#112 - Leadership & Accountability with Dave Anderson

Welcome to another episode of the Independent Dealer Podcast. Today we have a super, super special guest. He's a former car dealer, a speaker, a motivator, a person who loves to teach dealers. And today, there's so many things you'll get out of this. I took, like, three pages of notes, but you got to reintroduce expectations, and you got to have grounds for believing. So, Dave, with that said, let's go.

Thanks for having me, guys. Looking forward to it.

You are listening to the Independent Dealer Podcast with hosts Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson. Thank you so much for tuning in. Let's do this.

You know, you can be more accountable to yourselves by really modeling your values that you say are important. A lot of times we talk about them, but we're not modeling them. You know, being more accountable to ourselves is living up to the standard, really, that we create for others, but always surpassing it a little bit. I mean, if one of your values is integrity in your company and you come in late as a leader, you're not accountable to yourself, and you're making it easier for the team not to take you very seriously. You know, you've got to. You've got to set some goals for yourself. You've got to have a daily plan for yourself, and you review it at the end of the day, and you don't let yourself off the hook if you didn't do what you said you'd do. If you don't do that with yourself, you're not going to do it for anybody else. I mean, we should hold ourselves and our other leaders to a higher standard than the people underneath them. I mean, to whom much is given, much is required. So it's living the values. It's living the standard. Be the example. You want to see other people to live. Like, you know, we talk about it, but people would rather see a sermon than hear one. And then you can feel good about talking to somebody when they're falling short. When you know that you're not doing that same thing, when you know that you're keeping your commitments, that you're on time, that you're using the right type of language, that you speak well about customers, whatever you say is important to you. It's really hard to hold someone else accountable if we're not at least holding ourselves to that standard.

Should we. Should we write down those things? I mean, is it something so that we. Does that help us hold ourselves accountable? Is that something that you'd recommend?

There's something about putting it down that creates a bit of a Commitment, you know, it's like, if we're not even serious enough about it to put it, to write it down. Like, I asked people about their goals. Sometimes I say, can I see your goals? And they say, well, I gotta memorize this. You gotta write them down. You've got to review them. You've got to have them in front of you. So writing things down like that, I keep my goals, I keep my standards on my phone, and I review it in downtime. I mean, the more you look at it, the more you start to move towards it. And you can forget that stuff really quick. When it's out of sight, it really is out of mind. And so writing it down and then reviewing it, a lot of people write it down, then they never look at it. So you write it down and then reviewing it, and it's that old thing. You move towards what you think about, and as you're seeing it, it becomes more real, and you tend to do the things that take you there.

Yeah. Dave, let me ask you a question along those lines of being the accountable and being and setting yourself up as the standard for your dealership. I have a real issue, and I struggle with what I call boss guilt, where I feel like I can't ask you to do what I'm not willing to do. I. I don't want to come in on Memorial Day, so we got to be closed because I can't ask my guys to come in on Memorial Day, or I don't want to work a Saturday, so I can't ask them to. Or I want to duck out early in golf, but I feel bad as I'm leaving with the clubs over my shoulder. How do you reconcile that as the owner, the boss, but not let it create that culture of, like, oh, well, Jeff ducks out early every day, so I can duck out, or he doesn't show up and he's doing other stuff so I can do other stuff.

Well, you know, a lot of times people say, man, I wish I were able to do what you do. And I just ask them, I said, are you willing to do what I've done so I can do what I do? Okay. You know, there's a reason I can do what I do. And I wasn't able to do it at your level, at your stage. It took me years to get to this point. And so I think it's fantastic that you'd like to do what I do, but you got to be willing to do what I did so I can get to the point that, you know, to do what I do. And now you don't have a separate standard of values. You're still living with integrity, and you're doing those things. But as a boss, you're going to have some responsibilities they don't have, and you're also going to have some privileges they don't have. And so, you know, as long as you're. I'll bear more than my share of the responsibilities. When we had to cut pay around here during the COVID thing, I went first. None of my people took a pay cut. Okay, I went for. I took an 85% pay cut. So they understand, as a leader, I'm willing to take the first hit, but I'm also going to have some privileges that I have earned over the years that help balance out some of those responsibilities. And so you don't have to feel bad about it if you're not violating the values. You're still putting in the work. You're still keeping your commitments. You're still getting the things done you say you're going to get done. You've earned that. Enjoy it.

Is it communication? Is that it is a communication. Like I have to. I need to be painting that picture like what you just said. And maybe during staff meetings, make sure they know, hey, you guys have only known me for the last six months or year, but I've been doing this for 15. And back in the day, it was just me seven days a week, 12 hours a day. You know, maybe that's what I'm. Disconnection there.

I think it's great. I think it's great to have those conversations, you know, especially I like to try to have that when they're new and let them know the company history, let them know your journey, let them know your path, that you cleaned the toilets, that you've weeded the lot. You know, that you've washed the cars. And, you know, you could go back and do it all again if you needed to, but that's not where you're going to get the highest return on your time. Let them see the amount of debt.

Your name is signed on.

