#280 - Get A Grip - NIADA 2023

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

Guys, we're gonna have a, a great discussion here about a bunch of stuff. So first off, I think this might be the only dealer only panel, dealer only session. I'm gonna not make on contact with any of the vendors in here because I don't offend anybody. But dealer only opportunity guys to get education. So we're going to go over the EOS system, which is the entrepreneurial operating system by Gino Wickman. For only a couple of minutes of this session, we're going to give you all the references on where to go, where to learn more about it, all that kind of stuff. You can go home, study, read the book, all that good stuff. But then we're going to take the opportunity to ask these three gentlemen some questions, right? We've got three great operators here that have a wealth of knowledge. This is the time to be thinking of a hot topic or a question that you might have. Whether it's about EOS or just about your dealership in general. I think we need more of these conventions. So I'm going to take the opportunity to do this because I don't see any NIA guys in here that can shut me down or not invite me back next year. They don't pay me to be here. Yeah. Okay, real quick, let's do some introductions. Nick, Dan and Lucky, you guys might introduce yourselves.

Sure. Check, check. Hi everybody.

I'm Nick Marcosian. I am a dealer out of Utah. I have six locations. I do almost always here. We sell about 250 cars a month and we have about 4, 500 accounts.

And number of employees.

Just over 100.

100 employees.

Mexico. I'm trying to remember the country.

Big.

Not the country, the problem.

That's. That's an operation. That's an operation. Pass that around.

We gotta.

Mike.

I'm Dave Gromer from St. Louis, Missouri. I have three locations so just actually just open up the third one in two weeks.

Some.

The business model has just recently shifted from the 90% retail seller retail, 10% biker pay here. I just switched to lease your pay year and we're about a 45, 55 mix in the last couple months. So it's in a minute switch about 15, 1540s here and there.

My name is Lucky Lopez from Las Vegas, Nevada. I've been a dealer for 20 years, mostly in the subcon market here in Vegas. Sold my dealership in 2019. I do dealer consulting. I go around setting up car dealerships, rental car Companies, auto repair pretty much did everything with the automotive industry. And I also on the side go out and buy automotive portfolios or buy your payer dealers. And I have a YouTube channel. It's my name. You want to find more fun stuff out about that and I guess, yeah, let's get into the fun.

Lucky. Lucky was a late ad. So it's not like I don't like him. It's not like anyone gets to know about him. He's just, he. He was after the. And you can, you can find him on YouTube and Instagram and only fans and everywhere.

So pictures of the speaker.

So guys, what we're going to talk about is the entrepreneurial operating system. So this is a. A framework to operate your dealership. It was kind of co founded and mostly pushed forward by Gino Wickman. He's got kind of his flagship book, which is called Traction. So if you guys aren't familiar with Traction, how many y' all have it? You read it? Have you read it? Okay, I've read it like 500 times. Listen to it a ton. Still trying to figure it out. He's also got a handful of other books. Get a grip. Rocket Fuel and what the heck is eos? And then I think there's one more at the bottom. This slide should be in the app. So I want to start this off, guys, who here has been on a road trip? Like cross country road trip? Anybody? Okay, right up front. Jeff, going to pick on you. If I wanted to go cross country, what type of a vehicle should I take? What should I take? What?

How many are we.

Did you guys hear that? How many are we hauling? Right? I don't know. Does that matter?

Absolutely.

But you don't like I just like jump onto my Harley and drive cross country, right? Okay, I could. But it depends on what I'm calling, right? It depends on where I want to go. Depends on how many people I want to take with me. So what I want you guys to wrap around, since we're car dealers here and we understand cars is transportation, right? I could jump on a Harley and try to head across the country. But what happens when I start adding people? You know, I throw my wife on. That's fine. Where are my kids going to go?

I don't know.

What if I had an F and I got. What if I had a sales guy? Now I'm building sidecars and I got trailers and like we're stopping every 10 minutes because someone's got to pee or I don't know who's driving. But you know, I'm white knuckling it around every single corner, right? Because I don't know if this thing's going to fall apart. I don't know if the wheels can handle it. I don't know if the tires can handle it, right. I'm just like blazing down. Who's running their dealership like that? I have for a really long time, right? Like you just start piecing it together, you start throwing stuff on here and there.

Supposed to be the answer.

Dad.

