Episode 140: Not a Plug for Dave Ramsay’s EntreLeadership Summit

All right. Welcome back for another episode of the Fleet Success Show with your hosts, Josh Turley and Mark Canton.

Hey, everybody.

Welcome back again.

Thanks.

So we've been talking about— we've been traveling a lot these last couple of weeks, you know, between NAFSA and we got Government Fleet Expo. One of the trips that we took as an executive team recently, I wanted to do a quick recap for our listeners and for anybody watching on YouTube. And that's the EntreLeadership Summit. So for those who don't know, Dave Ramsey puts on this EntreLeadership Summit, wrote a book called EntreLeadership, has a podcast EntreLeadership. And while I don't need this to become a plug for Dave Ramsey, you know, it was something that kind of set me on a journey and had, you know, I would say a pivotal moment for me because it introduced me to Patrick Lencioni. Right. And that transformed our whole company.

Right.

If you've been following us at all, you kind of know that's a big deal for us. Right. Right. But every year he puts on this EntreLeadership Summit. In fact, it was kind of the inspiration for the Fleet Success Summit that we've been putting on. Right. And really is, is now we talk about RTA Connect, that is now kind of a merger. You have those two events now. We're doing keynotes and breakouts.

Right.

And that all kind of started from my experience at Entrepreneur Leadership.

Yeah, really.

So this was number 10, right? So they just did Entrepreneur Leadership. I have X's everywhere for number 10. But he typically, he brings in a ton of speakers, you know, like I mentioned Patrick Lencioni. Uh, I've heard Jocko Willink speak, the guy who wrote Extreme Ownership, which is another book that we are huge fans of here at the shop. Uh, I've heard John Maxwell, I heard gosh, I'm going to blank on all these names. I got to listen to Condoleezza Rice and George Bush speak. All right. You know, we've been to San Antonio, Nashville, Dallas. I think they've done Orlando one year. I missed that one. That would have been pretty awesome. San Diego, they went, you know, but these events are legendary because they, they kind of build up all this anticipation for the Sunday night event. And it's all a big secret. Nobody knows where they're going. Right. And then all of a sudden you show up. I went to a rodeo in San Antonio, which was fantastic. It was so cool, like barrel racers and bull riding and everything.

Yeah. Um, last year they did the, uh, uh, the, the Grand Ole—

the, what was it called? Yeah, the Grand Ole Opry. Yeah, we went to go see and actually like watch a live recording of the Grand Ole Opry, right? Like, so, you know, every, every week they do a show and— right. Uh, so we got to watch the live act. It was all 3,000 of us. It's a lot of people too. It's not like just a few people. It's, you know, it's 2,700 this year in Dallas. Uh, last year I want to say it was about 2,600, right? So Every year it gets a little bit bigger, but usually like that's something that I've gone to myself. And it, you know, I remember being in San Antonio and, and going into that event like I was not— what's the right word for this? I was hurting as a CEO.

Okay.

Right. I didn't have a good leadership team in place.

Right.

Mentally, I was just fried. I was like, I don't know what I'm going to do. Like, I felt lost. I felt like, you know what? Maybe I should just give up like this. You know, let's go sell this. So let me get out. I'll go find something to do. I can go work for somebody else. I would hate it, but like, let me just get out from under this weight that I've created for myself, right? I show up in San Antonio and I'm just like lit on fire by this event. And I'll never forget, like, Dave Ramsey comes out and he's got a whole team of people that like curate stories for him and all this stuff. But he comes out and it's closing session. And I've already just enjoyed so many of the speakers that are there.

Sure.

I was there by myself, didn't talk to anybody, or like, you know, I was very much just kind of in the moment. I just had— oh man, I forgot about this. I had literally just been diagnosed with anxiety and panic attacks.

Oh boy.

I remember meeting with a client just 2 weeks prior and literally feeling like my heart was stopping.

Oh my gosh.

ER, I was in the ER 3 times in a row, right? And so here I am trying out these new drugs while I'm at EntreLeadership. Maybe that's why I enjoyed the event so much.

I don't know. There you go, Dave. Give out drugs at your event next year.

And I don't remember the name of that drug. It was good times. Um, but so I remember being at that event and the very closing thing, and he comes up and he talks about Winston Churchill. And, you know, they're in the middle of the Blitz, right? At just this really, really, really dark moment in English history, really world history, really. And he gets up on the stage, right? And it's just super quiet. You can almost hear a pin drop. And he just starts firing off and he's just like, you might be in the thick of it right now and you might be this, but I'm the words of Winston Churchill, right? And he tells this whole story about Winston Churchill coming up and he's just like, never quit, never quit, never quit. Right? And man, I can still feel it today.

Yeah.

That moment for me. Was a pivotal moment in my trajectory as a CEO and as a business owner.

Right.

Um, and I look back at that as like, that is when I started turning things around. That's when I took ownership of my life. That's when I took ownership of, you know, like, okay, this is my company now. It's not my dad's company. It's not my grandpa's company.

Right.

This is mine. Like, I've got to deal with this. And, um, I can still remember it. Never quit. Never quit. And that rings.

Yeah.

Every day. Never quit. Yeah, just keep going, keep going. Yeah.

