#176 - Good To Great - Part 1

Foreign.

Welcome to the Independent Dealer Podcast with hosts Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson, a podcast by Dealers for dealers. Here we go.

Hello. Welcome to the Independent Dealer Podcast, brought to you by Buckeye Dealership Consulting. Luke, we are going to get into our Book of the Month, Book of the Quarter, Book of the Year series, right? Yeah.

You know, something a little different, Jeff. A book I've continued to go back to Good to Great by Jim Collins. It's just something that when I feel like something's not working right, my dealership, I like to go back, look at my notes or reread. And this time, you know, what we're going to reread with our audience, share our notes, and hopefully you get as much out of it as I've gotten over the years. And you know what? This is a time when it's hard to hire, it's hard to buy, it's hard to do all these things. And the only way for us to get better and better is to implement some of the things that are in this book.

Yeah, absolutely. And there's so many great business books out there. I know, you guys, we could have picked one of hundreds of books to do this on. But like Luke said, this one is so timely. It's got so many good principles in it. I've never read it in my life. And so this has been great for me. I'm listening to it and I'm reading it. So it's been a lot of. A lot of really good principles. So, Luke, today we're going to cover chapters one through three. So if you guys are listening to this, if you've read chapters one through three, great, you're going to understand what we're talking about. If you haven't, we'll try to explain it in a way so that you can understand it.

Yeah. And even if you haven't read it the first three chapters right now, this will give you a really good, you know, guideline to go back and read it, because you will understand so much more about this book if you. If you know what's coming. In my opinion, that's what. When I was in college, I used to do that. I used to read the Cliff Notes version first. First. And then I'd go to class, listen to lecture, and I knew what was going on. So, you know, just. Just the way I study anyway.

Yeah, it's great. So, Luke, set the book up for us. Give us the overall thesis that Jim Collins tries to explain to us here. What are we getting into in this book?

So, you know, the Biggest thing is the right people, you know, hiring the right people and having the right people on the bus, then the bus being your dealership, because most of us, we're right now talking to other dealers. Let's get the right people on the bus, making sure they're staying there. Get the wrong people off the bus, right? And also developing ourselves as leaders learn, learning what great leaders do, or what he calls level five leaders do compared to what, you know, just old, you know, run the mill leader does. And I think that's the key points here are about the right people in the right spot doing the right things.

And so he sets it up in the first chapter. He says what he and his team did is they went and researched many different companies in many different industries. And he basically said what made two companies that were side by side that had the same potential to achieve the same kind of success and growth? What, what was it that made one company excel and have exponential returns that beat the market and beat their peers and beat the industry as opposed to the other company that maybe floundered or failed or collapsed.

And what's interesting is that when he did this research, I think to be a great company had to outperform the general market by like 3.5% or three times, I think it was. So that baseline company did that jump and stayed there for at least 15 years. Now some of these, you know, good companies, as he would call them, did the jump but. But could not maintain it. So, and we see that in the car industry, you know, how many people have had just a great year, right? And we said that, yeah, we got on the right path, but we could not keep it where we were. Now, you know, we all have that problem. And so I think, I think comparing ourselves can really show us where to go if we do it the right way. And that's what Jim Collins did here.

Yeah, and we see a lot of dealers where we look side to side and we're like, man, that guy's just killing it. He's doing so awesome, blah, blah, blah. And two, three years later, crash and burn, you know, in just in fashion, they just explode or implode. And so you're right, it's about longevity and it's about that sustaining that long term growth. What were some of the key takeaways from chapter one, Luke?

So I guess one of the biggest things is, you know, people always thought people are your most important asset. Well, okay, but the right people are, Jeff. And I think that was a huge deal there. You know, we always say well, we need to hire. We need to hire. But hiring just to hire is kind of useless if you're not hiring the right person. Also, you know, something that really resonated me right now was that technology doesn't cause a transformation. Right. And we're all thinking about everything that's going on right now in the car business and how technology is taking over this, that and other. But again, if you don't have the right people running that new technology, you're not going to automatically transform. You can go out right now and buy whatever fancy toy to put on your website or to help you buy cars, but if you don't have the right people doing it and making sure everything's done properly, it really doesn't matter. The technology ain't gonna transform your business overnight.