Yeah, that's it. You know, but this is how you connect with people. It's important to have that relationship with them. Do you. You listen to their stories and they listen to yours. And then when you're communic, why you do what you do, I'll tell you where people have a problem, is where if you tell me you're going to do something with me later today, if you're going to have a one on One with me. And then you tell me you don't have time and then I look up and you're ducking out for golf. That's where I'm going to have a problem with it. If you're doing it, but you're not keeping your commitments, you're not getting your job done, you're not taking care of the customer you said you were going to take care of, then I'm going to have an issue with that. And I have a right to have an issue with that as a team member. But as long as you're doing that other stuff, I don't apologize. I don't apologize. If I. If I have somebody that comes into the office and they're from out of town, I don't apologize for going and taking them for a two hour lunch at the Four Seasons. Okay? That's part of my job, as part of my role as a business owner. Now they're only going to get an hour. If they want two hours, they're going to get docked for the other hour. So they can have two hours. They got to ask for it. It's going to cost them. But I don't apologize for that because that comes with my role, the relationship building, the customer relationships, the being a good host and so forth. When people come into town so they haven't done what you've done, they're not going to get to do what you do. But you got to make sure you do what you say you're going to do and keep those commitments before you go do those things that might cause them to have a question mark. This is the age we live in though, guys. Everybody wants what you have, whether it's your kids or whatever. They want what you have, they want to drive what you drive, live where you live, wear what you wear, do what you do, and they want to do it all right away without doing what you've done. Yeah, that's not how it works.

Along those lines, I know you're big on employee accountability and I try to be, but I know, like, I get uneasy sometimes about holding somebody accountable and I just find that to be difficult. It's how do you overcome that fear and how do you really just, you know, take control of your staff?

