278 - Generational Wisdom: How Family Legacy Shapes Business Leadership with The Tamaroff Group's Jason Tamaroff

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show, and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started. Jason Tamoroff, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the vice president of a third-generation family business located, uh, in the Detroit area, Detroit, Michigan area called the Tamaroff Group. And your website is thetamaroffgroup.com. You guys started out, your grandfather started out in automotive back in the, I think the '50s. And the business has grown to 6 dealerships and a whole bunch of other businesses. And you and your cousin are running the show now.

That is correct.

Welcome. Welcome to the show. I think you have a lot to teach us.

Thank you for having me.

Tell us a little. Let's start with you personally. Let's start with your backstory and then a little bit about the company and how it's developed over the years.

Sure. I guess I suppose I can go way back. And in high school, my friend, we were— I was struggling with Spanish and I really didn't want to take another language. So a good friend of mine said, hey, let's take this accounting class and I think it'll be an easy A. And then we don't have to take Spanish. And so I said, okay, fine. So I ended up getting an A, he got like a C+ or something. And so it was a good learning for me. Really, if it weren't for my friend, I probably never would have continued on that path. And so I ended up going to University of Michigan. I got a bachelor's in a BBA. I stayed for an extra year, got my master's in accounting, and I One of the summers I did an auditing internship and I just quickly knew that I like accounting, but auditing is not for me. And Michigan has a great opportunity to, to, to career drop and for resumes. And so I ended up, long story short, ended up at Deloitte Corporate Finance in Chicago working on really M&A activity, helping with companies with distress. Like, so I was there in, I was at Deloitte from '07 through '14.

Oh, right through the collapse. Wow. Yeah.

So we pivoted. It was great. So I was fortunate that instead of just being let go, they just, Deloitte had a restructuring practice also. So they repurposed us. And so I worked on some really cool projects, some troubled supplier work in Metro Detroit. So it was great. So it was a great experience. I did some really cool emergency acquisitions and really at the end of— I reconnect. So my wife, we got married while we were in Chicago, although she was from Metro Detroit. So we knew eventually we would want to come back. And if I wanted to come back, I figured I should try my hands in the family business. Now, I think it was really important for me personally to not work for the family straight out of school. And it was really interesting and eye-opening. I, in Chicago, I met with a family office. I don't remember what we were doing with them, but one of the things that they had mentioned, I don't remember how this came up, was that one of the requirements in order to work for their multi-generation family business was you had to work outside the family and you had to get promoted at least once.

Yep. And I was just going to say that I've worked with a lot of family businesses here in California as a peacemaker and mediator, and the successful ones have that requirement. So you don't—

Yeah.

You don't get inbred.

And I thought it was just real— it just really got a light bulb for me because— and we can get into this, but I've got my cousin who it worked out well for him, but he started working for the family right out of college. And has only worked for the family. Now, again, it, it worked out well for Eric. I'm not sure it would've worked out as well for me. And I, I think because not only it's really hard working for your family, especially working for your dad, but it's also, you only know what you know from the family. And I think I got a lot of really good analytical skills that were built with Deloitte that I, I don't know if I would've gain that experience.

You got something else, which you may not appreciate. You dealt with a lot of failure.

Yeah.

And you saw how a lot of people really screwed up and why.

Yeah.

And that's a, that's a really important lesson.

Yes. And so my last gig that was really long at Deloitte was we were helping Caterpillar and we were helping Caterpillar work with their dealers and Caterpillar. And it was really eye-opening just to see how Caterpillar— because they, they have their own dealer network. And so it was really eye-opening to, to see how the dealer interacts with the manufacturer and like how really beautiful their relationship, at least from an outsider perspective, appeared to be. They really go to market together. And in talking to my client, Ken Pillar, one of, he said, hey, you really gotta read this book, Generation to Generation. And so I don't know if you've heard of that, but I bought that book before, 'cause I knew that I was gonna go work for my family. And so I bought the book, I read it, and I think that was really helpful because it, it just, as I transitioned and worked into, to the family, I think it, it was important for me to understand what was going, like the dynamics, what I was getting myself into and, and try to help plan accordingly.

