Wake up, Buy Here, Pay Here people. It's a beautiful day. Go grab yourself another cup of joe and say hello to Jim and Michelle Rhodes on the Buy Here, Pay Here morning show. Take it away, you two. things are a little harder to get started than others yeah today was all technical in the end it was device related but we're a little late getting started here but uh we're uh we're happy to be with you on a white hat wednesday got uh some interesting leadership stuff to talk about a couple quick announcements any updates from the michelle desk before I dive into mine That's a no. That's a no. Then, so a couple quick things. Actually, we have something pretty significant happen today. We're doing an interview. It's a recorded interview with Jeff Martin from NIADA and Paul Folletti, the CEO with NCM. This is not what we put out there on social media saying that we're going to be doing for Friday with Jeff. This is a totally different thing. And so we're going to get a lot of Jeff this month, but this is going to be a really great conversation. Yeah, I'm looking forward to kind of, you know, everybody I think knows at this point that Brett Carmichael was eighteen plus years with NCM. He's now stepped into the chair of director of education. And so we tried to get the thing put together for December and everybody was going different directions. So now we're going to get together and have them tell the story. It's just like a hard month anyway to get. I mean, it's it's it's worse than herding cats. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's it's like herding flies. Oh, yeah. That's even harder. It is. It's a really tiny little rope. So, yeah, no, it's all good. Exactly. We've got some other subject coming up. I'm hopeful that next week we can bring this subject about the true cost of repos. Okay. Like I've got some hard math we're going to bring together on that. Is that going to be a Wednesday topic? I hope so. Okay, so it'll be Wednesday. Yeah, I just need to make sure I have the data all pulled together. Yeah, so that's, that is, I'm making an assumption because we haven't talked about it in depth. But, you know, there's, there's a lot of dealers out there that say that it is less expensive to not repo than it is to repo a vehicle and work with it work with the customer. I mean, it's one thing if you've got a write off a loss, because it's that's not a repo, because there's been an accident or whatever. But, but yeah. Yeah, very good. Okay, well, we should dive into our- What are we talking about today, Tim? Well, today we have a video that I pulled together from YouTube that is a- It's Simon Sinek, who we referred to many times. If you don't have him as an influencer that you watch on YouTube or other things that you can say, I like their content, even TikTok. Like his stuff because it is rich. Yeah. So today's conversation is around leadership. And I think what you're going to hear, most of what he describes is often in a corporate environment. And that's kind of where he lives. He works with some of the biggest corporations, military. I mean, he kind of has those kind of audiences. But I think folks, when they listen to this, they'll be able to hear the pieces that apply to them and their own day-to-day management of a small team and a buy-here, pay-here dealership or any other place they're plugged into managing and building something in their own business, right? Yeah, I've gone through and listened to it and It, it is, it, it's, he does reference, there's a book that those of you who are listening that like Simon Siddick, there's a book called Leaders Eat Last. And that book's been out for a good fifteen years. Jim Collison, Yeah. Well, this video we're about to watch is from twenty fourteen, but obviously this, all this stuff still applies. So shall we start? Let's get it going. I don't hear audio. You need to unmute it. At the bottom. There we go. Okay. On that day, William Swenson, who recently was a man by the name of Captain William Swenson, who recently was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions on September eighth, two thousand nine. On that day, a column of American and Afghan troops were making their way through a part of Afghanistan to help protect a group of government officials, a group of Afghan government officials who'd be meeting with some local village elders. The column came under ambush and was surrounded on three sides. And amongst many other things, Captain Swenson was recognized for running into live fire to rescue the wounded and pull out the dead. One of the people he rescued was a sergeant, and he and a comrade were making their way to a medevac helicopter. And what was remarkable about this day is by sheer coincidence, one of the medevac medics happened to have a GoPro camera on his helmet and captured the whole scene on camera. It shows Captain Swenson and his comrade bringing this wounded soldier who'd received a gunshot to the neck. They put him in the helicopter, and then you see Captain Swenson bend over and give him a kiss before he turns around to rescue more. I saw this, and I thought to myself, where do people like that come from? What is that? That is some deep, deep emotion when you would want to do that. There's a love there. And I want to know, why is it that I don't have people that I work with like that? In the military, they give medals to people who are willing to