He says he still does. So what's better, guys? If I want to go cross country and I know I'm going to have a bunch of people with me, what should I take? Maybe a bus, right? Maybe a tour bus. So what I want you guys to think about as you build your dealerships is it's okay to go cross country in a motorcycle, right? That could be a lot of fun. And I know a lot of dealers that make a lot of money with just them and their wife, right? Five to ten cars a month, they take weekends off, maybe they work weekends, maybe they take a holiday off. They keep everything that's, that's completely fine. If you want to build up a dealership, if you want to have multiple locations, if you want to hand something down to your kids and have generational wealth, you need to think about taking a tour bus, right? Something you got a lot of seats in, something you can fit people, maybe got a bathroom in the back. There might be a point where you want to go sit in the back. You might. I'm not driving this thing anymore. I'm actually going to get off the bus. I'm going to go down to Florida and drink all Arnold Palmer's and, I don't know, hang out and let that bus just keep on going and just spitting off cash every month, right? So, so think about that upfront. What kind of a dealership? What do you want to build now for the EOS model? It fits a Harley. You don't need all the stuff we're going to talk about. If you just want to run a dealership with yourself and your brother or, you know, your college buddy. If you want to build something that's going to last, that's going to give you some freedom and growth, that's okay too, right? And that's where we're going to help out with this. So there's six basic components to the EOS system. We're going to go over like a super high level discussion on this, give you guys the info and like I said, we're going to open up to questions and answers. So vision people, data issues, processes, traction. I'm going to take them in a little bit of a different order because that's how I work. So we're going to start out with the vision and I'm going to start picking on these guys that have some experience in it. The first thing is the vision. Right, Nick, I'm going to pick on you. Why is a vision for your dealership important?

It gives somebody, it gives your team something to get excited about. It gives them a reason to get up in the day and do their job other than the paycheck. And I think that if you have a strong vision for your company and you, you articulate that vision frequently and you force yourself to talk about where you want this company to go more often than you think you should, it's absolutely amazing. I have technicians come up to me and tell me they work for me because they like our vision and they think we're onto something and they're just really excited to be a part of something bigger than themselves. And I, I think a lot of people hear that kind of stuff and they regret it, books and whatever. And they think it's corny. And I've got to tell you, it just works. You get that guy that'll work the extra hours and do a little bit more work than they would just collecting a paycheck from somebody. If you can get them excited and motivated about where your company's going and where do you want it to go and what part they're going to play in it. I think it's super powerful and it can make a big difference to performance, your people. Yeah.

And Nick, keep in mind real quick, along with the vision, they're going to talk about your values.

Right?

So like vision is like what are we as a dealership? What's our mission statement? What are we proving? What are we doing for the world? Values are, who are we? Right? What do we stand for? What's important to us? What are our non negotiables? You've got to have those, Nick, do you know yourself? Because I have them saved in my phone.

Yeah, the first one, dsd. And that stands for do what you say you're going to do. And we have these posters at every one of our locations and, and I copy and it's a DSD and I just put enough set, not like nuff said dsd. And then the next one is energy and enthusiasm. I do really fun crazy commercials and I run around and I'm excited and Energetic. So we have a lot of energy and enthusiasm. The point being on that is I want folks that work here because they really like what Marco Cianado does. They really like what we stand for. They really like helping customers that get brewing the new car stores and getting them into good, reliable transportation. They have a passion for that. They're excited about it and they have that energy, enthusiasm. Number three is the little things are everything. So pee on the toilets, on the sides of the toilets. You clean that. Because that's. That's something that's gross. And it's a reflection of how we look at our business. If you haven't cleaned your toilet for two weeks, garbage out on the lot. You can kill two birds with one stone. You can do one on one with your salesperson that's struggling, and you can grab a garbage sack and pick up garbage doing that one on one. You know, how does the appearance of the store look? Does your salesperson act like you're interrupting their Instagram time? When a customer comes in? Those are some of the things that are. The little things are everything. And I think that too often we overlook that. The wheat, you know, I mean, the guys drive by and see your competitors, weeds, and you're like, holy crap.

Don't they?

They drive in and out every day. Come on. We're talking 10 minutes. 10 minutes of yanking some leads and your lot, your business looks 10 times better. So the little things are everything. What's left?

Your last value. Yeah.

It's empowerment. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And what I want, what I mean.

By empowerment is make a decision. You don't need to call me over every little decision that you make. I would even prefer the wrong decision. But have the guts and know that we believe in you enough to make a freaking decision. Hopefully that benefits our customer because it's so amazing how we make these really dumb choices that hurt our customer, that are totally irrational. But make a decision. And that's what empowerment's all about. Yeah.

We're going to talk more about empowerment soon. Adrian, what do I always say at my dealership? No dealership. No decision is the worst decision. Right? No decision is the worst. Just make a decision. No decision is the worst thing you could do for our customers. We're going back to that real quick. We're going to jump on and people. The people aspect of this. Right? So you've got your vision, you know who you are, you know what your non negotiable values are. Now you can start fitting people into that. Right. As you interview them as you put out job listings as you, you know who you are. So you don't have to worry about it. You don't have to, hey, man, does he fit these four core values from what I know of him? Or hey, Mr. Interview. What do you think about these four values that we are right? What do you think about these? Do you fit this? Great. Welcome aboard. You know, get on my bus, let's go, Lucky. I want to ask you this question because you go to a lot of dealerships, you dealt with a lot of people. You live in Vegas, the mecca of all wild people. How important has that been when you're educating or coaching or setting up dealerships, like finding those people where it's like, you know, what traction says is get it, want it and capacity. Gwc. Do you get what your job is? Do you want to do it and do you have the capacity to do it? Do you see that being important as you visited places?