Yeah. You're not just gonna jump into something and find some shiny new silver bullet. We talk about that all the time and being able to have consistency. Now they talk about a level five leadership. So let's discuss that and then let's go back. Cause I know getting the right people on the bus is a huge, huge issue right now. Right. Hiring, firing, that's something we could talk about for hours. So let's real quick touch on the level five leader. What does he mean by that when he says a level five leader?

So I think they ranked them from one to five. You know, and most of, most of these people you saw at good companies were level four people. I mean they were, they were rock stars. Right. But it's something that separated the leadership from these good companies to these great companies. And what he, what he found is it was a level five leadership and the things that he thought the level five leaders had followed. The first is the ambition for the company and not themselves. This is interesting. I've got a big personality. I like to be praised and this, that and other. But I guess for me to have long term success, it's really more about my company. And I think that's, that's really hard for so many dealers because most of us have big personalities.

And you got your name on the building.

We got our name on the building. So I think that's something that's hard to look, look through. How about you, Jeff? You have a problem with this at all?

No, no, I don't.

That Mormon humility coming out.

I say it all the time. No, it's not even humility. It's out of complete selfishness. I don't want people knowing that I'm the owner. I don't want them Coming here and asking for me. I don't want to be the one selling the cars. I don't want to be showing them around. I don't want it to live and die on my. And I know there's a lot of large personalities in the dealership group that have figured that out. You know, they probably have to battle with it daily or weekly. When they show up to the dealership and Godwin's name's on the sign, they want to talk to Luke. Oh, I want to, you know, I want to talk to Mr. So and so, you know, whoever's name's on the sign. And so when you're not in the dealership, does the dealership still survive? Could you package up and sell your dealership as it is? When. When it's all tied to you as the celebrity of the dealership, you're the one out front wearing the pickle suit, People want to come see you. And if you're not there, what happens? Does. Does that live on?

You know, that. That's interesting. You talk about that.

And.

And one of the things that you saw from the level four leadership compared to level five leadership was when after our a CEO left a company who was a level four leader, the company went down. And so they were on trajectory to be a great company. But as soon as that CEO left, who was charismatic and did all this, the company hit a down cycle. And that's so important to know that the company isn't about me, isn't about Jeff. It's about another dealer principal. You've got to build a company, and you've got to have the humility in yourself to make sure that thing runs without you there. And it's so hard to do. So hard for us to do.

Yeah. And help me out, Luke. Cause we didn't talk about this in the beginning, but what about the dealers that are. Hey, man, I don't need to be everything. I don't need to have multiple locations. I don't need to sell 50, 60 cars a month. Like, I'm looking to sell 10 or 15. It's me and my wife or me and my boy, or it's just me and a salesman. Like, does this apply to people that maybe aren't trying to get to, quote, unquote, great?

Well, I think great has all kind of sizes, Jeff. Just because it. The amount of cars you sell each month doesn't make you great, doesn't make you good or great. I promise you, there are dealers out there selling 100 cars a month that if you And I walked in today, we would not characterize as great. And I think it could last for that. Selling 100 cars maybe could last for 12 months or 18 months. But then if they had a leader that left or they had a key personnel person lead that that company is going to fall off the cliff. So size, size doesn't make you great when it comes to your business. It's running the right way, making sure things run without you. Making sure, making sure your financials look right make you great.

And then so much of that is, I would say, what is your objective? You know, like going back to our episode two weeks ago with Michael is what is your preferred experience for your life? Do you want to be the go to guy in your community who needs a car? Great. You're okay with them having your cell number and calling you at 10 o' clock at night to come in and sell a car on a Sunday or something? Like if that's who you want to be, great. If you want to be at your dealership every day, great. That's, that's good. You know, like Luke said, there's probably people selling 20 cars a month on their own that are making way more money than the guy selling 100 cars with a staff of 20.

Let's think about Jack, about Jack last week, you know, selling, you know, specifically exactly what he loves. He's selling on. Bring a trailer with him, doing it by himself. I'm sure his preferred experience is, is way up there, right?

Yeah.