Family system. Yeah. This is a book on family systems theory, I think. Yeah.

So he just talks about, so my grandfather was the controlling owner. He was like the first stage. He was the founder. My dad was the sibling partnership. And then now Eric and I are the cousin consortium, they call it. And each generation has different dynamics and we're just really blessed that my grandfather was very, he was very good at just planning and he did a great job of preparing my dad and his sister and then my generation for transitioning to leadership. And I think it was, and then my dad had his own frustrations with this because my dad had his own dealership. My grandpa had his own and through the years that they had different management styles and they operated in competition with each other. And then finally, when it got to Eric and I, we said, hey, this is, we can have a, we can have a constructive competition, but we need to have the same processes across the board. And so it, I think my dad saw some stuff that my grandpa did. Maybe like lingering a little bit too long. But again, I think that's part of that founder, like it's the business was my grandfather's baby. He worked until the end of, until he couldn't come in anymore. He was still coming in, checking emails and looking at talking to employees, shaking their hands, talking to customers. And so maybe that's a generational thing, but also I think it's, he was the founder. And so my dad, I think through seeing some of that, of my grandpa being around, not that it was bad, but he did meddle a little bit and prevented my dad from making some changes that my dad wanted to do. And so I think how we get there, it's, we were through, we lost two Buick dealerships and one Dodge dealership in the the Great Recession and bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler. So my dad went through that, and that really just gave him a bad taste in his mouth. And so I think he just got to the point where, again, I think it's a generational thing, but he was ready to just hand it— give— not give it up, but he was ready to step back. Pass it on. Exactly. So in 2018, Eric and I— he sold the dealerships. I started working for the dealership in the family in 2014. In retrospect, it was really silly because I changed careers and had my first son in the same month. I'm working for my family, being the owner's son, changing brand new on the job. Like, it was really foolish because I was like back to work on day 2 and I'll never hear the end of it from my wife because I took no time off. But it, I don't know why I didn't just start in April. Like I knew when Elon was gonna be born, or at least the due date. So that was foolish. But yeah.

I'm curious, what was the transition like? You, you're working in a consultancy, Deloitte, one of the largest in the world, very bright people, and being engaged to do very difficult things. Every day's different. A lot of strong analytical stuff. And now you move into the family business that you have, you know something about because you worked in it when you were a kid in high school, but it's a completely different kind of business. And of course, Totally. And your company has multiple businesses, the dealerships and real estate and insurance and a whole bunch of stuff.

Yeah.

How do you make that shift? How do you make that shift?

It was really hard. And I think especially for someone new, like I wanted to get in and change this and do that. And, but I really needed to slow down and learn and, and see what we were doing. I think because of maybe our systems or whatnot, I think we were missing some of that analytical capabilities. And I think it was really good that I had that third-party experience to get some of those analytical trainings. And so it was really challenging in the first few years. I had reflected back in the book and through talking and networking with some friends, they suggested we, Eric and I work with a business, like a family business consultant. And Dennis was amazing. That really just helped get Eric and I on the same page and really taught us that, hey, if like we can have our disagreements and stuff, but we have to have, we have to be, it's no different than like parenting with your wife. I was a new dad at the time, but you have to be a united front. And so you can have disagreements and stuff, but you got to have those behind closed doors. And I think that consultant, we probably worked with him on every other month or every quarter or something for a couple of years, but that really helped us. Get on the same page. And I think most importantly, I think what Dennis kept on harping on was equal partners, different roles. And I think— and I was okay with the idea, but I think in my cousin's mind, it was important for him to recognize, hey, Jason doesn't need to be— to do the exact same thing I do. And in fact, frankly, what we learned was that my expertise and my skills and my strength are like completely opposite one of my cousins, which is great because if we were both the same guy and if we were both the same, it would be horrible, right? Like, absolutely horrible. Like, my cousin loves to be the spotlight, he loves to be the leader, number one, and I'm perfectly fine being behind the scenes and, and not having that top role. So we work really well together, but it took us a long time to get there. And I think Dennis helped us get there a lot faster. And I think had we not gone down that road of having that consultant, I think it would've taken us a lot more time and it would've been a lot more heartache to, to get to the same spot.

