was really, really good. And then number four, Chris, was. He was kind of alluding to it. Is that, like the beauty of how hard everybody works to make those events go off? Is that the. The best compliment is that no one would ever know how hard it was because it looks so easy. And I was so impressed with, like, you had so many variables. Like we were in a movie theater that was actually still open and running. And the way that the team negotiated things that happened on the fly that no one would ever know about.

We were putting on an event in an environment that's not meant to put on an event.

Yes.

From every aspect, from serving food to serving drinks to the sound. I mean, it was 10 minutes before.

You know, we opened the doors on the first night for the reception that Kosh figured out to run an HDMI just to get the sound to work. Right. And for some reason we had a hundred foot HDMI cord, like happen to have it. Yeah. Random stuff, but not meant to be in that environment.

So my three favorite, my third favorite takeaway is that we put on an event that even the people that went to the event, that they go back to their stores and they try to explain what happened to somebody and I don't know that they'd be able to do it.

Oh, yeah.

There was like a really cool. It was almost an alchemy magic that happened. And it was so far. It was so far away from anybody could have possibly expected was going to happen. That was really neat. It was really cool to be a part of something, Something like that. The number two thing that I have down here is that I came out of that with the speakers and the lessons that were done. And everything that we did was that don't judge, take a lesson, or there's so much to learn from everybody or every situation. And I thought that that was really, really evident on when we had Christian come in and not me, different Christian come in and do what he does. And then all the speakers, uniquely, if you were sitting there, there was a lot to gain out of it, even if it wasn't exactly what they were saying. And then the number one thing that I would say that was really, really awesome is the breakout groups were. They were that reminder of how important the sense of community and within the breakout groups. Why the heck didn't we bring These parts managers in sooner. They were such. They had such great feedback and observations. And it was a lot of parts managers first time coming to Top Dog and. And it was so cool to see them interacting. It was like. It was like fixed, you know, fixed Ops was actually 1.1unit for the first time. It was so amazing to me.

I totally agree with that. I don't know what we were thinking not including parts a long time ago. Like, it's so natural and there's so much talent. Like, it doesn't make sense. Like, I don't know what we were thinking.

Yeah. But it was a lot of fun.

Okay, recap really quick.

Number five was clients are not vegetarians. Number four, no one will ever know how difficult it was.

Number four.

Number three.

Hard for someone to describe even though they went to the event.

Number four, don't judge.

Breakout groups, sense of community. Why didn't we get parts involved sooner?

Okay. Mine, I guess, are a little bit different. So this is kind of fun. So my. My first one on my list is when we did the elite meeting. So we thought our library here would be ready. And we were gonna have the elite meeting in the library here. But, like, everything were over budget and way behind, and it's like a movie. So kind of a couple weeks out, we're like, well, where do we have it? Because this isn't gonna be ready. So we decided to have the elite meeting at my house with. Which was interesting. Cause I don't know, we ended up that day having like 50 people there or something.

Yeah.

Which was a lot for the house. But it worked. During the elite meeting, one of the things that we do is we will take other businesses from other industries and dissect them. So we'll make a deal with the business. Sometimes we pay them, sometimes they do it just because they want the advice. It depends. In this situation, we had a connection with them and we've done business with them, but they're a hi Fi store, so a high end hi Fi store. And they came in and presented their business to the elite group. And they talked about their marketing and their numbers and how they get customers back and their kind of customer journey, which was really fascinating. And then the retention of it. And.

I describe their business model like heroin dealers, because it really is. Once you get a new turntable, then you need new speakers, then you need a new amp. It just goes.

Then the wires have to be able to handle the power and all the stuff. And then the needle. I didn't know about needles.

Yeah. Cartridges.

Cartridges. Yep. Sorry.

Yeah, it's funny, but just the fact that every time we do that, you walk away going, it's really not that different. Like we want it to be different, but it's really, at the end of the day, a business that's doing a good job serving the market, getting repeat customers is more about psychology than anything else. Yeah. And so that, that's my first one. Is that there a service department's way closer to a hi Fi store than you would ever think. Where we would think, oh well, it's hi Fi. It doesn't matter. Actually, it's people. And it does matter. We're more similar than we. Than we are different. Andrew Bustamante.

Love him.

So he is former CIA, maybe still CIA. I don't know. What an incredible human being he is. And the way. So what happened with Andrew was we had him just for the elite group. He was going to do a four hour interactive kind of choose your own story adventure that you're a spy. And he walked everybody through this. And then at the end there was a, you know, a winner. You had to analyze and make a final decision on how to proceed. And we broke everybody into groups of three. I think it was really. It was really fun. But we had him just for that. But we had a speaker back out at the last minute. We asked him if he would speak at the main event. And so he ended up hanging out the whole weekend.

So much access.

The way that he talks to people. It makes you feel like you're the most important person in the room. Over and over and over again. How genuinely selfless he is in his. I have never seen anything like that. And it's just like it's genuine. I don't know. It made me feel.

It made me feel like there's hope for humanity.

Oh, for sure. But the amazing thing about that is that it wasn't one person. Everyone. He came into contact, left feeling. I did, totally. I had a conversation with him. Wow, he really likes me. And like the way that he made me feel good about myself. And then I'd watch him do the same thing to someone sitting right next to me.

And.

And at the same time, everybody felt like they were the most important person in the conversation. It was an orchestra playing.

Fascinating. He went to everything too. So he came to the event through the whole thing. The only thing is after he went on stage and at the main event, he went on stage, he said, I gotta go get in a workout. He left and worked out and came back. That was it. Otherwise he was at every dinner in just making friends and available and accessible. And some of the conversations I had with him, you know, I'm super into that, the mindset and all that. So that was number two for me. And his content was incredible, but him as a person and how selfless he was, you know, incredible. The third one I have, which is just kind of funny, is. So at the dinner, the closing night.

The.

We gave away awards for Top Advisor and Top Manager.

And at some point, they're doing those awards, and I think Hoagie comes up to me, and he goes, you had the microphone, which didn't work. Everybody was way louder than the microphone. It was kind of a little bit of a mess. But you are talking. I don't know what you're saying, because I was taking pictures of people. And Hoagie comes up and he goes, I think. I think Christian's filling.

And he's waiting for you to go up there and give a final speech. And I was like, final speech? Like what? I don't have a speech. What. So I go over to you and you hand me the microphone or whatever. And then not long after, you know, we kind of closed in or whatever by closing. I mean the. The speaking part. Yeah, we were still. We still had a couple hours in the room and drinks and all that. You. You said, I gotta go. That's the first time I've ever.