#230 - Building Culture & Avoiding Burnout w/ Scott Miller

You are listening to the Independent Dealer Podcast with hosts Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson.

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Independent Dealer Podcast, brought to you by Buckeye Dealership Consulting. Luke, this is a real, this is a real treat. This has been in the works for a long time.

This is super, super great guest today, Scott Miller, who wrote a book that I read this past. He's written a lot of books, but one I read maybe three or four months ago, Master Mentors. It's volume one, we'll lead into that. But 30 mentors that Scott's had on his podcast, and he takes a nugget from each one of these guests and really expands on them. It's a book everybody should go out and buy today and read because you will get something from it. And I promise you, it won't take you that long to read it.

Scott, thank you for joining us. And like Luke said, this is my favorite kind of book. And we're going to get into some of the questions we have for you, Scott. But just real quick, I love. It's like the Cliff Notes of Cliff Notes. You know, like a podcast is a set of Cliff Notes. Like, hey, we're going to condense as much as we can into 30 minutes. And then Scott takes that 30 minute conversation and distills it again. This is like, it's like sucking the, you know, the flavoring straight out of the bottle instead of putting it in the snow cone. It's the best way to do it.

Oh, I wrote it for the Jeffs of the world that needed the Cliff Notes of the Cliff Notes. But I think, Jeff, you're exactly right. I mean, everyone is facing unprecedented, you know, demands on their time. There's an onslaught of information coming your way. Your ability to extrapolate learnings is tougher than ever because there's so much choice now. So I did exactly what you said I accomplished, hopefully, which was to try to extrapolate a transformational insight from each of 30 guests that were on the podcast that I host, which is now the world's largest weekly leadership podcast. It's about 7 million people each Tuesday, like yours, audio and video. And I've curated a series of books in this Master Mentors theme because I don't think you have to know your mentor. I have lots of mentors that don't even know I'm alive. I read their books, I follow their television programs, I follow their podcasts. And so this was about giving you 30 mentors that you don't have to call up every Tuesday. From 4 to 5 and have a formal coaching call with. I hope people see the book as another edition of mentoring in their careers. Regardless what level they are, whether they're, you know, in the C suite or an entrepreneur, they're a dealership owner, they're an up and coming manager. I think it could hit, like Luke said, everybody at a different point in their career and in their life.

It is. And it's so.

It.

It's so insightful because I don't have time to read all the books and have to get that all your guests, you know, wrote, so you get to put that there for us. And honestly, as soon as I read this book, I said, jeff, we need to do the same thing and write a book because it's a great format, it's easy to read. So, anyway, thanks, Scott. Really appreciate the book and really appreciate you being on. Jeff, you want to kind of hop into some questions we got for you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, one thing. We've all had trouble hiring Scott over the last year, hiring and retaining employees. And when I was reading the book, one thing that just jumped out to me was quantity will give you quality. And it was talking about hiring people. And when you're a small business and you only have 20 employees, it's hard to get a lot of quantity. But what we found is that we weren't getting the best people. So we just started hiring. And finally, after we hired enough folks, we got the quality we needed in our shop. Can you speak to how entrepreneurs should. Should use that to their advantage when it comes to quantity to get. To get you quality?

I think it probably is different for different settings. Right. In some cases, surgeons. Hiring surgeons is probably not just quantity. You want quality from the outside. So I think it's a little situational. But the employment market is in such upheaval right now with no signs of changing. It isn't like the great resignation is going away. We hear some of it calling the great reevaluation. I think as entrepreneurs and as leaders, you've got to recognize that we're never going back to the way it was. There is a level of choice and empowerment that the workforce has that we never had. Perhaps pre pandemic or even in my generation, I'm 54. There wasn't the level of choice. When someone quits their job now, and Luke, you ask them where they're going, they say, I don't know. You say, well, what do you mean? You must know? I'm not sure. I might open up an Etsy store. Or I'll create an nft, or I'll trade some crypto, or I'll do nothing for six weeks because I don't have a car. What do you mean? I have a car. Yeah, I'll just Uber places. I mean, it's unrecognizable. So I think the first role of a hiring leader is to recognize what you knew and what you learned is not absolutely as relevant anymore. You've got to understand the values and the desires of the future workforce and really move outside your comfort zone and realize, what are they interested in? How do I build a culture where they feel like they're engaged, they have a voice where they're having fun? People quit now, unlike our generation. Right. I mean, we didn't quit our jobs until you had a job. Now people quit with no shame. They don't even. They get hired, they don't even come to work. They decide, yeah, I don't want to work there anymore. It never. Never mind. Exactly. Right. It's anathema to a lot of our values. That's not changing. The first is to recognize you've got to understand it's a different workforce. Second, to your point, I do think in some cases you may have to circle in and cycle through uncomfortable level of people to find out who should stay, who has the values, the skill set, the talent, the desire to build a career in your organization. You may have to hire people and recognize that, you know, 2/3 of them aren't going to work out, but you know what one third is. So for every 10, three will stay for six months. And maybe if you're a really great leader with a phenomenal culture, they might stay nine months. And if you're like, off the charts in terms of high performance, they might stay a year. The rules are different. I think the biggest leadership lesson there is what got you here will not take you there. And although it's a cliche, it's solely true. Leaders, owners, entrepreneurs. Hiring leaders have got to transform their skills and recognize that it's a whole new world.