sacrifice themselves so that others may gain. In business, we give bonuses to people who are willing to sacrifice others so that we may gain. Yeah, that's powerful. So I asked myself, where do people like this come from? And my initial conclusion was that they're just better people. That's why they're attracted to the military. These better people are attracted to this concept of service. But that's completely wrong. What I learned is that it's the environment. And if you get the environment right, every single one of us has the capacity to do these remarkable things. And more importantly, others have that capacity too. I've had the great honor of getting to meet some of these who we would call heroes who've put themselves and put their lives at risk to save others. And I ask them, why would you do it? Why did you do it? And they all say the same thing because they would have done it for me. It's this deep sense of trust and cooperation. So trust and cooperation are really important here. The problem with concepts of trust and cooperation is that they are feelings. They're not instructions. I can't simply say to you, trust me, and you will. I can't simply instruct two people to cooperate, and they will. It's not how it works. It's a feeling. So the trust element, when we talk about trust, obviously with our White Hat Wednesday, that's one of our core principles. And so when you talk about establishing trust, I mean, he's going to touch on some of that, but I think that's one of the first things is how do you establish it? So we'll let him kind of explain. Yeah. And what I do like about what he does is it's more that the application is more for your team within your company. But how important it is to be able to create what you want, because everything kind of goes downhill. And so if you trust your team, your team trusts you, and then you can just like flow that downwards, it's a lot lighter lift. Yeah. And of course, you know, for me, it's like the thing about leadership, you're right. It's about team, but every team needs leadership. So whether that's on a small, somebody leading internally on the team or a director of the team, it's like, so how do we establish trust? I'll let him continue, but that's kind of the thing I wanted to touch on. Feeling. So where does that feeling come from? If you go back fifty thousand years to the Paleolithic era, to the early days of Homo sapiens, what we find is that the world was filled with danger. All of these forces working very, very hard to kill us. Nothing personal. Whether it was the weather, lack of resources, maybe a saber-toothed tiger, all of these things working to reduce our lifespan. And so we evolved into social animals, where we lived together and worked together in what I call a circle of safety inside the tribe, where we felt like we belong. And when we felt safe amongst our own, the natural reaction was trust and cooperation. There are inherent benefits to this. It means I can fall asleep at night and trust that someone from within my tribe will watch for danger. If we don't trust each other, if I don't trust you, that means you won't watch for danger. Bad system of survival. The modern day is exactly the same thing. The world is filled with danger, things that are trying to frustrate our lives or reduce our success, reduce our opportunity for success. It could be the ups and downs of an economy, the uncertainty of the stock market. It could be a new technology that renders your business model obsolete overnight. Or it could be your competition that is sometimes trying to kill you. It's sometimes trying to put you out of business, but at the very minimum, is working hard to frustrate your growth and steal your business from you. We have no control over these forces. These are a constant, and they're not going away. The only variable are the conditions inside the organization. And that's where leadership matters, because it's the leader that sets the tone. When a leader makes the choice to put the safety and lives of the people inside the organization first, to sacrifice their comforts and sacrifice the tangible, results so that the people remain and feel safe and feel like they belong, remarkable things happen. I was flying on a trip, and I was witness to an incident where a passenger attempted to board before their number was called. And I watched the gate agent treat this man like he had broken the law, like a criminal. He was yelled at for attempting to board one group too soon. So I said something. I said, why do you have to treat us like cattle? Why can't you treat us like human beings? And this is exactly what she said to me. She said, sir, if I don't follow the rules, I could get in trouble or lose my job. All she was telling me is that she doesn't feel safe. All she was telling me is that she doesn't trust her leaders. The reason we like flying Southwest Airlines is not because they necessarily hire better people, it's because they don't fear their leaders. You see, if the conditions are wrong, we are forced to expend our own time and energy to protect ourselves from each other. And that inherently weakens the organization. When we feel safe inside the organization, we will naturally combine our talents and our strengths and work tirelessly to face the dangers outside and seize the opportunities. The closest analogy I can give to what a great leader is is like being a