You know, I think accountability requires two things, the right mindset and the right skill set. You got to have both. You got to have both. If you have the right mind. The mindset is making yourself do it even when you don't want to do it. Okay. The skill set is knowing how to do it if you have the skill set without the mindset, and that's what a lot of people do. They know how to do it, but they're their friend. They, they're afraid they'll get mad, they're afraid that they'll leave. And so they have the skill set, but they don't have the mindset, so they don't do it. The other thing is, if you have the mindset, I really want to do it, but you don't know how to do it, you'll probably get sued. So you've got to have both. And I think one reason people don't hold others accountable, and this is very common, you're certainly not alone. I hold a whole two day class on accountability and this is a topic that comes up a lot. I think one reason they're not comfortable doing it is they don't look at it the right way and they were never held accountable the right way and they didn't like how they felt and so they don't want to make somebody else feel that way. So let me tell you a couple things that might help you. First of all, as long as you look at holding someone accountable is something you're doing to them instead of doing for them, you'll always be reluctant to do it. You know, you'll always be reluctant to do it. Accountability is something you do for someone, not to someone. Now, they may not see it that way, but not responsible for how they see it. You're responsible for doing your job. And so if you care about people, you're going to have the tough conversations. You're going to let them know where they stand and how to turn it around. You're not going to let them walk off the cliff on your watch because you're afraid to make them and you uncomfortable. So just like when we're raising kids, I ask people in my classes, how many of you, when you were raising kids at one time, everybody raises their hand. I said, how many of you had some do's and don'ts for them? Everybody raises their hand and you have some consequences. If they didn't do the do's and they did do the don'ts, was there something that happened? Most people still raised their hand. Some people have no consequences, but most people still raised their hand. I said, so why did you do that? Because you hated your kid, because you were mean to him, because you were a bully, because you just didn't care about them. I said, isn't it the opposite of all those things? You did care about them. You did want them to do better, you did expect more for them. So you cared enough about them to let them be pissed off at you for a while if they needed to, to make both of you uncomfortable and do what was hard and right rather than take the easy way out. So you got to look at it the right way. So many people screw this up right at the beginning. They sit down with you and they say, man, I hate to do this to you. Well, don't ever say that because what you're doing is when you're apologizing, I hate to do this. You've just made them the victim and you the bad guy. Because then they're going to look at you like this, what are you going to do to me? Now they're the poor thumb sucking victim that's going to go talk about what the boss did to him. Don't apologize for doing your job. You might say, I personally, I don't hate to do it, okay? Because I hate that they put me in a situation to where this conversation is necessary and I'll tell them that I hate that you created a situation where we need to talk about this, but we need to talk about this now. The second thing is, after looking at it, is doing it for them rather than to them. You got to remember, accountability should be a conversation. You don't need to whip out your high and mighty accountability voice. You don't need to lecture them and preach at them and bring up the last 25 stupid things they did. We don't like it when somebody does that to us. And so accountability is a conversation. And conversations are less threatening. You're more calm, they're more calm. It's easier to listen to. It's more likely to get through. All right? So remember, accountability is a conversation. A lot of times we get angry when we're holding someone accountable. And you know who we're really angry at is ourselves. We're angry at ourselves for letting it get this far, for letting it happen four other times. And we ignored it and now we have to address it. And that's usually who we're really mad at deep down inside. Now the other part, the skill set part, not only to have a conversation with them, but you got to be clear in the first place about what you expect. I know a lot of managers, guys who are reluctant to sit down and hold somebody accountable because they know down deep they weren't clear enough about what they expected in the first place. So how can you really sit down with me and say, you know what, Anderson, you're not cutting it. If you haven't gotten really clear about what cutting it is, okay, you'll be reluctant to do that, and you'll even feel bad about doing it. So you probably won't do it until it gets so bad you must do it. And so clarity. I always say this in my classes. Clarity is the first step to accountability. People think, oh, I got to hold people more accountable. I got to go give more feedback. I got to install consequences. Not until you get clarity clear first, because the question is, accountable for what? Ambiguity is the enemy of accountability. So there's a lot of leaders with vague expectations out there that aren't holding people accountable because they know down deep they never got clear enough about what they expected in the first place or they know they're not living those things. A lot of leaders won't hold somebody accountable for lying to a customer or coming in late or not keeping a commitment because they know down deep they do the same thing and their people know it about them. So that's kind of. If you're a hypocrite, it's really hard to hold somebody accountable. So you got to be clear. After you're clear, you got to give feedback, and then you can apply consequences if necessary. There's a lot of Cs to accountability. Clarity, candid feedback, consequences, conversations. Okay? You got to have a consequence. Guys, a lot of times we don't have a con if you have something that you say is a standard. Okay, if being on time is a standard at your place, what happens if somebody's not on time? If nothing happens, it's not a standard. I had a manager tell me one time. He said, well, one of my standards is our salespeople need to make 10 calls a day. I said, okay, super. But then I asked him a question. I said, or what? And I got the blank deer caught in the headlights look from him. I said, or What? They make 10 calls a day or what? Still blank. Look. I said, there isn't an or what is there? He said, well, not really. I said, no, there's no, not really. You either have something that happens or nothing happens. He said, well, nothing happens. I said, okay. I said, this isn't about fault. It's about fixing it. I said, but let me help you. You don't have a performance standard. You have a performance suggestion. You are suggesting that people make ten calls a day. Sounds to me like if they don't want to do it, nothing's going to happen. Now you got to determine what the consequence is. It Needs to fit the offense. Right. For something like not making calls would probably be a form of progressive discipline. First time, you don't do it, it's a verbal warning. Second time, it's a written warning. Third time, something more severe happens. We're very big on being on time in my business, and this is something that if you're late to work, you violate all five of our core values. So I take it very, very seriously. We have a form of progressive discipline. The third time you're late in a year, you're fired. It's very clear. In a year. In a year. So first time, it's a verbal. Second time, it's written. Third time, I wish you well, but you can't continue to violate my values. Just distract teammates. Let your teammates down. I got to be able to count on you. And so let me tell you. Guess what? I don't have a problem with people being late. I do not have a problem with partying. Because the last guy I fired for coming in late, the third time, he came in late three times in a week. And he was really good at what he did. I had just recruited them from our bank and I had. I had known him for three and a half years, and he was very efficient and professional and personable, but I didn't see that he was coming in late. Right? And so after that happened, everybody knew that is. That is real. That is real. And people say, well, that's not very realistic. You live in la, there's, you know, you got riots there right now, and there's freeway shooters occasionally and wildfires and mudslides and earthquakes. I said, that's why they get the first two. That's their grace. But the principle applies to anything. You can't have a consequence until you first have clarity. Once you have clarity, you can give candid feedback based on that clarity. You're doing it well or you're not. And then you can have a consequence. So once you do those two things, you get your thinking right. I'm not doing it to him. I'm doing it for him. I care enough about him to get them back on the right path. And I'm going to make sure he understood what was expected in the first place. I'm going to make sure I'm living those things myself. So there's no hypocrisy here. I'm going to make sure I'm giving him feedback, because when he's doing it well, I need to tell him about it, too. He didn't only need to hear from Me, when he's off track, he needs to hear from me. When he's doing it well, he's more likely to keep doing it well. But if he falls short, there's got to be something that happens and it's just. It's too important to be an option. Yeah. If you're in a leadership position, accountability is a duty. It's a duty and you worry about, well, what's it going to do to that person? What are you doing to the rest of the team by not holding that person accountable? Look at the distractions they create. Look how much more difficult their job is because they have to pick up the slack and clean up the messes and do all that other stuff. So what do we owe the rest of the team, too? So accountability protects the team, protects your credibility, protects the culture. It's a big deal.

It is. Speaking of times of kind of chaos, you talk about rioting and things like that. How can we effectively lead during a time where society is kind of chaotic? I mean, we've been essentially the whole 2020 with that going on. What can we do to be better at leaders during this type of time?

