The Pros And Cons Of Building A Bench | #SDR 238

Welcome everybody to the big show. We got an exciting, exciting.

Box of content for you. Legendary today. I'm Chris Collins and this is Chris Joan.

Hello everyone.

Today we're going to talk about the pros and cons of building a bench. And I guarantee all your money back that we're going to bring up stuff that you never thought of and we're gonna present it in a way that you've never heard it presented.

This is a tune in. Pay attention. 1.

Next thing we're gonna do is talk about a zombie apocalypse and what to do.

Yeah.

And that rolls right into the news.

Everyone wants to know.

Mention again about Christian's childhood trauma and much, much more. Coming up on this edition of Service Drive Revolution.

Everybody to the big show. This is Christian.

Hello, everyone.

The joke man.

I've been known to tell a little funny here and there.

Funny man. If you are watching this and not just listening, you know that we've done a few of these in Christian's office. So this is actually Christian's office is.

The ready made studio, which I really enjoy.

Pretty soon though, we're going to be in the new. In the new digs. They're pretty much done.

It is so cool. What's your favorite part?

We have a statue of Lincoln coming that's eight feet tall. Okay, I like that. I'm excited about that. The gold wall is pretty cool. The minotaur statue.

Minotaur statue.

The way the bookshelves have the doors, the blue, the carpet, the. What is that 16 by 9 screen?

It's huge.

Yeah. The stereo. So the stereo is pretty nuts. Hi Fi. It's been described as an experience listening to music already and we haven't really, it is. Had that many people.

You have not said my favorite part yet.

The, the chairs.

Those are nice too. Keep going. It starts the party off.

Starts the party off. The pink door.

Yeah.

Oh, really?

The pink door with the old fashioned like cage where you can open and see who's coming and everything. All that stuff that you mentioned.

Doors a lot of depth because the. That wall is gonna have carpet, which is gonna be weird, you know.

Yeah.

The design is unlike anything you have ever seen.

It's so custom and so creative. It's really cool.

Before we get to the news, Christian, I have a question that I was debating with somebody over the weekend.

Okay, I'm ready.

In a zombie apocalypse, would you rather have. And we could say these are trucks, like an electric truck or a gas powered truck. Which would you rather have? Oh my gosh. Okay, let's get to the news.

You don't want me to answer the question?

Oh, maybe the question's in the news.

So today in the news, a California car dealership follows Tesla's lead by selling solar alongside EVs. Could that be the answer?

So Capistrano VW Mazda car dealership in beautiful San Juan Capistrano, California. They partner with the San Diego based solar and battery insulation company to offer EV customers solar, the battery storage and also EV connectivity, which is pretty smart. So it's the first of its kind between an auto dealer and solar company and beautiful, wonderful Orange County. The wave of that is with electricity versus the gases that it's renewable. Right.

What do you mean by renewable?

Well, it's electric. So you can just put electricity back in. Especially with something like a. Like this model.

Right.

Like what's your, what was your idea?

Well, I would go with gas.

For the simple reason that they can shut down electric cars remotely.

Yeah. Okay.

So over the weekend when I bought Inspired by you, who had a Tesla and then proceeded to get rid of it, and now you drive a midlife crisis. But when you had a Tesla, you opted not to get the self driving option. I got the self driving option, which has never been used. I don't know. We've had that thing for over a year. Never been used until this weekend.

Oh, How'd it go?

Oddly, not very good.

This is crazy. So it's confusing, but you turn it all on. There's like a million things you opt into to turn it on in the Tesla menu.

Then it says that you have to keep your hands on the steering wheel even though it's driving.

What's the point?

Hold on. Okay, if you don't, you get a violation and if you get five violations, they turn off the self driving option that we paid $10,000 for. It was expensive.

Oh, it's not cheap, for sure.

They turn it off so they can sell you an option that they can turn off if you don't behave. I mean, already I'm, I'm in. You know, the first, the last thing I want to do is be told what to do all the time.

Like, I guess I just don't understand them. Adverse to authority. Yeah, you're better, you're better off when you're in charge.

Yeah. And so that just. But it wasn't me driving, it was Missy. And Missy, her little hands, they didn't feel him or whatever. She got flagged and it turned off all the way to our destination. Then when we got at our destination, went in and Came out. She's like, well, should I try it again? And I was like, maybe we should try it like early in the morning when there's no traffic. And then we tried it again early in the morning when there was no traffic the next day. And she just kept her hands on the wheel and it was fine. But the idea in the back of my head is, oh well, they could turn this. They can turn this thing off.