It's hard for me because I think, well, I gave them 40 hours a week. I gave them a solid paycheck. It's like, well, that's not what they want. And then I take it personal when I have high turnover, like, oh, you know, am I. Do I have a bad culture? Do people not want to work for me? Do people quit? Like, they say people don't quit jobs. They quit managers or they quit, you know, like culture. So maybe my culture is horrible. Are you saying that maybe it's not a hundred percent my fault and my culture doesn't suck. Maybe just people get impatient. Maybe they just want to bounce out.

I think it's probably all of those. I don't think. And you're not suggesting this, Jeff, but I don't think it's one thing. I think great leaders, great owners, great recruiters, they're constantly kind of teasing all of those, right? Teasing. Meaning they're teasing out the wisdom people stay when they work for someone who they feel respected and loved by and they stick. What's that?

Well, it was so funny, I was about to bring up a quote you had from the book. Leaders rarely love their employees enough to risk not being liked. And I just. I thought that was. It kind of ties into what you're talking about here.

It does. And Luke, it's a great. It's a great timing is people don't quit. Leaders who love them now they do, but not as fast as they quit someone else. So as a leader, you've got to communicate to your person that you care about them, not just how many cars they can sell today for you or how many insurance plans or how many, you know, extended warranties. You've got to communicate to your people. I actually care about you. I care about your life balance. I care about your family. I care about your career growth. I care about your income. You've got to convince your people authentically that you care about them more just than what they can do for you. Secondly, Luke, to your point is that a lot of leaders don't give their employees feedback on their blind spots. The biggest gift you can give your team member is to move outside your comfort zone and discuss with them what might, up until now, have been the undiscussables. Their communication skills, their personal accountability, their ability to forecast their goal or to close a deal. Their personal hygiene, the way they greet clients or look them in the eye or shake their hand or walk them around the lot. This is what the leader does. The leader has high courage conversations in a way that does not embarrass or minimize the other person. Jeff. Hey, thanks for coming into my office today. I want to have a bit of a high courage conversation with you. Jeff, let me declare my intent. My intent is not to diminish you or embarrass you. My intent is to make sure that you have a great career here and you build skills that will serve you in life. I want to talk to you about a few things. I see that you're doing that. I think are serving you poorly now and will keep serving you poorly in future careers beyond our dealership, that's a leader, Luke, that loves her and his people. And those are the kind of leaders that have longer tenure with their employees. So when that person gets recruited by XYZ dealership two blocks down the road because they pay, you know, 7% and not 6%, the person thinks twice. You know what? How much is 1% work for me? Luke likes me. I got a career path here. It's a good place. He lets me take, you know, the days off I need, and he understands that I have some anxiety and occasionally I might need to come in late or whatever. It's a whole new world. And this is probably your competitive advantage. I'm going to guess the automobile industry is fairly flat in terms of the differentiation. I'm going to guess most dealerships have similar benefits, are selling similar cars, they have similar margins, similar commissions. I'm going to guess there's not a whole lot of differentiation, perhaps other than maybe pride of product and relationship with your leader. I'm going to guess I'd rather work at a Mercedes dealership than a Kia dealership. No dis on Kia, but the margin and the commission's probably higher on a Mercedes and a Maserati than it is a Kia. But in terms of differentiation, do I enjoy coming to work in the morning? Do I feel like my leader likes me? Is she or he encouraging me? Do they praise me in public and coach me in private? Do they make me feel better about myself and my skills? Are they stretching me? You know when you. When you put your arm around someone appropriately and you walk them off to a corner and say, hey, I'd like to give you some feedback on what I saw that worked really well in that last client engagement. And I also want to give you some feedback on some things I think you could fine tune next time, both redirecting and reinforcing feedback. Doing it in a diplomatic way that shows consideration for their feelings, doesn't minimize them in front of their peers, and then says, hey, can I ask you a favor? How would you feel if I ever shared this with the rest of the group? Because everybody is struggling with this thing that you're working on improving, Would you feel comfortable if I use you as an example in your presence, as opposed to gathering the team together and calling out Tim or Tina and having him feel horrified? It's just small things that make big differences in retention.