There's a lot, you know, and I've done some programs on this. I've been doing a lot of Zoom meetings with clients. Clients because I'm not able to travel as much as I normally do with all the shutdowns and so forth. But that's actually been a blessing of the crisis because I've been able to reach more people through Zoom meetings in a week than I was reaching through a quarter on the road. But whenever, Here, here's a principle. Whenever you are surrounded by disorder that you can't control, you've got to double down on the order you can control. Okay. And so when you, when you got a lot of stuff going on beyond your control, you can get so distracted by looking at it, worrying it, talking about it, that you lose focus on the things you can control. When this crisis first started and the shutdown and every state was a little different, but people were in their quarantine and they're in their houses. And you're seeing what they're posting on social media. Oh, you know, and they're talking about sleeping in every day and not shaving for a week and bragging because they haven't bathed in two or three days. And I'm just wondering, you know, are you practicing your homeless look and scent, so if you end up under a bridge, you kind of fit the role? I. I was astonished how people were letting Themselves. Go. Because when the bell rings and you get called back into the workplace, you're not going to be ready. So when you are surrounded with disorder, you've got to double down on the order you can't control, okay? And that is things like sticking with your values, sticking with your discipline, having activities people need to execute every day, practicing planning. If you have training, training, taking online courses, whatever you can control. That's how you keep your morale up, your focus up, and that's how you continue to improve rather than just be the victim that's worried about what's going on around you. So you need more structure. When the world tries to take your structure away, you got to. You know, when I was working from my house, I got up when I normally got up and I get up about 4:30, okay? I dressed like I dressed for work, all right? I went into my study and I worked there. And you got to stay in a work rhythm no matter what's going on around you. Other things, you got to take your eyes off the media. This media with all its negativity, with all its horror stories, it's not built to make you feel better. Media by design is built to make you afraid. Not the so. So three key words. Media in moderation. You gotta. When there's a lot of garbage going on, you gotta learn how to balance being informed without being obsessed. I know people who couldn't take their eyes off the television. They could quote the daily infection rate, they could quote the daily death rate. They could quote the new rule for this or the new rule for that. Now how effective is that person not only, you know, keeping their own morale up, but bringing everybody else down around them, in their family, at their house, the people they're texting, whatever. So media in moderation, focus on what you can control. Second thing is, you got to get your mindset right. A lot of people think this crisis, and we're still, we still got after effects. We're not out of the woods yet. And we got a lot of time to make up for it this year. And I know some people already doing really, really well. But you got to get your mindset right. This is not happening to me. It's happening for me. I got to find a way to use it. I got to find a way to use it. I got to find a way to use it to get stronger, wiser, better. Because a crisis will expose your weaknesses, okay? And you might have been blind to them during the good times or you may have chosen to ignore them during the good times. But a downturn always exposes the sins of the good times. So you have an opportunity to address them. Okay? It's going to show you new opportunities. Just like we got into Zoom meetings and live streams. Now, last month, 20% of our revenue was from products that we didn't even have two months ago. Wow. Unbelievable. And so. And this is not a product that's going to go away. We're going to keep doing it. We're going to get better and reach more people because of it. You got to get your mindset right. No, I don't like it. I don't like what we're going through, but I'm going to make it pay me. My. My mindset was, we're going to figure out how to make this pay. Every bit of stress I'm going through now, every bit of sacrifice, every loss we're taking, every bit of stress my team and their families are going through, we're going to use it. We're going to get stronger, wiser, better because of it. I'm going to make this thing pay me. It's going to pay me. And so you got to have your mindset, right? I hear people saying, well, we just want to get back to the way things were. Well, that's stupid. That's way too low of a bar. You went through all this just to get back to the way you were, right? You went through this stress.

So that reminds me, Dave. It reminds me, I listened to your podcast a couple weeks ago, and you had talked a lot about the optimism and positivity and the difference between the two. They're not the same thing. People think that if you're optimistic or if you're positive, you are both or the other. Right? But those aren't the same, especially two different things.

And as leaders, you got to bring that to your family. Your family needs that. The people, even if you're not in the workplace, you're probably texting or communicating with them. They don't need to hear your doom and gloom stories. You got to be positive while you're optimistic. You've got to keep that outlook. You got control over your mindset. That's why you can't let the media take a dump on it hour after hour after hour. And these are two things that are very important in a crisis, especially positivity, optimism. And as you say, a lot of people think they're the same thing. They're similar, but they're different. They got different roles. Some people are one, but not the other. Let me explain real quick. If you look up the definition of positive, it talks about constructive building up, being useful. If you look up the definition of optimism, it talks about confidence in the future. So positivity is about the present. Optimism is about the future. Okay? And so if you're doing. My contention was, and what I talked about in the podcast is today, no matter what's going on around us, we can still find constructive things to do, constructive things to say people. We can build up useful activities to engage in. And if we continue to be positive today, we've earned the right to have confidence in the future and to be optimistic. You see, a lot of people, they don't understand optimism is earned. You got to earn the right to be optimistic about the future based on what you're doing today. If you're not doing the right things today, you should not be optimistic about the future. You should be scared to death. You should be a nervous wreck. If you're not doing the right stuff today, eventually it's going to catch up with you. See, this is where I said some people are one but not the other. They're very positive today, but the future scares them to death. Oh, we better get what we can now. We don't know what's coming next. You know, they get that bunker mentality where they're not playing to win or just holding on to what they got. Other people are optimistic, but everything today is terrible. Today, nothing's going right. This is the worst I've ever been through in business. But tomorrow will be a better day. Well, you got to have both, because people pick up on that. And it's very demotivating to see a leader who's a nervous wreck, a leader who's confused, a leader who's tentative. And even if you are those things, you can't show it. Okay? Nobody wants to follow an uncertain trumpet, especially not in difficult times. Nobody wants to see the leader not knowing what to do, immobilized, not sure about what's going on. Napoleon said leaders need to be dealers in hope, okay? And so we got to master the moment now, be positive now, and know that by doing the right things today, we're legitimately optimistic about the future. That's one thing we've got to double down on. We can control that. No one can take your optimism from you. No one can take your positivity from you. You got to give that stuff up. You got to surrender it now. They can do lousy stuff to you. Bad stuff can happen. You still get to choose how to respond to it. You can still decide whether it's happening to you or happening for you.