Yeah, they can for sure.

I don't know if they have a kill switch on, on a Range Rover. I know that the thing updates from the satellite like every once in a while. I get in there and it says your software has been updated. But I don't know what that means because I never noticed anything different with the software. It's still glitchy.

I would guess that they can turn it off though. Like my car, you can lock and unlock from an app. From the app on my phone. If they have that, they can kill it.

If that's the case, then I would go electric.

If it's evo level playing field. Yeah.

Because it would keep me from having to store hundreds of gallons of gas in my.

Yeah, like what could go wrong?

Yeah.

Goodness gracious.

Okay, that's my thought. Tell us what you think.

They'Re going to be like. We just glance over that we went right to zombie apocalypse. We don't want to talk about how we got to the zombie apocalypse. Just what would you drive? But yeah, interesting. The old solar panel, I think.

I mean we're making it clear that we believe in a zombie sometimes. This is completely. I'm going completely sideways now, but sometimes I look around LA and I think we're already in a zombie apocalypse. Yeah, there's homeless people.

There are at least 7,000 zombies in LA for sure in 2000 that are that applied and they just got approved.

I was coming home from the gym Friday morning at like. So I'm leaving there at 6, right. I'm driving home and on the corner there of Santa Monica and La Brea, there's like I've seen the guy there before but he's like clearly homeless, but semi attractive guy but you know, out of his mind standing there like on the corner like almost in the street, like what would you call that? It's not break dancing but it's like freaking out but for real not. It's not American pants. And I think they.

Cause I think they call that an OD.

Maybe but he's just like kind of like fighting himself in the air a little bit, but looks almost Painful and very uncomfortable. And then a couple hours later, gunfight right there on. At the target there. Like cops in a shootout with people.

It's getting better.

What do you got to do at target to get shot? Symphony.

Just be there.

Wow. I heard gunshots this morning.

Yeah, it's nuts. So I. Maybe we're already in a zombie apocalypse, and we should figure this out. Could be good news is I don't have the solar panel these. These guys here are inventing, but I do have a gas, and I do have an electric car.

I do like the idea of a solar panel on top of the car, which would perpetually charge it. Yeah, that could be kind of cool.

I think we'll get there.

So, pros and cons of building a bench. Let's start with the cons. Christian, what would the cons be to building a strong bench? This is something that you talk about a lot. You talk about always being. Always be recruiting. Always be recruiting.

So the one con is how much.

Always, always, always be recruiting.

That's right. So the time that you have to spend.

Okay, so it's. It's a pain in the.

It is a pain in the. Does not do it by itself. You always have to. Yep. And you have to be willing to change regularly. So you have to massage it. It's not a set. It's not a. It's not a line in the pond with a bobber. It's way more like fly fishing, where you always have to change everything.

Which means you constantly have to be interviewing.

And.

Let'S see. What are other pros and cons or just cons? Sorry. Just cons.

Gosh, maybe you would be in danger of hiring too many people.

I'm running out of cons.

There would be the con of you got to let go of some stuff. You got to empower some people. You're gonna have to trust.

People. Right.

Okay.

If you're trying to build a bench of people moving up in their career and eventually replacing you as a. As a manager.

Oh, do you think some people would take that as a negative? As the fact that you would be building yourself that you could be replaced? So, like, if you're really insecure, you wouldn't do that.

For the same reason a lot of people won't hire people more talented or people that have achieved more. Usually they won't hire somebody like that.

I love people that have achieved more. We get to learn so much, and it's like, hey, I couldn't do that, but you sure can. I don't know I think that's great.

Okay. What about trust?

Well, yeah, I think the trust thing would come from just in general. Right. So when you think about the person that does every. Doesn't have a bench and they do everything themselves, they would be very afraid that the. Whatever needed to be done couldn't be done as well as they would do it. Patricia was saying this, is that she.

She was looking right at me when she said this. Tell them what she said. Looking right at me. She said this.

Yeah. So she said that it's way better to have things 80% correct and 100% done than 100% done by you.

Yeah.

Okay.

The 80% is generous. That's a generous number.

Do you think it's 60, 40? Yeah. My favorite.

How do you come up with a. What's. What science is behind.

Like we can get our people to do 80% of what we want. It's so funny.

Stems from me talking about how I would like things done a little bit different.

Yeah. And then more.

I had a list today.

Yeah. It's so great. So Patricia and I meet with Chris.

I waited until Monday though.