That's. I mean, we're speaking about radical candor. Ray D'. Alio talked about it. I think you talked about it, Kim Scott, in your book. And it's hard for me to have this radical candor with employees. Do you have any words of wisdom, everybody out there? Because I know it's just not me. How do we get to the point of being better at that?

Yeah. It is a muscle you grow. Nobody came out of the womb having diplomatic and high courage conversations. Right. We have to work our way into it. We screw some of them up. You have to role play. Here's I think a couple of areas. One is when you hire someone, make your onboarding conversation sound like this. We are excited to have you join our team. You're going to bring a level of X, Y and Z, energy, enthusiasm, authenticity, product knowledge, whatever is appropriate. And all of us are on a learning journey, including you. There are going to be some things, some behaviors that you exhibit that we are going to uncover and we are going to fine tune them with you, which means we are going to talk with you about them in private or in public, whichever makes the most sense. But I want you to know our culture here is one of bruise hard but heal fast because we have your best interest at heart. When you can improve your skills, you're going to earn more money, have more satisfied customers, they're going to refer more people, and we're all going to be better off. So recognize that part of our culture here is a culture that coaches and sometimes you're going to probably hear some feedback that you might bristle at, that you might disagree with. That's okay. Our intent is not to minimize you. It's not to embarrass you. It's to build and grow you. So when I give you some feedback, which I will pretty consistently, I may not always use the right words, may not always be the perfect timing. I want you to know my intent is to help you. And when I'm giving you feedback, which isn't easy for any of us, I want to make sure in return that you don't deny it, deflect it, dispute it, or disregard it. I want you to sit on it, think about it. You're welcome to come ask me some more questions, but I don't want to hear, yeah, yeah, yeah, but you. But so and so. No, I just want to hear you. I want to hear you say, hey, thank you for that. That took some courage. So build that expectation up front. I also think it's important, Luke, to recognize that everyone wants to hear feedback differently. Some are fine if you give feedback in the Monday morning sales meeting in front of everybody, right? Some that would horrify them. Others, they would quit on the spot. Others would like it in an email. Others want it over a cup of coffee, walking around the parking lot, you know, others want it maybe on a phone call, after hours. I think it's important that your owners, your managers, your leaders get to know their sales team enough to know how do they want the feedback. We also, we often hear this word, the golden rule, right? Treat others how you want to be treated. Bs, the platinum rule. Treat others how they want to be treated, how they need to be listened to. This is my natural voice level. I talk like this all day long, and for many people, it's very fatiguing. And when I lower my voice and I calm down a bit and I lower my tone and my rate and my pitch, there's a whole level of audience now that's finally tuning into me because now they find me more sincere, more genuine, more authentic, less alarming, and less attacking than my voice. You get the point, right? Is leaders have to know how to change their style without changing their principles. And that's a leadership talent that you learn over time.

That sounds like a life talent.

It is. It is, right? Yeah.

I could think of so many applications that would be applicable because as car dealers, and it's just, you know, Neanderthals, like, I see a nail and I just hit it. I'm just a big hammer, right? And so when my, you know, salesman is plugged his Tesla into my Tesla Charger for the second time, and I've asked him not to, because to me, that's the same as stealing gas, stealing energy. I just. I come in on a rage and I don't handle it right. So, Scott, how do we. How do we. I mean, how do you learn that? How do you. I mean, you are. You're like a therapist, a psychologist, and I'm not.

I'm not.

But to have.

I am kind of. I'm a guy who's made a lot of leadership mistakes in life, and I'm trying to fix them with my marriage. Can I. Can I answer your question real succinctly?

Hey, everybody. Sorry to interrupt the podcast. This is great, great stuff out of Scott. I mean, geez, Louise.

So.

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Yep.

Absolutely. Give the guys a call.