So that's interesting. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I got to— Yeah. You know, I don't know you during this time, right? I mean, I've heard of you, right? And kind of probably had, you know, people in similar circles and all that.

This would have been about 2018-ish, right? '18. Yeah.

But now I've gotten to know you years later. And, you know, I— if you remember last year, I got you a sweatshirt and I didn't— I wasn't looking for a present for him, right?

Yeah.

I just, I saw it and I said, this is Josh, right? And so I got it. And so the you that I know is completely embodied.

You got to tell everybody what's on that sweatshirt.

Yeah, this sweatshirt says, bet on yourself.

Yeah.

Right? And it's that same connection. It's never quit. It's I can do it. It's if there's anybody who can get it done, if there's anyone I can believe that can make it work, it's me, right? And that's so funny to hear you tell now this. I didn't know, I had no idea, for the record folks, I had no idea you were gonna tell that story. And I had never heard that story before. And so, but my point is fast forward a couple years and the only Josh I know is the Josh who's clearly been lit on fire by this, right? It's the never quit, the never quit, the bet on myself that I can, that I may not know how to do it today, but I know that I can figure out how to do it, right? And having that faith and that confidence. And it is a mix of both, if we're being honest, right? That's really interesting to hear you say, because that's, that's the you I know.

Yeah.

You know, so.

And it really did. It changed me as a leader, as a husband, like just all of it. Because, and I like that phrase, that mantra, I almost should have this like tattooed somewhere if I tattooed, but it would be never quit, right? So you fast forward another year and I'm like, well, I've got to bring people to this, right? So I buy 2 tickets and it's in San Diego that year. My wife gets pregnant, can't go, right? So I've been trying to slowly get people out. I can't think, like, we went to Nashville or Dallas, and I remember it was Dallas, right? And I brought one of my VP of sales at the time, brought him along with me. And then last year we went to Nashville and brought 4 or 3 team members with me. And I started making a connection, which was as much as this is for me, there's a lot of my leadership team who's where I was 6 years ago. Right, right. And, and they need that same context and that same investment. Yeah. And I'm not just investing myself anymore, right? So I still go because I still need to, you know— yeah, it's good to get that refresh and we get the fire up a little bit.

Yeah.

Um, but really I need to be investing in my team. So this year I brought the entire executive team, right, on tree leadership.

Yeah.

Um, and next year Ooh, in fact, I got to make sure we book those tickets next year. We're going to take everybody. We're going to take the leadership team and our managers. Not everybody. I need to rephrase that, but everybody in leadership at the company.

I didn't know you had decided that either. So that's cool.

And it's not cheap. Let me tell you what, like, as far as leadership events go, it's way overpriced. Yeah, right. But at the same time, I've never been in a room that's this stacked. Yeah, right. Like, you know, this is— if I had to pick a team This is like the Phoenix Suns of this year, right? But better results. You know, like this is an all-star cast of speakers and authors and everything, right? So this episode, I wanted to give a recap of like some of our takeaways from that event. And ultimately, like why I'm deciding to invest more in the team. And largely it's because of some of the speakers and sessions and the takeaways that the team who went. Some of their takeaways of what they got out of it. So quick rapid-fire, favorite speaker from, yeah, from EntreLeadership.

Oh, I'm gonna go with Deloney. I really like Deloney. So Deloney talks a lot about, you know, he's a mental health, right? He has got the number one podcast. I think he goes back and forth with, oh, why is the guy's name escaping me?

I wanna say Joe Rogan.

Joe Rogan, thank you. You know, and, and, you know, he just, he just hits home for me. You know, he has this, you know, he talks about kind of the importance of taking care of yourself. Yeah. You know, in all this because, you know, he's, he's, I think he's accurately found that common vein that, you know, Dave, the people that Dave, you know, it's kind of touching on the people in that room, you know, they're like your folks, right? They leave their companies. It's small and medium business throughout the States, which means they're, that they're putting the world, literally the weight of the world on their shoulders. And your leadership team is trying to help you with that, essentially, you know. And there's a lot that goes with that, right? You wear a lot of hats, you work a lot of hours, you do what needs to be done. And, you know, it's kind of like there are groups in the world who probably need to hear more about this is why you need to do all that stuff. I think for the most part, the people in that room, they do that naturally or somehow something's in them, right? And, and, you know, just hearing that message, being reminded that, you know, a lot of it, to your point, it's not something that you necessarily don't know, but you just hear it in a different way, you know, and, and it rings a bell and it reminds you and invigorates. And so there were a lot of great speakers. Um, you know, I went the previous year. I was one of the people who— yeah, and I remember being at Nashville and you saying— and they were— they put up, you know, where they do their little pitch for you to buy for next year, right?

Very good salespeople.

Very good salespeople.

They're always selling.

You turn to me and say, you know, would you— if I bought it for next year, would you go? Would you want to go? And I said, Josh, if, if, if you, if you would give me the, you know, the— I would really appreciate the opportunity to go. Yeah. But I loved it so much. I remember saying to you, if you didn't buy it for next year, I would ask for the week off and try to figure out how to go pay for it on your own. I would try to buy it on my own. Yeah, that's how I felt about it. I thought it was really good.

And it was in some ways it's life-changing, right?

It is life-changing on things.