You did. Patricia and I meet with Chris every week. And every week like we go through this meeting that takes an hour and a half every Monday morning. And we leave feeling like we've got this one, we've got it nailed next week. He's going to love everything we told him. And we come in and we report back what we did over the week only to find out that we didn't do everything exactly how you would do it. But like coming into that very moment every week, it's like, oh, we got it this time. And then it's like, shoot.

No, no.

We missed the, we missed the boat a little bit. But definitely the delegating thing.

Well, two things. One is we're. We're growing fast and we got big things on the horizon. So we gotta, we gotta think a little bit different. So I'm trying to condition everybody to think a little bit. Yeah.

Learning new skills for sure.

And. Yeah. And push.

Yep.

But the other thing is the main thing I wanted to talk about this morning that I would have liked to have been done different was months ago.

Yeah. We're behind.

Well, we had a. We had somebody in the CRM that wasn't with us anymore. That wasn't. The people weren't reassigned, I guess.

Yeah. So it was housekeeping type stuff.

It wasn't a week over week thing. It was a long term idea for sure. Just a basic philosophy of when you're when you don't work here anymore, you're dead.

That is figuratively. Not literally. Yeah, figuratively.

Not literally, but it's true.

Yeah. That it's. The chapter's closed.

Yeah. I don't want to see your name ever again.

That is so final.

It should be final.

Is that a. Is that a constant in your life or just at work?

It's an interesting question.

It's probably. Yeah, I caught. I.

Listen, Christian, here's the thing. I only have so much room in my little melon. And I don't know, maybe I had a. Maybe when God was handing out melons. Maybe my melon was a little smaller, so I got to protect it. Like, I don't have a big melon like you. And so what is in there? I gotta. I gotta have a toll booth of what I allow in there. So I don't.

It's gonna be high rent.

I don't watch scary movies. I don't watch a lot of negative stuff. I don't hang out with people that are. That are negative. I got invited to a party this weekend, and I was like, do I really want to go to another Hollywood party where everybody's pretending to be.

Small talk? Do I want to do that? Or would I rather be working on the leadership book?

Much rather be working on the leadership book. That's not even a hard decision.

Yeah. So I got to protect what's in there, and so I respect that.

I think I understand a lot more about, you know.

Yeah, you got to protect what goes in.

That's right. I think.

I think you should. You should think about what you let in your mind a little bit.

I'm pretty guarded.

Didn't you just go see a movie over the weekend?

Yeah.

Yeah. Stunned. Sephora movie.

What?

Yeah.

The one about the Michael Jordan shoes. Yeah. How is that a horror movie?

It's a nightmare for Adidas and Congress.

It's just basically a documentary on how they.

How they committed suicide.

Hundreds of billions of dollars out the back door. It's a complete. Complete travesty.

How is it you can't just think.

Of it from your perspective like you're wearing Nikes or whatever.

How is it that the best joke in SDR history was told by you?

That was awesome. There's been better.

Oh, my gosh. That was great.

No, but you do gotta. You gotta protect, like, you gotta.

I agree. I don't even watch, actually.

What we were talking about wasn't that we weren't talking about. I like the person, and I certainly would talk to the person or whatever, and they left on good terms. But as far as computers and assignments and all that, it needs to be.

A. Yeah, we can be better. How we do anything is how we do everything.

Exactly. Okay, back to the pros and cons of building a bench. So we've established that it takes focus, it takes work, takes committing to it.

The downside of it is you got to let go. So things might be 20% the way you want them, but 100% done.

We've gone from the 80 to the 20 rule. Yeah, that's good.

And so, you know, 100% done, but not the way you want, I guess, is better than nothing. Those are the only two choices.

That's a low bar. Yeah. Goodness gracious.

So there you go. There's the. There's that. That's important. But now let's. Let's flip to the other. The other side of what. What sort of benefits are there in a culture where people see other people moving up? Like, one of the. One of the. The.

Craziest things I ever saw was at a job fair.

And I don't know why we were at a job fair. We were trying weird stuff at the time. But next door to us at this job fair was Enterprise Rent a Car.

Oh, yeah, I remember that.

And we used Enterprise Rent a Car.

Right.

And so I went over there and I was listening to them, and I always wondered how they get these kids for $35,000 a year to wear a suit and wash cars. Like, I always thought they had an amazing culture. Do you know what they were telling people when they came in?

I do, only because I've heard the story. But no.

What am I, like grandpa now? Like, my story's been weird.

