What’s Causing Your Time Management Issues | SDR #227

Today we're going to talk about what Christian used to do when he was a new service manager. It might not surprise you or it might time management. And there's some very interesting things in the news, hit pieces. It gets political for a second. So that and much, much more coming up on this edition of Service Drive Revolution.

What would you is the thing that's plaguing the automotive industry.

More than anything else? Like what's the biggest.

Problem that needs to be solved?

I know this answer. I know this answer for sure. An overabundance of clinker tile in dealerships.

Well, that's really random and specific to BMW.

Yeah. Okay. If it's not that, which I think it probably is. The technician shortage.

Yes. Yes. And so we know this. We launched a new version of our how to hire technicians.

Training.

Where we were going to assign a coach to everybody. And so you get a coach, a one on one coach to help you recruit techs, help you with your ads, the interview, you know, whatever it is you're ailing and is keeping you from hiring techs. And then we're gonna do every other week we're gonna have a live.

Yeah, it's like a zoom thing. There will be Q and A, there'll be lessons, but I like to call that a master's class.

Yeah. So every other week we'll have a master's class and Christian's office that is designed to be like the inside of a Tetris game.

Yes.

And then they get all our online training.

Right, all the online training. The Tech Tree is a really, really good training platform.

What we're thinking about doing is.

Including the every other week masterclass and the Q and A with our on demand because we're selling out of the other one pretty quick.

Yeah. So we only have so much capacity for coaches to just coach really quick.

Which is a indic indicator that people need help hiring techs. That it is selling that quick.

Correct. Yeah. That's a really good sign.

And so if you're listening to this, you might still have an opportunity. But it also, when you look up Chris Collins technician tree and find that URL or you can DM us on Facebook, there's a pretty good chance by the time you hear this, you won't be able to get a personal coach, but you can get on the calls, which you'll still be light years ahead of everybody else. But we're really good at hiring techs and we want to share that with everybody.

We do this math. We've made the hiring of Technicians for our clients. A part of our internal competition.

Yeah.

So anywhere between 60 and 80 on a given month that we are involved in the hiring of techs, right? Yep.

For sure. I was just a meeting yesterday, and it was between three or four dealerships, was 10. And these. These guys have been on the program for a while, and they still hired 10 techs in the last 30 days. So it's pretty fun to watch.

So if you're struggling with that or you're about to, you know, reach out, let us help you with that. Get in on that, because we're going to start those in a week, the live ones. And you want to be in it from the beginning.

The other thing that I would say about that is I often am presented with the question about shop culture.

Oh, okay.

I've never fixed the culture in a shop without bringing in some new faces and new energy.

Yeah, you got to tip the scales first, Right.

What happens most of the time is the good tech. So the ones with the positive attitude of left, the miserable ones are still there, and they're what you're.

Grading your culture on.

Not understanding that what you need to do is get good at hiring text. Because if the negative ones are the majority, you're gonna have a really hard time. Like, you go into these shops and the text don't want to do warranty working. Like, there's all these weird.

Yeah, there's rules. Yeah.

That you're like, oh, wow, how are you guys functioning with all this? And they're like, yeah, it's terrible. And you're like, did you ever think about hiring more techs? Oh, you can't hire techs. Like. Yeah, well, if you say you can't, you can't.

But, yeah, there's no doubt that's the way to guarantee you won't hire taxes to say that you can.

So I'm excited about this time management topic. Let's do the news and then let's. Let's talk about time management. You had some. Some fun notes about it, and I've. I've actually been talking about this time management thing a lot lately, so I think it'll be fun to share.

Yeah, it's good to reflect. I think it's good to reflect on the. The time management thing just to. I think anytime you stop and look at what you're doing in a day, there's no level that time management's not important for. From an advisor, technician, parts person, service manager, general manager. Time management's huge. So no one has to feel like they're on an island. And speaking of islands, there were these three guys.

