#292 - 3 Reasons Your Employees Wont Stay from CIADA 2023

Hello, and welcome to the Independent Dealer Podcast, brought to you by Buckeye Dealership Consulting. This week, we're going to bring to you a recording from the Carolinas Independent Auto Dealer Association. This was a presentation that Luke did on the three reasons why your employees won't stay. He goes over engagement, productivity of your employees, and ultimately retention, how to retain your top talent, and your dealership. So hope you enjoy.

You are listening to the Independent Dealer Podcast with hosts Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson. I'm not sure if y' all know this, but probably in the last three years has been the most difficult time when it comes to employee retention, hiring employees, and also getting those employees engaged. And so sometimes people think that the people who present don't have problems. And so that's not the case. Typically, the reason I want to present on a topic is because I've had this problem. And so I have to try in my scientific, analytical brain is I've got to try to figure out a way to solve this problem. And so I'll start going down a path and doing research and saying, okay, everybody's having this problem, but somebody's not. So what are the people who aren't having these problems? What do they do to prevent those problems from reoccurring? We had this game at our dealership, and we said, hey, my comptroller, who handles all payroll and everything, she says, look, I'm gonna play a game with you. And at the time, I thought it was a funny game. And it was at the end of 2021, and the game was, I'm gonna take our stack of W2s and I'm gonna call out a name, and I want you to tell me how long they worked here and what department they worked in. Our stack of W2s was that thick. We only employ at one time, usually about 20 to 25 people that year in 2021. And we didn't start having our employee problems until about midway through 2021. We had over 80 W2s. 80. She would call out a name, and I wouldn't have a clue when they worked there, how long they worked there, anything they were doing. So 2022 was worse. But we turned a corner at the end of 2022, and we're on a direction. I think that's really good, and I want to share with y' all what I found, and hopefully you can learn from it. So three reasons employees will not stay. So the problems we're going to try to solve during this hour, I know it's down for hour 15. There's no way I'm going to take hour 15 your time. So first problem is lack of employee engagement. Who in here has employees that you don't feel want to work for you? I'm sure more than one person in this room has people they feel like don't want to work. Yes, we all do. And I'm here to tell you it might be your fault. I couldn't deal with that. I couldn't say it's actually my fault. The reason people don't want to work for me is me, not them. It could be them, but if it is them, you probably hired the wrong person. But you've got to look at yourself. You got to figure out why. This is number two. We're going to try to solve this. We are going to solve this. The lack of employee production. So, again, a raise of hands. Who in this room has employees? Not every employee, but has employees that they believe are unproductive? Everybody should raise their hand. Even I do. I'm sure Tracy does. I'm sure Kevin does. I'm sure everybody in this room has employees that they don't feel like are producing what they should be producing. And the third thing we're going to try to solve is employee retention. Okay. I think if we solve all three of these problems, we're not only going to solve those problems, we're going to solve competitiveness in our environment and hiring. So follow me with this. Employee retention. You do understand that as keeping the employees you have, if you want them, if not, get rid of them and find new ones. Okay. So I can get this thing to advance. Here we go. How are we going to solve these three problems? Well, first, the first thing, and this is a big word for car dealers. I understand that. I'm a car dealer. Sometimes I can't say things properly. And I'm from South Carolina, which makes it even harder. So I'm going to try here. We're going to dissolve anonymity among employees. And you may say, what does that word mean? I'm not going to say it twice. It's too hard. So anonymity is the condition of being anonymous. And you may say, why does this matter? Why does this apply to my employees? And why does it matter to my employees? So you're all here at a convention. Who in here knows someone at the convention? I hope everybody raises their hand. Right. How many people think that I know you? A couple. Okay, well, you're kind of anonymous to me if I don't know you. Okay. It's okay. In this setting, it's not the end of the world here, but for me to truly relate to you, I need to get to know you. I don't know. Who are you? I'm Luke. Gabe. Gabe, where are you from? Myrtle beach or Myrtle. Dirty Myrtle as we call it. Okay, I'm from dirty Columbia. Doesn't really rhyme, but it's the same difference. So Gabe, how long have you been in car business? Four years. Okay, and this person sitting next to you is your manager. Awesome. And where is your dealership In Myrtle Beach? On 501. See, I know where 501 is because I'm from Myrtle Beach. Okay. So now Gabe is not anonymous to me. Get that. So now when I see Gabe tonight in the Expo Center, I'm gonna say, hey, Gabe, how you doing? Tell me