Yeah. You're talking about a really common dynamic, especially third generation business owners. And you got lucky. Most, yeah. Most family businesses aren't that lucky.

My grandpa has, has always taught us that it's family first and the business, and you gotta keep the business separate from the family and you still gotta go sit down for Thanksgiving dinner. Dinners and holidays dinners. And yeah, it's important that you're still a family unit. And my grandpa did a really good job of leading that and living it. He passed a couple years ago. In the book, the Generations book, it just talks about that person being so powerful for the family, such a leader. Exactly.

Everybody puts— bases their identity on how their relationship to the founder And when the founder dies, if it's, if you haven't worked through it all, there's no longer an anchor and now people don't know how to relate to each other and it creates a huge amount of conflict.

Yes. So I think everything in life happens for a reason, but I, I think my grandpa did a really good job of trying to be proactive at trying to make those transitions. And my dad fortunately did the transitions when he did, and it really, helped us, no question.

So you and your cousin Eric are now running the business. What about your dad and your uncle? Are they still involved or still alive?

So, so my— so it's Eric's mom is my dad's brother. She was never really involved with the day-to-day operations. My dad was and still, but 2018, Eric and I bought out my dad and then it was just a crazy circumstance because we closed at the end of 2018. In 2019, we had a fluke hailstorm that like damaged every single car in our inventory. So we had a really bad, and we had to, and it damaged one of our buildings. And then we finally got the renovation done and then COVID happened. And then it's just been a crazy year since. But so Eric's dad is not involved in the day-to-day. He's not a shareholder, but his aunt or his mom is. And so we have board of directors and we have annual meetings and But it's a little bit more informal for now. I think we're building a little bit more structure into it, but I think it works for now.

That's really terrific. So you've been doing this now for 10 years and you've gone through a lot, as you mentioned. What is it that gets you up in the morning and gets you excited to go to work?

Just, so I like to do, I do like to do things diff— like I enjoy in Deloitte, like you were saying, every new day, every day was a different adventure. And so I do, you don't really know what to expect for the day. So you just check your emails in the morning and see what you're going to walk into. And, but it's also important to try to take big picture and plan out. One of the really big things that I think has helped us a lot is EOS. I don't know if you've heard of Gino Wickman and EOS is Entrepreneurial Operating System. It's just a way to run your business. So one of our leasing companies started doing EOS and basically what Gino says is, hey, in order to get to, to know where you're going, you need a 10-year goal. And in order to get to the 10-year, you need a 5, then you need a 3, 1, right? Quarterly. And then you need weekly.

Yeah.

And so you gotta have these. So we started that and it's been really helpful. We just hired a new office manager last month and she has experience doing EOS, so we're really excited to, to kick that off at the dealership as well. And I, I think that has really helped us give some more structure, communication, and it's taught us a lot.

Wow. So as you look up, look on the last 10 years and what you've contributed as a leader to the family business, what do you think is unique about yourself as an individual that has allowed for the success that you've had?

So again, I think having just a different opinion and a, like, a different set of experiences. So having that working outside the family, having that experience of seeing how other businesses operate, how other businesses were successful, not just focusing on the dealerships and how dealerships are run, I think has really added a lot and brought just different ways of looking at the same problem because you, you, we're very blessed that we have a lot of tenured employees, especially with our management team. And so they only know what they know and what they've experienced with us. And so having a, someone at the table that has worked outside and has those different experiences, I think has been really helpful.

Wow. I suspect that you're probably a pretty good listener. You can't do what you're doing and not be a good listener. I'm curious, how do you go about learning how to listen? Because it's not a skill that's taught.

No, I think, I think I probably may be being modest or, but I feel like there's a lot more I should be learning on listening. I think it's, you gotta be able to listen and see what, yeah, I probably have more to go.

You've been in a, you've, I'm sure you've been in the presence of people who you didn't think were very good listeners. How do you react to that?

