#274 - Whats Your Morning Routine

You are listening to the Independent Dealer Podcast with hosts Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson. Hello and welcome to the Independent Dealer Podcast brought to you by Buckeye Dealership Consulting. We are on location.

Luke on location. Buy here, pay here in beautiful Las Vegas. Look, we got sun. I hope his dome is not messing with Yalls view of this on YouTube.

We're having a great time down here at the Bellagio. Buy here, pay here. United Summit 2023.

Yeah, it's late night because I got in late. Early morning.

Early morning Luke had a panel. And speaking of an early morning Luke, what we're gonna do in this episode is we're gonna talk to a handful of dealers and discuss their morning routines a little bit different. You know, we're not gonna bring you buy here pay your education. We're gonna bring you personal education on how to have a better morning and a more successful day.

You know what I find is when I don't start my morning the exact same way every day, I get distracted real easy. And I believe that it's so important to have a routine to get. To get you past the point where you start procrastinating.

Right.

And so if you can get yourself motivated early in the morning, go through a certain routine in the. In your personal life as well as your business life every morning, you'll be more successful in business, and you'll be more successful every day.

Yeah.

It's all about repetition, building good habits, and then staying consistent.

Yeah. Not drinking too much the night before, so you make sure you can get up and run all these type things.

Yep.

I would never do that.

Never. So hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Here it goes.

All right, so Jeff, we got other gym Jeff with us. Jeff Stevens from It is a solid name. What is it? You have to be a certain height. If you're Jeff, he's got. He's got way better hair than you.

I don't think, because. Have you met Jeff Martin?

That's true. Jeff Martin is shorter, but it has the same hairdo as you.

That's true.

Huh.

Maybe that's to come later, right?

Yeah. Extra Auto center from Pampa Papa, Texas. So this episode we're talking about, what do people do as their morning rituals, their morning routines? And I was just talking to you about. And you're like, man, I'm at the office at like 5:30 or 6 every morning. So tell us how your day gets started and what you do.

So, yeah, we. I usually there between 5:30, 5, 45 every. Every day. You know, for me, just getting Everything started getting unlocked. Definitely getting coffee on. That's important, right? Yeah, but, yeah, just looking over the deposits and stuff from the day before and just get my past dues printed out and getting ready for the day. So.

So what time do you wake up to do this?

Five o'.

Clock.

Five o' clock every day, Jeff, could you get up?

It's early. Five o', clock, west coast time?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We're getting up with the Chinese markets, so.

Yeah. So what's the. I mean, what's the most important report that you pull every day?

Past dues, definitely my past due report. To me as our lifeline. We've got to know where we're at there. So.

And you do that every morning? Not every other morning.

Every morning.

You talked about deposits. Do you have a specific deposit report that you look at every day?

So I'm just comparing from the day before what we deposit. Just make sure it does check off to what we've. Actually, that's in the bank, you know, to make sure. And then I get it recorded into the QuickBooks. So do you have money integrated? I'm old school.

He's a non integrator.

I am a non integrator.

Jeff. You got some questions?

No, no, I think non integration is okay with me.

No, I like. I like integrations.

You like to be integrated?

I like to be integrated. Do you have someone else that prepares to deposit? So you're checking behind them or you're doing it all?

It's me. Yeah. Okay.

Most.

Most generally.

And how long are you at the office every day?

Oh, it's. It's 12, 13 hours.

Jeff is at the office 12 or 13 hours a week?

Yeah.

Month, Monthly. Monthly, yeah.

Okay.

All right.

Well, Jeff, thank you so much.

Thank you.

That's a good way to get going.

Appreciate you.

Thanks, bud.

Thank you.

Here we are with our new best friend, Macarena from Franco's Auto. You got to roll the R out of Miami fl. Yes. So, Macarena, tell us, help us out, give us some ideas. What do you do with your morning routine? Like how do you get your day started? Kind of walk us through that.

Yeah. I live in the beach, so I go, I run every morning to the beach, more or less between 5, 30 to 6 before my kids wake up. And I meditate for between 30 to 40 minutes until the sunrise, until I see a sunrise. I stay there for 30, 40 minutes and then I go. I ran back to my house and then that's how my things.

That sounds like a great day to you.

Blew Me out of the water. When you say I live on the beach, I'm done. I'm done. I can't compete with that.

But where you live is very beautiful, too, so don't.