parent. If you think about what being a great parent is, what do you want? What makes a great parent? We want to give our child opportunities, education, discipline them when necessary, all so that they can grow up and achieve more than we could for ourselves. Great leaders want exactly the same thing. They want to provide their people opportunity, education, discipline when necessary, build their self-confidence, give them the opportunity to try and fail, all so that they could achieve more than we could ever imagine. for ourselves. Charlie Kim, who's the CEO of a company called NextJump in New York City, a tech company, he makes the point that if you had hard times in your family, would you ever consider laying off one of your children? We would never do it. Then why do we consider laying off people inside our organization? Charlie implemented a policy of lifetime employment. If you get a job at NextJump, you cannot get fired for performance issues. In fact, if you have issues, they will coach you and they will give you support, just like we would with one of our children who happens to come home with a C from school. It's the complete opposite. This is the reason so many people have such a visceral hatred, sort of anger at some of these banking CEOs with their disproportionate salaries and bonus structures. It's not the numbers. It's that they have violated the very definition of leadership. They have violated this deep-seated social contract. We know that they allowed their people to be sacrificed so they could protect their own interests. Or worse, they sacrificed their people to protect their own interests. This is what so offends us, not the numbers. Would anybody be offended if we gave a hundred and fifty million dollar bonus to Gandhi? How about a two hundred and fifty million dollar bonus to Mother Teresa? Do we have an issue with that? None at all. None at all. Great leaders would never sacrifice the people to save the numbers. They would sooner sacrifice the numbers to save the people. Bob Chapman, who runs a large manufacturing company in the Midwest called Barry Waymiller, in two thousand and eight was hit very hard by the recession and they lost thirty percent of their orders overnight. Now, in a large manufacturing company, this is a big deal. And they could no longer afford their labor pool. They needed to save ten million dollars. So, like so many companies today, the board got together and discussed layoffs. And Bob refused. You see, Bob doesn't believe in head counts. Bob believes in heart counts. And it's much more difficult to simply reduce the heart count. And so they came up with a furlough program. Every employee from secretary to CEO was required to take four weeks of unpaid vacation. They could take it any time they wanted, and they did not have to take it consecutively. But it was how Bob announced the program that mattered so much. He said, it's better that we should all suffer a little than any of us should have to suffer a lot. And morale went up. They saved twenty million dollars. And most importantly, as would be expected, when the people feel safe and protected by the leadership in the organization, the natural reaction is to trust and cooperate. And quite spontaneously, nobody expected, people started trading with each other. Those who could afford it more would trade with those who could afford it less. People would take five weeks so that somebody else only had to take three. Leadership is a choice. It is not a rank. I know many people at the senior-most levels of organizations who are absolutely not leaders. They are authorities, and we do what they say because they have authority over us, but we would not follow them. And I know many people who are at the bottoms of organizations who have no authority, and they are absolutely leaders. And this is because they have chosen to look after the person to the left of them, and they have chosen to look after the person to the right of them. This is what a leader is. I heard a story of some Marines who were out in theater, and as is the Marine custom, the officer ate last, and he let his men eat first. And when they were done, there was no food left for him. And when they went back out in the field, his men brought him some of their food so that he may eat. Because that's what happens. We call them leaders because they go first. We call them leaders because they take the risk before anybody else does. We call them leaders because they will choose to sacrifice so that their people may be safe and protected and so their people may gain. And when we do, the natural response is that our people will sacrifice for us. They will give us their blood and sweat and tears to see that their leader's vision comes to life. And when we ask them, why would you do that? Why would you give your blood and sweat and tears for that person? They all say the same thing. Because they would have done it for me. And isn't that the organization we would all like to work in? Thank you very much. Good stuff. Oh, yeah. Wow. I'm going to take this out. So many thoughts. Yeah, I have a bunch of notes over here. So go ahead. I think about one of the last things is because I wrote down so many different things. you know when you as an employee feel like you matter to an employer that is all the difference and it's it really feeds into this whole leaders eat last again if you are looking for