I mean, 100%. I know a lot of times when people hire people, they have this expectation.

He'S a nice guy, he's going to.

Work out great, blah, blah, blah. And I think the capacity comes to where you actually put in your procedures. Every time I train up a dealership, we have this big thing about hire good people, train them, show them how to do it. First time they screw up, it's their fault, they're new. Second time, you train them again, if they screw up again, get rid of them. I, I know it sounds bad. I give people about 60 days. Don't waste their time, don't waste your time. When it comes to actual strategy, I definitely implement process ridiculously. I have posters on every dealership. We set up the simplest process. When a customer, customer walks in, how do we drink? Blah, blah, blah. You add your steps in, I give you my process, and then they just keep going from there. I think so many people run their dealerships down because they didn't get the right people. They didn't spend that time training, which I know a lot of times we send our sales guys down and we just let them screw off on the phone. They can hang out on Facebook, Instagram and not do anything right. Their ass is like Zorro. Stay on your people, train them. Don't be afraid. If they suck down, they suck. I don't know why people are so politically correct now. If they're idiots, tell them, just kick rocks. Yeah, it'll be much better for your business. But I think the fact of the spending the right time hiring people and then putting that effort into training Them will get much better. I've had very low turnover. My dealership, I've been in business for over, I think, 12 years. I've gone through two finance guys, that's it. And maybe six sales guys. Yeah. Where I, everyone I've known, every week.

They got new sales guys.

Make a fun environment.

How many times have you guys had an employee put on you and you're just like, man, I did not give that guy. It's 100% my fault. I did not set him up for success. You know, I did not train him right. I threw him on the phones, I sent him him out in the mechanic bay. I sent him out to detail. I didn't educate him, I didn't train him, I didn't give him the standard. I didn't even tell him what he was supposed to be doing. I didn't tell him where our standard was. And then he doesn't get there and you're pissed and he's pissed and you guys are looking at each other sideways and then he bounces out. Right. So fault Dan. Dad, the next step is data. I know you're a data guy. How important is it? Or, or maybe share with us as dealers, what are some of the data points that you like to look at at your dealership?

Well, so in eos, the idea behind the data portion is to if, if you were to be on a desert island and the only interaction you have with the outside world is someone who's going to hand you a napkin once an afternoon and there's going to be about maybe eight or 10 different things on that napkin.

It was going to tell you what.

The health of your business was at that particular moment. That's what the data portion is when it comes to us, the high level, the most important pieces of it.

Right.

Because you can get so granular and.

Just so in the weeds that it.

Loses its, is it luster. So some of the things that we look at is lead count, closing percentage, how many cars we get through service. I mean these are kind of some leading indicators on where the business is going to. And then we also have, you know, data for each individual department. So not only do we have as the high level leadership team, but each department has their own data as well. So again, the leadership team has the highest levels and each department has their data as well. And that which gets measured gets improved. So even just by measuring it alone, we'll oftentimes give you improvement.

Yeah. Inspect what you expect. Right. So like 10 key performance indicators. Right. It's pretty easy for us as business owners, dealers, anyone, to just say what, you know, what is that?

It's.

It's sales leads, it's appointments that. It's applications taken at sales. It's, you know, recon, car delinquency recency for buy your pay here, guys, you know, turn time for a lot of our retail dealers, you know, simple, right? So I get those numbers. I get a weekly daily. If you could, if you have a CRM, if you had a DMS that was robust enough to give you that info.

But usually we measure them on a weekly basis because it's a long enough time where the data is accurate and then.

But it's.

But it's not so dug in.

Yeah.

Do you have a fancy system for that?

We use. So we use 90io. So it's. So it's a. It's a pretty simple system.

It's. It's a per user.

Yeah, it's like $7 per user.

90Io, which is an EOS type.

It's one of them.

Right.

And Nick uses something, a different one. But it's, it sets it all up. So you, and you just set up the numbers you want to track, and you have your people put their numbers in every week, and if the numbers are off, you can move that number into your issues list and then discuss it in your meetings. And you read that book. It's so simple and so clear. If you just follow the directions of the book, it'll transform your life. I'm not kidding. And with regard to the book, Gina Whitman is not a genius. He pretty much took a lot of, like the Stephen Covey's the Seven Habits and a lot of these, These other.

Great books and just pretty much took.

All the best ideas and just kind of put it in a program for entrepreneurs. Because entrepreneurs as a whole tend to.

Be a little, kind of all over the place.

Things that make us great, but it also makes us terrible. They run in the day.

Yeah, I always start this on the podcast. Work on your business, not in your business.

Right.