It changes how you approach leadership. Right, changes. And really, John Delony, I think, changes how you approach work. Yes. Right. So if you haven't followed John Delony or don't know who he is, right, he is a mental health expert, right? Um, he wrote a book called Anxiety Redefined, right? Or Redefining Anxiety, I think is the name, right? Uh, but really talking about just this approach to how you deal with anxiety, which, you know, somebody who's dealt with it, I totally appreciate it, right? Um, but he had— I want to say 2 years ago, 3 years ago, like, he had a session and he had this statement that he made, and it stuck with me, is that winning will not make you well. Right, right, right. Uh, but we've done a podcast episode on that one. But like, that mantra of recognizing that, you know, most of the time we're out here trying to win, we're trying to grow, we're trying to do better, and it's because we're trying to like fill a hole that's inside. But you can't, you can't fill the hole, you have to repair it, right? Um, and so this year, like, he talked about, you know, feeling, healing, and enough. Right. And like, you have to be able to feel so you can heal and then you'll be able to be enough. Right. But you have to focus on those things because, you know, and he's got this theme, winning won't make you well.

Yeah.

Right. And, and I really, I loved a session this year, Jacob. I turned around and he was just like, oh my gosh, I'm in tears.

Yeah, it was hard. I was, I was tearing up. I won't lie. And try not to.

And it's one of those sessions.

Yes.

Right. When you think about it as a leader and you'd think like, oh, I go to a leadership seminar and we hear from all these rah-rah, right, people. And then here's this guy coming out and telling you like, you need to deal with the trauma of your dad, right? You need to go deal with your mom who you haven't talked to in 2 years because that's really your problem. It's not work, right? Right. Um, and I'll still never forget too is, you know, like the lesson he had on the bricks in the backpack, right? And just like, you're carrying your bricks around and you're giving them to your children to pave the road to their future. Yeah, right. Like they are literally paving the road to their future with your trauma. Recognize that. Yeah, be better, right, man? You want to talk about as like a father, husband, and leader, right? What that does to you.

Oh, absolutely.

You know, and those are things I wouldn't get that anywhere else other than EntreLeadership.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. He has this paradigm, and as you point out, and it's, it's this recognition, and, and it— and part of the power of it is being in the room. And, you know, I'm relating to what he's saying, but I'm in the room with 3,000 people who are all relating to what this guy is talking about. And it's this concept of, you know, most of us are out there trying. We're— to your point, you know, you— winning won't solve your problems kind of a thing. But that's actually probably what's driving most of us, right? Like, I know for me, a big part of it's fear of failure. Just feel like I, I need to meet the expectations of the people who gave me my opportunities and all that. You know, I'm getting emotional now talking about it. Yeah, like So very cool stuff, you know, like, and just understanding that, you know, just mind-blowing for me because that's what my whole life has been, right? And sorry, Mark, you've been barking up the wrong tree.

You've been trying to fill that hole. Yeah. And fill it with stuff that won't ever—

it's not sustainable. It's like, like, you know, quicksand that just keeps going.

And it all makes sense. So you think about it.

Yeah, it makes perfect sense.

Well, duh.

Yeah, right, exactly.

At the same time, you're barking up the wrong tree, right? Like how many of us do that and we just get stuck in the grind of the doom loop. Only to realize, like, crap.

Yeah.

Uh, you know, like, that's not my problem.

Yeah.

You know, it's like, I can never make enough money, I could never, you know, get enough promotion, right? Right. And really, I think the, the mind-opening piece for me was recognizing that's not what's going to make me enough. I just need to be enough for my kids, right? Right. And I need to be enough for them. And, uh, oh, I don't remember who I was talking to. I was talking to a guy, he's actually in my Raptor Club, He's a real estate agent and he's like, oh no, I used to close like 8 to 10 houses a month and I was just on the wheel. He was on the hamster wheel.

Yeah.

But he finally, like his wife said, like, you just got to recognize it. It reminded me of what John Delony said, which is most of the time we're winning. It's not because we need something more. It's because of our ego. Yeah, right. Like her ego is driving that. And it's really, you know, in her mind, like she challenged him on it. She got right up in his face. He's like, look, you want to do one more podcast? You want to go do one more speaking engagement? That's fine. But just recognize that you're not doing it for us. You're not doing it for the kids. You're doing it for you, right? Oh, man. You could— can you imagine as a husband, like, whoa, that hurts. Yeah, cuts. That cuts deep. Yeah. But he said the same thing to me, right? He's talking about like, I was cranking and I was grinding 8 to 10 houses a month and we were making bank. And I realized like I was coming home every day and my kids were different. Right. And he was like, I had to slow down. I had to become a different person. And so he slowed down to like now he does 2 to 3 houses a month, but he's not spinning the hamster wheel. And his 9th grader came up to him and was just like, Dad, I want you to know, like, we know you're making an effort and thank you. Right. Like, the effort alone means the world to him.

Right. I think a key piece, too, is they do reconcile some of it because there's this— you start to hear it right in the whole show. You're hearing about how, yeah, we're entrepreneurs and we do it when nobody else will and we go get it. And we're up earlier and we work harder. And we, so it's like, wait a minute, uh, uh, you know, you know, round, what is it, round peg in square hole kind of a thing. And, um, and, and I thought he did a pretty nice job of reconciling it. In fact, that's, I would love for him to go deeper into it maybe the next time around, which is, you know, this concept of seasons. They're really zoned in, the whole group is really zoned in on this concept of seasons, right? And, and so the, the idea was is that Yeah, to make it in business, there are going to be seasons, which is just their way of saying, you know, time periods, right, where you are going to have to hustle like that, right?