a good read leaders eat last by simon sinek And it reminded me of, you know, when he was talking about layoffs and, and I just quickly went through the gambit of emotions that I experienced once when I was let go because the company I was working for had lost a huge contract. And so I was let go. And, and then I, you know, I still had people that I knew within the company and that they were know they back on top all of the things and I I when I was let go it's like I loved that company loved that company right now I have little respect for the company because I've I kind of it was it was that whole like the banking thing where you're gonna sacrifice people so that you're okay And, and, um, and so I, you know, I, I recognize that if they had come back to me and said, we need to cut your salary that I would have said, okay, okay, let's do it. You know, that we, that we need to do this or this, but what they did is they kept my team and they got rid of me because I was the highest paid in the team. Right. And they've never replaced me, which, you know, but they're like back on top and doing things. And they probably realize that without this, that they are making more money or whatever. But I mean, I was like a huge asset. I know I was to the company. And so, you know, you walk away and you're like, I, I just, I felt like I didn't matter at all. You would have spent your entire career there potentially. I could have. Yeah. And so I think this kind of ties into the other stuff that we talk about with, you know, if you, if you're, if you're playing a short game, then you look at your, your balance sheet or PNLs and you may say, I need to make adjustments, right? I have to, I have to make adjustments in the interest of the, Yeah. The company. I mean, I get that. Yeah. Math is math. You can't, you know, you can't undo the math, but I think what you, what you have to really think about, and this is about planning and everything is, you know, what is really tying together is this idea that your team will do the stuff for you. It's a question of how, You know that when you talk about leadership and as is often the case, a lot of what I feel like is my own formation of leadership long before I ever heard of a Simon Sinek or anybody else with my own kind of going through social environments like. being part of a football team and becoming a leader of a football team. It's like, how does that even evolve? Like what did, what did I choose? Well, it wasn't by talk. It wasn't by giving a speech. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't those things. But so you start to think about, okay, what is it that makes a leader? First of all, they have to be willing to step forward and sacrifice for the others or for the greater good of the team in order to really be successful. a trusted leader like what he's talking about here is creating safety within an environment and and especially for us in the buy here pay your space even though we're small companies small corporations smaller teams we still have the same thing about in some ways it's even amplified because You have a small team. You need cross-training. People have to lift one another and cover one another in other departments and this and that. And so it's part of where when we have the right culture, which is around safety and that comes from leadership creating that environment. As you talked about, it's not that they're necessarily better people a lot of times. It's because most of us have internally the makeup to step up in the right environment when there's a need we would step up if we're invested and we feel safe and you're right then we would step up and do what's necessary and you think you know most people if they've worked for someone else um have had something happen that they're like, oh shit, I'm going to lose my job. And that feeling of blump, of dread, because there was a mistake made or you weren't able to do, and that fear or that lack of safety in their position. And so it just, it's, I know for me when I've had experiences like that, I mean, I'm not, I'm not a spring chicken and I've worked for a lot of different people that there's this feeling of dread, which creates a level of anxiety, which creates sometimes depression, which helps me to doesn't help me. It hinders me in being accurate all the time and, and, and really being able to, to give my best. Cause I'm so just, I'm, I'm worried about shit. This is, you know, I'm going to be in, I'm going to be in trouble or I'm going to be whatever, because this mistake was made or cause we all do it. We all do it. And so you think if, if you, you know, cause we make mistakes. If you realized in the course of making a mistake that, that your job was not in jeopardy yeah how much clearer you would think in the process of whatever it is that you're going through and it's just like you need to have a conversation you know and and yes there it's baked into all of us that that we that we avoid conflict but you know if you're creating an environment where you're not going to lose your job for a thing we'll just get you the training that you need and we'll get it I'm thinking about a collector. A collector, it's like I haven't been able to collect as well, and you're starting to feel stress and stress, and you just lost another thing, another client, another contract, and you're just like, pity your stomach. I'm going to lose my