#22 - Our 4 Tips For Staying Sane.

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Independent Dealer Podcast. Today, Luke and I are going to share with you our four tips to stay motivated in the dealership.

I think it's our four tips for not going postal. But anyway, so you got, number one, you got. You got to have some hobbies. Number two, you got to delegate. Number three, you got to have the right staff. And number four, you got to have a big picture. Jeff, without those things, we do think you may go crazy.

You will definitely go crazy. All right, Luke, let's get into them.

All right.

Welcome to the Independent Dealer podcast, the podcast for auto dealers to learn and grow together. Here are your hosts, Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson. Okay, today, Luke, we are going to discuss a couple of ideas, strategies, topics that we use personally to stay motivated in the used car business. Why do we need this stuff, Luke?

Well, I mean, you can see on the Facebook forum that so many people some days during the week just want to, you know, lock the doors and go home. And we're in a business where things happen, you know, we're selling merchandise that we can't really control, which I think you've talked about before, Jeff. And unfortunately, transmissions go bad, motors go bad, cars overheat, and the customers can get angry. You know, and if you see three or four of those in one day, or if a car you're trying to fix, doesn't fix, man, it can get to you. And sometimes you just need to find something to calm yourself down or just get away.

Yeah, we all do, right? We all have a lot of stress. I'm sure we, you know, we're probably running the shop. You know, we're overseeing people, we're dealing with personnel. We're probably the last line of defense with customer issues and bad buys at the auction and an engine blew up. And so, yeah, you're. You're kind of continually dealing with stress and these issues. So, I mean, it gets real easy to just want to throw the towel in. I know exactly what you're talking about. So let's do this. Luke, you and I, we put together four topics. Let's go over all four of them. Number one, something I know you're passionate about, making sure you got hobbies. Tell us about it.

So, you know, we went through a thing. We went through some issues at the beginning of the year where we were just had staff turnover. I was working 12 hour days and I was doing that six days a week. And it was just getting. It was getting too much. And after the first quarter, I was like, I Just. I can't keep doing this. I'm driving myself crazy. I've got to figure something out. And I love to play golf. I hadn't played golf the whole first quarter, and I said, you know, I need to take one day during the week and I just need to go play golf. And I got buddies that can. That can go with me, and they love to go. So I said, on Thursday morning, after I leave my bni, my business networking group, I'm gonna drive straight to the golf course and I'm gonna play 18 holes. I'm not gonna be bothered. And that's what it is. And I tell you, that has really changed my outlook for the rest of the week. I look forward to it. I look forward to coming back to the office after I've been gone. It just breaks the week up, man. It's something that people really need to do. You need to take care of yourself, and a lot of times people don't do that. Years ago, when I was training for Ironman, I was working out 25 hours a week, and the only way for me to get my swims in with a coach was during the middle of the day. And I tell you, that hour and a half that I took away for three days a week, really, that changed my life too. You know, it gave me. I was in the pool, my phone wasn't ringing. I was doing what I enjoyed. I always. I was being healthy, you know, So I think whatever it is that you. That you passionate about, if it's. I mean, shoot, if it's. If it's art, if it's, you know, bagman, if it's whatever, do it.

Not car related. You know, you can't say your hobby is going to the auction. You can't say your hobby is, you know, turning wrenches.

Just.

So help me set up some context. Luke. Do you work six days a week? Are you at the office at the car lot six days a week?

Sometimes. If I'm in town during the weekends, for me just to go to. For me to be at the house on a Saturday, sitting around, that's not gonna work. It just is just not what I do.

So if you're in town, you'll probably be at the lot.

Right, but if I'm out of town, of course I'm not. But.

But your standard Thursday morning golf is just set in stone. It happens.

Set in stone. If it's not Thursday, if we have to move it one day back or forward, we do.

Nice. You know, southern Utah is actually. It's kind of the Mecca of golf. I mean, I think I've got 18 or 19 courses within, you know, 20 minutes of me. So, you know, oh yeah, that's the.

Southeast of the US is like that too.

Next time you're in the neighborhood, we'll show you some stuff.

Let's do it.