Talking about that earlier, that. I've got your. I've got your stories on Rolodex.

They. They had a picture of the CEO, and they said, the CEO started out just like you.

Yeah.

And now he's the CEO of the company. So you should. You come in here and be the right fit and work hard, and you also could be the CEO. By the way, he's worth $500 million or whatever. Right. It's not a bad.

Not a bad ploy.

And I don't think he's worth 500 million, but he's making. He's making more money than you would at the local branch.

He's not making $35,000 a year.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so one of the benefits of building a bench is they are going to be more committed. They're going to Try harder because they see a career path. We've also seen this with the corpor quick lube, where kids coming in, if you give them a career path and they have incremental wins along the way, it dramatically improves their effort. And it also dramatically improves your retention of quality people.

That's right.

Correct.

100%.

Okay. So they're going to be more committed. They're going to move up. The next thing is, if you have a strong culture, it is always better to move people up than to bring in new people from the outside.

Absolutely.

We know a dealer group that is acquiring a lot of dealerships, and they have such a deep bench of talented service managers. They become general managers or talented advisors that become service managers. But when they plug them into the new. The new point that they just acquired, the culture comes along. They know what's expected. They know the culture. It's the same thing with you take a porter that understands the culture and you make them an advisor. They already know how we treat customers. They already know that we show up on time. They already know what we're willing to do to make someone happy. They understand the heart and soul of what we're about. And it's way easier than bringing in an advisor that came from, you know, whatever. God.

Yeah. And you, like, deprogram them to reprogram them. Like the. The learning curve is very sharp.

Yes.

It's beautiful to watch.

Third thing about building a bench is it saves you money. Let me tell you why it saves you money.

Please.

When we go into a dealership that's booked out three weeks and they need technicians, when we go recruiting those technicians, are we getting them under, market, at, market or above? Market, above, at or above. Sometimes we get them at fair.

When we have a career path and we grow our own. So little Timmy starts off on the quick lube rack and then moves up. Are we above? Below? Where are we at?

Below or at.

So, culture.

Yeah.

And.

Third question. Is little Timmy apt to leave for a dollar more an hour?

No. You buy the loyalty.

Timmy probably isn't looking. Unless you're way underpaying Timmy, which. That isn't good either.

Yeah. I think pay people what they're worth. For sure.

Yeah. But you're not going to be held hostage. There's no ransom. There's no blackmail. Yeah.

That's great.

Right?

That's really good. I have one. Do you have more?

Yeah.

Okay.

Fourth one.

Are companies that have a strong culture and people are vested and feel like they are a part of the future of the company. And they can move up and. And their trajectory, their lifestyle is determined by their commitment and their creativity and their availability to be a solution.

That was the one that I was going to say. You create an environment of problem solvers. Yeah, that's really cool.

You're going to adapt quicker to the changing marketplace. You're going to. Some of the best ideas I have ever heard has come from employees on the front line that are vested. They're invested emotionally and they share their ideas because they care. They want. You know, it's really easy for somebody to come in every day, clock in and clock out and never really contribute.

Something emotionally.

You know, it's a.

Never vest themselves. Yeah.

You know, it's a good example of that that we do here is our top dog competition is built off of stuff learned on the front lines from our team. Almost all that stuff came from that.

And they just keep coming up with ideas. Almost too many for me to implement. But that's a really good example that. Where we try to foster that creativity internally too. But yeah, it's fun to see you.

Work in dealerships number five.

Yeah.

People that are vested, people that care about the company and people that want to move up are also people that want to be cross trained.

Yes. And less likely to embezzle.

Less like. Less likely to say, that's not my job or no, I'm over here. I don't want to do that. They're curious about other positions and how it works and what the finances are and what the numbers are and what are we doing, what are we learning? They're more apt to. To want to be trained and to get better.

Yeah. They see no ceiling.

Yeah.

Great.

That's a good one.

I like that one too. I snuck the embezzle one in on you a little bit, didn't I? That's pretty good.

So to make a very long story short.

Seven hours.

I would encourage everybody listening to this.

Not today, but starting tomorrow. First thing, start building a bench. Start building a bench of the future of our industry.

Stop sitting on your hands and overpaying for people that don't care, that are entitled. Build your culture from the bottom up.

Yeah. I believe the children are our future.

Teach them well and let them lead the way.

You should make that into a song.

Yeah.

Thanks, everybody. We'll see you next time on Service Driver.

Thanks so much for watching this episode of Service Job Revolution. 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 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.chriscollinsinc.com now it's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.