But you also get up before the sunrise every day.

Yeah. 5:30. That's like, wow. Yeah, 5:30, Jeff.

That's early.

That's what I do.

East coast time is really early.

It's very early.

Yeah.

She's on the east coast.

Yeah.

Right.

So after you do that and your head's right, you get the kids going, which could mess anybody's head up, because I have a kid. And so you said you take your golf cart to work. I mean, that sounds. I mean, what, do you live in community somewhere?

I mean, what's going on?

Yeah, I live in an island called Kiwis Cane in Florida. And what I do is I go back home, I put the kids. Well, I prepare the kids to go to school. I have three, so I put them in the golf cart, and then I drop them off school. And then my office is across the street from the school, so I just walk, and then I work there. And as soon as I get to the office, the first thing I do is a zoom call with my whole team.

Nice.

Because we have a lot of people that work for us overseas, too. Oh, okay. So we have this thing where one employee per day has to come up with a way to motivate every other employee.

Oh, nice.

Cool.

So we watch videos, we dance, we exercise.

You do the Macarena every morning.

Every morning.

Every morning.

I got it in.

That's super unique. So you assign a team member the motivation.

Right. So we have a calendar, and it's like, one day per team member, and then every single person will do a motivational speech video. Sometimes we play games.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Yeah, it's just they can, like, relax and start the day with their right foot.

Yeah, man, that's great. I mean, motivation, meditation.

I love it.

Yeah. All the ends. Golf carts, beaches. I'm moving. Are you hiring?

Yes.

Awesome. Margaret, thank you so much.

No, you're welcome. Thank you, guys.

Hey, guys, real quick, bust into the podcast here. Our amazing interviews we've had so far, just to make sure you guys know about Buckeye Dealership Consulting.

Yeah, Buckeye Hawkeye Dealership Consulting is a big sponsor, founder, founding member of Buy Here, Pay Here, United Summit. That's where we are. And I've stressed it so many times, but reinsurance is what you make of it, and you can't make anything of it if you don't get started. You need to call Brett, you need to call Jason. You need to get started. Because every day you wait, you're costing yourself thousands, if not millions of dollars in the long run.

Yeah.

I gotta imagine all these guys, many of these guys in this room have their reinsurance set up. They're putting wealth away. And Buckeye, they're the guys to go with.

I agree. That's where you got to go. You got to start today. Give them a call. All right, Jeff, another dealer here. It's Sam Brenner from Brenner family dealerships in Pennsylvania. And we're not talking about just dealerships. Dealerships, body shops, all kind of stuff going on.

Yeah, Sam, before we ask you your routines and how you keep all this stuff straight, give us real quick just the basic breakdown. What are you in charge of? Your dealerships, your body shops, give us an idea of the scope.

So I'm a fourth generation dealer. I took over from my father, and at one point we were mostly new car dealers. We'd been doing that for a long time. We had seven different franchises at one point. And in around 2005, my father developed the buy here, pay here side of the business. And 2019, we got out of new cars. So we still kind of have that like shell of a new car dealer, you know, the large service department, the body shop. So it's a challenge to justify all those expenses, but the buy here, pay here is really kind of what we dove into in two feet. We also have a retail location, but the buy here, pay here, in the last few years that I've been in this business, that's what I've been putting all my energy to.

And it's. You have five locations of buy here, pay here. How close? I mean, how far? What's the circumference of buyer?

It's roughly an hour apart from each other. You know, it's like from the north border of Pennsylvania to like southern border of Pennsylvania, almost in a straight line rural manufacturing. There's a little bit of an urban population, but we're pretty far from any metro.

So, Jeff, this brings up an interesting dynamic when it comes to your daily routine because it's not just one location you have to go to. You've got to have a set routine where you know what to do, you know what the managers are supposed to do. So, Sam, what do you do? How do you get involved?

Fill us in on your routines, the systems you use to make this work.

Okay, so you know, I stay organized by. By our weekly regular Meetings, and we'll schedule those as well as any phone calls, you know, with vendors. I'll schedule all that in my mornings. So my morning, you know, I get up, I'm on the phone, I'm on Zoom, I'm on teams, and then I wrap that up around 10am and I get on the road and, you know, we have. We have six locations, five of them buy her pay here, and I kind of divide it into north and south. So, you know, I'll do the two southern locations one day, then I'll do the retail store, then I'll do the buy here, pay your headquarters with the reconditioning facility, and then I'll do the two north stores. And I try to do that every week. I don't do it every week, but it's my goal.