job. And then you become – you're just like – It affects your job. It affects your relationships with the people at your job. It reflects in your relationships at home. It reflects in all of the things. And so just the idea that you can feel safe and you develop trust through safety is, It also goes, the challenge for us in this industry is being able to, it's not as challenging to create that within your team at your dealership. It's creating that kind of trust with your customer. And so that they start to know something's happened, but I'm not going to get repoed. They're going to work with me and I'm going to be able to get through this and we're on the same team and they'll help me get the resources. or whatever it is, which kind of plays into this conversation we're gonna have around repos. But it just, it does. If you don't feel safe, it affects everything. And I think I can simplify it by saying, to me, it's about short-term versus long-term. And if I'm, obviously at some point, if the bank accounts don't support, I can financially not support certain elements or whatever, But I think back to his example about the report card. If one of our newer employees is performing at a grade C level, then we either think, well, I got to replace him and get an A plus person in there tomorrow. I'm wasting money. I'm wasting money. You can take that approach. But I think what we have to do, because we see this a lot in social media where people are talking about turnover, turnover, can't get people to stay in a job. Well, let's look at our environment. Let's look at the environment that we've created. Let's look at the kind of leaders that we are in that environment. And have we created an environment that is thinking longer term? In other words, if somebody has that C letter grade on their progress report. Yeah. What's the reaction? Do we scold them and now they're afraid and they're even making more mistakes? So the question is long-term versus short-term, like Simon Sinek's Infinite Game. Can we play an infinite game? Can we approach a team member as though we've got some work to do. We're going to sit here and work together and try to develop you. And will they ever be an A-plus performer? Perhaps not. But do they still have a role in the team? That's up to you to figure out, can you develop their project? I mean, your kid may never be a straight-A student, but... You, you know, it's when you, it's as, as a parent, you know, a lot of our listeners have kids. You know, I've, Jim and I both raised our children. They're adulting now. And considering the bane of our existence, we have no grandchildren. Yeah. considering having kids and then they'll be going through this cycle themselves but as a parent you know when they're in elementary school or whatever you can let me help you when they get into algebra or some of those things hire a freaking tutor okay I mean, find someone that is – it doesn't have to be like – but hire someone that can tutor them. And there's lots of things. When we look at our team members, like your collectors, whatever, it's like have them – there are lots of courses and things that are local for people to be able to tap into about good communication skills, good – how do you – deescalate a situation, you know, all of those, give them the tools and help them and check in with them and all of, and what you end up getting at the end of that is someone who not only trusts you, but is a lot more, it's a lot better in the, in the company and in most cases. Yeah. Yeah, so I just think it's, you know, we can find, there's plenty of other resources out there. There's also a book, I'll look it up real quick. I think Dave Partridge is the author of a book called People Over Profit. It's like, I think we're just challenging people to think longer term, be prepared to develop the folks that you have and work to create an environment where they can feel safe and they can feel because, you know, if, if I, if I'm on a team and I'm, I'm deep in the process, you know, and I feel like I discover a way to improve the process, um, I need to feel safe that if I bring ten ideas, nine of them may not be adopted. But I need to feel safe to keep bringing ideas because the one that I do bring that gets adopted could make a big difference in our ultimate productivity. So that's another element of safety is around ideas and sharing and lifting each other up and without overstepping on boundaries. This is where leaders have to manage and they ultimately authorize people. It's simple delegation, right? It's like, can we delegate to people? Can we develop them to perform better in their roles and be a real asset to what we're doing? And your team members may need a tutor, but darn it all, there are a lot of business leaders that I have been... witness to, I've worked with that need a tutor themselves. Because so many people, especially in our industry, they're coming up from just being, I worked as a salesperson on a car lot and now I'm doing it myself. They have no deep training in how to really effectively lead a team. And so it's just the only people that get hired are ones that's like, oh, it's someone that... we can joke about the same stuff and they can do a job effectively or whatever but they're not it's it there's there's a big difference in being able to pull people together from different backgrounds and different different um different