When, when me, you know, trying to make sure we're selling 40 and 50 cars a month and having 20 employees run around like my chicken look at, like a chicken with my head cut off. You know, that's not necessarily my, my preferred experience, but I'm trying to get there and I'm still building. Some people build it from one person, some people, it might take a lot more people to build that preferred experience.

Yeah. So for the sake of argument and the discussion of this book, we do talk a lot about having the right people on the bus. So this is assuming that you've got one employee or you've got 100 employees, right?

Doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter. You still gotta have the right people. And part of that, what he talks about is as dealers, we fall into this genius with helpers model and he talks about like you've got some of these large, large personalities out there in business and all they want to do is they want to be the genius and then they just want to have a bunch of little like minimum wage Peons around them that kind of carry it out. And that's the McDonald's model or the e. Myth book that talks about, like, hey, just have a policy and procedure and hire the cheapest person you can and have them follow the policies. And it's like, I don't know that that creates long term.

So, you know what I, you know. Yeah. You know what I relate that to in our. In our business right now, and we hadn't really talked about this. We talked about this a lot last year was, you know, the, the turn and burn model. You know, I think that McDonald's model is essentially, you know, what is it called? What's the turn and burn model called in attrition.

A lot of high turnover.

No, with the cars, you buy them, you know, you buy them at cost and you. Settlement cost, essentially. What's that?

Yeah, yeah.

Velocity. Yeah, the velocity type. I mean, I think McDonald's and Velocity kind of go hand in hand.

Yeah, that's true.

And so it might work. I don't. I don't think that model ever works. But, you know, it's. I think there's better. I think there's a better way than that, right, Jeff?

There is. I think if you compare those two. So you say, hey, you know, you look at like a McDonald's and you look at like, you know, in or out or a Chick Fil A. Right. So they both have the same policies. They both have very strict processes of how things are supposed to be done. But they're not always just trying to find the cheapest labor to flip the burger, you know?

Sure. I mean, look at Chick Fil A. Chick Fil? A probably pays a minimum of 15, $16 an hour. They hire the best people they can find. And you can tell it every time you walk in. Service is great, food's great. You're in and out in a second. You go to McDonald's, they're paying minimum wage or maybe a little bit more than minimum wage at this point. Your orders are always messed up, the lines always stretch around the building, and the experience sucks. Right. And I think that's kind of what. What you can pair, you know, talking about. Go ahead. Sorry.

No, I was going to say, so how do we do that? How do we not be the McDonald's of car dealers? How do we be, you know, a higher quality? Can we attract those type of people to our dealership?

Do we need to be, you know, it's all. It's all about customer experience. I know we say that a lot, but that's where it is. And the customer experience starts with the top. How do you want your customer to feel when they have a problem? How do you want them to feel the first time they step into the door of your dealership? Can we relate that to the actual, you know, the way we advertise? And I think as long as that all lines up, then our customer will have the best customer experience. And if, if you have that, your customers will pay more. They'll bear with you when things do mess up and, you know, overall, you're going to. You're going to have more peace of mind and things can work better in your dealership.

Okay, but. But what I want to know is how do I get the people in my dealership to give that excellent customer experience? Right? How do I get the people on my bus? How do I attract those top talented folks to my dealership that will. They'll do better than I am? You know, I have to be honest. I'm old, I'm grumpy. I don't like dealing with customers anymore. I have zero patience for it. We talked about that. Like, just give me the car back. You know, just give me the car back. I just go. I don't want to argue with you, but how do I find someone to fill in those gaps where I fall short and to be better than me? You know, I mean, that's ultimately it. If you are a great leader, everyone around you is better than you. Well, that you've got to do, right?

You hope. You know, one thing that, you know, I have highlighted in our show notes here is the purpose of compensation should be to get the right person on the bus to start with, not to get the right behaviors. Now, I've talked about compensating people to get the behaviors you want for a long time, and that's how we get reviews. That's how we do this. But maybe I'm thinking about this wrong, Jeff. Maybe, maybe we should pay more upfront. And I think this economy right now is probably starting to show us that, that if we pay more than what the market bears right now, we may hire the top talent. And if we're able to do that, we don't have to make these crazy car dealer compensation models, commission models that we've done for so long. Maybe it's not about the commission model. Maybe it's about paying the right amount upfront to get the right people.