You guys took time out to come to Vegas to work on your business, right? You're out of your business right now. Whose phone's ringing? Who's getting phone calls from the dealership? Who's got fires going on back at the dealership? Real, real high fires. You guys got fires. Who here calls themselves a firefighter? Who here. We had a post in the independent Facebook group the other day that said, man, why does everyone just bring me negativity? Why is everyone dumping problems on my desk? Why is Everyone bringing me issues all.

The time.

Because you allow it and because you didn't follow this step. The hardest step in the entire system, in my opinion, is the processes, right? They're bringing you fires because you haven't told them what to do. When they see smoke, they don't know that there's an alarm they can pull. They don't know where the fire extinguisher is. So they sit there and they're like, I mess with this, I could get in trouble. I could get fired. I don't know if I'm going to do it the way Jeff wants me to do it. And then all of a sudden, it's a fire, right? And you've got a complaint, you've got a bad Google review, you've got a customer dumping their car. You've got, you know, employees flaking out, sexual harassment suits or whatever.

I don't know.

But the process side of it is why you guys hate your business. If you hate your business because you don't have processes set up to run it without you. Hey, man, it's all in your head, right? It's all in your head. So everyone has to come and freaking pound on your head to get an answer because they don't have a manual, a book, a paper, a napkin, anything to look at to be like, oh, there's the answer. This is what I do with an angry customer. This is what I'm allowed to put on a due bill or a we owe statement at the time of sale. You know, here's what I do. When this guy's 60 days late, this car's at impound, and I can't get the breathalyzer to work to bring it back here to the lot, right? Like, put it down. Get it out of your heads, right? Lucky you talked about processes and so dig into that a little bit more. Like, I mean, you said posters. Like, you have posters. Like everyone has a sales process, right? You know how you want sales to be handled? You know how you want your customer to be talked to? Do you write it down and then you train on it?

Yeah, the. The whole process is like method to our Mattis, the car dealership business. You guys know we do it. And I can say some of the good people, some of the bad people, but when it comes to, like, our employees, every time I go to a dealership, there's always this disconnect. I call it the franchise effect. But you guys work at a franchise store. You guys know this sales, and we know sales financially. There's finance, service, Finance. None of these idiots talk to each other. So it allows basically just things to fall off the map. When we set up processes and independent dealerships, I go from the very first, how do we group the customer? We put it down. Every owner. I'm sure you guys know too. We have a way of how we greet our customers, what we're going to say. If you guys collect information, do you need an application for a test drive? I get all of their information and we literally put it on a poster because I don't know why we teach people, once you say you expect them to know that it never works. And then also when you have these issues, like you said, unwind deals, you have to chase your car on your buyback, stuff like that. I cross train every single person to know my job, your job, his job. I don't know why more franchise stores don't do this. I don't like to say it's like CarMax, but I believe that the process of training your people, educate them about everything, and then also having a book, having some information and getting people to power the ability to actually do certain things. My finance guy, anything under a thousand bucks, he can do whatever the hell he wants. I don't care. I trust anything over that. He's got to call me. I literally never go to my dealership. You guys know that was it the seven hour workweek or so? I read that book and I said, screw it, I'm out of my dealership now. I barely go by. I talk to my guys, they send me a text once a day, let me know what's going on. Every process is thought out. So this way I don't have to go there. I can hang out with you guys, we can bs, we can go hit the tables after this and I don't have to worry about it. My guys know exactly what to do. The customer comes in. If my dealership catches on fire, the aliens come back to Vegas. Every single thing is thought of. So this way we don't have to worry about it. But nobody wants to put the time in writing a boring book or putting a boring page on there. Everybody thinks, oh, my way is the best way and this is the way we're going to do it. I take a lot of ideas from dealers like this, even my employees, and just build a good spreadsheet and literally print it on a piece of paper and make sure they follow these procedures. Because once you do this, 90% of my headaches are gone. All I got to say is yes or no. In dealer center if they have a really tricky deal that's got to go through the bank, that's about it. Everything else, it's all done through our process.

Yeah, Nick, I want to go to you because I cannot imagine like every time I talk to you there's like a new location and you have 50.

Employees or whatever you got going on.

Right. It's like another theme. How in the world do you manage? Like, and I know the answer is going to be processes, but like managing that is just mind boggling.

Yeah.