It's hard with listening. I think you got to be empathetic and you got to have to recognize signs. And I think what I don't— I'm a big data guy. And I think what's really, again, talking about the differences between my cousin and me is my Eric is a very big gut guy. And I think I know in my gut what someone's what I'm saying and what I'm seeing, but I need a lot of the data to help convince me. And what I need to do as a leader is listen to my gut a little bit more quickly, that versus like my cousin will, he'll know, yep, that's, we gotta do this or whatever. And I'll be like, wait, maybe we need to see the data on this or we gotta do. And I think listening to my gut is something that I need to improve more on.

So intuition, I teach a graduate course in decision-making under stress and conflict. And one of the things that I teach is what's the difference between intuitive decision-making and reflective decision-making. Intuitive decision-making can be, is very fast. It's very efficient and it's very dangerous because it's all about pattern recognition.

Yeah.

Your brain starts to recognize patterns. But the problem is if, if it sees a face in a cloud, it's making a, it's finding a pattern where there is none. And if you make a decision based on that sort of thing, yeah, it cannot be good. So gut decisions are great as long as the decision you're making is within well-defined boundaries.

Yes, sure.

And you have seen this pattern a million times before and you don't have to think about it. But if it, if those, and also the risk of making a wrong decision is very low.

Correct.

The risk of outcome is low. But if any of those conditions aren't present, then your approach, let's look at the data.

It's a better one.

It's a better one.

Yes.

Because there've been some really interesting studies about experts being given a problem in their domain to solve and just asked to give a, a, a gut response. What do you think? They were, they were right 50% of the time. And then they gave the same problem to a bunch of untrained experts and they were right 50% of the time.

Right. I think what I also do a good job is try to take the emotion, out of it and try to look at the facts and decide there. Like, if I just reflect back to COVID, that was just an incredibly stressful and really— because again, that was— you had no idea what was going on there and how to navigate it. But I think my— Eric and I did a great job of trying to navigate as easily as we could and with the least amount of impact for our team. Ultimately, we did decide We closed our dealership for 6 weeks, which was—

that's hurt.

That, you know, it did. But we were really— at the time, you didn't really know that we were going to get PPP money, but that certainly helped. But it was by far the most difficult decision we had to make and was not one that we took lightly. We had to furlough almost all of our employees, and it was really painful.

How many you probably have what, 1,000 employees?

No, less than that. We've got around 250.

250.

Yeah, but still—

But you're spread across 6 dealerships and a bunch of other businesses. Yes. That's 250 families you gotta feed.

No question. And I think it was extremely difficult for us to make that decision, but Michigan was hit really hard in the beginning, and, we could see it from our employees and our customers just were really apprehensive about coming in. And so we finally said enough's enough, we're just going to shut it down. And then lo and behold, on Monday— so this was on a Friday, and then on Monday Governor Whitmer issued the stay-in-place orders and we would have been shut down anyways.

Right.

But I think it was really— it was a good— we really wanted to be leaders and we're thinking about our team members' families, and we just thought it was important at the time to, to do that. But again, there's no— there's— it's funny because again, I'm trying to look at data, like, what are the counts of the, the new COVID cases? And my, my Eric was just more gut. Hey, I think this is— so we got to the right decision and the same decision, but it's interesting how we go. Exactly.

Yeah. To, if to the degree that you can do that on a consistent basis where he's relying on intuition and you're relying on data, more reflective thinking, and you can come to the same place. That's, that's a powerful combination.

Yeah. Yes, exactly.

What do you do? What happens when you have a divergence where he's saying, my gut tells me we should do this and you're saying the data says we should do this?

So that's, it's hard.

It's very hard.

It's very hard. And so sometimes the loudest voice wins and sometimes you just got to wear on them and it's not easy. And it's, there's no question we've had our disagreements. It's fortunate that the disagreements that we might have had have been low risk and not that impactful, but it really is. There's some bigger things that it's, I held my feet and said no. And it ended up working out. I think Eric's intuition ended up winning, but I just needed more data. So again, so it's not easy and sometimes you gotta go to a third party like my dad or his uncle and, or his dad and kind of get some other, or frankly, we rely on a good team of trusted advisors like our accountants, like our third-party accountants and tax people and lawyers and really help get a good team of trusted advisors to help break a tie.