Yeah.

But, but I think two key points, my takeaways are one, they need to, they need to have a start and an end, right? They can't be a forever. Yep. And, and really, and this is interesting to me, is being intentional about it, right? That's the piece that I think most of us are missing, right? Because we struggle with that reconciliation. How do I be successful and be— because I know I need to grind if I want to really get ahead, right? Or I really want to get, you know, get this thing going, so to speak. And yet I do want to see my family and my kids and, you know, and all that jazz. And how do you reconcile the two? And so the concept is, well, let's be intentional about it. And it's sitting down with your wife and sitting down with your family and your loved ones and saying, all right, This is what, this is how I see this going, right? And kind of working through that, right? Which is, you know, I, I think it's gonna take whatever it's gonna take. 6 months, a year, 2 years, 3 years having full buy-in. And it's, it's interesting because that changes the whole thing. And it's true. We know, all know this every day. Like you, you, you're the boss, right? You'll walk into a meeting, you might have your mind made up, but you feel better about it if the whole team kind of, yeah, let, let's go with it, right? So, so it's the same thing, right? If you sit with your family and you say, hey, look, This is gonna be a tough period. You're gonna see me less, but this is what I hope to get out of it. And by the way, it won't go on forever. Yeah. Right? Then you can reconcile those two, right? And you can make it work. You can go through your periods where you just have to put your fire side on, right? But then still have that healthy balance, right? You know, so like, you know, your colleague that you're talking about, you know, maybe he did need a period where he was selling like that. Yeah. But it was going to go on forever if he didn't have that moment, right? Yeah. And that's where you get into the danger zone, right? It's overload or something like that. It's gotta be a better word for it, you know? But I appreciate that too, because it makes, it takes this ideal that for some, sometimes can sound like pie in the sky, you know what I mean? It's like, really? Can I really have this life, you know, where everybody loves me all the time and I still make enough money to not feel like I'm scrounging for food and all that other jazz? And the answer is, yeah, you can. You just, you but you gotta be intentional about it, you know? And so I really like, I really liked his talk and I really like how they, how they put it together, started like they marry those two sides of the coin. Yeah.

It's just like, hey, it's the anti-hustle culture.

Right.

Right. Like grind, grind, grind, but make sure you're not grinding yourself to death. Right. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Um, I think one of the other sessions I got a lot out of, and it's the second time I've heard this particular session. In fact, we're going to offer something very similar to it in October. Connect.

Yep.

Which if you haven't signed up for that, that is open to everybody. That's not just an RTA customer thing.

Right.

It really is going to be a blend of the Fleet Success Summit and our user connect conference.

Yep.

So we're going to be talking about leadership principles. We're going to talk about fleet success in general, and then we're going to have other tracks that are more product focused if you want training on that kind of stuff. But one of the sessions we're going to do, and it comes straight out of this session, And I love this one because my younger leaders got a ton out of it. In fact, like, they were right in the middle of dealing with this particular problem. And that's overcoming uncomfortable conversations.

Oh, that was such a good one.

It was a pinch hit, right? Patrick Lencioni had a medical issue. He couldn't make his speaking engagement, which I was super bummed by because I was really looking forward to seeing— he was going to marry Working Genius and Death by Meeting.

Yeah, I can't wait to hear that one.

I was really excited to see that one. In fact, maybe I'll reach out and see if we can get like a video or like a, I think he's got webinars or something on it. But so their CTO, right? Ramsey Solutions CTO comes in and basically does this pinch hit, right? Where on the fly, he's gotta present this. Thankfully it's been something he's presented before. And he's very well spoken. But he delivered this session called Overcoming Uncomfortable Conversations. And because he's a technology guy, right? Naturally he had to put it into like a script. Like here's a formula. Of how you navigate uncomfortable conversations. And like, here's your stages from like first contact, first time I ever mentioned something about it, to ongoing coaching, to, okay, you talked about emotional firing, right? Like, okay, we're gonna have to have a really hard conversation here. And you know, you're not gonna lose your job, but you know, like you really need to make a choice here. You know, do you want to go through, here's your performance improvement plan, or would you rather just take a severance and leave? Yeah. Right. And then he walks through the steps of how to navigate that conversation and how to frame it. And then what do you do when they come back and they say, no, I want to do the performance plan? Okay, here's how you build a performance plan, right? And once the performance plan comes back or they decide to move on, uh, then he has a whole framework for that conversation and doing firings, right? And I think about it like a lot of our leaders have never had that discussion other than what we might have told people in passing. Right, right, right. But, you know, here's one of our leaders, Janelle. She was going through this, you know, with an employee, like, as this is happening, as this is happening. And she's just like, yes, she's writing everything down. She gets back and like the very next day she has that conversation. She does an emotional firing, right? It went perfectly, right? It went exactly like it was supposed to because she had been given the tools necessary to do that job. Right. And I think back to why we started talking about fleet success. Right? And why we started doing this little journey, right? And it's because honestly, a lot of us in fleet management, we never got that type of training, right? Right. We never were told how to have a hard, uncomfortable conversation in a way that was, you know, that they handled it with dignity and love and respect. In fact, I think that was the subtitle of his session. It was, right? Yeah. And we just never were never taught that. So that's why I was never taught that, right? Right. And I remember sitting through that session. This is the second time I've heard it and I still had takeaways from it, right? But that was probably one of my most practical sessions. I'm trying to remember like who my rah-rah speaker was and it might have been James Clear. I enjoyed his, you know, he came in and he's the author of Atomic Habits.

