#88 - MM - The Cost Of Bad Health

All right, Luke. Happy Monday, buddy. Hope you're geared up for a great week. Looks like you're just getting over a little bit of a sickness, huh? You look a little under the weather. Little coronavirus got you down.

So. Not the coronavirus, the flu, buddy. And let me tell everybody out there, make sure you get your flu shot and do what you're supposed to do, because, oh, my gosh, it's been five or six days of just working from home and feeling like trash, and, of.

Course, the worst time of the year for you to be out of the office. But tell me this. What do we. I mean, obviously, I don't buy into the hype. I think coronavirus, flu, it all happens. Do this, do that, do the other. But generally speaking, we should have some policies and procedures in place for our offices of, hey, guys, like, do this, don't do that, come into work, don't come into work. These types of things. Right, Luke?

For sure. And you're right. I think a lot of the. And we may be. This. This may not hold up well, but we. I think there's a lot of hype built in around what's going on with the coronavirus. But, you know, the flu is dangerous, and we know every year, we know people who get the flu, and. And the flu's got, you know, 0.1% mortality rate, so it's definitely something not to play with. You definitely need plans in place, and people should not come to work if they're sick. And including you, including the owner. So it has to make me stay at home when I get sick. And unfortunately. Well, fortunately for my staff, she's right. And unfortunately for me, I just got to learn that it's not, you can't.

Come to work sometimes, but it's more so that it's even prevention. Right? I mean, what do you guys. Are you continually going down and wiping down the office with. With Clorox wipes? Do you have hand sanitizer on site? Are you doing things to prevent sickness not only from just a health standpoint, but also from a downtime and lost productivity? You know, Luke, I mean, how many deals do you think you could have put together that you maybe missed because you weren't on the ground? Or how many additional down payments do you think you could have shaken out of customers had you been there?

For sure, and that's not number one, but that's big when it comes to a dealer thinking about what should be done. We had a salesperson out almost, well, two or three days last week during our Busiest time. Well, it cost him a lot of money. He had an infection where he couldn't work. I mean, you know, and I understand that. But if he'd have taken a little prevention on the front side of keeping himself healthy, then we wouldn't have been in that situation. I think it's important as a dealer to recognize that you need to deep clean your office several times, especially if someone's been sick. You should have hand sanitizer on, you know, the front counter. You should have. Have it placed throughout the office in high traffic areas. You should have someone who cleans those high traffic areas with Lysol and with Clorox. You need to wipe down your doorknobs, you need to wipe down your chairs, all these things. If you notice a customer comes in and it's coughing and things, you should politely ask that customer to leave and come back when they feel better. And you should sanitize when they leave. All these little things are important to keeping your dealership healthy.

Yeah, yeah, go out. I know you can't buy those face masks anymore, but you can maybe go out and get some old cabin air filters and maybe strap it around their head or something when they're. When they're in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, buddy. But definitely we are in a people based business. We have a lot of people coming and going. We're dealing with cash, we're dealing with cars that have come from the auction and had 15 people in and out of them. And we're going to the auction and we're touching everything. So obviously be smart, guys. Be smart. Stay healthy. Luke wants you to get the flu shot. I want you to take your vitamin.

C. And we do that. And one last thing. Post a within your company, post something explaining your procedures on what you're doing to make sure that people don't get sick and encourage your. We keep vitamin C, you know, packets at the office so you can take it if you don't feel good. These zinc pills, all these type things that you can do to make sure your staff is as healthy as possible. You know, it might even be something where you, you pay for them to get their flu shot or, you know, whatever it is to help them be more healthy. I think it's something that you really should do for your business and for your employees.

Yeah. So smart. Pays dividends, pays in the end, keep them there, keep them healthy, keep them running, reduce the downtime. But if you've got it, don't be scared to send them home. Don't be scared to tell them to stay away.

And, you know, the thing is, is most of us can work from. From our home office. And even a lot of your salespeople, they can still take Internet leads. They can still do a lot of these things from. From the house. So don't be afraid to send them home and ask them to work leads from, you know, from their location. Or if you have a collector. That's sick. A lot of. A lot of us have ways to work collections from home as well.

Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. Should learn how to do that full time. That'd be great. So this week's gonna be an awesome episode. We have Jared Halstead joining us out of Arizona. We're gonna talk a lot about his life and business, about curbstoning and Arizona's forefront kicking butt.

Yes, sir.

Really being a leader in helping us dealers keep the riffraff out. So stay tuned for Thursday's episode, and everybody stay happy and healthy.