Well, it's good that you have it structured in a situation where you can actually do it, because to me, Jeff, it seemed overwhelming.

Right, that sounds insanely overwhelming. How important do you think it is to be physically at the locations? Do you feel like there's a difference when maybe you don't make it week after week or so?

I would say being at the locations is how I maintain my relationships with my managers. If you can maintain your relationships with your managers without being on location, maybe you don't need to be there as much as I do. But I feel. I feel it's critical, you know, to see how people see and hear firsthand. How people talk on the phone just. And they want to see you, ask them how they're doing. You know, I love to talk to my people. I care a lot about my people, you know, the people who work for us, but also our customers. So any chance I can see them in their natural habitat and, you know, talk to them, take them out for lunch? It's a plus. As far as the harder conversations I manage through the managers, you know, so when I. When I show up, I'm watching, but, you know, I'm really there to talk about what we're doing. Right. Talk about the philosophy of what we do, talk about, you know, the philosophy of collections or sales or service, whatever it is.

How long has it taken you to develop that structure and how you manage those managers and set everything up?

Yeah, well, I'm really lucky, you know. You know, I took over from my father and I had to hire a few managers. But the managers that stuck around are very strong, and we're developing some great talent. As far as being organized, I don't know if I'm the best role model for that. But, you know, staying on top of my guys is very. Is very natural. You know, every week, every month, we run through the numbers. Every week we run through the operations. And like I said, I try to see them face to face once a week at least. Well, thank you, thank you, thank you, guys. I love your podcast.

Okay, so we're back and we said we'd have only dealers talking about this, but we didn't say only dealers. I mean, Buckeye Bread is been a dealer and he's, you know, a vendor and he tells us how to structure deals and do these type things.

Buckeye Brett is the boss of the morning routine. When I need morning routine motivation, I just check into Brett's Facebook post and it motivates me to go, Brett, give the listeners just like an abbreviated version of like, what's your morning routine like, mentally, personally, physically? Like, what do you do to get yourself in the right state of mind in the morning?

Yeah, so it starts with always kind of planning it the day before, especially with me, because I'm traveling so much, it can be really difficult. But it starts with, you know, setting my alarm and making myself get up when I say I'm going to get up. And then after that, it's. It's very regimented. It's like coffee, bathroom, reading, making my list of things I need to do for the day, and then I go to the gym. And once I get back, then it's kind of like my day is set. You know, I kept the first promise that I made to myself. I've already checked some boxes. You know, they. They talk about, you know, like, you know, making your bed and starting the day with finishing that. That first task. But one of the reasons why that started for me was especially like, when I was a business owner, when I still had my stores, is it's really difficult with as busy as we are to find time and to have that, like, you know, work life balance that everybody's talking about. And between our business and our family, doing things for yourself always kind of feels selfish. So when you get up in the morning and it's like, this is my two hours to work on myself, take care of myself, make my plan for the day. Because if you don't have that, then it's just one distraction after the next from, you know, my kid can't find their book bag to I was doing my meetings in the morning, right.

Talking about distractions. Distractions, Right.

That was a lot.

And, you know, somebody comes into your office and they need you for something. And the next thing you know, that one thing you had to get done today just doesn't get done.

So, you know what's so crazy is I know when I going to have a good day because I can walk into my office and do the exact things that I do every morning when I first walked in my office. But I know I'm going to have a bad day when I go to do those things and someone says, I need this fire put out. And then my whole day is screwed up because I lost my routine. Even I run most mornings. So if I don't start my routine and get up at a certain time, it's trash the rest of the day.

Right.

It's terrible. And when you start missing the things that were important to you, then it affects your mood, which just trickles down to everybody else. And, you know, a lot of times, one of my, you know, I always post a lot of isms, you know, in the morning. And one of the things is like, did I have a bad day or did I have a bad five minutes that I let ruin me for the whole day?

Right.

I had something that happened that threw me off, and I never got back to my routine. And it's typically because people don't have a routine. They have. Well, I want to. There's a lot of things I want to get done today, but they never had a plan. They just kind of, you know, in the morning as they're getting ready, I got to get these three things done today, but they never had a plan, and you have to have it.