I have a management team, you know, I have a sales director, search director, a general manager, and they're overseeing it. And in a perfect world, we have a checklist that's being followed by all. FDA process, FDA followed by all. And they're doing the checklist. And so, for example, getting the sales people to do their work, clients, check. Checking the restrooms, check. Getting the heat sheet cleaned up, check. Checking on your leads, check, you know, and so on. I think checklists are really simple and a lot of times people are very resistant to them because they seem over, over simplistic and almost like you're dumb. But you know, some of the smartest people in the world are pilots and they have a simple checklist before they'll, they'll fly that thing. And I think they're ext. And they can really work if they are implemented properly. So in answer to your question, I mean, we've grown a lot in the last year and frankly it's not working very well right now. We're struggling. And so I don't have all the answers. But I can tell you what I think the answers are. And that is that we're setting up processes and procedures that are not being followed up on. We're not making sure they're being done. And the best I've ever heard is accountability is uncomfortable. That's a David Henderson slogan. And we forget that, you know, we think that everything is hunky dory. And, and we've got to remember, I heard another one, you know, the, the CEO of Goldman Sachs. There's a really cool podcast by a guy named David Novak and He interviewed interviews, CEOs and one of them was the one Goldman Sachs. And he said that, you know, leadership takes people where they don't really want to go. That's what leadership is. And so it is uncomfortable and it's not going to be rainbows and unicorns all the time. And I think we've got to remember that that doesn't mean you have to be mean to people. Or you have to be harsh, but you have to make your expectations clear, agree on those expectations and then hold them accountable to those expectations. And a lot of times there's something in that that's broken. I think a lot of times we expect our people to read our minds, like just know like psychically what we're thinking and if they're not doing what we think they should do, get pissed. I, I'm, I'm definitely gonna see that. So you have to be over the top, clear of what you want, what do you want? And then once you, and then the guy's like, naughty. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. And then the next day he doesn't do it. And, and that's where, that's, that's where the accountability, uncomfortability of accountability comes into play is, dude, like I took you to lunch, it was all buddy, buddy. And we, we had a plan and the plan is gone. What happened? You know, but if you don't have that follow up conversation, that's that part of follow up, that putting reminder in the iPhone, check on this dude for this thing. If that's not happening, that's where accountability is broken. And it's freaking hard and it's exhausting sometimes. But if you want to get your company to the next level, get your people to the next level, that's what it takes.

Yeah.

So I want to leave a couple.

Minutes for questions at the end of this. I promised you guys we would do some Q and A, so be thinking of your questions. But Dan, take the mic. Nick's got a problem, right? Nick has a training, maybe an onboarding problem. Let's use the last two parts of the EOS system issues and then obviously the traction component. Explain that to people. And maybe how would you bring that up? Like how would you use EOS and Nick's dealership to fix that issue?

Yeah. So the issues portion of its ideas.

Identify, discuss, solve.

And so how many have been in a meeting? And we have meetings just to have meetings. And you talk about, you know, first of all, you talk about other leak counts down. The next thing you talk about how the reporter didn't clean the bathroom. How did that conversation start evolving, evolve, evolves into like this. Yeah, merry go round of you. Never got anything done. And so I'm very much that person. I'll sit here and talk and ramble on if you let me.

Once we started really implementing this, this.

Piece, I recognize that when somebody's kind of doing that merit around dating me, it gets me very uncomfortable.

At all takes me off. So the idea behind that is in.

In one sense, what's the true problem?

Okay.

What's, what's the real issue that we, that we have going on right now? Don't give me a 30 minute dissertation as to why things are bad.

What's the problem? And then we spend the time to.

To actually discuss what the true solve is. And then we solve it forever and we move on. We don't, we don't go on any other subjects.

We don't talk about the orders.

We're talking about whatever that case, whatever that one issue is at that moment. And then when you're, when you're, you.

Are solving these problems, you really want.

To tackle the most important things that involve the people that are in that particular team. So again the leadership team, you don't necessarily talk about a very low level accounting issue. And it should stay in the accounting department.

It should be specific to the people.

That you, that are having that particular meeting. But the idea behind it is real quick, one sentence.

What's the problem?

Let's discuss it and let's solve it forever. We're never coming back even.

Yeah. And then you go back into your processes and you fix them and you say, oh here's, here's the leak in our bucket. Here's the hole. This is where we're losing stuff. Let's fix that forever. Right. Who's accountable? Who's going to follow up somebody else.

At a bath to do. You're making a steer to make a rock. And that's where the traction part comes in. You to do something's going to happen within the next seven days.

Right.

If it's any longer than that. It's based on Stephen Covey's concept of rocks. We'll get to that. Right. In a second. But it's a, it's a. Anywhere between over a week to 90 days.

One of the most important things.

You need to own your business.

First things first.

And somebody else the biggest stuff.

Because what a lot of times you think it's a big stuff. It's not a big stuff.

It's a little stuff.

And if you solve the big stuff.

A little step solve and sometimes with the idea. So with that you wind up kind of discussing it and you realize that maybe the issue that is first aid isn't the real issue.

Yeah.

It's, it's a symptom of what the true issue is.

Yeah. Nick's like, there's pee on my toilet seat. What is the real issue? The lights don't work. How long has this light bulb been out? We've been peeing in the dark for months. Pee on the toilet seat. Like, problem solved.

You have a Shirley over here.