Yeah.

And you can still decide whether that one step back is going to be used to take 10 steps forward. Hey.

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Can we hold employees accountable differently if they're working remotely right now compared to. To if they were in our store or in our business? Is there a different way to look at that?

Are you still paying them? Working remotely? Are you still paying them for sure.

I mean, but is there, is there fundamentally a different way?

I wasn't being a smart doc, honestly. I mean, we don't have leverage if we're not paying them. There's some people doing stuff remotely just to help out, but if you're paying them, you gotta, you gotta. It's all about activities. You know, in. We got two types of goals. You got outcome goals and activity goals. And one of the blessings of this crisis is outcomes are more uncertain. We don't know what to expect. Who knows, we don't have anything to base this on. We haven't been through anything exactly like this. So it's even hard to set intelligent outcome goals. You still need to have them, but you need to focus less on them and more on activity goals. And I'll tell you why that's smart. The activities create the outcomes anyway. So one thing we need to do with people who are working remotely is we need to really clearly define what activities are non negotiable that we're expecting every day. And we need to report on those every day. A lot of times we're interested in the outcomes. But again, sometimes the outcomes are hard to create, especially when you're working remotely. But they can, they can control the activities, whatever they are, whether it's contacting X number of people, whether it's asking for X number of referrals, process, whatever we got them doing. You got to hold them accountable a little bit differently. But this is where clarity is so important. How are you going to hold them accountable remotely if you don't hold them accountable in person? That's really going to be tough. So clarity is even more important now. Redefining. I call them maxx. Maximum activities. And I talk about dailies, weeklies and monthlies. These are the things you got to do every day. These are the things you don't have to do every day, but at some point during the week. And these are the ones you got to do every month. Not every day or even every week, but at some point during the month, they got to be done. Now, you don't need 40 of them. You don't need 14 of them. You need about four in each category. Now, people may have 40 things to do that day, but there's got to be a way to prioritize. Out of the 40 things you've got to do, these are the four that are the most essential. They've got to be done. They've got to be done with excellence. They've got to be done every day without excuse, regardless of the cost. Why? Because they're big deals. And because those are the four things that are most predictive, have taken us to the outcome we eventually need. And we need to understand that the narrow focus is what helps people in a crisis. Too many people spend their days a mile wide and an inch deep and they spread themselves too thin and they are not playing to win, they're just trying not to drown. So as leaders, by pointing out these are your non negotiables and you say, well, how do I figure out what they are? One of the best ways to do it is, and the reason I limit it to 4 is simply this principle. If everything is important, nothing is important. Yeah. And so we got to narrow it down. Four is manageable. We can focus on four. Four is technically a handful. Here's how we do it. If this person in this role could only do four things today, if that's all they were allowed to do, four things that were most predictive of getting the result I'm paying them to get, what would they be? Those are your max acts.

That's really important, the car business too. Because what we find out is if you make certain amount of phone calls, you'll set a certain amount of appointments, you'll. You'll have certain amount showing a certain amount closed. I think that that goes exactly what you're saying, Dave.

It does. You've got it. You've got to. And I'll tell you what else you got to do. We got to understand that not every season is a harvest. A lot of times people do the activity. They do the activity. They're doing it well, they're doing it every day and they're not seeing the result yet. You Got to keep doing it. Doing the right things has a compounding effect. It will catch up with you. It will catch up with you because I'll say doing the wrong things also has a compounding effect. It'll catch up with you, too. So just like doing the right thing, you plant a seed today, you don't see a tree tomorrow. You got to weed it, seed it, feed it. But eventually it's going to come and you're going to get a harvest from it. You got to trust the process. You don't have to love it. You don't even have to like it. You just gotta love where it'll take you and work it every single time. What a lot of people do, though, is they do the wrong things or they do unproductive things and there's not an immediate result, so they keep doing it. But it has a compounding effect, too, and it's gonna catch up with you either way. So we have to understand the compounding effect of both effective and ineffective activities. Neither necessarily shows up overnight, but they will show up over time. So we have to keep doing it, keep hammering away, keep hammering away, and the results start to come. We got to get better at managing activities. In our business, we are so enamored with numbers. And I get that. I mean, that's how we're measured. That's how we pay people. But if the activities create the numbers, if the behaviors create the numbers, we got to spend more time on the behaviors. It's that old thing. Don't confuse the scoreboard for the game, right? So many people, they're looking at the scoreboard. What did we sell today? What came in and they took their eyes off the game. And you think about that coach on a football sideline. He doesn't looking at the scoreboard. He's in the game and he knows he can make adjustments. He can take this guy out and put that guy in, and he can influence that score before it's on the board. Numbers are wonderful. It's good to be a student, numbers. But numbers are the lagging indicators. They show up too late to do anything about them. By the time they're there, it's done. If we're managing behaviors, we can impact those numbers before they're on the board. So we got to become more ferociously focused on managing activities, especially when outcomes are more uncertain or people are working remotely.