That whole thing was a buildup to a segue.

Yes, sir. That's dedication to the craft. So three guys, they're stuck on an island together. But the good news is that they found a magic lamp. And the magic lamp awarded each of the three guys a wish. So the first guy goes up and he rubs the magic lamp and he's like, I wish I were home right now. Disappears, goes out in the middle of nowhere. Second guy goes up, he's like, well, that worked really well. I wish I was home too. He disappears. Third guy's left, looks around. He's like, man, I'm so lonely. I wish my friends were here.

Okay, what's in the news?

Let's talk about news. Today is like, we'll call this scandal news almost. So the first I'm going to open up with Michigan Carvana store agrees to surrender dealer license. They can still sell cars online, though, so they have to surrender their license in lieu of state regulators taking further administrative action. They can keep delivering vehicles purchased through the website, but they can't sell at the site. So it's in Novi, which is a suburb of Detroit. But essentially it's a plea deal that Carvana said, okay, we'll revoke our license, we'll give our license back. And yeah, so they're in trouble. The. The hits keep coming for poor Carvana. We suggested. Chris had suggested a solution to that. But.

Yeah.

They'Re hurting for sure.

So in Michigan, there's a separate license to sell online than in person.

Must be. Well, I think that that's. That online sales is a backdoor thing for a lot of dealership stuff. So it's pretty fascinating as far as that goes. But Carvana in the news taking the hits. Then this one surprised me a little bit. So there's new information.

Resurfaced or surfaced if you want to say that that Tesla video promoting self driving was staged. It was fake. Fake news. So there was a video that is still on Tesla's website right now in 2016 was showing that the car was driving itself. Turns out that was fake. That was Hollywood. And it's pretty funny that they didn't have the technology to let it drive itself, so they faked it. So that's.

Essentially at the end of the day, there was a lawsuit because there was a fatal crash. And then they kind of came up with the whole story that the 2016 was the publication of this one very recently.

No, the news source.

This is auto news and yesterday, 20.

Hours ago, it's automotive news or auto news.

Auto news.

Yeah. So have you noticed that there, there is a plethora of negative Elon Musk news everywhere?

Would you call it a smear campaign?

It is nuts.

Like, it is, like, it is so crazy that as soon as he started releasing the inside stuff on Twitter about how the, you know, the government was meddling in things and the Biden stuff and all that, how much negative.

News.

Is out there that almost isn't even like, when you read those articles, they're not even really conclusive. They're just dog whistles and headlines. Have you noticed that?

So I do know that when we go through this and we talk about the news that we're going to do for these episodes, I bet 30% is negative about Tesla. So yeah, it's definitely upticked a little bit.

So Soros and his clowns are.

They'Re shining their media light on him. It's just, it's fascinating.

Yeah, it's the, it's crazy, the power that's involved in that. That's for sure.

If you watch the Joe Rogan one, who is he talking to about this? Oh, I think it's the guy from Barstool Sports.

Okay.

And he talks about when he had Covid and all of the negative stuff about him and how basically there's just a machine that's turned on and they, they try basically just obliterate you everywhere.

Yeah.

It feels like that's what's happening to Elon right now is they're, they're strategically releasing, they're crafting and releasing negative stories about him with little substance. Just a flood the news feeds with negativity.

Yeah, it's like a political campaign, but in the business world. Yeah, super interesting.

But it is political because he's going after politicians.

It's fair.

And what is the one thing that the politicians don't want?

They don't want bad press.

They don't want to lose power.

Yeah.

It'S fascinating because that sounds like it sounds like a fake story to me.

Yeah, it was. The video was six years old.

You know why it sounds like a fake story?

Because maybe a little more than six years ago, we went with the elite group to the Tesla factory and they drove us around with driverless technology and it was mind blowing.

Oh, that's.

There was nothing fake about it. Everybody in the elite group went, they put us in Teslas. They got on the freeway, they went down a couple miles, came back, got off, and nobody ever touched a steering Wheel.