Yeah, that was pretty neat.

I thought he had a really good, awesome session first day in, right?

Yep.

I probably liked the book a little bit better if I'm honest, but like his session was still solid. Yeah. Mike Rowe was entertaining. Like there wasn't anything practical I got out of it other than you know, we need to invest in the trades, but we need to make sure that we don't overcorrect.

Correct. Which I appreciated.

That was so pragmatic.

Yeah.

And I'm like, yes, this guy gets it.

Yeah, exactly right. Yeah.

Uh, was that like, 4-year universities aren't the devil, right? Like, they're not for everybody. And like, the everybody goes to college thing was totally wrong.

It was totally right.

It was the bullwhip effect. Now let's make sure as we correct that we don't swing the pendulum back too far to the other direction.

Yeah. And I just like that because let's be honest, as a society, that's what we always do. Yeah, it's always one extreme or the other. We struggle.

There's the middle, man. Just find the happy medium, you know. It's okay to compromise, right?

Compromise is not failure, it's success. It's moving forward. Oh yeah, no, I hear you. I, I liked all of those. I'm really excited about it too because we've talked quite a bit about the podcast and the importance of the team. And, you know, and we get all the time in fleet about, well, I can't do anything, I can't fire somebody. So You know, I think that's one that really can hit home for fleet managers. So I'm excited about bringing that to folks, you know, and connect.

And if I could get him as a guest speaker, y'all, that would be a coup. I'm telling you, I don't think it'll happen. Yeah, that would be a coup.

That would be sweet.

But he shared an interesting statistic, which was that college admissions are down. Yeah, right. Fewer people are attending college and trade school admissions are up by almost the same amount, if not more.

Right. Which we need.

And that was really encouraging, I think, for us. Right. You know, is we don't need more programmers. We've got plenty of programmers. We need more fleet people. We do. Right. So I really enjoyed seeing that. And obviously, you know, I think the best moment of the day was when somebody asked him about AI and he is like, oh, you mean artificial insemination? Right. That's it. I never watched Dirty Jobs. You know, he does a lot of that.

Right.

And that's one that was pretty fun. But yeah, there was just several really solid sessions. Yeah. You know, Dave Ramsey sessions, I've heard most of it before.

Right.

You know, so like there wasn't anything in there for me, right? And as he gets older, a little more cantankerous, like, I'm always just like, yeah, yeah, there you go.

But he makes me laugh, so I can never forget San Antonio.

Yeah, I never quit, right? And that's what I'm like, I'm waiting for that moment again. Yeah, right. It hasn't quite happened, but I'm, I'm— it's coming, I know it's coming.

I want to mention this one real quick. Carrie Loren spoke. She was— for those who don't know, oh yeah, that was a good one. Yeah, she was great. She was the first female combat fighter in the U.S. military. She flew for the Navy And I won't say that her talk was the best of all of them. It was some great talks, but there was a piece there, a little nugget in there that like blew my mind. Right. And she pointed out how, and I forget the exact amount, but it's like, you know, what was it? How many people are on those ships?

You know, it's like, oh, it's like a small city. It's like 3,000.

It's like 3,000 people. And it turns out they change over completely every 9 months.

Mind-blowing.

That blew my mind. Mind-blowing. These ships run like clockwork.

Yeah.

With you know, basically 18 to 22-year-olds, right? Kind of thing, right? I think she said the average age was 19 point something, right? And they completely turn over. So they turn over in halves, right? And so they completely turn over every 9 months. And yet the thing runs like clockwork. And it just kind of hit me like what you can do. Yeah. You know, if you have strong leadership, if you believe in what you're doing and you have good systems in place. Yeah. And it's like Man, I'm never going to complain about turnover.

It's not your problem.

Turnover is not your problem, right?

What a— that's a— that was a terrific little nugget because I had that same thought. Was like, here we are, like, oh, well, there's been turnover lately, you know, and that's what our problem is. No, it ain't, right? No, it ain't. It's your systems, right? Because otherwise your systems would be set up so that it'd be, you know, repeatable. You could onboard somebody quickly, right? Like, you imagine the onboarding program of the Navy, right? Now, mind you, you don't just get thrown into an aircraft carrier on day one, right? Right. You got to work up to it, right? But the fact is that they can change over the entire staff and not miss a beat, right? Every 9 months.

Right.

Could you imagine dealing with that type of turnover here?

Yeah.

Or that type of turnover, like, you'd have to have amazing systems.

Yes. But it's systems upon— it's like networks and layers of systems, right? Because there's a system of the work that needs to get done on that ship. Yeah. But the whole while, to your point, you don't just get thrown into that. So there's a clear system about how we're training you and educating, and every experience is preparation for the next experience. Yeah. And then obviously they do a great job of getting people to buy in. Yeah, I can do it. They put me here because I can do it. They try to follow it, right? Exactly. Yeah.