So there's so much more to this system, but I wanted to touch on one more thing before we move on to the Q and A and stuff, because this is crucial and this is the number one fault of everyone in this room. Because I see you all and I know most of you letting go of the bond. Delegate and elevate, right? Write that down. Tattoo it on your eyelids. Delegate and elevate, right? So I'm in my bus. I've got a bus full of people. I don't have to be the driver. I don't need to be the one putting the gas in. I don't got to be navigating. I don't got to be picking the music. I don't got to be turning the AC up. I don't got to be yelling at the kids to shut up and sit down. Right? Like, I don't have to do it all. But we can do it. All right? Are you the best salesman at your lot? Are you the best salesman on your team? Are you the best F and I guy? Can you shine that tire until you can see your face in it? You know what I'm saying? Yeah. You're probably the best guy to go out and pick weeds because you're a damn good weed killer, right? And you, you can see them and you know what this lot should look like and get the bumpers perfect.

You shouldn't be doing it.

Right?

What is that, $10 an hour work?

It is.

So how do you do that? How do you. How do you delegate and elevate when you are the best one to do it or you believe you are?

So all these. These steps are really kind of intertwined.

And so part of it is the people component. First of all, you start with your.

Chart of accountability, which is kind of an organizational chart. But what truly do you need? What is your organization? Is wheat puller? Is that a full time job? Is that a function of your dealership? Well, we pull it into the Internet. You don't talk about the person that's going to do that wheat puller job. You do that later. And then once you decide these are.

The functions you need, well, then you.

Do pick the people. Do they get it?

Do they want to?

Do they have the capacity to do the job? And then you write the process in which that wheat puller is going to pull those weeds. And then for Every wheat, pull it from there on out. As long as that process is solid, those weeds are. Because you're never gonna have to. Jeff's never going to see weeds when you walk. Nick's going to see weeds when he walks in his line because it's followed by all Nick.

How do you. How do you delegate and element? How do you let go of fine, like how, how do you scale to that point and not worry that there's some guy somewhere, some salesman is saying the wrong thing and in two weeks, it's going to be a lawsuit on you guys.

Man. It just takes a leap of faith, frankly. And it has to have to be. You have to be okay with things not being. Check, check things not being perfect all the time. And frankly, I just, I. I can't. I. At this stage of the game, I honestly can't handle being at the dealership for 40 or 50 hours a week. I don't, I don't think I have anybody.

Get burnt out and old and then you'll want to give it all up.

I remember when I hired a second manager for my store when we were still on locations, we were selling well over 100 cars a month. That was a huge step for me. I promoted a guy and he had worked for me the years prior. I remember it explicitly because right after I promoted him and put him in the desk, I went ski. Like, this is awesome. This is why I have a business. I have a business so I don't have to work. You know, obviously when you're getting started, you got to do the 70, 80 hours a week and you've got to do everything. But I just. What's the point of having your own business? You can never leave. And if you're working constantly and it's killing you, and so at some point you, if you have to figure out a way to hire somebody that's capable, train them, motivate them so you can live your life.

Yeah.

And.

And it was a huge relief for me. And really, I love my business. I have a great relationship with my business. I get the gratification I need out of leave my people, motivating my people, but it isn't. I'm not a slave to it. Like I felt like I was.

That's. That's so true. You feel like you can't leave because it's going to implode. I feel like I couldn't go to 20, right. 20 group would stress me out because every time I came home, someone would quit. Someone would have quit while I was gone. Right. Some fire would have blown up or some personality situation would have happened, and I can't leave. Right. And I feel really bad when I talk to dealers and they're like, I can't make it to convention. I can't be out of my dealership for three days. That's. That's a sad situation to be in.

The irony. I. I. Sorry. I don't know. The irony of it is, is I know two. I can think of two very specific dealers. One is a successful lease or pay here dealer out of North Carolina. He has this. He has this fishing boat called Release because he does in house leasing. And he goes off for fishing, like nine months out of the year. And this boat costs him a freaking fortune. And he's got full time.

At the bottom. Oh, okay, okay.

Now smothering it. There's a process for that.

That's my theory.

All right, Good job.

So anyways, he's got two captains, he's.

Focusing a freaking fortune, and he's like half the size that I am. And then I have another friend who works 60 hours a week in his office non stop analyzing numbers. He knows every number like the back of his hand. I mean, he's got them all memorized. It's working super, super hard. And the dude that's fishing nine months out of the year makes no money. It can be done. I think there's a lot of naysayers, you know, or people that come up with these excuses in their head, and.

Maybe that's not what you want.

Maybe you enjoy working and that's fin. But my point is, is figure out what you want out of life and then go get it. And it can't happen. How many days a week is that guy open?

Did you talk about I gotta find.

Which guy in North Carolina? How many days? I mean, he's just like any other six. No. Oh, he's only open four days a week.

I didn't know they're open five days a week.

They're closing the weekends. Oh, and they close early on Friday.

Mikey, put a pin in this before.

We move on to question answers.