Oh, that's pretty cool.

Even merged.

That was right around that time, wasn't it?

Yeah. So it's not. It was. It existed. Like, I don't understand what they are saying by. It was filmed Hollywood style, but that is pretty loose. I don't know. When you. When you said the date and you said that, I was like, no, we. We experienced that, and it was real.

Oh, that's funny.

You weren't on that trip, right?

Nope.

No, it's fascinating.

Yeah. I know people that did go and they said it was pretty cool.

They're after Elon Musk.

Yeah. There's no doubt about.

We got to try to support him. I'm for. I. If anything, I want free, free press.

Fair enough.

I feel like social media is way too powerful not to be. To have a bias.

Okay. That makes sense to me.

And the bias is very left.

I think it should be fair both ways.

Okay.

Do you not agree?

No. I think that there's probably not enough of us using the platform to even out the scales a little bit, at least. Asking questions.

Time management.

Good topic. Okay.

So in your.

Segue into a joke, you were saying how important time management is as a subject.

That's right.

I don't agree with that.

Why?

You tell me why I don't agree with it. Let's do a little guided discovery.

Because you think that time management is a symptom, not a cause.

Yeah. So time management. Exactly. Is the outcome of not being committed to what it is you say you want to do. Right?

Yeah. I think that's fair.

So what would be an example of something extreme? Like, if.

You'Re. You know one of your jokes, Right. You're like. So I was walking to work today, and I came up on this homeless guy, and he pulled a knife, and he started chasing me.

Yeah.

Now, in that moment, do you need time management?

No. You just need strong legs. Yeah.

But you know what you're gonna do?

That's right.

You're gonna try to get away.

Yeah. For sure.

Or disarm him or something. But whatever it is you're gonna do, you're gonna decide very quickly, and you're gonna do it. Win or lose. You've chosen a path.

Yeah.

Now, are you gonna procrastinate?

No. No chance of that.

Right. And so then the idea of it being an overwhelming desire. Right. If you're really hungry, you don't need time management to get food. Now, you might make bad food choices.

Guilty.

But that also is just because you want it now. And so you're not willing to wait for something healthier. But do you need time management?

Not for that, no.

Okay, so in a sense, if you woke up every day and you were really committed to a certain outcome or specific outcome, and there were two or three things that you could do to get you closer to that, wouldn't you do those two or three things?

Yeah, there's definitely a commitment level. And I think that you kind of hit the nail on the head that time management is stacking the deck.

And then the other thing is it's an outcome of something else.

Okay, so I'm going to take a guess.

The first one is it's an outcome of lack of true commitment to what it is you want to do, what your goal is. Right.

So if I had a guess, I would say from your angle. The second thing would be self esteem.

Or leadership.

So take for example, somebody who is a manager but not a leader and their people are dumping upset customers on them all day. Now, is that time management? Like if you get better at handling upset customers for everybody else, does that problem get better or worse?

Oh, gets way worse because they have to do less.

But we're gonna work on time management in order to get better at it.

Okay, I see what you're saying.

So the fix is to be a better leader, hire people, train people, get people to be accountable so the upset customers aren't flooding your voicemail. Yeah, right. If you come back from lunch and you got five upset customers in your voicemail, do you need to get better at that time management or do you need to fix the cause?

You need to get to zero voicemails.

Right. And so then I think probably the thing that you were thinking is self esteem is oftentimes that's the self esteem of your value of time.

Yeah.

Is that what you meant?

Yeah, for sure. And I think that there's a, there's a thing about delegation in there and I think that that's kind of a nasty trick for a new leader, specifically because you kind of have to learn like there's that thought internally or at least maybe I had this as a new leader, was that if I asked somebody to do something that I was being lazy by not doing it myself. But at the end of the day, it was way more about the fact that if I have these people employed to do this job, I can do my job. But when I'm not asking them to do, then I'm doing their job and my job and neither really well was what I found out.