Yeah, that's super interesting. I think all of us probably have employees that, you know, if you gave them a flat salary every Single month, they would probably produce the same amount and they would produce excellently. I'm saying, I was saying they would work for you. Great. If you just gave them a salary, you took them off hourly, you took them off commission. You just said, hey, I'm paying you X amount every month. You know, that person is still going to perform their job to the best of their ability because they're internally motivated, they have a loyalty, they have ethics, they have this internal drive to be the best at what they do. Right? And we have other people that I've got a hire right now that I paid top dollar to, I stole them from another place, paid him top dollar. And it is, it is not turning out. So no matter what you pay them, they are going to produce at the level that they are internally built out.

The right people will do the right things and deliver the right results regardless of the incentive system. That's what I mean. It was written in there. So it's all about hiring the right person. And the right person has the right morals. They have an intrinsic internal passion to do what's right and to do their job properly. You don't have to talk to them about the way they came to work, dressed that day because every morning they wake up, they want to make sure they look good, they dress well, they're doing the right thing. So I believe that we've got to do a better job at interviewing. We've got to do a better job at interviewing, focus on what's right for our company. Because whatever's right, whatever we feel is right for our company, we know it.

When a.

When a person walks in for an interview and talks with us for more than 10 minutes, I think we know it. Are we going to make mistakes? If we do make mistakes, there's one key thing we make a mistake talked about in here. If you made a mistake on where to put the person, you still believe they're the right person, then move them up to 2, 3 times to find the right, the right spot for. But then if you know after three weeks that you didn't hire the right person or after two weeks, you didn't have to hire the right person, you got to get them going quick because that's, you know, the more, the more you let them stay there, the worse they're going to be for your. For your whole company. It hurts the morale of the people who are working and the person that's not working. Honestly.

Yeah, it's so interesting to think you've got the right person, but they're Just in the wrong seat. And that's why they're not producing. Right. You've got a collector doing a salesman's job. You've got a, a salesman doing a porter's job, you know, and so you need to, if they are the right person, get them in the right seat, but then have the ability to just cut, cut it when you've dragged it out too long. And I think we have that. I have that problem. I'm already short staffed. You know, how can I fire this guy? I let a detailer go on Friday that lied. He lied about damaging a car. And I don't care about the damage to the car. No big deal, whatever. But you can't directly lie to my face about not doing it when you know you did it. That's just not going to be here.

That's right.

It is 100%. It comes down to being ethical. We are ethical here. We do not lie to anyone, especially me. And now I got no detailing. You know what? That sucks. And I can't find them. So I'm back to the drawing board. But you've got to, like Luke said, make that hard cut, pull the band aid off, move on. Even if it means you're going to be short staffed. Because you're right. You. So many times we sacrifice great for the sake of good. We all have salesmen who are good and we're not willing to cut them loose to open up that desk space so we can find someone who's great.

Yeah, it's, you know, we had a, we hired a tech probably two months ago, a month and a half ago, and he had all the certificates and all this. And when he got here, it wasn't as advertised and it just, it was so. I've been fooled several times, interviews, it happens, everybody, just to let you know. But this was so, so out of left field that I was just like, you know how this guy's an oil change guy? How in the world is he wearing, you know, how does he have all these certificates and this, that and other. But we identified it quickly, made a choice, we made a decision and three weeks that he had to go. And you know what I found out, though? And we hired, we paid a lot of money to get this tech and it made me make a decision quicker because I, you know, if I'd have paid this guy.

Yeah, yeah, bottom dollar. You would just let him drag out.

I would just, I would have just let it drag out. But because we paid him what the market's bearing right now. I knew that I couldn't. I couldn't wait. He had to go. And so maybe there's something to this, you know, paint it up front to try to. I don't know. I don't know. That just occurred to me, actually.