So how do we, you know, how do we take all these accountability things and all this, and how do we. How do we create a culture that attracts this top talent that we all need and retains and holds it. I think the accountability part will retain a lot of that, that top talent we get. But how can we attract them? Knowing what we do and how. And how our culture. How can we build that culture up?

Well, culture can. You're right, because culture can be a big attractor. You know, eagles want to. Eagles want to go where other eagles are. Eagles are attracted to mountaintops, not the landfills. And your culture can be a terrific recruiting tool. And so the culture takes a lot of work. I mean, we could spend a lot of time on culture. If you think of culture, think of it as the foundation for your leadership. I mean, if they're going to build a skyscraper, they got to put it on the right foundation. If that foundation's got cracks and holes in it because you got no accountability, you got low performers that you kept too long, you got micromanagement, you got any of that other stuff that creates weakness in that foundation, you're going to be limited as to how high you can build on that thing. Luke. So. So the foundation requires constant attention. I know people think culture is like a to do list item. Well, we got the culture good. Now we can go on to something else. It's never done. It requires constant attention. It's like a garden. You got to weed it and seed it and feed it. And what happens if you take your eyes off the garden very long, it gets hijacked by the bugs, the weeds, the disease, the elements. And so think of five pillars that are holding up that foundation. That's your culture, core values, your mission, your performance standards, your core competencies, which are the things that are your best at and that separate you from the competition and people. You got those five pillars of culture that there's always something we can do to improve that. We can improve people. We can train them. We can get more clear with our standards. We can redefine our values. We can unite people behind our mission. We can take our strengths and exploit them and get even better. Those are the five areas you work on to continue to improve your foundation. It'll. It'll weed out the guys you don't want there. I've been telling people that. You know, another blessing of this crisis is there's some people you don't want to bring back. I mean, that's a good thing. If the horse was dead when you sent him home, he didn't find a new heart. When you're bringing him back into the dealership and taking a stronger whip to him the second time around isn't going to move the sucker. It's dead. When the horse you're riding on dies, you got to dismount. And so we don't want to bring that person back into the dealership. So this is a wonderful time to upgrade your team. Wonderful time to reshape it. And what a time to recruit with all the good people out of work right now. We haven't seen a talent pool like this in or outside of our industry in decades where there were these many good people, through no fault of their own, that had companies do layoffs, furloughs, went bankrupt, and they're out there. And so we got to get people better or get better people. You don't have to suffer.

What you had Any good tips on finding those people that are out of work right this second?

You know, it's interesting when you're. When you're looking at. I've written whole chapters on recruiting and whole books on recruiting. It takes a lot of work, which is why most people don't do it, okay? And when they're interviewing them, they're looking for the wrong things or looking for past experience rather than past accomplishments. I don't care how much experience you have. You may have experience being very average. You may have years of experience being a real moron. I mean, it is what it is. And so experience is nice, but I need to know, what have you done with it? What have you stuck with? What have you overcome? What's the most significant thing you've accomplished? Any job you've ever had. So focus more when you're interviewing people. Don't worry about whether you like them or not. There's a lot of likable losers out there. I'm just going to level with you. I got some in my family. You know, they're fun. You wouldn't want to be around them very long in the workplace, but they're kind of fun to have a beer with later. But just because you like them doesn't mean they're going to perform. So we got to get over, like, what can you do? How can you perform? Will you share our values? Okay. Do you have the things I can't teach you? Character, attitude, drive, energy and talent. Right? Can you follow a process? Do you have a high standard for yourself? These are things that we got to hire these things in. So you're looking for the right stuff. I tell you what, I've hired some people. I wouldn't want to hang out with them, okay? But they're really good at what they do. They share Our values. And I'll tell you what, as I see how well they perform, they become a lot more likable. And I've had other people I hired because I thought, this is just really a nice guy. Our customers are really going to love him. And the guy was just a complete mess up. Couldn't get to work on time. Still likable. But I tell you what, he became a lot less likable when you see the type of job he does. So you got to get past like, you got to look, do they have the things you can't teach them?

Tell me those things. That was really interesting when you said, did they have the things you can't teach them? Drive, energy and talent. Yeah, those are not teachable. Because I struggle with that, the drive. Like, I want, I want you to be hungry. I want you, I want you to have two mortgages and 10 kids and three car payments and just so driven to make money that you're going to be hustling. It's not teachable. That needs to be a core, hired, internal, hardwired characteristic of an employee.