a little bit more about your dealership. I'm gonna ask. I'm gonna. I'm going to really get to know him. Right? So who else in here do I not know? I've met you before, but I don't know you. I'm Luke. Leo. Leo. You're from North Carolina. All right. Where at North Carolina? Burlington, North Carolina. I know where Burlington is. Yeah. What's the primary role of your business? You're the general manager. What's the name of your dealership? Rush Auto Sales. You buy here, pay here. You retail? He's retail. How many cars you sell them on? 30 to 35. Pretty good dealership, right? And he's in Burlington. His name's Leo. He is no longer anonymous to me. How many employees in your dealership are anonymous to you? Don't feel bad if you don't know your detailer. Do you know everybody? Everybody. Okay. You know their wife's name? Okay. You know if they have children? Yes. That's not. That's not shabby. I don't know everybody. That's a problem, right? So I had a manager call me today and say, hey, our detail department is not doing good. So that's been a thorn in my side for a while. So I don't know the detailers names. So I go, well, it's a management problem, probably not an employee problem. So we need to fix this, right? Let's do training, let's do this. But a problem we are having in our detail department is turnover. And if I look at might be. Because I don't necessarily have to know everybody, but the people in my store, their manager probably needs to know them. We have a calendar that says where everybody's birthday is. Right. So everybody can See it. We can go say hello, go say happy birthday. Birthday to those people. You want to make your employees feel like they're your friend. Now, don't take that literally, but you need to make sure that they know they exist. If your employees know they exist and you know that they know that you exist, they're more likely to engage. They're more likely to tell you if they don't like you or tell you that they want to leave. But if they just exist in your atmosphere, they can go out of your atmosphere really quickly. And you don't want that unless you want that. Right? So you've got to engage with that employee. You've got to ask if they have a soccer. If their kids had a soccer game this weekend, maybe their kid is the next Lebron James and they're playing basketball. Find out about it. Talk to them about it. See how many points he scored the night before. See how many points or many goals she scored playing soccer. These are things you need to know. If they are getting married, you need to give them a wedding gift. Right? You need to find out their name. If they're having a kid, you need to give them a. You know, sometimes at our dealership, we do a shower for them because they're having a kid. Right? These are things that you need to do and you can do to make employees engage and make them not feel like they're just, you know, a speck of dust on the floor. Because they're not. They're the people that make your livelihood, and you do a lot for them, too. Okay, Number two, we're going to find employee relevance. So, Kevin, I'm going to ask you, why are salespeople relevant? Yeah. That's your relevance to them. Tracy, why is your salespeople. Why is their job relevant to anyone? They are the front line. They are that. What I'm trying to dig at here is that is our relevance for them. They have to have a relevance in their life. And a lot of your salespeople in here, they provide a service to the consumer, and they don't think about it. They really go above and beyond for a lot of their clients whose credit may not be perfect, right. By them being able to sell and put this customer in a car, they provide relevance in their life by giving these people transportation, by allowing them to have transportation. So the salespeople are really easy collectors. A collector's main job is to do what? Collect money, Right. Their second job goes to that consumer, and that is keeping them in their cars. So if you have A collector who just loves to throw people out of their car where they're not very relevant to that customer. They're repowers, they're not collectors. Right. But if a collector can understand it, their relevance to that end consumer is, hey, I've been trying to keep you in your car. That's what I'm doing here. I think they would be better collectors and they would understand that their job really means something. Most people leave careers and jobs because they feel like there's no relevance. Why am I doing this? You heard that lately, as you know, every Gen Z and Millennial is deciding they're leaving a job because they don't feel like they're doing anything for society. Right. If they see relevance in what they're doing for someone else, they're more likely to stay. And I think I hear the quality or state of being connected, closely connected. And this doesn't only go to the end consumer. I'll bring back up the dealer, the detailer that I'm talking about today. If the detailer understands that the person they're helping most in our dealership is the salespeople, they're connected to that salesperson. If I don't do a good job detailing this car, it's less likely that my salespeople are going to sell this car. Explain that to them. How are we going to connect everybody in a web so that they. If they want to leave, they're going to think twice about it. That's what this is really about. If I wake up in the morning, I know I'm going to work as a collector just to collect money for the