It's self awareness. It's asking and coaching all of your leaders to become more self aware around what it's like to be in a relationship with you, what it's like to date you, what it's like to be a roommate with you, what it's like to work next to you in a cubicle, what it's like to work on a sales lot with you, to ask your customers, what was it like, my encounter with you? Everyone thinks they are more self aware than they are. I'm a pretty ferocious person. I don't see it. I'm a pretty intimidating person. I don't see it. I'm a loud person. My wife reminds me of it. So as I have become more mature in my 50s, I've become a little more aware of what it's like to work with me. And I think one of the things every leader should do is to pound home with their team members. You want to become an expert on you, you need to study yourself more. What's it like when someone walks onto the lot? Do you race over and intimidate them? Is your energy really strong and they're more shy and retiring? I mean, are you mature enough emotionally to kind of assess the situation? You're going to have prejudices, you're going to have unconscious biases. You might think that they don't have a dollar to their pocket. They might be worth $10 million. Right? Never judge a book by what you think. But reinforcing in everyone to be self aware is the first step. And quite frankly, Jeff, the best way to become self aware is to move outside your comfort zone and ask people, hey, you've watched me in the, in the, in the showroom the last six weeks. What are words you would use to describe my style? You've watched me, you know, walk a client over to the loan officer. What does that look like for you watched me, you know, with customers. And it takes a courageous person to be able to ask that feedback. Which is why the leaders have to model it. The leaders have to sit their teens down and say, I want to become a better leader. I want you all to respect me and learn from me. What Are some things that I do that annoys you? What are some things I do that inspires you and get the feedback from them so that your team sees the leader asking for and accepting feedback and implementing it into their life. The leader sets the standard. It's why not everyone should be a leader.

Then they can't be scared of repercussions. You've got to ask and have that relationship of a genuine. I really want to know. Yeah, give me that candid feedback just like I'm giving to you. Are our businesses, are our dealerships capped by us? Like if we are the dealer principal, we are the owner, we're in the business day to day. Is. I just keep thinking like you say these things. Yes. My self awareness seems like it would cap the success of my dealership. If I'm not, you know, if I'm not a, if I'm not a true leader or able to grow, it can only grow as big as I can grow. Is that, is that kind of a law of nature?

Yeah, I might, yes. I might have said it differently. I said is you set the standard, you set the expectation. It's why not everyone should be a leader of people. Not everybody should be an anesthesiologist. Not everyone should be a cardiovascular surgeon. Not everyone should be a leader of people. But if you are going to be a leader of people, you have to model all of the talents and behaviors and mindsets that you want to see in your people. You have to dress the part, you have to groom. You have to be on time. You have to be well organized. You have to be focused. You have to be kind and gentle, but courageous and diplomatic. You've got to ask good questions. You got to make and keep commitments. You've got to hold confidences. You've got to admit when you're wrong. You've got to offer excuse, free apologies. You, you can't gossip. I mean, leaders have to do all these things and people will watch you. When people see the owner say, hey, I apologize. I told you. There's going to be a shipment of seven new cars to sell today and it's coming in on Thursday. I read the email wrong. I am sorry. That's like amazing.

Don't blame someone else or deflect.

That's right.

On an unrelated note, Scott, if anyone's listening, there is a dealership for sale in southern Utah. I feel like I should probably just hang up my hat here. That was a long list of quality that I do not possess.

None of us do. None of us do it Completely.

But you get. But you can work toward that. And I think, Scott, you said something when we were talking about all that. We, Jeff and I always talk about role playing with, with your employees, you know, to get them better at talking to customers, especially salespeople. It's just so dumb of me not to think about. I could role play those, those conversations, hard conversations with an employee I feel comfortable doing it with. And it made me better at leading people.

Anyway, let's do it right now. Let's do it real time. Let's say that I'm the sales manager and Jeff is my owner. We've called everybody together for a sales meeting. We're going to talk about offering and receiving feedback so that we all build our self awareness so we know what it's like to be on the selling end of our customer's experience. Jeff, you're the owner, I'm the sales manager. Ask me for some feedback on you. Say, Scott, give me some feedback.

Hey, Scott. So what's the deal? Why is no one listening to me? Is it the way I'm coming across or is it my yelling, my screaming? Is it because I threw staplers? What?

Yeah. You know, I'm honored you asked. It took a lot of courage to ask. One of the things that I found that you often do, Jeff, that I don't know, that you're aware of, is you interrupt people a lot.

What's that?

Right. You tend to cut people off. I think it's because you have a lot of experience and you process very fastly and you're an efficient person. So I think it comes from a good place. You want to help us. But the implication is that people don't feel smart around you. They feel intimidated. And you want people, I know to feel successful and smart around you. So my advice is, is you need to be a little more mindful of how quick you are to finish someone's thoughts or to accelerate a conversation because it has the opposite impact. You want. What you want is that person to be successful, but that person feels minimized and less intelligent around you.

I feel like you were in my dealership, Scott.

Scott's already got me figured out.