All right, so number two, this is something I'm passionate about delegating. I think as owners we know we can do it better, you know, or at least we believe we can. And unfortunately you get in the mentality that if it needs to be done right, you're the one that needs to do it. And that's wrong. It's gonna stress you out, it's gonna burn the candle at both ends. You're gonna go bat shit crazy, you know, you're gonna go nuts. You've got to learn to let go. And even though that person might only do it 80% or 70% of what you would do, it's better just that they're doing it. One thing I looked at, I mean, simple stuff that you can let go of like taking pictures for your website or posting descriptions or filing paperwork or bigger stuff like your accounting or things like that that you can delegate to someone who's responsible. Just think of the time you're going to free up and maybe you could weigh that out. You know, when we brought on our social media girl, I thought to myself, alright, it's gonna free. It's going to cost me maybe twelve to fifteen hundred dollars a month, but am I going to be able to sell one more car? You know, just one to cover that?

And that's key. And it's not what it's going to cost you, it's what it's going to cost you to continue to do what you're doing.

Right?

How much is it costing you now? And that's a great way to look at it, Jeff. So we all say let's delegate. Okay, so let's, let's think about how you did this, Jeff. Did you write a list of the stuff you do that that is not worth your time and how do we go about getting to the point of delegating? Because I'm not good at it. I'm not good at it.

It's probably a whole, I mean, this could be an entire podcast in my opinion. But I think that I look at every task I'm doing. Every time I pick up a piece of paper or someone puts a post it note on my desk or gives me some sort of a text, I just think to myself, alright, can someone else do this? Can I set up a process or procedure or can I teach this to someone? Take the time to teach it to them. It might take me twice as long, but I'm going to teach it to that person and they're going to be able to do it from here on out. Now, obviously, there's some high level stuff that I just don't want to delegate or things that I just enjoy doing. You know, I enjoy, you know, I don't know, climbing up on the ladders and fixing, you know, I was fixing a sign this morning and I was replacing the air filters and you know, stuff like that just gives me joy because I like to use my hands. But yeah, I mean, adding inventory to our dms, you know, no, thank you.

So the other day, what was funny, I've done, I don't, I don't do stuff with my hands, but earlier in the week I did, I did add inventory to the dms, but I was doing that for trying to figure out some of this IDMS stuff. But more than that, you know, earlier in the week, two days ago, there was a car that came in with a, with a code that really probably only I could research and figure out what to do. And I'm sitting there thinking, and I, and I remember something on a podcast that I was listening to earlier in the week and it said, what would a great leader do in this position? And I bought 30 cars last week, right? We got to get those cars ready. So do I bog down the shop by doing that or do I take the time to research and figure out what's going on? And I said, you know, what would be a better use of my time? Send it to the dealer. Okay, that might sound ridiculous, but what I did was I said, it could be this problem or it couldn't be now. I'd be much better off to send it to dealer to verify the problem and let them fix it. Well, they call this one, it's a $500 fix, but I'd be willing to bet you that I would have wasted hours verifying what was going on, plus had to buy it a part. I promise you, it cost me more than $500 in the long run.

I'll tell you what, I can't tell you how many times I get neck deep in something and then I have to stop and look up and just say, what am I doing? Spent four hours researching this thing or doing this thing when I should have outsourced it, I should have given it to someone else. And one thing I. I can't remember who the speaker was, but they said there's three things that you do good. You know, you either enjoy them or you're just better than everyone. They're your core competencies, and you need to focus on those three things. And whether yours is buying the inventory or marketing or running your numbers or running your staff, whatever those three things is, you need to identify them and then focus on those, because that's what's going to move the needle. Those are going to really move the needle. The mundane stuff is just going to get you bogged down in the weeds.

Yeah. The other thing you talked about there was taking the time to write down the process and procedure into a manual. And that is something that takes time. But once you do it, all you have to do when you hire someone to do it is hand them the book and say, read this. You have some questions. Come to me. But I'm gonna also train you on it. So you're gonna read the manual, going to explain it to you. You're going to watch me do it probably for about a week. I'm going to help you do it for about a week, and then I'm going to turn you loose, because with the processes in place, you should be good to go. And if you find out that. That that person is not good at doing that after you've showed it to them, then maybe you made the wrong hire. But. But if you have it in place, it's so easy to get going.

Yeah. I bet you could even outsource the manual.

You probably could.

Have them type it up. Okay. Number three. Luke goes along with delegating. You gotta have what you got to.

Have the right staff.

Yep.

And. And you've got to have staff for your operation. You know, there's so many of us out there that want to run lean and mean, and I promise you, I'm probably the world's worst. If you look at our composite, it's gonna probably tell you that I need to hire somebody or two people. And, you know, that's. That's the way I kind of like to be. Now, I think there's value for being overstaffed. But just for instance, if you're selling 40 or 50 cars a month, maybe 100 cars a month, you know that those cars are going to create issues. Right. They're going to break down. They're going to break down within a week of selling. They're going to break down within two months of selling. And you know that the biggest thorn in your side is. Is that customer coming back and complaining and you're having to take the brunt of that. Well, wouldn't it be great just to hire one person on staff that all they do is handle incoming heat customers and customers that are issues.