Yeah, I've kind of had that philosophy in my property management business. We hired a manager and we paid him top, top dollar. And there's a lot of comfort in knowing that you've paid someone top, top dollar. Like, hey, man, you gotta produce. You know, we can replace you in a minute at this rate. You've got to make it happen. And so when we talk about replacing someone, Luke, as the owner or the manager, the hiring person, we've got to always be looking, right? I mean, that sounds bad because you've got your team and you want to be loyal to people are here. But if you see someone who gives you great service or if you have an applicant, you. You find a room on the bus, right? I mean, you maybe hire them with no specific job yet, but, you know, that's someone that you need near you because they are going to excel.

Where you read the show notes and you know that great vision without great people, that's irrelevant, right? Because you can have. You can have these grandiose ideas, but you can't implement them because you don't have the right people. And as a small business, it's scary. It's scary to know that, let's say. Let's say six months ago, when I had all the staff I needed, I had 20 people, we were moving in the right direction, and I found somebody that was just dynamic and I didn't hire them, right? I didn't hire now because within that, that six months, with a month later, one of my salespeople left, and then another, you know, another couple months, somebody else left. It's just like, if I'd have hired them right then and took that leap of faith, took that chance, I wouldn't be in the position I am now at 14 staff. I would have had at least one more, maybe two more, because I kept hiring. But I didn't. And, man, I tell you, it's scary. It's scary to know that you have enough people on staff and then you see somebody and you're too scared. You're too scared to pull the trigger. We kind of get over that for sure.

We're all scared when we walk in and everyone's standing around talking to each other and you're like, well, crap, I'm overstaffed. I got too many people. Like, why why is everyone just hanging out and chatting? You guys don't got enough to do. I got too many people. But. But there's definitely something to be said about being overstaffed, at least for some period of time, because it sounds horrible, but. But you're ready to make movements. And if you need to let someone go who's underperforming, you've already got someone who knows the system, who knows how you guys work and can step into that situation. You know, they kind of talk, you know. You know, your job is always up. You know, your job is always out to be hired by someone else. There's always someone who could take your job. And I don't say that to make you feel insecure here. I say that to make you know that you are continually competing to keep this position at our company because it's important to us, you know?

And what. What also might be the thing, you might hire that new person and not have the vision yet. Right. You may hire them, and they come in. All of a sudden, you see a whole new product line that your business can take off in. Maybe you hire somebody because they're dynamic, and next thing you know, they really have an interest in cars and they figure out a new way to buy from the public, Right? Yeah. You never know if it's the right person and they fit your box. You got to hire. We've got to get over the fear of seeing that payroll number come by every two weeks, and we've just got to go. If it's the right person, just hire. Yeah.

Luke, what have we not touched on?

So the three things of being rigorous, not about being rigorous in your dealership, be rigorous on yourself. You know, in. The first one was, when in doubt, don't hire, keep looking. We kind of went over that a second ago. You know, no company can grow faster than the talent they have. Yeah, that's something. Something we got to think about. And I've said this before, a salesperson can only sell a certain amount of cars. So if you think that you're going to be selling 50 cars a month with two salespeople, I don't think you're going to make it happen consistently. You may, because you have a BDC that's wonderful. That's bringing in all these things. But you couldn't do it if you didn't have enough BDC people.

Yeah.

So you've got to make sure if you have a number in mind, you've got to have a number of cars to sell in mind. You've got to have a number of employees in mind. That's going to get you there, too. Same. I saw a question on the Facebook page today talking about how many collectors do I need to collect a certain amount of accounts.

Right.

And that's always an interesting thing, too. So if you have. Let's say you've outgrown, let's say you've had one collector forever and then all of a sudden you've outgrown the amount of things they can do. And this, you've outgrown the amount of collections they can make in a month. And all this depends on what your repo rate is, what's your collection rate and this, that and other. If you see that your collection rate's falling because your collector is not able to touch everybody, then it's time for you to hire a new collector. Now, that could be at 250 accounts for some people, it could be at 800 accounts for others, depending on how you have it set up. But you've got to look at your numbers and you got to know where that number is. But if you want to get to 1200 accounts, you may not be able to do that with your current staff.