But here's the point of that. Jeff is the owner. I work for Jeff. And now what Jeff does next, everybody is thinking, holy. What Jeff does next in front of all the staff means everything. Jeff can say, well, that's because everybody's an idiot. Jeff can say, that's because everybody thinks too slow. Or Jeff could say, yeah, I don't think that's really true. Or Jeff could say, thank you. That took some courage. Thank you for sharing that with me. Hey, Scott, can I ask you a question? Yes. Hey, why do you think I do that? Like, how often do I do that? What's going on with me? You're not a psychiatrist, but what do you think's going on with me when I do that? And I might say, well, Jeff, I think you have. You're fairly impatient. You have a high standard. You understand that the lifeblood of this dealership is volume and selling cars. And so you recognize to hit payroll and to buy more cars. And we have to have, you know, productivity. We have quotas. And so you get impatient. You're under a lot of pressure, you know, clearly from your investors to, you know, pay back your loans. And so I think it comes from a good place. I just think you should be a little more mindful of the impact it has on people. And then Jeff could say, so what do you think I could do instead? And now people are like, going, oh, my gosh. The owner is asking the sales manager how he can be a better leader. And I say, well, Jeff, you know, I don't know that leading people is your number one quality. I mean, you're a mathematical genius, right? You understand inventory and supply chain and interest rates and profit margins. And quite frankly, Jeff, I think your superpower is running this dealership. I think the best thing to do is to let other people who perhaps have more time to develop their people skills, let them do that. Now, that might need to be role played a little bit, but now you've got 20 people whose jaws are dropping because they're watching what Jeff's response is.

You said something in there about efficiency and effectiveness, and that was in your book as well. And you talk about how efficient you are, and I feel like I'm the same way. I get things done. And I think it does cause problems with my employees sometimes because I've asked them to do something that would take me five minutes to do, and they're on it two hours later. Right. Can you discuss, I guess, describe how we need to be more effective and less efficient sometimes and how that comes into relationships with employees.

I think everyone needs to remember that every company is now a technology company. Whether you're selling cars or lingerie or tulips, every company is, in essence, a technology company. Every dealership is a technology company. And every company is also in the same business. You're in the people business, but people are not your most valuable asset. Stop saying that. It's the relationships between your people that is your dealership's most valuable asset. It's how the loan officer and the parts person and the service person and the sales manager and the sales team, how they work together, how they complement each other, how they cover for each other, how they forgive each other, how they pre forgive each other. So relationships are the business you are in. You're not in the car business. You're in the business of relationships. Owner to gm, GM to sales leader, sales leader to all their sales staff. The relationships and the trust between you is your most valuable asset. It is not the inventory on your lot. Now if you believe that may take you a minute to get there, then you understand that in relationships with people you cannot be efficient. You cannot be efficient with people. And for those people like me whose whole career is built on outworking people, out thinking people, getting stuff done, checking stuff off, I get up at 4 o' clock every morning. I'm a super productive person. I outwork everybody. And it's the key behind all of my professional success and my wealth to the extent I've created any. But it's also the cause of all of my problems with people. Because you cannot be efficient with people. You can only be effective. Now, one is not worse than the other. There's a time to be efficient, right? Reports, email, social media, X, Y and Z, right? Taking the garbage cans out, washing the cars. There's a time to be efficient, there's a time to be effective. And if you believe you're in the relationship business, if you believe that growing mutually respectful, trustworthy relationships is a connection to retention, newsflash, it is. Then you realize that sometimes what is your biggest strength, which might be your efficiency needs to be checked and you've got to consciously slow down, you've got to turn off your watch, your Apple watch, got to close your laptop, shut off your phone and really check in with people. This is a skill that we have to learn because all of us now are living in this hyper productive world where efficiency and productivity is everything. Inventory churned. And how many contracts, how many sell, sold. Now some can take that too far. You can be so effective with people that you forget you got to sell three cars today, right? You got to close the deal, it's time to walk them to your desk and get the paperwork out or whatever the process is in your dealership. But it's that balance, that self awareness, Luke, of knowing when to be efficient and when to be effective. Dr. Stephen R. Covey, who wrote the seminal book The Seven Habits of Highly effective people. I was his chief marketing officer and Associate for 26 years. He said very famously, with people, fast is slow, and slow is fast. For most of us, our strengths are our biggest weaknesses. My efficiency becomes my biggest weakness when I'm dealing with other people moving along, checking it off, getting it done, and people feel that and they quit that.