boss. How long am I going to stay? Because I'm probably going to get cussed at today. I'm going to get yelled at, the phones get hung up in my face. You think that collectors want to do their job for the rest of the day or for 20 years? They're not going to want to do that, are they? But if they know that their main relevance is, I've got to keep this customer paying because this is this customer's livelihood. This is how they get to work. It's going to make them feel a little different about their life. Right. So relevance, super important. And also, please interrupt me if you have questions because we've got tons of time. I want to make sure that I don't gloss over something that's important to you because I may. So we're going to spend most of the time on this. And it's measurement. You've got to find measurements for Each and every employee, and everybody's going to say this together. What's the number one measurement we use in our car business? Sales. And we base that on what, every month, Right? Well, okay, that's kind of. That's kind of. It works, right? How many cars did you sell last month, Tracy? See, everybody knows that. How many did you sell last month? Okay. Dale, 300. Leah, 32. Greg, 20. Kelly. Golly bum. Everybody knows that measurement. I bet that. So it's a measurement. That's what keeps you going as car dealers. How many cars are we going to sell this month? That's your measurement. That's what your ultimate goal is. If I know that I'm going to sell three cars next month, I'm probably not going to be very excited about that. Right? But that might be the deal. If I run out of employees, I've been there. I run out of them. I don't like it. Okay, measuring something. How does this apply in your dealership? Why is it important to employees? Okay, so I played high school football, played high school basketball. What was the number one thing I wanted to do? Win. That's it. Win the state championship. I want to do everything. I want to win every game. How do I tell if I win every game? Score more points than the other person. That's what motivates people. Don't let any of this garbage media tell you that people don't care about winning because everybody in their heart cares about one thing. It's winning. When I sit in 20 group, I care about one thing. Being on the left side of that book. That's all I care about. Now. I'm not always there, not there a lot. I end up on the right side. Sometimes that tells me what I need to do. Do to win. 20 group is about winning. Playing sports is about winning. This all matters to your employees. It's about winning. So we've got to figure out how to quantitate everything each employee does. I know that sounds like a big deal, but it's really not all that bad. So what are some things we can measure in our dealership? And I want everybody to think about this, okay? Collectors, up here on the board, I just have acronyms for a lot of things. Promise to pay percentages, charge off recency and delinquency. Those are the three easiest ones to come to mind. Right. What is someone else in this room measuring when it comes to collectors? Redemption. Repo Redemption is a very good one. What else? Come on. Hopefully you're measuring something. Dollars collected. Love that one. Because that really matters, doesn't it? Okay, More Todd. Anybody got anything else? Okay, for sales? Appointments set, calls made in sales. Again, I don't like measuring sales. But you have to, right, Tracy, what else are you measuring when it comes to sales? Okay. Reviews are big. Exactly. 100%. Yeah. Multiple. Multiple tools that can. That can send that out. Really hard. Really hard. Yeah. Reviews are a good one. Measure. What? I'm sorry, down measured. Yeah, measure down payments. Okay. We also. One of the big things we measure that I did not put up there are applications. Applications per salesperson. Because our model is more of. You get a lead, you turn them to an application. So we can measure lead to applications received. Okay, so how effective are we at turning leads in applications? Because we are primary buyer payer. But that can work in a retail establishment too, because you really can't sell a car if you're using outside finance without an application. Right. Then how many of those applications we can measure? How many of those applications did you get approved? But that might be for a finance manager. Right. Or for your F and I department. So this gives you measurements across the board. So applications, another really good thing. And also for your marketing. Your marketing person inside your dealership. That should be one of the things you look at when you're grading them as well. If you have an internal marketer. Mine's my wife. So if I don't get a lot of apps, I probably shouldn't say anything. Imagine that conversation. I've had it before. It's not very good. Yeah, she's feisty. You know, Dale, all right, for tech, we do hours turned cars done in recon, and also what we call policy expenses per tech. If they break something. Right. Or they missed Iag something, I've got to eat it all. These type things. So these are good things to measure. Anybody else got anything? When it comes to techs, that's great idea. How much is that tech recommending per ro, Right? What is your. You know. That's right. Yep. And your average RO per customer pay ticket. All these things are really good ways to measure. So you might be measuring those, but let me tell you what the employee really wants to see. They want