So, yeah, you got to questioning it. You definitely need to hire because that's a collector is a position. You never want to be left high and dry when that lady gets overworked or that man gets overworked and they bail and then you're the one doing the collection calls. But Luke, when you say hiring the people and getting the right people on the bus because of your biggest, you know, having those opportunities because you're never going to grow more than your biggest talent, you. It does remind me of our sponsor. So we're going to plug Buckeye right here. They just made a couple of really big hires that I think everyone has seen come across in the media releases. But Buckeye dealership consulting, I mean, obviously they're making some big moves more towards the consulting side, but until they start making some announcements on that, they are the go to for reinsurance products. You guys know, we've talked about it before setting up a reinsurance company. It's like Luke said, if you had the right person in place that really enjoyed that kind of thing, you could have a dedicated employee. If you're selling 40 to 50 cars a month, I bet you could have one person and their whole job is to sell back end products to, you know, make sure you're funding your reinsurance company. Right. Make sure you're administering claims. Right. They're a hybrid Service rider. F and I, Guy. And all they're doing is helping you sock money away into your reinsurance company. Tax deferred. Tax free.

Tax deferred. And Buckeye Dealership Consultant can help you if you find that right, Guy, I promise you they can come in and help train that person to sell your product. And I promise you the only way, the only way to build wealth in this industry is to have your reinsurance company and to get it producing like it should. And Buckeye Dealership consultant for sure can help you do that.

Yeah, make sure you hit them up their links in the show notes and of course, look forward for future announcements for them because they have made some pretty, pretty high level hires in the last few months. I'm sure they've got some big plans there. So we'll see what happens.

Even in the last few days. So we'll see what happens there.

Yeah, exactly. So, Luke, the other thing you talked about and that I think is really smart is when you look at that person and you, and you look at every employee that you're, that you have in your dealership and you ask yourself, would I hire them again if I had to and would I be disappointed if they left? You know, those are two great questions, man, like, would I be disappointed if they left or would I be relieved and would I actually hire this person again if they came back to me in six or 12 months?

You gotta always ask that. And you know, and it may change. It may change over time. You may say, you know, you know, this month, man, I would hire this guy 100 times and next month it's not. But sometimes when that happens, it's not about the employee. You know, sometimes it's about your leadership. Maybe your best people don't need to be managed. They need to be guided and taught and led. And I forgot about that. We had a little hiccup in our service department. Last month actually is a big hiccup. And the perfect storm happened and we lost a good bit of money, you know, net over net. And we had really made big strides, our service department making good money. And it was because I forgot that I needed to lead these people and I needed to guide these people. I need to show them what they were supposed to be doing. I need to build new processes and I didn't do it. And part of was just me being lazy. And, you know, I got to look at myself and I got to go, I got to fix this. I got to make it better. And this month we've really done it. And Our service department's bounced back, and we're going to be fine. But, you know, it's about leading the right people. It's about guiding them and making sure that they're taught by taking them to convention, by doing this, by doing that, giving them the resources that they need. Because if you don't, they're going to leave. And you don't want to lose the right people. Right, Jeff?

Yeah. And when you say lead, I think that's super important. And you're not managing, you're not micromanaging. It doesn't mean you're in their business saying, hey, do this, do that, do this the other way. It means, hey, guys, here's my problem. Our turn time is not good. How do we get there? How do we get to a better turn time? Help me help you. Let's put some stuff in place. Let's look at some of these things that you thought you couldn't do. Now, me as the owner is going to tell you, yes, you know, we can do this, we can do that. Let me help you with this resource or hire this person or maybe help you streamline this process so that we can increase that turn time. You know, you're not in their business every single day. And that's something that I have to continue to remember as dealers. We have a million fires right now at our dealership, right? We have a thousand. If we really looked closely, we could be stepping on every little amber that pops up, and we'd be just driving everybody crazy because we don't like the way the front line looks. We don't like that the stickers aren't there. We don't like that this car sat too long. We don't like that this part was ordered from this vendor instead of this vendor. So we got to be careful not to micromanage those little things, because not only will it drive us freaking crazy, but it'll also drive our people crazy, and it will push out people who are good. Good people don't like you up in their business all their time. But just sit down and talk to them and help them, guide them along. Like, hey, how can we get better? Here's what I need to see out of you. Let's talk again in two weeks. Let me know what you need from me.