Wouldn't that change your so many times.

That change your world? Wouldn't it?

It wouldn't. And a decent, an average to good customer service person, if they sat there and just twiddled their thumbs and did nothing other than feel field those fire cases, I mean, what's that gonna cost you?

It'd probably cost you, what, 40 grand a year maybe?

Yeah, maybe. I would say that'd be maybe high. I don't know. You can get a server coming from Denny's or somewhere that wants a stable 9 to 5 and they're just blowing sunshine up everyone's butt and that's their thing.

And when they're not, and when they're not doing that, they could be also helping out in the office, taking payments, doing title work, whatever. But they could be the coordinator with the customer and the service department to make sure that that customer is taken care of. And you know, that's just a simple, you know, person to hire to help you out. But I think if you don't have the right amount of staff, you can't, you can't go in and golf or do your hobby, you know, and you can't delegate like you should because you're taking the brunt of it. So.

When you're understaffed, you're burning yourself out. Yeah, burning everybody around you out. I remember when I was a two person operation, you know, and unfortunately was me and my little sister, so family vacations, we had to shut down everything. We didn't take payments at all. And then as we grew, it was like, okay, well now I'm going to be gone. But that puts it on you guys, you know, and that was at about five to eight employees. If I left it, it put a strain because there was nowhere there to handle the heat cases. Now we're to about 12. And I've got a manager who's here who it doesn't matter if I'm here or not. He knows what to do. He can handle all the heat cases. I mean, they sell more when I'm not here, you know, so it definitely changes. And yeah, that's some overhead and things like that. But I think it really comes down to asking yourself like, you know, what's your, what's your game plan? And Luke, maybe that leads us to our last one is the Big picture number four. Right. I mean, keeping a big picture perspective on where am I going?

You know, and that's a, that's so important, Jeff, because, you know, we have, both of us have kids and we have families. And the big picture, maybe not always to everyone is making so much money and retiring early and doing this. You know, the big picture might be about your family and getting to spend time with your family and getting to go to your daughter's ballet recital or your son's baseball game. So big picture really matters. It's work, life, balance.

Absolutely. And what's, you know, hiring that extra person if they're not commission based again, might cost you two or three grand a month, but what is that going to free up in. Yeah. Your time to be to family activities, to go on vacation, to golf, to not feel like you're burning out the rest of your staff and you've got this high turnover, which just compounding the problem.

Yeah. You know what's so funny about that is that there's two ways to look at this because somebody's big picture might be early retirement too, you know, so they may go, you know what, I'm gonna work so hard for 15 years that after the 15 years I can relax. So, you know, maybe there's not a one answer, maybe, maybe it's a multiple thing. But I believe that each person needs to figure out their big picture and probably needs to write it down so that they'll have a plan for that. So when those days do get rough, where you go, oh my gosh, I'm so stressed, you know, but if you could walk in and look at what you wrote down and says, you know what? The reason I'm stressed is because this is my plan. So that might even take some of the burden off.

No, absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. You know, that you've got this, you've got some goals or you've got some mile markers along the way and yeah, I want to be at X amount, you know, in my nest egg at this time and this time and this time and, and maybe that also speaks to, you know, people need to make sure. I mean, it wraps us back around at the beginning of having hobbies, but you got to also make sure that you've got other interests, other investments, maybe, you know. Yeah, I mean, you've got money do set aside. So if it did come down to the point where you literally decided to lock the doors and walk away, that's okay because I've squirreled money away in my reinsurance Company, or I've been buying commercial properties, or I own my land and I could lease it to another car lot and go chase some other thing or retire. I think as car dealers and entrepreneurs and sole business owners, we need to understand that. Yeah, I mean, no one's stepping in to take care of us at the end of the day. I mean, it's really. It's on us. So part of that stress can come by not having a nest egg or a backup plan or a plan B.

You know, for sure. I think that's a. That's big. And, you know, your friend who we had on two weeks ago talked about it that, you know, keeping that debt ratio low is big on that, too. Because if you do get. If you do get so upside down on everything that you're having to work all those hours, man, that's tough. And just remember, before you do anything crazy, make sure that it makes sense. You know, don't buy millions of dollars worth of property if you don't plan to be a little stressed. Right?