to see a scoreboard. I wish that was a little brighter. Can everybody see that? Give me a second here. I hope I don't screw something up. Nope, that didn't work. Can we dim the lights, somebody? Oh, well, so I read this book a while back that talked about these scoreboards, and everybody is a buy here, pay here, dealer in here in retail. It can Go retail too. But y' all remember how easy it was to sell cars in 2021? You should be shaking your head yes. Okay? Collecting money was just as easy in 2021. And so when collecting money to me was easy in 2021, I didn't even think about talking to my collectors. Why? I mean, it wasn't even worth it. We were collecting money. I was having fun. I was buying stupid cars. It was, it was so much fun. I had plenty of cash in the bank. Well, fast forward to about this time last year. Car sales slowed down. Okay. Interest rates went up and my collections started having holes. So at this time, when I talked to you about earlier, I start reading. I start trying to analytically figure out why is this not working anymore. It worked fine not long ago, right? So I dug in and figured out, read this book. It said you need to scoreboard each employee. And this was before I even thought about the measurement portion of it. And so I built these scoreboards and what you can't see is. And I really hate this. I wish I could dim the light somehow. But this is my collector scoreboard. So every Monday morning at 8 o' clock in the morning, this goes out. It's going to tell her the total collected forecast percentage. So I base my total collection principal and interest as we forecast it out according to how many accounts we have and how much we should be collecting per account for that month. And so anything above 100% is good, but we will have a trend line and we'll put that figure in there. Promise to pay percentage. Our promise to pay percentage should be over 60%. Our goal is 62% for the last week. It will go in there. We'll also have the number of promise to pays we had last week, the number of contacts made by that collector for the week. We have a guideline, we have a baseline and they know that they need to be over that number. Number of promise to pays from those contacts and the total amount of their promise to pays. And then this is previous week compared to that start of accounts, beginning of the week, starting accounts at the end of the week and the promise to pays for this coming week. I believe that's what we should be measuring. Everybody's measurements are going to be different. Okay, so insurance, school board. So I have an in house insurance, not agent, but she's my agent, she's over cpi. She manages all the insurance on the portfolio. So we set up these goals. This is our first goal for cpi. This is actually what we had. This is our collection goal for CPI is 90%. Our goal is this. This is what we collected so far the month. This is what's remaining to the goal. And our, our ultimate goal for expired insurance is zero. Right. And so it tell her how many we've actually had that are expired that you have not taken care of. That should be zero, but it never gets to zero for some reason. The last one is, is my recon scoreboard and I call my guy that handles our recon, our Internal inventory manager. IIM school board recon complete for last week. F1 is our first inspection of the car complete. F2 is a total, it's done in the shop. Complete body. Complete body weighting detail. Complete detail Weighting F1 weighting F2 weighting. F1 weighting should be zero all the time and F2 should be a low number percentage on website. We get all of our cars to the website as quickly as possible. And so our goal is to have at least 80% of our inventory that we own on our website at all times. What is the percentage of all our total inventory complete and what's still waiting? Okay. We do it manually. There are plenty of good resources that will be in the expo tonight and will help you with recon. I know it's a big deal for everybody. That is ultimately scoreboarding and recon is probably the most important place to have a very, very efficient scoreboard because you will find out quickly if you need to fire someone or not. So anybody have questions on scoreboards? Yes, sir. Good question. No. So we are just, we are infants in the CPI world. And her original job, and she was, she was a insurance agent, not an agent, a rep for an agent. And her original job was to handle all of. We didn't have any cpi. So her job was to make sure the portfolio was covered at all times. So that was what she was originally hired for. She also assists in collections. Her job is to be the first line of collections until a collection person really has to get involved. And her ultimate job now is CPI penetration in the dealership. So our first goal was 10% which we met a couple months ago. Then we had to figure out how to collect it properly. So now we've gotten gotten that figured out. So our next goal is 20% which we're working on now, hopefully we hit by the end of the year. But all these are goals, right? All these are measurements that is winning to her. I do not pay bonuses. Another thing I should have probably started with, I don't pay bonuses. I have an expectation, expectation to do Your job, I'm going to pay you properly. I expect you to do your job. If you do not do your job, which you will have plenty of notice if you don't do your job. Because these scoreboards go out every Monday morning. You know, if you are