Yeah, the, the analogy I've been Giving lately, which I think really works, is you. You know Matt, right? My boxing trainer.

Love him. Top.

He talked at Top Dog two years ago.

He did.

And he came and hung out at Top Dog.

I was. I was also wondering, on a side note, do you think that when we have boot camps and we have dinner with.

Our clients that come. Do you think it would be fun to have, like, Matt and that group of characters at those.

Yeah, because we're not necessarily super characters like that. They just bring a cool energy to the party. I think it'd be fun for them to see what Matt's like.

Well, I was thinking Matt and a couple other people, like, yeah, but Matt is single. Have you ever seen Matt with a girlfriend?

Never with a girlfriend. I've seen him with women, but never.

Yeah, he's had dates before, but it never works out, right?

Never. Not in close.

In fact, one time, not that long ago, he had two dates in the same night. Remember that?

Oh, that's right.

One left and then another one showed up.

Yeah.

Great date, which is interesting. But he has not had a girlfriend. Yeah, correct. Right. Okay. So then I met somebody that I thought might be interesting for him to ask out. I'd actually talk to her about this. Like, I had already kind of broached the subject of, oh, you're single. I know a guy. He's a great guy. Like, I'm selling him, right? Like, he's a great guy.

So then I tell him, hey, I have this opportunity for you that you could ask her out, maybe meet for coffee and see if there's something going on. And he deadpan says, nope, I don't. I don't. He said, this is how he worded it From November to February 15th is a no fly zone.

Yeah. And then it all made sense to you, didn't it?

Well, so the no fly zone means that he doesn't date because he doesn't want to buy a Christmas gift, and he doesn't want to buy a Valentine's gift. And maybe he doesn't want to go for Thanksgiving to somebody's. Meet their family or whatever.

I bet you're right.

So now here's a guy that always complains about being single, wants a girlfriend, and then when you go to set him up with somebody, he has all these weird rules that keep him from doing so. Now we're treating the symptom, not the cause. And maybe the cause is he actually really doesn't want a girlfriend, which is.

Totally okay if that's the case.

Right.

But when you hear him Talk. It seems like he wants one.

But that's how most people walk through life is like, no, I have a goal, I want to buy a house, or I have a goal, I want to do this. But then all of their actions would tell you that that goal doesn't exist. All of his actions are telling you that he doesn't really. And so that incongruency, I think, at the, the top of it is the cause of time management issues. Not actually time management, because you only have so much time.

That's right.

And also if you're better at managing time, there's that. That saying you can. You can't grow a tree in a room full of stuff. You actually don't want to stack your time, so you're busy constantly back to back to back to back because you have no room to get the things that are going to get you ahead done.

And no ideas, no creativity. The whole thing shuts itself in on you.

And you're. You're making more impulsive decisions. You're reacting to stuff, right?

Yeah, I think that's pretty good.

So I think in a sense, whenever. Whenever somebody says time management, what I hear is, I don't have priorities.

Or if you do, there are loose priorities where somebody can stick in front. I think that the, the best people that are best at time management are rigid about their calendar.

There's an analogy in.

Franklin Covey. Covey, he has a book on time management that I've read, and there's an analogy in there of a vase. And he says, if you need to put these rocks and this sand in the vase, if you put the sand in first, the rocks don't fit. But if you put in the rocks first and pour the sand over the top, then it fits. And basically what he's saying, or my interpretation of that, is if you do the big things that are gonna get you to where you need to go first, then the sand kind of takes care of itself. It's funny how many little things go.

Away.

If you focus on the big things.