backgrounds just in itself there's something out there called and we could save this for another day and perhaps we find an expert to come talk to it but there's something called the peter principle which is really about promoting people before they're really qualified and ready. Sometimes that's on us to develop them. Oh, because it just makes them want to grow. Well, yeah, but I'm saying when you elevate somebody, if I elevate somebody from salesperson to sales manager, and then they're not effective, they're not ready for management, to your point, then we tend to lose them. Because they can't really go back in the sales effectively. But if you see someone that it's like, oh, they're almost there. It's not just that they're killing it. And so someone can be a mentor, that they would be a good mentor, but maybe they're not a good mentor. Sometimes we promote them just because they're our most productive salesperson. And I've seen examples where that works. But what we have to be prepared for is when we promote somebody in that way to lead a team, If they're not prepared to lead all these kind of examples that he gave and they can't earn trust and they can't create a safe environment for a team, then they may not be effective in that role. So now I've hurt myself two ways. I've got a manager who's not effective. I've lost my productivity that was at a salesperson level. So I think it's on us as owners of our businesses to make sure that the people that we promote are really effective. um, more than a nice person and more than just productive that they're able to manage people and help drive the whole team performance. Right. And, and productivity. Yeah, I've got a lot of thoughts around this whole Peter principle because I think that it's true and it's not true. I think that you can keep someone in the team, in the dealership, in the whatever, that may not work well as a manager, but that's something that is... got to be, I mean, you've got to have a pretty strong team anyway. So, yeah. Yeah. So can we recognize with our buy here, pay here folks, so many of them are small. They've got a small team of, you know, three to five, ten people. So it's a little different environment. But all these principles that we're talking about still apply. You know, we're still leading an effort day in and day out to get better in certain areas. And so we either, either our team trusts us or they don't. And so we got to look at that. So, you know, the crux of today is what are you doing to create trust in your team? You know, are you are you someone who creates an environment of safety? Because that is really the crux of trust is do you feel safe? to make mistakes? Do you feel safe that, you know, your, your, your employer and your team members have your back? Do you, and that it's, it's like, yeah, it's, it's going to be okay. Whatever it is that the mistake it's going to be, it can get fixed and it's going to be okay. But do, do your team members feel safe? And there's, you know, getting, getting the help that they need for the mistakes that might be made along the way. whether it be another team member, whether it be you, if you're the expert in the facility, or someone outside that can help someone really learn how, because like collections are collections, sales are sales. Buy your pay here is not like every other business, but the act of collections is pretty universal. So I think we'll probably wrap up on the idea of just, it's around training and development, right? We got to train, train, train the people we bring in because You know, people talk about the turnover. If your approach to this person is not productive, I have to replace them. So if your first thought is to replace... Or just getting irritated and more and more irritated and more and more irritated and more and more irritated. That's just not a good environment. So it's like we have to look at ourselves first. Are we in a position to develop them? What did I miss? When I interviewed them, did I choose the wrong person? Two, did I provide them enough training in their onboarding and training period? Did we give them enough to be successful? And then it doesn't stop. We have to continue to work with them and try to support them and help them to become more successful. And then, you know, obviously you can reach a point where if you've done all that and you've exhausted it and it's not working, it's not working. But but we just think if you think in longer term and you're putting people over profit and. then you would find ways to get that person to elevate their productivity. And we've got to be ready to develop people. We don't just order people on Amazon and they show up ready to do the job perfectly, right? That's very, very true. We have to be ready to develop them. Oh, that's funny. Hey, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us today on White Hat Wednesday. Again, if you haven't already liked Simon Sinek on your whatever social, YouTube, TikTok, all of those, like him and subscribe. He's just such a wealth of information. And the book Leaders Eat Last. I think a lot of the conversation that we showed today was from that. All right, everybody. Thanks again for joining. We will see you on Friday with Jeff Martin. Right. And we'll be talking about things that are happening in NIADA. Have a great rest of your day, and we will see you on Friday. Have a great Wednesday.