winning, if you are not winning, then we need to have a serious conversation. And some people don't win because they don't have the tools. It's our job to give them the tools. Something Steve Levine said just an hour ago next door. He said when he goes into people's dealerships and he talks to, I want to make sure I get this right. And he talks to employees, he says, well, you know what, my notes are not working right now. Does anybody have that problem with Apple notes that sometimes they just don't come up? User error. So Steve says the number one thing he hears from employees is, I haven't been trained. I don't know how to do my job. Who in here has an employee that you might feel doesn't know how to do their job? Really? One? Yeah. Okay. The number one. The number one thing in an exit interview that you will find people say is, I quit because I didn't have direction. My manager didn't tell me properly how to do it. The number one thing you typically hear from someone when you bring them in to have this conversation. Well, I didn't know that was a goal. Well, yeah, you did. It's right here on your school board. I didn't have a job description. Well, you do have a job description. Did the manager at hiring not give it to you? I never got it. So then you can go to that manager and say, did you not give it to them? Yeah. So we've gone a step further. We have a daily task list they have to do and we also make sure that they have their job description. But a step further than that is building a scoreboard. Because, you know, in the 19, I guess 90s, late 90s or early, probably early 2000s, they started giving away participation trophies. Right. So I don't want to give away participation trophies to my staff. I want to win. And winning to me looks like having selling cars. Right. Have low delinquency and low recency and low charge offs. I mean high recency and low charge offs. That's what matters to me. That's winning and customers that are happy with great reviews. I'm selling 500 cars a month and I'm getting 251 star reviews. I'm not winning. Yes, sir. Interesting question. No, because it's not relevant. It's not always relevant. Every manager sees everybody's scoreboard and there nobody's blind copied on an email. Everybody knows who's on the email. Okay. During our managers meeting that happens every two weeks, every number is put up there. So they do it. Managers know at that point. Yeah. I don't know if it'd be a good idea to share this with everybody. There might be, there might be instances where it does make sense, just not. I'm not sure of that. I wouldn't say do that. The one where it may is sharing maybe a detailer's scoreboard with the sales staff. Maybe. I don't know. Maybe. Yeah. That's an interesting question. Okay, any more questions on scoreboards? Because I could spend a whole session on scoreboards if we wanted. Yes, sir. Yeah. Yes, I have service manager, quasi sales manager, collection manager and a general assistant general manager under me and then an HR manager. Yeah. Anything else? Yes, sir. Yeah. How many tos did you do?

How many layups did you do?

If you do those consistently, then the results will increase in the sales. We always want to look at the results 100%. So Jody's. What he's speaking of is leading to lagging indicators. Right. And if we're only measuring lagging indicators which are cars sold, I mean that's the biggest lagging indicator out of anything we're working on day old information every time compared to leading indicators which will tell us how many cars we are going to sell. And that is the reason we measure applications. Applications approved, applications conditioned, applications turned down. We measure all those things because that leading indicator will tell us how many cars sell in the retail space. It's appointment, appointment, appointment. And Joe Verde. Right. It's set the appointment. And we know if we have a hundred leads and we can set 50 appointments, 25 are going to show up. We're going to sell 12 and a half. Right. Pretty much it. And so I got, I know that if I need to sell 50 cars next month, I got to have 500 applications or 500 leads. So you've got to look at what's the leading indicator in your dealership. And when you see that and when you can find it, you can build scoreboards. And that is the reason we set expectations for leading indicators. And the expectation for a leading indicator would be making phone calls. You've got to touch 30 people today. You got to. That's just the way it is. Either by text, by email, by phone call. And all that has changed in the last 10 years. It used to be only by phone call, right? But our world's changed, so 90% of those texts, 90% of those phone calls are now being texts. But the problem is this. How long does it take to make a text compared to a phone call? So your expectations have to go up. So maybe you need to touch 60 people a day. So that would be a scoreboard model for my salespeople that week. You know, you're expected to make 50 phone calls, and you just can't tell me you made 50 phone calls. I'm going to go into my phone system, verify you made 50 phone calls, and I'm gonna put that on the scoreboard because that's what matters. Don't rely on your salespeople or anybody in your store to tell you these numbers. These numbers have to be produced and know that they are real. You gotta audit them. Okay, I made 50 phone calls. Okay, let's go listen to 50 phone calls. Well, you just dialed. You make a phone