That's right. And I think you recognize that you can't do everything all on your own. And the thing that I think time management for me is best explained when I look at, like, NFL head coaches. Right. So you think about an NFL head coach and during the game, like, I think a lot of service managers do this where if they were the NFL head coach, they would call the offensive plays, they call all the defensive plays. They'd make sure that nobody was hurt. They'd be, you know, work in the special teams. But the truth is, is that the best NFL coaches, the head coaches, they don't do anything during the game other than they're kind of just monitoring from afar. But who calls the main plays in the games? Right. The coordinators. In some cases the quarterbacks that are 45 years old. But, but I think that.

Are you saying that Tom Brady calls his own plays?

If I had to guess, I would say yes. I think he calls his own plays.

I don't think he does.

Okay, I respect that. I think he might. But.

I think one of the last.

Quarterbacks to call their own plays is Peyton Manning.

Oh, he loved to call the audience.

Pretty sure Tom doesn't call his own plays because he used to. He argued last year with Leftwich a couple times on the play calling.

Yeah, you could see it.

Okay, now he might audible out of everything.

Yeah, I think that there's a lot.

There might be one thing in the ear and he says another thing.

I could totally see that. But when it comes to the head coach's job and their effectiveness, it's all in the prep. Right. So when you think about, like, high level activities for a NFL head coach.

What do you think those are for an NFL coach?

Yep.

High level activities.

Yeah. Getting.

Getting the right players personnel, I think is number one.

And then the, the culture and the belief that they can win. Right. Like, I mean, not just because I'm a Seahawks fan, but the Seahawks did play above their weight limit because of the culture there, not necessarily the talent.

That's right. And I think that that's the great thing. It supports something that we say all the time, is that if you have a strong leader and a great system, you don't have to have the best players to get a really good outcome. So that's why I always kind of think about that. And then the other thing, and then I'm done with sports analogies, is you know how for a long, long time they had player managers in baseball? Right. Like Pete Rose is probably the last, like, person that you can think of that was a player manager. But since 1950, how many player managers do you think have won the World Series?

Zero.

Absolutely zero.

Because there's been player managers in basketball too, I think.

Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah, you're right. I don't know that Jordan ever coached his own himself.

The Wizards.

I didn't think he was the coach. I thought Doug Collins was the coach for a long time, but maybe he was the Wizards. Yeah, the Washington Wizards. He went. Collins went back and coached The Wizards when Jordan went there.

You don't win a championship being a player coach.

It's just not possible to do both. Both roles. So that's a really good example or maybe a good thing for, like our service managers out there. Like, if you're managing the department, if you're dispatching, if you're the warranty administrator, if you're the service advisor, if you're the. If you're the shuttle driver.

Your leadership skills are probably lacking would be my guess. So just kind of think of that, is that, you know, and I think I've shared this before, that as a manager, I connected my identity when I first started out with all the tasks. I don't know if you remember that, but, like, I was always happy. Like, I was the guy they called when the alarm went off and I was the snowplow guy, which is always a funny story to tell.

But I remember more sitting in your office when you're a manager and you saying inappropriate things. That's mostly what I remember. I don't remember anything about tasks.

Good thing that hasn't changed much.

That's funny. That's what I remember.

I had my ego.

A little office on the end, the little glass bars.

I love that. You know what's funny is it started out that I was in the manager's office, was a fishbowl right by the waiting room. But I loved sitting at that office right on the drive.

Okay, let's recap. We launched a coaching element for you to help you find and recruit technicians, how to build a culture, how to grow your own techs. We are very close to being sold out on that DM us on Facebook or LinkedIn if you want more information on that. My point of view on time management is that it's a symptom to a bigger problem. And that's that you don't really have clear goals or if you do, you're not committed to them. It's a lack of leadership because other people are throwing things at you and you're doing their work for them. Right? So it's poor leadership and it's value of your time more than anything else. So when we talk about time management, I would focus on those things versus getting better at doing more stuff because you can't grow a tree in a room full of junk. The more stuff you do, the less efficient and effective you get. There's that saying, slow is fast.

Good stuff.

Thanks, everybody. We'll see you next time on Service Drive Revolution. 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 8-333-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 that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.