So traveling throws in a big monkey wrench into these things, because I know when I come to conventions and things, I may stay out a little bit too late, and I got an early morning the next day. How do you make sure that when you're on the road? Because you're on the road, I would think most of. Most of the week.

Right.

How do you. How do you make sure that it's done even when you're in a weird place?

Yeah, I think a little bit is just some personal accountability at night. I mean, you know, coming to this convention, you know, I had a. We both did. We had a long day, a little bit of sleep and a long travel day out west. And then, you know, you're here till midnight. But, you know, sometimes it's like, you know what, it's time for me to go to bed. I got to eject myself from the. The fun time I'm having with a client or friends. And then again, it's setting that you Know that alarm and you know mine went off this morning at 5:15 and I got up and I was like, we got a company photo at 7:15 and if I'm late, Rob's going to be mad. So I got to get up and get my run in. And what's funny about being on the road, especially conventions like this, is because my routine is so solid now. Like I've got other guys who have routines and they talk to me about it. And then when I go to the gym, I'm not by myself anymore. Like at conventions like this, when I show up, there's like 10 guys there waiting for me who are. And we all just kind of work out together.

So it's not only Buckeye, Brett Beachbody, Brett Gym rat Brett. I like it, I like it.

That's good. It's good.

Get you a T shirt that says that everyone's gonna follow you around.

Meet him for a run in the morning.

I am totally getting up at some point tomorrow morning and I'll meet you somewhere sometime tomorrow. Hopefully you're still there. Brett, thanks so much, man. This is, it's motivational, that's for sure.

Yeah, you're welcome. Thanks guys. Appreciate it.

Hey y', all, one more break in.

Buy here, pay here.

United has many, not many, five founders. PrimaLin is one of them. Primalin is here to help dealers succeed. From lending you cash when you need it, helping you buy your location, all these things that can help you be a better dealer. It's hard to grow if you don't have cash, right Jeff?

Absolutely. And definitely stay tuned. In a couple weeks we're gonna have a great sit down interview with Primal End and really, really dive into how they can help dealers.

And they don't only help lend you money, they can help understand what's going on in your business if you're not quite there yet. So give them a call if you need them. Thank you.

Hey guys, we are back. We've got Mr. Jeff Martin, President of NIADA.

CEO, I think that's correct.

CEO, sorry, let's just say on the team.

On the team, on the team.

So Jeff, you are, you've taken over some an awesome role. So you've got a ton of things going on. I'm sure that throws off your routines right because you've got all sorts of new things coming at you. Employees across multiple states give us some tips. What do you do to keep your daily routines effective, efficient?

Yeah. Interesting that you say that. It actually starts for me the day before and most of my routine is guided by Google Outlooks. So I go to my calendar usually around 8:30 or 9:00 clock at night. I identify what meetings I have coming up. I want to make sure that I'm prepared for those. Now one of the things that's really advantageous for us and the teams that we have right now at Nieda, we ask everybody to put an agenda together before the meeting. So hopefully the agenda is attached to whatever that meeting invite is. I can open that up, take a look at it. Certainly know that if I have a role there, I need to be prepared for that role or at least know.

Whatever it is, that there's nothing, there's nothing worse than being in a meeting and not know what the meeting's about.

That's right.

And not being prepared for a question that may come your way, that you don't know what's going on.

And even if the meeting is about brainstorming, I'm okay with that. But let's just identify what we're going to be doing here is brainstorming today. Otherwise, you guys know those meetings can drag on forever. I'm also not a big fan of saying just because it's a meeting, it has to be an hour long. If it can be a 15 minute meeting, let's have a 15 minute meeting.

And if you can call in sick because you saw the agenda the night.

Before, even better, you can pull a hamstring. There's all kind of things you can.

Do to get out of those, I guess. And it's more like it sounds to me like you're using the night before to prepare a block schedule that you made for your day. Correct, right.

That either I've made or, you know, certainly the folks on our team, they can schedule meetings for us. And so if I look out there and I see that there's a meeting at 9 o', clock, if I have something that I need to do before 9 o', clock, I know that I've got to get, I got to get out of bed and I got to get that done, whatever it is.

It's interesting Luke made that point today. The night before being so crucial to having a successful morning. Right. Luke, you were talking about you're here at convention and maybe not going out so late at night and maybe not doing those things makes you better off.