call, right? So make sure that you're looking at leading indicators before you make your scoreboard. Thank you, Joe. That was really insightful. I like that. So what will your dealership look like if you do this right, and, you know, we're all here to make our dealership better, and if we just talked about these things and didn't do them, then you're not going to get anything. You're just banging your head against the wall. So if you do these things right, your dealership will run smoother. And I know nobody out here has got a phone call today from their dealership. Nobody here. Right. Okay. What if you could leave for a day and never have a phone call? How would that make you feel? That is what we. That's what we expect, right? That's not the way it has to be. I got a phone call from my dealership today that might be good or bad, I don't know. But I was away for eight days, and I can count maximum 10 times they called me. Now, when I got back, I had a bunch of fires put out, but they didn't call me. I had a good time. We had one of the best collection months we've ever had. Because even on vacation, I put together those scoreboards and sent them out. Okay? They take some time to get used to, but they don't take all that much time. You will create a competitive advantage if you do this right. And you might say, why is that? Well, it's multifaceted one. You will hire better people, and that's what we're talking about here, you'll get rid of the people who don't need to be there because they're not meeting your expectations. So you're going to push them out the door because you sat down every week and you've talked to them about this and you've written them up, so you push them out. You don't have to worry about your unemployment insurance going out. You did your job okay, as long as you trained them. We're not talking about training today. I'm training managers. Today I'm training owners. If you didn't train them, then that's your fault. You're going to hire better people. Better people produce better results, better employees. Doing the job you hired them to do and being engaged will give you a competitive advantage and you will beat the other dealer in town. Now, some people may be in the same town in here, so you're going to have to up your game. You'll fight less fires. Who in here is a firefighter? Everybody's hand should go up. Do you feel like that's all you're doing every day? You can't work on your business because you were fighting fires. It's because people don't know what to do. They've not been trained properly what to do. They don't know what their expectations are. And so you can't blame that on you, on them. You've got to blame it on yourself. It took me a long time to say that. Everybody's talking about the great flight. Everybody's leaving, everybody. So, oh, it's not me. It's not me. It's not me. It took me a long time to figure out that part of the problem was me. It was too good. Covid was too good for most people, and it got too easy. Everybody was making money. We let good employees lead because we didn't set expectations. We let good employees lead because they didn't know what their job responsibility was. We let good employees lead because they got paid more somewhere else. How many in here lost good key employees during COVID All of us probably did. And it's. It's unfortunate. I had a. I had an employee, it's my best salesman sales lady. I hired her at $11 an hour to be a dealership assistant. In four years, she made $85,000. That's life changing, right? And I trained her from the time she was a, you know, a dealership assistant. This is how you handle our customers. This is what you do. This is how you sell cars. She knew her expectations. She made $85,000 in 2020. She left me in May of 2021. That's kind of mind blowing, right? She just left. I told her one day that she wasn't. She didn't do her paperwork right? And she. She told me where I could go. I thought of this young lady as family, and it was just. We were just butting heads, and she went to lunch, and she never came back. But I can promise you, if. And she is still friendly with tons of people in our dealership. And I've seen her once or twice since. And I know the reason she left was me. It was the way I spoke to her, you know, it gotten past the point of training because she was so good at her job. And I spoke to her. You know, I was insulting. I insulted her paperwork. You do this again, I'm gonna cut your commission. Another reason. I don't have commissions anymore, too. But that's what I told her. You do this again, I'm gonna take away the commission on that car sale. And she left. You know, she made a lot of money. Another dealership. And now she's moved on, and she's. She's doing something else. She's working at home. She loves it. And it took me a long time to realize that that was my fault. I should have said that to her. I should have pulled her in, talked to her about it, and fixed the problem. I should have trained her properly, but I did. So the fourth thing to do if the dealership. If you do this, your dealership will, like, you will spend more time doing things you love, things you enjoy to do. I don't know about y', all, but my enjoyment does not come from being in my dealership every day from 10am or 9am till 6pm it may be to some of y'. All. You may really love it. You may actually. And I know there's a lot of car dealers out there that love this. I do not being in the auction lane every day, right? The one thing, the