The, the secret in those situations is learning how to listen to emotion.

Yes. That's what I teach.

That's what I teach. Because when you can learn how to listen, like for example, you, if, if you're, if Eric is getting emotional about something, you can listen to his emotions and understand the emotional experience he's having, help him process it. That gets him calmed down and then he's more amenable to looking at the numbers and thinking about it from an unemotional place. But if people get escalated, they can't think.

That's so, so maybe that's something that I have been doing just, I don't know if by accident is the right, intuitively.

Right.

And I think, yeah. And that eventually he does, oh, maybe that is right.

And I, I, before we got on, I, I said I'd like to send you a copy of my book, my fourth book, and I'm gonna do that and read that book.

Okay.

Because it's gonna teach you how to do it. Yeah. No, I'm excited.

Yeah. Yes. I think exactly. That'll be fantastic.

Okay. Jason, one more question. I'll let you go. What's one thing about yourself that we would never know unless you revealed it to us?

One more thing about me that I don't, that I haven't revealed. I'm a horrible skier, or sorry, horrible golfer and a good skier.

Okay. Okay. There you go. We're the same. I don't play golf, so I'm a horrible golfer and I'm a level 3 certified ski instructor.

Oh, really?

Yeah. I taught skiing for many years.

Where's your go-to ski, ski place?

We gotta, I live here in Central California, just south of Yosemite National Park, and I got a resort like 45 minutes up the road, place called China Peak. But if I get to, if I get my choice, Mammoth Mountain across, it's 70 miles across the mountains, but it's still a 7-hour drive cuz there's no way to get across the mountains. Gotta go all the way.

Got it.

In California and come back up. But I really enjoy skiing Utah.

I, it's Utah.

Yeah. Utah.

So your valley. That's so I, for my 40th birthday, we, some of my wife skis, which is great. I love to ski and it's just being in Detroit. There's nothing to do on the weekends in the wintertime. 'Cause you got other than be indoors and play video games. So we gotta get the kids outside. They gotta do something away from screens. And so. We got my two boys into skiing, which is phenomenal. And so for my 40th birthday, I said, you know what, I've never been to Park City. I would love to go to Park City and I would only love to go with my boys. I don't want to do like a big party for my friends. I'd rather be with my family. So we ended up going to Park City. It was amazing. By dumb luck, I'm talking to my brother, we booked it and my brother's like, that's Sundance weekend. And so I was like, oh God, this is gonna be horrible. It's gonna be a disaster. But it turns out, it turns out it's a Park City is a mess, but we ended up staying in the canyons.

Oh, okay.

In Canyon Village.

Yeah.

And so we were away from it. Oh, great. And it's actually the best, I shouldn't be saying this publicly on the, because it's like the best weekend to ski because everyone's there for the movies. No one's skiing. There's no lines.

Park City's like, it's so skiing, but Good luck getting in for dinner somewhere.

Yeah, but we just stayed in the canyons and it was fine. So, so it was perfect. So that's amazing.

And the canyons are a little scary. I mean, that 9999, it's got some pitch to it. And it's, it's huge.

They're like— we never even— because we were talking to a guide the first time that we were there, and he's, you don't— it's going to take you 2 hours or an hour to get over to Park City. Just stay in the canyons. So we stayed in the canyons. It was amazing. We're— so now I've got a 3-year-old, so we're trying to figure out how do we— I think we got to get either the 3-year-old's got to get onto skis or we got to find someone to— I don't know, we got to figure that out. But I love Park City. It's awesome.

Yeah. 3 years old. She can— she—

it's a short little girl. Yeah, I think she can. We started Alain, my oldest, I think around 3. In fact, I think we had to lie because he wasn't quite 3. Or that might have been one of them. We had to lie because they weren't potty trained, but we got it done.

Yeah, I know. By wintertime, she's ready. Good for you.

Exactly. Yeah. So it's fun.

It's fun sharing that experience with you. So, Jason, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for your time today.

Thank you for having me, Doug. Appreciate it.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag Listening with Leaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up, ratings, and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.