It's amazing when you don't drink too much and you go to bed early how much better you feel in the morning. I was like, wow, what happened?

I had no idea. I'll give it a try. I'LL also say one thing for me, and I know, Luke, you like to run. That's really healthy for me. I always say I don't really run for the physical side anymore. It's more for the mental side. And a lot of times I run in the evenings and that's when I kind of process, hey, here's what tomorrow is going to look like.

That's funny. I run in the mornings to kind of get me like going.

Right, right.

But I do like the idea of running in the afternoons because it's really is truly. I don't run with the phone or music or anything. So it's relaxing. It just calms me down and allows me to have a good path and a good direction for my day. And it's can be the same.

It's kind of just mind cleansing. Mind cleansing for me.

Cool.

Jeff, you should try it, Jeff.

I only run if something's chasing me. Yeah.

Thank you, bud.

Thank you. Appreciate it, guys.

So welcome back. And this time it's going to be me talking to Jeff about your morning routine. Do you have a morning routine?

Yeah, I do, briefly. Just from personal. I like to get out of bed first, take a poop first, typically roll, find my bed. But I like to get up, I like to get spiritually set first, you know, do some scripture reading for the first couple minutes of the day, you know, kind of ground yourself, inappropriate things, get the pre workout in me, a little caffeine going, hit the gym. You know, we talked about that earlier. I think dealers, we think we're going to live forever. We forget to take care of our health. You know, there's always a reason to go into the office. There's always a reason to skip the gym and get to the office because there's some fire to put out. But I think it's really important that we attack our personal health and our mental health first. Right?

Yeah.

So I like to get those things out of the way. And then of course, on the drive to the office, I like to have no music, no podcasts at that point and just be able to make sure I've got my day lined out, you know, so if I didn't do it the night before and I didn't set my schedule, then I like to do that on the way into the office, realize what are the highest priority items. You know, if I can only get one or two things done that day, what will really move the needle?

So.

And then obviously when I get to the office, amongst the many things, the first thing I try to do is just pull up my dashboard, you know, so in my. In our dealer management software, I like to look at my dashboard, see where we are for sales collections, you know, anticipated money collected, what cars we've sold the last seven days. So I kind of know what I'm looking for to replace. And then from there it's just full firefighter mode, man. Just putting out fires.

Do you have a to do list that you use?

Yeah, typically I text myself or I just use the to do list in my phone like an apple. Yeah, I recommend that you easiest way to.

Do you do any. Do you do any block schedule like during this portion of the day I've got to do this, this and this or no, you just kind of take them as they come.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I kind of have days. Like I know that, you know, Wednesday is a podcast day. So I'll spend most of Wednesday recording or editing or doing podcast stuff. Thursday is a free day. Monday's always like dealers, you know, meetings and things like that. So I kind of have it by day more so than by hour.

Yeah, not that busy.

Okay.

So my day usually starts at about 5:30. We're gonna switch here and start. He's interviewing me now. So I get up around 5:30 or so a couple days a week. I run four days a week at 6, usually back home by 7 to spend a little bit of time with my daughter before she goes to school and then after she leaves the house. Then I'm with you scripture for probably 30 minutes. And it's really grounding really gets me to focus on what I'm doing and then when I go to the office. So a couple days a week, Tuesdays, 8:30 is the service meeting that I do training. Fridays at 8:30 is sales training. So I have those two days at 8:30 is when I'm at the dealership starting the day after those meetings. And every day when I get in, there are three reports that I pull immediately. What did we collect the day before? What were our broken promises the day before? And Also anybody over 31 days past due that we do not have a promise to pay them. Okay, so those are my three reports that have to be pulled every day. And I do that to make sure that we're collections, a lot of collections numbers, all about collections other days of the week, especially on Monday, like today, I actually spent four hours on the plane yesterday doing this. I build scoreboards for every department. And so I'll spend a lot of times on. Sometimes on Sunday night. But most of the time Monday mornings putting those, putting those scoreboards together. But it comes from every report I pull during the week. So I have a daily list of reports that have to be done. Three done first thing in the morning, and the rest of them are done during that time because I think that those reports help me build my day. Who needs the most training? Who needs help in this department? Do I need to buy cars? Do I need to talk to salespeople about the appointment set, all these things? The use of reports for me helps build my day.

Excellent.

Yeah. Hopefully that helps.

Yeah.

Helpful for me.

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