one enjoyment you find in this business is buying cars. Okay, that. That's great. If you get your dealership running properly, you can be in the lanes buying cars more. So it might be working on your business. It might be fishing, it might be golfing. It might be whatever. It might be taking vacations. But if you do this right, you're gonna have more time to do this. All right, I got some homework for y'. All. Hope you're ready. All right. Before you open on Monday, because I'm sure most of you, you should be open Tomorrow. But you're probably not going home tomorrow. I'm sorry, I'm not open tomorrow. You don't have to be open tomorrow. I'm. I want you to list every employee before you open Monday morning. List them out, see if you can do it. Number one. I can't. Okay? You may have to call a manager and say, hey, how many people we got working there? You know, you know all their names. And if your manager doesn't know know their names, then you got a problem, okay? Because ultimately you're going to take. If you're big enough and you have enough people, you're going to take the manager and get him to know that that employee. Okay? And determine whether you. I got to a little too quickly. Whether you or their manager actually knows it. Okay. And that is. Okay. Manager, you knew their name. I want to know what they enjoy doing, where they go to church, how many kids they have. I want you to engage with them. I want you to be sincere. I want you to be patronizing. I want you to be sincere. Find out what they like to do. Get to know them. If you need to take them to lunch, I'll buy lunch. I want you to go. Once you figure it out, okay? Determine how your employees jobs affect others within your dealership and outside of your dealership. Back to detailing. I was in 20 group not long ago and just how important detailing can be, I don't know. I'm focused on detailing today, but you know, because probably it's the lowest department you have. But a detailer was cleaning out a repo at this customer's at this guy's shop and he got fentanyl on him. He almost died. So the detail department is pretty dang important, right? So if we know that our detailers are detailing that car to their utmost condition, that's really something for our employees too. Another detail story that I have, I bought a Toyota Tacoma, single cab, small truck from a service customer of ours. And she called me and she said, luke, I need you to come get this truck. It was my husband's. He's passed away. My son, who's a drug addict has been riding in it and driving it. I need you to come get it. Went and got it. It's the most perfect low mileage Tacoma you've ever seen in your life. Right? Anybody can sell it. And she said, she told me this, make sure you detail it good. Because I know there's drug paraphernalia in the truck. Okay? Told my detailer, make sure you clean this thing good, because of this. And be careful when you do it. Everything's good. Truck cleans up, person comes, test drives it, they ready to buy. I just got one problem. Same. Yep. Chuck's got no problem. Right. Well, I opened up this compartment, and there's a needle in there. So that could have affected somebody. Right. What I'm telling you is everybody's job is connected to everybody at the dealership and to people that are buying your cars, no matter how menial that job is. And number four, this is the most important thing, in my opinion. Find measurements for every single one of your employees. Every single one of them. If it's your comptroller, that measurement is. How far off were you on reconciliation on this account? How many times did that happen? How quickly did you close the books? Were there any mistakes? That's one of those type of things you can do. Okay, take these points home. Your responsibility as an owner is to manage and care for your employees. It's not the managing care for yourself. They're putting a lot of freaking weight on you. And you may not understand that their livelihood depends on you being a good manager. If you do it right, they'll love you forever. I'm sure. Ton of y' all have employees have been with y' all forever, and the reason is because they like y'. All. They wouldn't be there if they didn't love you and they didn't think you were family. There's a reason. And number two, you got to provide the correct management resources for your employees to love their job. It's not. It's not as simple as going, I need you to do this. It's training them. Make sure they have every resource available. Y' all are here. That's the. That's half the battle getting here. Learning, trying to become better owners, trying to be better managers. The hardest job I've ever had in my life is managing people. It is the single hardest job you have. If you do it poorly, it's going to be real bad, because I've done it poorly. You know, I started managing people at our dealership when I was 22 years old. I was a wreck when I was 22 years old. Okay? I did not manage people very well. People sit in this room. No, I used to be a crazy person. Okay? I've calmed it down a little bit, maybe. So my biggest point, my overall point, is that employees deserve a job they can love. And you, as a. As employer deserve people who are willing to be engaged in that job. And if you. If you successfully do that, then both your lives are going to be better. Not just theirs, not just yours, but everybody. Dealers helping dealers. Please leave us a review and subscribe the Independent Dealer Podcast.