If you put them in the right environment and there's some drive there, it'll. It'll bring it up to a higher level, but you can't put it in them if it's not there. Okay? You can help make people more than they are. You can't make them something they're not. Okay? If somebody has a positive outlook on life, they got the right attitude. I can surround them with positive people. I can do the right things, I can help them grow and that positivity is going to focus, flourish. But I can't turn a negative person into a positive person. If I take someone who has some goals and some drive in life, maybe they got something to prove. Maybe they got that family, maybe they never had anything. Maybe they just got fired and they're ready to turn their lives around and they got something going on within them. I can put them in the right place and set the right goals and give them the tools and what we're going to unleash that drive. But I can't make them want it, and I can't make them want it. So here's the thing about motivation. A lot of us are hiring unmotivated, undriven people and spending inordinate amounts of time trying to motivate them. And it lasts about a day. Okay, see, here's what we can do. We can alter somebody's mood. We cannot change their drive or their attitude. Mood is a temporary feeling. So you can throw some money at them, get them a hug, pat them on the back, tell them you love and tell them you need them and. And that'll alter their mood temporarily. But as soon as that external stuff goes away, so does that temporary feeling. So we got to hire people who got the stuff we can't teach. If you look up the definition of drive, you know what it says, Guys, think about this. An innate. Now there's a clue. Innate means what? Within? An innate biologically determined urge to attain a goal or satisfy a need. It starts within. I have people come up to me at seminars. It happens about at least once a year. And they say, dave, I want to do better. Really, I do, but I just don't have any drive. What can I do? And I tell them, I said there's nothing I can do for you. Please get away from me. It's like I can't put in what was left out. You got to give the universe something to work with here. You got to find it. Now I talk about how someone can help discover their drive, how they can help get that fire going from within, but you can't do it for him. And this is the thing about motivation. You should not need motivation to get people going. If you got the right people, they're already going. Motivation gets them going faster. Yeah, it gets them going faster. So I see these managers and they got these people who require excessive amounts of motivation to get going every day. You got to hug them and burp them and nurse them and bribe them and give them a pep talk. It's like, that is exhausting. That lasts about an hour or a day. And so that's. That's not. That. That's not the role of motivation. To take unmotivated people and get them going temporarily. We got to hire people who are giving us something to work with. Motivation. They're already going. Now they're going faster.

When do we know when we need to cut bait? When do we. You talked about we're on the dead horse. The horse is dead. Maybe it's not dead yet, but we realize that it's. It's a small dog and not a horse. And it's not going to get us where we need to go. When do we.

Couple of thoughts here. There's not a cut and dry answer for that because there's different situations. But first of all, you got to make sure you've done your part right. Have I been clear with expectations? Have they understand them? Have I given them the feedback? Have I given them the training? Have I surrounded him with good people, or have I surrounded them with unproductive people that are making it harder for him to perform? Have I held them accountable? Okay, that's your little checklist. Now, if you've done all that, you've done your part, you put them in a good culture, you've given them coaching training, they understand the expectations, you've given them the help, they're still not cutting it. Then we have to understand the difference between hoping and wishing. And there's a big difference between the two. You can work with hope, you can't work with wishes. So I always, in my classes, I give definitions because definitions create clarity. Here's the definition of hope. And the first three words are key grounds for believing something in the future will occur. Grounds for believing. So what are you. That. That indicates there's evidence, there's a trend, there's movement. You could basically take the case to court and win it. You could go to the courthouse and say, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I'm here today to petition on behalf of five Car Fred. Okay, at current, he is below our standard. But in the last three months, I've seen these two attitude improvements. I've seen him start this good habit and stop this bad one. And for three months in a row, he's made incremental improvement. Now, it's not where we want him to be yet, but it is headed in the right direction. Based on this, I have grounds for believing if I continue to work with him, he will someday soon be a productive member of the team. See, we can work with that because we got something to rally around. The problem is when we don't have grounds for believing, we just want it to happen. Now you're wishing. You look up the definition of wish. You know what it says? A strong desire for something to occur that probably will not. Okay, so. And you look at what that definition is missing, that hope has grounds for believing. So we would. I'd have a guide, have a manager. When I was running my stores, I would have a manager, and I'd say, okay, it's time for this guy to go. He's not hit the standard. And of course, the manager always wants to take up. Oh, come on, Dave, let me work with him a little bit longer. Give me a little more time. My question was, what are your grounds for believing things are going to be any different tomorrow, a month from now, six months from now than they are today? And usually he'd say something like this, well, he's just really trying hard, and I really want him to make it, and he's been with us a long time. That's not grounds for believing. That's just emotion. Of course we want it to work out. Of course he's probably trying hard. He doesn't want to get fired. And it's great that he's been here a long time. But since he's been here a long time, shouldn't we even expect more from him and not less? Haven't we given him more time, more training, more opportunities? I mean, we should expect more from people like that, not less. And so sometimes our emotion hijacks our reason. Oh, I just want it to work out. And what A lot of managers, if they're honest, what they'll say is they're very selfishly holding onto that person. They act like they're doing it for the person, but deep down, they don't want to have to replace them. They know it's a lot of work to find someone else to train them, to get them up to speed. And so when they're asking to give that person a second chance, what they're really asking for is that they want another chance for themselves. Give me a little longer. Let me work with this a little longer. That's not a good strategy. Not at all.

Yeah, David, you say all this, and all I can help but think is our organizations are a direct mirror of us, the leaders, the top of the pyramid. When I think about, I didn't create. I have not created clarity around the responsibilities. And that's my shortcoming because I didn't communicate it. I didn't hold the standard. I don't hold them accountable. I don't create the consequences or the job descriptions or the, you know. So it's a very hard thing to grasp that when anyone says, well, the culture in my dealership is X, Y, or Z or it's not good, or this isn't right. It's like, look in the mirror. Right?