Yeah, that's so powerful. We all need to learn from that. For sure, Jeff. I mean, I do that every day. Do you? All right, sorry to interrupt one more time, Jeff, but Pastime. Pastime is our GPS provider. They do great. The only time I figure out when my GPS isn't working is when it was installed badly, which happens a lot. Are not installed at all, which we've been finding lately. So, yeah, it's great pastime, though. It's. It's the product I use. I've been using it for five or six years now, and they never let us down. Great company.

Yeah. Yeah, great company. And be sure to use the code podcast. Tell them that, hey, the independent dealer podcast, send me over here. They're going to work out some sort of a special with us. Not sure what it is yet, but make sure you're letting them know that it was the independent dealer podcast that sent you over, and they'll send you a box of chocolates or a rose or something. I don't know what it is, but I think it'll be worth it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in my entire life. That's so true, Scott. I just.

It.

Switching gears is so hard for me. So hard when. Go, go, go, go, go. Employee comes into my office and wants to ask me a question that could be completely genuine and something. I'm like, this, this, this, this, this.

Yeah.

You know, shut the door. I'm doing something, and I'm not doing anything that's crucial. I'm not saving a life.

You are not alone. Right? I mean, you're in good company. And I. Here's the different. Here, here's. I think you should ask yourself, how do I want to show up? How do I want to be remembered? Because you build or destroy culture in every interaction, every email, every text, every pass in the hallway, every conversation, every. You build or you destroy culture? Think about it. It might only take you 45 seconds to say, john, I'm glad you came in. What's on your mind? You're in the middle of, like, the most genius acquisition or email you've ever written, but you've got a person in front of you who wants to spend two minutes with you and you say, yeah, what's going on? And you look up from your laptop, or better yet, you close your laptop, you turn over your phone so they can see you and say, what's on your mind? That person now knows that you have prioritized them and their need. And inside you're going, right? But you're looking at them and you're asking yourself, how do I want to show up? I want this person to feel seen. I want them to feel like they're important to me. They're as important or more important than the crisis I got going on here. And the fact of the matter is, it might be two or three minutes, right? You might say, jim, what's on your mind? Da, da, da. That's pretty heavy. Hey, Jim, can I finish this email and can I call you back in in about four minutes? So I'll have 10 minutes to discuss that. There's so many ways to ask yourself, how do I want to show up in this situation? I suck at this most of the times, right? I'm. I'm learning like you how to become better at it.

Yeah, that's like I. Scott, the. That's like asking me to like walk on water. I just don't even comprehend. My body is not wired. I'm not light enough. I don't. I feel like it's internally wired. Is it internally wired to me? Am I burnt out? Am I an old grumpy man? Do I need to find a new passion in it? Like, why is my knee jerk reaction to be like, that's annoying? You instantly annoyed me just within the first two feet as I came see you coming down the hallway. How do we rewire our brain?

Yeah, I appreciate your vulnerability around it because I feel like I'm looking at my twin brother. I have more hair, but I feel like I'm looking at my twin brother than you is. I don't think this is unique to you. I think there's so many pressures. Right? It probably is inherently your personality. I'm guessing your parents conditioned you to get stuff done. At some point in life. You felt the reward was from checking things off and moving things on. You obviously process information at a fast speed. You obviously have a lot of history and experience in solving the problems, like all of us. You need to change your paradigm. You need to recognize that a leader's job is to get work done, to achieve results with and through other people. Your job is to achieve results with and through other people. Otherwise you're doing everything and then you become a martyr. You become a victim, you punish people subconsciously and you burn out. So instead of falling down that cancerous path where people start to hate us, you say, you know, my job is to achieve results with and through other people. That might mean that I got to slow down. I might have to exercise a level of patience that is unnatural for me. I might have to not do this and find five or six minutes to coach that person so that I've now educated them on the right questions to ask as opposed to now them coming to me, me being obviously frustrated, them leaving feeling like an idiot with their problem solved, but less likely to come back to me. Jeff when a leader's paradigm is that my job is to achieve results with and through other people, and when I coach, I mentor, I find time to do that, I exercise a level of patience that may be totally unnatural for me, then you prevent the burnout, you prevent the victim mentality, you prevent the culture of, well, if you don't want done right, just do it yourself. You build relationships and people choose to stay. Because the problem is now anybody can go get a $60,000 a year job. Anybody can go sell cars anywhere. You got to give them a reason to want to stay working for you. I tell you, it's why not everyone should be a leader. Because it is demanding a higher level of individualized attention on people now more than ever. I am shocked at the number of 18 year olds I know that don't have a driver's license. Why they don't have to. There's no status owning a car. I mean, When I was 16 I had my license at 7:20am on my birthday. First in line, pass the test driving by 7:20. It was a rite of passage. It's different now. And what's different also is people are expecting and demanding a different level of treatment from their leaders. That doesn't mean you tolerate mediocrity. It doesn't mean you don't have high courage conversations. It doesn't mean that you don't fire people. It doesn't mean that you don't hold people accountable for making and keeping sales quotas. All those things are the same. The standards have not dropped. But how you treat them along the process, fundamentally different.