Yeah, definitely. I think I saw someone the other day make a comment about how they were selling 20 to 30amonth as a single operation, you know, and their net profit was like two grand per copy. And I was like, well, I guess that's not too bad.

Not at all.

You're a single guy, and you, you know, a single operator, and you're bringing home 60 grand a month. I think you're probably doing all right, you know, I mean, but you could probably pull back a little and still be okay.

I've seen so many dealers, Jeff, who. Who see other dealers, you know, just whatever. Now, they may be doing it or not, but those other dealers are saying, oh, there I'm selling 100 cars a month. I'm selling 80 cars a month, you know, and you see that, and some people want to be that.

Right, right.

They're at the 30. They're at the 30 mark, and they go, man, this guy's selling 80 cars a month. I want to be like that guy. He's riding around and a Bentley, he's doing this. Let me tell you this. I've seen so many of those dealers who were doing that exact thing go out of business. And guys, it's not worth it. What it's about is making great business decisions, spending time doing what you like, being with your family, if that's what you like. But that's what it's about. Keep it straight, keep it less stressful, and spread the love. I mean, you know, the more. The more People you can hire and pay, the better off. The economy is better off. A lot of things are. And I promise you, you'll see it, too, in the long run.

Yeah, yeah. It's expanding your means. You know, it's like you're taking kind of those steps into the dark by hiring that new person or bringing on that new employee, knowing that, hey, it's going to, you know, this is going to pan out for me. This is going to work out. You do got to kind of be a little bit, take some risks sometime maybe. If that's what you're comfortable with.

Yeah, for sure.

All right, Luke. Well, that's awesome, man. I think that's some four great points. I'll just summarize them real quick. Number one, make sure you've got hobbies. Number two, make sure you're delegating things, you know, getting some of that workload off your shoulders. Number three, make sure you got the right staff. You got people around you that are lifting you up, people you enjoy being around that are not putting more work on you. And then number four, make sure you're keeping a big picture perspective. You know, what are you doing? What are you working for? What's the number one priorities, you know, are you keeping your sanity with your work? Life balance?

For sure, for sure.

Luke, how much longer do we got until we're all going to see each other at the NIADA conference in Vegas?

So we've got some pretty exciting news on that front there, Jeff. So we are going to be out there the 17th through the 21st, right? Yep. June. So we got three weeks.

Three weeks.

Three weeks and we'll be out there.

That would be my tip. Number five, Luke, get connected with other dealers that you can talk to. I'll tell you what, on those days when I'm struggling or I feel like something's not going right, I got, you know, buddies like yourself and some of the other guys that I've made friendships with. You give them a call, you chat about it, you can commiserate a little bit, and when you hang up, you're ready, ready to roll again. So things like these conferences are great places to go and get motiv, I'll tell you. I mean, I cannot tell you I have not had a single 20 group meeting or a single conference, any really. Any kind of. I don't think I've ever come back from any conference and not been motivated to tackle everything.

Man, it lights a fire. You come back with so much. Sometimes you have to prepare, you know, you have to write Down. This is what I'm going to hit. This is what I'm going to do. And you do have to prepare. And maybe we'll talk about that the week before the conference. But you need to make a plan. You need to go out there, and you can't go crazy in the expo hall. You got to find what you need to find. But those conferences and those 20 group meetings do mean a lot, and those connections mean a lot. But come see us. So I think we're gonna do a live show out there, right?

Yeah, I think we may have got Justin to volunteer the NIADA booth, so we might be able to hang out there in their little lounge and, and do some live and some interviews.

Yeah, that's gonna be cool. And we're gonna try to get some vendors who are out there, do some one on one, some quick. I guess I was thinking about this. Is there a way that maybe some people in the audience could send us an email and ask some questions that they may want?

Yeah, of course. So if you've got questions you want us to answer, if you're gonna be out there and just want to connect with us, or if you want us to corner somebody and get some answers, whether it's a vendor or another dealer, you can just email us@infotheindependentdealer.com so infoheindependentdealer.com it's also in the description here of the podcast. And I mean, along those lines, we really just appreciate everyone for listening. It's been just growing like wildfire. And we're just really amazed by how we're being able to touch people, hopefully help some folks out.

Yes, sir. I love it.

Great. All right, Luke, well, let's wrap this one up and we'll. We'll talk to y' all next week. Nothing? Nothing for me. No, nothing.

No, you did good.

Sam.