Okay, this. This question, actually, it's really close to home. In 2019, I sold my dealership, gave everything away because I was just completely stressed. I believe the reason why most of us don't let go of the vine, and obviously it's ego. We all think that we're better, smarter, and can do everything a lot better. And the one thing I kept running into as I was growing my business, as we started selling 50, 60100 cars. We went from 10 lenders to 24 lenders to 40 lenders. Buy your pay here, rental cars. It just got so convoluted that I stressed myself out to the point where I got up to £300, £200. Now I had ulcers in my stomach. I was staying up all night. And for some reason, every time we're lucky, you could solve all your helps by hiring somebody. What's the first thing? No, they're going to leave, they're going to take off still on my idea. So even though I kept implementing my processes so this way I made sure people didn't like, knew exactly what they did. I didn't want the process for me to step away. And so I started listening to that seven hour work week. I tell you what, that is the biggest slap in the face when I realized how stupid I was. I had to swallow my pride, let go of my ego and find somebody. Because I know, like you said, we all think we're smarter than everybody else. Guarantee you, everybody on this room has somebody in their office or their backboard room or anything that's smarter than we are that's doing something that we can't possibly do. And so the more I go out and train dealers and set up dealerships, this is one thing I tell everybody. It's always better to have two men in the ship they've been sinking. If you're trying to bail buckets of water by yourself, you're doomed to fail. So one thing I like to tell everybody is think about all the things that you can get rid of and not have to stress about because I know, same thing, I'll clean the bathrooms when my guys don't do it. I'm trying to show the right effort. I'm going to show that I'm motivated. Now I'm this gun ho alpha male that's going to crush everybody. It's all pride. We're idiots. So now it's all about just helping other people out. Get that process going. Let your ego go. Let hire the people, the right people that can do something and stand by their side. And even though they screw up, make mistakes and we have that frustration like, oh my God, this guy's an idiot. I told him six times to space what to do. Got him on the back. Good job. Thank you for trying. Let's try it this way and just keep going forward. And Q and A. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So one last thing on that.

Yeah.

So as far as pick the things that you absolutely love to do and that you're absolutely awesome at. And delegate everything else.

Yeah, that puts a pit in it. Right. That's the thing. I'm good at it and I like it. You know, I'm good at it. I don't like it. I'm not good at it. I don't like it.

Right. Actually write four squares and exactly that what your day consists of. And write those things and those close.

Yourself and get rid of that. Yep.

And then every quarter finds one of those things that's in those other quadrants. I'm good at it. I don't like it. Or I'm not good at it, I don't like it. And delegate those off. Right. Start delegating those activities out every quarter. Just delegate one more activity. Right. And then you're left with that. I like it and I'm good at. Right. Which is maybe fishing. Nick. It's boating and skiing, you know, and it may be in your dealership. It's buying cars, you know, maybe that's the last thing you're going to let go of. Maybe it's writing checks. Maybe it's balancing the books. You know, maybe it's just hanging out, working on cars and picking cigarette butts up off the lot. You know, who knows what that is? But guys, if you want more information from these guys, Both Nick and Dan have been on my podcast a couple of times. Nick's. Nick's a three. Dan's only one score's off. We need to crack on there. And lucky, we need to get back on. Just get on in general. Right. So anyways, that's my pitch is listen to podcasts. If you want more information, of course, download the Traction book. Buy the Traction book. It's a great way to run your business. So your business is not running you. Right. Let's do just a couple minutes of Q and A before they kick us out of here. Does anyone have something for these guys?

Yeah, you?

Yeah.

Do you guys have an exit strategy? And if you do, how? Like set up your board chart in a way to exit as an independent dealer, you know, whose guys are friends. Like how do you thought about that? Or are you just going to run it and sell it?

The question is, do you have an exit strategy or secession plan? And do you have it written down? And is your workshop set up for you to completely be away and. Or sell it or give it to your kid or something?

I don't. I've explored different scenarios. I'm 49. I'm not ready to retire. Wait. I like my business, but I have explored, you know, some of the private equity options that are out there. I have a banker that is into that world just to see what's out there. You know, sometimes you never know what's going to happen in life, and I think it's a good topic to be thinking about. I have a plan in my head for when I'm a little older. Probably, you know, depending on what the economic conditions are at that time, there'll be along the lines of just liquidating the portfolio, renting out my properties. Something will happen. We'll see what happens. Kind of same boat. It's still. Still growing, still building, but it has in the background, not an actual plan. Sounds like you.

Yeah, I mean, there's a few things. Obviously, you know, we all think our.

Dealerships are worth money.