Now it is, you know, we're kind of leading into something I found so interesting in your book and it was called the S curve of learning. That is, you know, I think we're all, I think we've all been in that S curve so many times. And you describe a sweet spot in the center and it goes from beginning of your career to that sweet spot. And then we get up here and we kind of, I think, starting to burn out. Yeah, business owners, we, we have that issue. Some people may have it more than others. And I think that's the reason as serial entrepreneurs, we look for something else. How can we challenge ourselves when we get to that, that plateau of the s, what can we do to, to be better owners at that point? And what can we do when it comes to our employees and they get there.

First of all, I think is talking about it is, talk about it is each of us are going to have a lifespan of our passion, of our engagement, of our learning. Talk to your employees, like call it out. Say, you know, all of us have on average somewhere between an 18 month and 36 month level of passion for anything we do professionally. The science shows that is that after about three years, most people have mastered every aspect of the job. They know what they're doing, the challenge is no longer there. And so they begin to become a little more complacent. Not because they have a poor work ethic or because their character is low, but their competence isn't being challenged. So what happens is people generally, scientifically at the 36 month phase, for some people it's 12 months, for some people it's 39 months. You get the point. But generally speaking, at about three years, someone has mastered their job. And what happens is they don't think other people notice that they become a bit complacent and so their brand starts to suffer. The owner feels like the person isn't as engaged or they're not as in invigorated or they're not pushing themselves. And quite frankly, the matter is they're not bad people. They're just kind of bored. It's hard to reinvent yourself every 12 months. It's hard to get super excited about the new Tesla model when it's barely different than the previous model.

Right.

We can fake it. We can, there's, there's outliers to this. I think Luke, the best point is talk about it. Talk about, recognize it, address it. Talk to your sales managers and say, you know, someone might need to move from parts over to sales, someone might need to move from sales to buyer. Someone might need a bit of a change or a break. I think the biggest gift next to feedback that a leader can have with their team is just talk straight, surface the issues, discuss the undiscussable, say, hey, let me tell you something. Science shows that amongst most of us at 36 months. We tend to get kind of bored, and it impacts our brand, a reputation. I don't want it to happen to you. So the moment you start to feel that you're getting bored, let's talk about it. Doesn't mean I can solve it. Doesn't mean that I'm going to all of a sudden promote you to be GM or move you to my office in Albuquerque. But I'd love to have a conversation with you about it. I want you to feel safe talking with me about your passions, your role, your success. In exchange, I want to feel safe giving you feedback on things that I see that might be causing you boredom or causing you to phone it in, or areas in which you perhaps could increase your income if you change certain things. That's the kind of leader everybody wants to work with. Someone that is just sort of, you know, so confident in their own selves that they can be humble and say, let's just talk about it.

How do we get ourselves out of that?

Well, I think we just did some of it, right? It's just recognizing that, you know, I think it's. I think it's in Mastermindors, Volume 2, coming out in October. One of the mentors is a woman named Dr. Tasha Urich. She's an expert on self awareness. She wrote an amazing book called Insight I N S I G H T. And she basically teaches a skill of studying yourself. We spend so much time studying other people, right? Experts in the business, authors, people that we admire. We spend very little time studying ourselves. How and when and why do we get bored? And when we do, how does it manifest, right? Why do we talk to our spouses this way? We don't mean to hurt them. We don't mean to minimize them. Why am I doing that? What was my trigger, right? Why did I come home and take out all my frustrations on my wife? I love my wife. My wife had a rough day, too. Why did I do that? Yesterday I was so mean to my wife two days ago when I came home. Had nothing to do with her. Why did I do that? I don't think that I've talked to myself enough about it. I think the answer to your question is, be comfortable asking yourselves, why am I doing that? Why am I saying that? What could I do differently? Could I have walked around the block? Could I have, you know, stopped to gotten a Slurpee? Should I have gone to the gym first? I mean, you know, it comes back to my point with Jeff is asking yourself, how do I want to show up and being comfortable enough to talk about that. Right. I mean, because you're the general manager, because you're the owner may or may not mean that you should be leading people. Maybe you should be doing something else with your passion or, you know, being comfortable having that conversation. It's almost like disrupting yourself. It's having the courage and the wherewithal to disrupt your pattern of thinking. Because we get into these rote patterns, as Jeff was mentioning earlier. You know, only 10% of the world are truly sociopaths. 90% of us aren't. We're good people, hardworking people trying to get by. And we end up doing stupid and saying stupid things to people that minimize them when we don't really mean to. Only 10% of us are narcissists and sociopaths. The other 90% of us are good people.