Well, and you think about it too, right? You know, we always say, well, we can't find qualified technicians. They're running an aircraft carrier with 18 to 20— in fact, what was the average age?

19.5.

I want to say 5 years, right? They're not even old enough to buy beer, right?

Exactly.

Here we are trusting them on a nuclear aircraft carrier with billions of dollars of aircraft and machinery.

Yeah, landing planes in the middle of the night at crazy speeds with, with 40-foot changes in elevation because of waves. I mean, just like totally blew my mind.

And there's no excuses.

There are no excuses.

That's really what I got from that. There's no excuses, right? It's not turnovers, not your problem. It's your systems. And who's to blame for that? It's you. Right, right. Sorry, y'all. It's you. Own it. That was a terrific little nugget. I agree. That was a mind-blowing one.

Yeah, that one jumped out.

I'm trying to remember who all the other speakers were.

Well, let's see.

I should have brought my notes.

I tried because I'm not good with names. Well, we had the, the talk on, on charisma and charismatic talking with Vanessa Van Appelen. Yeah, I thought that was pretty good.

Yeah, yeah. So she talked all about communication styles, right? How, you know, like a lot of people, you can be competent or you can be warm, right? And, you know, if you're overly competent, people just like get turned off by you because, yeah, you're incredibly smart but you have no delivery skills, right? So people just like, they're intimidated by you, right? But then you have the other side where you're just all fun and games, right? And you have no idea what you're doing, right? Or at least that's the way you're, you're proceeding.

Yeah, you could be great, right?

You could be competent, but you're coming off as like a dumb dumb, right? Yeah. So I recognized that as, you know, like, as I talk, I use my hands a ton. I was like, oh goody, I'm hitting the smart ones, right?

Yeah, you're good.

I don't know if it was, if that's true or not, right? But I'm more cognizant of it. In fact, like, I remember the, the team used to make fun of me because I would use like the PowerPoint clicker, right? And nobody knew this, but like the battery tray would always fall out, right? So whenever I would clap, I would like do this, right, and clap backhanded, and they would make fun of me, right? I realized that you're like, no, no, this is just something in my hand, like I got something in my hand. And like, so I'm just cognizant, yeah, about what my hands are doing all the time.

So yeah, well, she made me very conscious of you know, the punctuation marks. You're talking about people using exclamation points and all that.

And all of us competent people are like periods all the time, right? And then the warm people are like triple exclamation points.

Yeah, right. So now I'm like, how many do I put? I know I usually put one. Do I put 15? Yeah.

Well, another tweet she showed, right, of like somebody's like, I have to re-read my tweets and figure out which of the sentence is gonna have to bite the bullet and get an exclamation point, right? Yeah. And then somebody else is like, oh, I have the opposite problem. Like, I have to go through and figure out, okay, that's too many exclamation Which one am I going to remove, right? Like, which one gets it, you know? And I'm going to take them off.

That's funny.

And so it's just, it was very funny to see the difference, right? And, and how your charisma can impact your ability to be promoted, right? How it can impact your message and whether or not, you know, as you're leading people, are they understanding the message you're trying to convey, right? Uh, because, you know, truthfully, if you're not communicating well as a leader, you're not going to be able to lead very well. We're not going to be effective. Right.

So, well, the theme of the, of the event certainly was trust.

And oh yeah, that came through, that came through a lot. And so when Cloud talks about that, right, um, who's the other one that talked a lot about that?

Yeah, we had Cloud, we had— there was a minister, I'm gonna—

oh, great, his name, great show. That was a terrific one.

Yeah, that was excellent.

Transparent. He had a formula for trust, right? Yeah, he came up with the trust algorithm, right, right. Um, and I should have looked at my notes, but I want to say it was like a transparency consistency. Yeah. And oh, I can't remember the third one. And sorry, y'all, I'm gonna butcher this. I'll throw it up in a YouTube thing later.

We'll re-record.

Yeah, exactly. What I— but every one of us had an area that we had to work on, right? Right. Empathy, transparency, and consistency.

Yep.

Um, they just talked about how each one of us, if we need to build more trust as a leadership team, right, right, then which of those 3 areas do we need to focus on, right? Right. Um, if you're not transparent, then people aren't going to really know what you're talking about, or they're not going to believe what you say, right? You're not being totally honest and open, right? So be vulnerable, be real. And it correlated really well with our core values here. Yeah, right, is that transparency. Um, I really liked the empathy. Yeah, you know, are you— do you care? Do you have compassion for your team members? Right. And that's something we really stress here a lot. The one I need to work on most, right? And this was just like a ringing indictment of me is consistency. Is how do I show up? In fact, it was really funny. He said this during his session and I had an immediate flashback to just 2 months ago we were doing our offsite. Okay. Right. And we go around and we do this helps-hurts exercise, which you've heard us talk about on the podcast before.

Sure.

And it was my turn for hurts, right? So I get to listen to all the things I do to hurt the team.

Right.

And we just done my helps once. I'm feeling great about myself. Let me do this one.

It's a tough exercise, but well worth it if you ever tried it. Do it with your team.