You see these dealer groups like Automation, Sonic, Autogroup buying up all these franchise stores, but they're actually buying some of the larger independents. So it's actually a good question. I think a lot of people are thinking about doing it. Here's the problem. 90 of our dealerships aren't worth. So just get that out of the way. The only thing that's worth money are our portfolios. That's something that somebody's gonna want. The real estate. If you're thinking about extra strategy, you gotta buy the property you're on. Build something that's completely different. If you're doing your own funding, you. You have a lease program, something like that, that'll make you stand out. That's what's going to make you enticing for the seller. Michael, literally no. Is to do the same thing these gentlemen are doing. Build as big and buy your. Excuse me, as big as buy your, pay your portfolio. I possibly can physically own my land here in Vegas and use my YouTube channel to promote it. So hopefully Cox Automotive, one of these other guys will think that I have the greatest things in sliced bread, and they'll come make me a stupid offer. I've seen them buy out plenty of really bad companies out of the Midwest, which actually shocked me. But I think that's the way we have to approach it. So as far as what our dealerships are worth and big strategy for it, that's up to you to figure out what kind of price. But all I would say is definitely take advantage of marketing your dealership. That's what's going to put the value is at the end of the day, I've seen these companies have actual financial valuations. Hey, this guy's got $3 million of portfolio. His Buildings worth this, but that doesn't have a hit factor, so they never buy it. How many guys know Carvana? Okay, everybody knows how to raise their hand. How much money they make for car.

Minus three. Three grand or something like that.

But they make it up on value. Yeah, yeah. $3 billion. So that's kind of the thing. They just stole the dream. So as far as that goes, that company's not worth. But at the end of the day, your dealership could be if you build the right processes, you build your portfolio, do something different and take advantage of that. And yeah, right off the ground.

I plan on never dying. So that's my answer. Strategy.

That's the question for you.

Or just burn it to the ground and call my insurance. Yeah, one of those two. Well, let's do some rapid fire real quick, Jeff, because I picked on you. I'll call on you.

Yeah, just real quick.

And I.

You know what? So have you ever managed basically this process that you're not working as many hours? I guess I'll start with you, man. I mean, like, for you, or are you going to work?

Well, I, My, My work ebbs and flows. When I feel like. When I feel like things are good and I don't have anything to do, I'll go do something else. I, I somehow that's. Not everybody can do that, just turn the on and off switch, you know, And I, I seem to have that ability. And, And. But right now I feel like the company needs me. I feel like we're in.

We're.

We're not handling our new growth and there's problems. And so I want to get really involved right now and try to figure out what's going on. So that's.

The snow melted. You've got nothing to do. There's no skiing.

So I got 42 days in. It was awesome.

Yeah.

And I think it, you know, you really. I don't. You just envision what your perfect life would be, really. And then just try to. Try to figure out how to build it, because it is attainable. It really is. You just have to have the will to figure it out.

And it could be buying and selling cars. Right. Like, to that point, hey, you find something you love to do, you're never gonna work day in your life. And maybe I love being in lane sucking exhaust. I don't know. Maybe that's what I love to do.

Yeah, I started this.

Yeah. Yeah. And love it and manage it so you can continue to love it. So you don't resent it, so you don't hate it. Any other questions? Right here back right you. Yeah.

Gina Whitman.

I think he's great.

I love the yo's book. Somebody drove an hour to see me.

That was selling one of these Robbie book. He said to me just reach out.

Or do anything over mine.

And I said to him, I was.

Like, so, okay, I appreciate what you got here for. He goes, no, I hate to bring you this book.

Read chapter two.

Going on with the book. What are you doing with it? I read chapter two.

I couldn't put the book down. I hadn't read a book since I was.

Honest. Long story short, in the book, one thing that they mentioned that I hear you guys talk about. Do you guys do level 10 meetings?

I mean obviously that's something really good.

Idea together and hold them accountable.

So one of the, one of the best things about traction in my opinion is the level 10 meeting.

Right.

We should have, we should have brought that up. I, I was on my level 10 meeting at 6:30 this morning, Vegas time.

Because there's two reasons why you miss.

A level 10 meeting is because it's you're on vacation or death. And it better be your death. And that's, that's in the book, by the way.

How long did you do them?

I'm sorry. So with each, each department does them once a week. And this was my to L10 meeting. So level 10.

L10.

Level 10 meeting. And it, it basically checks off all the boxes of all of those, those on that circle that put up there. So yeah, it's, it's a, it's, it's invaluable. It's, it's all in the book. The directions are in the book. You just have to follow them. And what, what, what I find amazing. It really isn't hard is I tell a lot of folks about this program because it has changed my life. And it's amazing how people try to customize it. Don't, don't customize it. Just follow it and do what it says because it really works. So we do the quarterly meetings, we do the L10 meetings. We do the annual two day off site meetings. We do all of it and we love it. And it's something my team looks forward to. It's brought the team closer together. It's just, it's been great. But I honestly, I really do follow the directions to a team.

Yeah.

I'm intense about it.

And be prepared to lose people.

Yeah.

Not everyone's gonna go on that ride.

Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes you gotta kick them off the bus right it's your bus. Remember that. Your bus, your seats. You decide who sits in the bus. You decide where the bus goes. We are out of time. Guys. Thank you so much for being here in this session. If you have further questions like, order these guys here. They will answer every question you ask.

Thank you.

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