And they're all on Facebook.

Right.

I think what you said, Scott, is like.

What was the phrase you said?

Working with people to achieve.

Yeah. A leader's job is to achieve results with and through other people.

Achieve results with and through other people.

That means your mindset has to be. I'm not going to do all the work. It's not dependent upon me. I'm not going to rush in and save the day. I'm not going to treat everybody poorly because they don't have my knowledge base or my field of experience. I mean, Jeff, how many cars have you sold in your life?

I can't even count.

Right. Thousands of them. Right. You've got sales people that have sold six, that have sold eight, that have sold 30. They can't possibly have your wisdom. You're less.

They want to do it their way.

You're well, and you know what? And sometimes it might be okay. I think, you know, I think it's important that leaders set processes. You can't dictate their style. But you can say, this is our process here. These are the things we don't deviate from. But beyond that, I want you to be yourself. I want you to feel confident and draw upon your passions and your strengths. If I find that your passion is wrapping to clients, I might have an issue with that. Unless that client told you they like to have their sales pitch wrapped. I mean, you get the point.

What dawns on me, Scott, is to avoid the burnout. I can figure out how to run a car dealership. Right. Top, bottom, A to Z. I think I have 90% of it figured out. Right. I could get burnt out. But if my passion is people, you never get burnt out of that. Because that's ever changing, right? Like in your dealership, you're ever building that relationship, you're ever developing that salesman, you're ever working with a technician or turnover in your detail area. And if you're, if your goal is to build relationships with those people, then it seems like you never have a burnout because that is never ending.

Yeah, I don't agree. I am totally burnt out on leading people. And people is my passion. I have led people for the last 35 years. Performance plans, firing, high courage conversations. You know, I mean, I am burnt out, burnt out. I do not want to lead anyone for the next few months or years. I need a break. And so I do think you can get burnt out on people even when they're your passion.

Okay.

So I think you got to just have that self awareness that, you know what, maybe you need a break for a while, right? Maybe you need the assistant manager to be having the conversations. Or maybe it's, you know, the general manager step in. I think it's okay to say, can I tell you, I am burnt out on this. I need some renewal. I need a break from this. I want to stay here. I want to contribute. I want to earn my share. I need you not to punish me. I need you to meet me where I am. I want to earn my share. I need to feel safe in my conversation with you. But I am burnt out on this right now and I need a reprieve. I don't know if I need three days or three weeks or three months. I don't think it's three years. But how can you help me now? You can't demand that if you've not earned the credibility that you're worth that reprieve. Right. If someone of my employees that was here for six weeks said I'm burnt out, I'd say everyone's got to work. But not everyone's got to work here. I wish you well. If someone comes to me and they've sold 400 cars in the last two years and they've, you know, done their best and they've owned their mistakes and they've improved, I'd say let's talk about it. I mean, maybe you could be over in service for a while or maybe, you know, I don't know, let's talk about it. You mentioned a couple roles. Maybe you run the detail store where there's only three employees, not 14. Or I do think you can be burnt out on people even when it's your passion. Absolutely.

I tell you, there is so much wisdom from Scott and I know we've taken up too much of his time already. Jeff, do you have anything to wrap up if you. If you haven't read Master Mentors, go buy the book.

Thank you, Luke.

It's great you got a new one coming out. You said October 8th.

October 4th, Master Mentors volume two with 30 new mentors and 30 new transformatives. I'm told it's better than volume one, so I hope it's well received and.

You can find you every week on Franklin Covey own leadership podcast, right?

That's right. Just google Scott Miller on leadership and my ugly mug is down. Bound to come up.

Well, we really appreciate your time and thank you so much. There's so much wisdom in this episode. I will probably listen to it three or four times and take notes because I couldn't take them fast enough.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hope I survive this mentally. I.

Jeff, you know what? You're doing just fine because you're not getting all the right questions. Jeff, let me end with this. Vulnerability is a leadership competency. Just like empathy, just like reading a P and L, just like calculating ebitda. Vulnerability is a leadership competency. And you've got it because some of the questions you were asking, I was watching, you know, kind of you self reflect on them. I think you're on your way to improving your leadership skills immediately. Guys, delighted to be on. Thanks for the spotlight today.

Thank you, Scott.

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