You nailed it. That's it. That's it. There's no two better reflections of a leader than the culture they create and the quality of the people they attract and develop. That's a leader's report card. People say, well, how about results? Isn't that the report card? Well, ultimately, we're all measured by results. But sometimes we got products or economies that make us look better than we are. So we got to get a little deeper than that. And sometimes we have economies and products that make us look worse than we are. I would contend this if you got the right culture and you've attracted and developed the right people. You're going to get the results. That culture is in our image. Those people are in our image. It astonishes me, guys, when I hear managers complain about their people because they're really confessing themselves. In my book, up youp Business, I talk about something called the Law of Attraction. It's the business version of the law of attraction. It's real simple law. It says you don't attract into your leadership what you want, you attract what you are. In other words, on a scale of 1 to 10, if someone is a 5 as a leader, they're not going to attract eights, nines and tens. An eight or a nine or a ten is not going to follow a five, not going to be inspired by a five, not going to feel like they can grow under a five. They're going to think a five is a joke. If someone is a five as a leader, they can't very well develop someone into an 8 or a 9 or a 10. They can't take people on journeys they haven't been on. They can't export what they don't have. And so I had a guy tell me one time, well, on my team I got a bunch of twos and threes. I said, well, that makes you about a four. That would make you about a four. Now the good news is you can get better, you can improve. It's not a permanent verdict, but if we're cursing our team, you're right, Jeff, we gotta find a mirror. All right? Because we brought them there, we created the conditions and there are a lot of folks in the same situation you just said you were. We haven't been clear enough with expectations. So you go back and fix it. None of this is about fault. In my seminars I tell people a lot. I said, just about everything I'm going to mention is your fault. Okay, if you're a leader. I said, but that's good news. I'm not beating you up. Because if it's your fault, you can what you fix it. Now if it was your mama's fault or the government's fault or where you grew up's fault, then you could, you could hang your hat on that excuse. I said, so go back and reintroduce expectations and do it in a collaborative way, okay? Don't go do it in some new sheriff in town, heavy handed way. One of the best ways you can reintroduce expectations and say, you know what, guys? As I look on our goals for the rest of the year, we got some Pretty big ones. We got to dig ourselves out of this hole that we got ourselves into. But as I look in the mirror, I realize I just haven't been as clear as I should be about what I'm expecting from you guys and by when. And I own that. It's on me and I'm going to fix it. Today, when this meeting's over, I want to sit down with each one of you and I want to get us on the same page. I want to give you some really clear targets to shoot at to help you become more successful. Because I'll tell you what, if we all step up just a little bit, we can make something very special happen between now and the end of this year.

That's. That's so great.

Think about how that would go over. Who would be offended by that, who would feel threatened, Threatened by that. Think about the words you said. It's my responsibility. I'm fixing it, though. I want to get us on the same page. I want to give you some clear targets to shoot out. I want you to become more successful and I'm not singling you out. I said if all of us step up, if we all step up just a little bit, we can make something very special happen here. So go do that. You got to have clarity. You got to have clarity and you know, expectations are key and they get forgotten, they get watered down sometimes subconsciously. Some leaders don't want to get too clear because deep down they don't really want to hold anybody accountable. So in their mind, if they kind of leave it vague, they don't put themselves or anyone else in a corner. But that's no way to lead. People deserve to know what's expected and by when and to have the tools to get there and to be held accountable for getting there. And that's just a leadership basic a lot of us got to get back to.

Yeah, this has been incredibly motivating and depressing all at the same time. Very much a mirror on myself. Dave, we appreciate your time. If people want to get ahold of you and learn more about you and these principles and the things you teach, obviously we're all going to see you at convention here in September. But before that, how do we get in contact with you and learn about you?

Best way is our website, which is learntolead.com if you spell it out just like it sounds, guys, we just added a whole page there called a leading in crisis page. We've got all kind of free videos and resources for people that are coming out of the crisis into recovery. On the prosperity. There's a lot of stuff there. Our services are there. The Zoom meetings. We're doing a lot of. Right. I'm kicking off a lot of meetings for dealerships now by computer, for managers, for salespeople on different topics, getting them going, speaking for 30 minutes, giving them things to work on. That's Dave on Zoom. All of that's on our website. Take a look. There are a lot of free resources to help you and our services as.

Well, and I would recommend your time. Yeah.

Find Dave's podcast too, on itunes. That's been great. I really enjoyed listening to that as I've been traveling.

We started that four years ago. That thing is downloaded. It's called the Game Changer Life. Not the Game Changer, but the Game Changer Life because it really applies to your whole life. And we started that four years ago. I think it's downloaded in 81 countries now. And it's not just for leaders. We have teenagers listening to it that play athletics and they're just anybody wanting to get better, anybody wanting to have a better mindset. It's all about getting your mindset right.

Right.

It's been awesome. Dave, thanks so much for your time.

Thanks, Luke. Thanks, Jeff. Good to be with you guys. Appreciate it.

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