Great personal growth.

Yeah.

But the feedback I got was, we don't know which version of Josh we're gonna get, right? We don't know if we're getting great and grumpy Josh, or if we're getting, you know, happy-go-lucky Josh, or something in between, right? And we just don't know, you know, like, we have to kind of read you, and then, oh, today doesn't look like a good day, better walk on eggshells, right? And we And what I recognized in his talk was it was consistency, right? What I was lacking was consistency. You guys don't know who's going to show up, so you don't know how to behave, right? And you can't trust me to always be the same person that I need to be, right?

Yeah.

And while I might be the most genuine, authentic person I can be in that moment, the inconsistency means that you guys are having to pivot around whoever I decide to be that day, right? The Jekyll-Hyde approach. and that was like a, it was a ringing indictment. And I was just like, oh man, that's why, like, we don't have the right level of vulnerability yet or the right level of trust as a team. And we're pretty healthy.

Yeah.

But that is absolutely undermining our effectiveness.

Right. Well, we all, we all have grown to do like, and I remember that hurt. And I remember several folks give you that feedback. And so I think it's legit. And I love hearing you say that, but I also remember saying, I don't feel that from you as much. I don't know if I'm lucky or what it is.

You just haven't crossed me yet.

I may, knock wood. I hope I never get there.

But well, that's not true too, because you and I have done it.

We've had our go at it. So in fact, maybe that's what it is, is because we can go at each other and at the end of it, yeah, it's just, it's just thoughts.

Yeah, it's totally good friends.

Yeah. But you know what I like about the consistency one, because that's what I would have chosen for myself too. Yeah. And what's interesting is, you know, I think it's, it's a good formula and Consistency can— you can take it in any context and it still works. It's legitimate, whether it's the Jekyll and Hyde and how I'm, you know, I'm feeling or acting that day, whether it's the way you do your work, your consistency with delivering when you say you're going to, you know, all those kinds of things. And it still could be legitimate because having that consistently builds that trust. People know that you're going to be what you say you are, you're going to do what you say you're going to do, you know, those sorts of things. So I just thought they did a really good job this year of tying in that theme in multiple spots, right? So going back to the charismatic speaking, right, you're talking about blending empathy and competency. And what was it about? Well, because then they trust you.

Yeah, right.

They need to both be able to relate to you but also believe in you that, you know, you're the right person for the job, that you have the skills, that you have the abilities to do it. And that's how you build trust, right? And then Henry Cloud talked about trust as well, and he did it from another angle, which is, you know, the whole, how do you know if you can trust someone?

Right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And he had a little bit of a— Yeah, exactly. So I just thought they did a really good job. You know, I do think, you know, you hear that all the time, like in a very cliché way. Trust is everything. You can't have anything. You can have a friendship, can't have a relationship, you know, and it— but it's true. You know, it's so true. And they actually broke down, you know, this is how you have trust. This is how you gain trust. This is how you give trust. Yeah, you know, those sorts of things. So I thought that was really well done on their part and, you know, and really valuable, you know.

So I often reminded whenever somebody talks about it, I always think back to Stephen Covey had a book called The Speed of Trust, and basically that business moves at the speed of trust.

Yeah, that's a great point too.

Right. So in fact, I think we've got it on the bookshelf back here. No, but yeah, it's this whole idea that without it, the whole everything fails, right? Society fails. Right. And they talked a little bit about, you know, we've got the election coming up and just how trust really is the central issue of that. Right. You know, both sides telling you to mistrust the other side, right? Both sides are trying to undermine democracy. Both sides are trying to save democracy.

Yeah. How does that work?

And really trying to figure out, can you trust their motive, right? With that's Lencioni's version of trust, right? But then, yeah, these other elements of are they transparent? Do they have empathy? Are they consistent?

Right.

And then, you know, Henry Cloud's one about the reliability and authenticity, right?

Yeah. And that's what I loved about Cloud because, you know, normally when you think about do I trust this person, you think and they talk about person of character. Are they honest?

Yeah.

Do they have good intentions and so forth? And so you trust them. But he points out very, you know, accurately, but in a way that I kind of hadn't really thought about, was, you know, well, you can have someone who's totally trustworthy, but you shouldn't trust them right now for this purpose or for this task or for this thing, right? Do they have the competency? Uh, you know, you know, do they have, uh, do they have a track record, right? You know, that—

I love that concept. Yeah, you know, they have a track record, and that goes back to the consistency, right? But do they have a track record of delivering and honoring trust? Right, right.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, you know, again, so obvious, right? Because it's like, oh, well, you know, I trust my wife implicitly in a million ways. Do I, do I trust her to— if she says, Mark, I'll have dinner ready by 6, do I trust that it's going to be ready by 6? Absolutely not. You know, and that's okay. But it's, it's a matter of understanding, you know, the circumstances and what, what all is going on. Right. So I thought that nuance was really important and really valuable. Because it's applicable in so many business settings. So yeah, yeah.

So I think, you know, final takeaways is as a leadership team, we get a lot out of those type of events, right?

And very appreciative for you letting us go. I really—

well, and that's just it too, right? You go from a personal standpoint, it helps you personally.

It does, yes.