And you're right. I think it's a. It's a week or every two week, just check in with that person. I think Alexa likes to use that word, a check in. Let's check in. What are you having difficulties with? What do you think you can do better at. These are a couple of things I saw that may be part of your process that you're not doing. You're not micromanaging, you're not over managing, you're just trying to teach them. This is what I really want to see. Can I see that more often? That's it. Yeah.

And how do you keep the balance if you're not micromanaging? When you get down to have those check ins and those conversations, what you got to remember as a dealership is you do want someone who's going to argue with you. Right. Luke, he talks about that in the book. Right. We talk about the vigorous discussions. So you're discussing a topic to get to the best solution. You're not discussing a topic to pound down your opinion on your employees. And I think that's the big difference. If you're so dug in on your philosophy and your opinion and your way of doing it, that's not a discussion, that's just you lecturing your employees on something. So, so be careful that you're finding that balance of being open to new ideas.

I think, and I think just thinking about him talking about the vigorous debating, you know, man, we get out at 20 group. Jeff, when we're sitting there and maybe I came up with an idea and everybody's just, you know, blasted it out the park because they think it's horrible, which happens a lot. I like to think about some things, but we get that we, we have that management board that, that help keep us in check and make sure we're doing the things the right way. Because there's a lot of people that have done it before differently than what we currently do. So you gotta, you gotta have that sounding board. You gotta be able to debate, then maybe bring that back to your, to your managers and talk about it. And y' all debate those as well. Because the more you debate, the more right ideas I think will come out of that. Right?

Yeah, yeah, you're gonna, you're gonna, they're gonna explain to you why it can't be done the way you think it should have been done or why you think this thing might have been, you know? Yeah, absolutely. And be open to change and be open to being wrong. That's the reason why Luke gets blasted in 20 groups is because he digs in so deep on software providers and then everyone just likes to poke at him.

One last thing that I thought was interesting was put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems. I think that I've always Had just the opposite thought. If I've got a problem, I want my best person handling it. But I'm just, I guess I'm thinking about it all wrong because there's probably opportunities that I see that I don't have time to do that. I could put somebody that really has time and do it a lot better than I can. Maybe especially with millennials, especially with younger people who understand things a lot better than I do when it comes to technology. Maybe by using them to, to develop those new opportunities, to buy cars online, to do whatever, maybe I can get better at that. Maybe market it better online.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is sourcing your most, your biggest opportunity, buying the car right up front. And maybe that's where you got to focus all your talent. Whereas at dealerships, we focus all our talent on the sales team. You know, we're paying them high dollar. Or is it recon? I mean, why does a B level tech or an A level tech get paid less than your salesman gets paid? You know what I'm saying? It seems like we kind of got some of these things back in the, in the car world, but.

Or why'd your collector make less than your salesperson to buy your pay your store? You know, I don't know. Some things that we need, some questions we need to continue to ask. And Jeff, you know, just, I think that's pretty much wrapping up our first notes for the, for the first three chapters. Let's talk about where we're going to be. We're going to be in Texas at the end of the month, right? Or end of next month.

Yeah, yeah. This is, this episode will be the first of July. So yeah, technically we'll be at the end of the month in July. We're going to be down at Tiada. If you guys have not listen to the podcast about the Texas association convention coming up, be sure you do and be sure you get signed up. You still got time. Austin is not a horrible place to be at the end of July. We're all going to be inside an air conditioned building. So don't worry about that and take the time off of your dealership to work on your dealership. That's what this whole book's about. That's why we did this episode work on your dealership, not just in your dealership.

Yeah. And actually we got the names of the people that are going to be on our live podcast panel and it's really exciting. There's some people who are really heavy hitters when it comes to sourcing inventory differently than what we currently know as sourcing inventory. So I think it's going to bring a lot to the table from from inventory purchasing side. There's gonna be a lot to to learn there.

So yeah, Tuesday morning session, 9:00am Be there.

Yeah. And if you can't make it, it's going to be a podcast. We're going to put it out there for everybody. But man, we encourage you to be there. A lot of networking, all kind of stuff that's going to going to make your dealership go from good to great, I believe.

Yep. Awesome. Luke, talk to you next week.

Yep.

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Sam.