Um, selfishly, from a business standpoint, is if I'm investing in leadership, the leadership's just going to keep growing, they're going to keep getting better, the company is going to get and reap the rewards of those returns, right? They're going to get the benefit out of that. Right, right. And so I think my advice to fleet leaders, to anybody in fleet, right, we don't have these types of seminars.

That's the thing.

This thing, right? You can send them to NAFSA and they'll learn how to be like, they'll get some tactics around and it'll be about EV or something like that. Right. But there's really not a ton of leadership in NAFSA. NAFSA does have a leadership program. Yeah, but which is new to you. It's new. It needs some work. Yeah, right. And that's somebody who's like a, you know, professed leadership expert, right? My ego or whatever. Um, but there's really not a whole lot of events like this, right? Which is why we put on Connect.

That's why we do it. There's, there is one event.

Yeah, of course it's ours.

Yeah, it's called Fleet Connect.

Honestly, thanks for the plug, Mark.

Yeah, it's, um, just, it's, it's the truth. And, you know, whether I worked here or not, it's the truth. You know, it really is. It's just, it's a it's a really special event and it is unique. And you know what, let's be honest, we're starting to see some of our competitors and some of the adjacent, you know, people in the industry catch on and realize the same is true and they're trying to do similar things. So there's a reason for that.

So it's going to be October, first week of October, I believe, 7th through 11th. Sounds familiar.

Yep.

You can go on our website and see the dates there. But, you know, for just so you guys understand, I think Dave Ramsey, you know, he charges for the base level package $5,000 a seat. Yeah, right now that includes some incredible meals. But I happen to think that I'm a pretty good picker of food. I'm a little bit of a food snob.

Yeah, our meals are better.

Promise that we're at least—

and we give more of them. You don't just give lunch, right?

And we get you to the buffet line. Yeah, yeah. That got us started on that.

Yeah, the low— that was the low.

But, um, but $5,000 for that event, right, to go to EntreLeadership Summit, you can get access to, you know, very similar thought leadership, but it's tailored to fleet for 20% of the price. Right. I want to say that our base ticket starts at $1,000 for the early bird pricing, right?

Yeah.

So if you're interested in anything like that or you know somebody who would benefit from that type of leadership investment, from that type of— and it's not just leadership, I should be really clear. Yeah, it's true because it's leadership. With fleet.

Yeah, right.

Like we get really clear, you know, you're going to hear from guys like Steve Salzgeber and Tony, right? The podcast host.

And we're—

and we're going to talk about things like lifecycle cost analysis and procurement and staffing levels and doing the use. Right, right. We're going to talk about our product too, right? Sure. You all— you need to create a work order. Here's how you use a reason code and here's a report to go run to make all the magic happen. But the goal really is, is it's not just a leadership seminar like going to Dave Ramsey's thing is it's that type of content married with NAFAA or Fleet Pros or GFX, right? And that type of content all in one event that you can send your technicians to, your shop foreman to, your managers. You should be there.

You can send your procurement people to, right? They can learn a lot about your city manager.

Yeah, they would benefit from the whole leadership track. Yeah, right.

Absolutely.

So I mean, that's, you know, definitely something that we believe in that event so much. We make it really affordable because we want more people to be there.

Right.

I think we had like almost 300 last year, which was incredible. This year is going to be the first year that we do the blend. Yeah. So I'm really excited to see where it goes from here.

Yeah, I'm excited too. We have some great, you know, every year from our customers, we have beautiful, wonderful customers. We're blessed that way.

Yeah.

But, you know, to reiterate what Josh says, if you're a faster user or AssetWorks or whoever you might be, Collective Data, you know, whatever it might be, Fleetio, it doesn't matter. Pick a system. It doesn't care.

Excel. Yeah.

If you're still on Excel, that's okay.

You know, it's not a sales pitch.

It's not. It's not right. Right.

Pushing the product. Yeah. We'll tell you what's going on with us and we'll have a product keynote. But the meat and potatoes, right? Like, come and just learn how to be a better leader.

Right. Exactly.

I promise you that we'll invest in you and give you that type of benefit. Yeah.

Yeah. That's really neat about it. I really think that's pretty unique.

So with that, you know, I do want to just recommend anybody who don't come to that one, invest in your leadership team. Right. You know, if I'm leading by example, then follow that example, right? Invest in your team because you will reap the benefits of having a strong bench underneath you.

Yep.

Somebody to replace you when you retire, somebody to take off some of the load. Yeah, that's a big one, you know, and you're going to empower them and invest in their growth and they're going to be able to go have an impact at their next job. Right. And you're going to make them more marketable and help really foster their success, which in my mind, like, that is the ultimate responsibility and stewardship of leadership.

I agree. And you know, there is still even a selfish benefit to that because my experiences is when they go on to that next job, you know, they refer talent back to you. Where's a good place to work? Where's a good place to get your stuff? How did you get started? I got started there. That guy, that's a great crew, right? Exactly. You know, I always remember that. Yeah, it's so—

it's really important. So invest in your team, right? And if you're looking for an area to invest in them or some type, some type of event that you can send them to, RTA Connect.

Yeah, I'd love to see you.

Success Summit.

Love to have you.

Yeah, right. All right. Well, that's going to wrap it up for this episode. As always, Mark, it's been a pleasure. Same here. So we'll see you guys later.

Have a good one, folks.