Where are all the Automotive Dealership Management books?

swear to God, I was about to call you and I was looking at

dinner with the delegates member the matte black family, Nicholas, the younger son and he's like, he goes on to Kobe. I was reading the book in this type of house because I read the whole book. I just flipped around that everything was less than one he goes through. I said that Yeah.

That's how you actually read it.

But my dad said the same thing. And he got a copy of both us great, great stuff. You messed up everything's lesson one.

Well, I do I love the format, because it's small. It's a small book, and it's no 100 license. But it's convenient. And it's engageable. And I think people will pick it up and actually read it and reviews on Amazon through that to be the kitchen reviewer. And when I

wrote it it was really just something that was a bucket list thing I always want to do. I'm working on another book that is more nonfiction, more novel style. And I was getting played around with the with the literary agent that's working with me on the book and I just happen to sell a car dealership his daughter bought a car he had the cosign for reset are talking about it. And it turned out well no this guy's written published 48 books. So I started talking to him. He was wanting to come up with another book. He goes and learn how to do it yourself. Because that's the best way to do it. So this is a practice. This is like a book out of passion out of learning out of trying to figure things out I've always wanted to. So this was my first book. And I thought my mom and dad would be the only one they bought it. Maybe a few people here in the area. Boost my ego a little bit celebrate. A lot of car dealerships are buying it. A lot of car dealerships are vying for their managers, while their reviews are from executives and auto dealer groups, but also a lot of reviews right are from all different walks of life school. Teachers, basketball coaches, housewives, I'm still here. I try and contact anybody who has left a review or has contacted us talk through and see how they came about the book. And it's interesting how I was written I wrote about the car business but after I wrote everything pretty much translates into life. You know, you could be a house house, right? You still have everybody has the opportunity to lead. Everybody's leading someone whether you're leading yourself or leaving kids or you're leading a group, a team, a sales team, everybody needs leadership.

The biggest mistakes car dealership managers make

The lessons there's a lot of talk a lot about partners if you've got a good long time you have partnerships with you've been, you've been around the block, a couple of different things. You're going to cigar so I know you've been in the cigar business. You've owned some some entertainment establishments, with a couple of different varieties. Although you've been you've been able to tell tell us this traits are universal. So tell us about about universality and romantic cigar joy, dance club merging

So what I did when I put together the book, I just don't read a lot. In the last year I read. I'm gonna see 60 different books. And those are the books that I actually lean towards I lean towards biographies that we just had read south were actually works with me these often I see these on zoom with a bright as you can see, I'm showing a cigar right and also one of my cigar buddies. So, you know I wrote the book just looking at different lessons I've learned from different leaders you listen to us grant Harry shooting and Teddy Roosevelt, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, and what I noticed was all these rules that could be 500 years old. These lessons translated perfectly into today. And I think as I I am involved with a lot of different auto dealerships, and I come across a lot of different managers. And so some things that are, were successful at myself some things that were lacking. I mean, there's something you can find in that book, anybody could find that that can help them be a better leader or a better manager. So

lesson number one, the first thing I tried to do was something that really stuck out to me, because I had a story about it, which is another way of storing everything into a story but the first thing in the book was to praise in public and criticize in private. And then the second one was kind of a witch witch Act, which he obviously is, is kind of you want that to happen all the time. But the second one was like a coordinator that Jordan had never seen anyone Express which was only have automotive sales training meetings to train into play. And if you're going to have a company Jesus needed to get one at a time. You don't need to come to Jesus meeting with everybody. When you have a big meeting. It's not that

Bringing compassion back into automotive management

and that's one of the biggest failures I've seen over 35 years in the garbage right I don't know your background in inside dealerships, but I mean, that's like the most demotivating demotivating thing to just have a beat up session in a meeting I mean, there's really nothing that asked her you want to be out there. I deserve it. I'm gonna take I'm gonna take accountability for but let's do it privately.

Background I've been working with dealerships for 3040 years in selling automotive radio advertising, marketing and training. My experience with the meetings is exactly that. I'll be in for a sales training meeting. And they'll spend 30 minutes doing everybody a new one. And then Oh yeah. Here's Terry. He takes my house. Great happy customers who use social media. For where do you go with that?

So a lot of it again applies to everything. And one thing that I really liked, you know, I've been around the car business a long time. You're the only manager in the car dealership. core principle in the dealership that I've ever really say hey, groceries are taken that make you stress the the mental balance or well being and the physical and emotional balance and several years. Again,

let's face it, our businesses abroad we feel it's the most important thing, the most important time everything at the end of the day really doesn't mean that you don't have your mind fresh and your mindset right and you feel good about it. Just like in any business. You just have to be positive. It comes down to positivity and feel good about what we do and in the car business for some reason. We centralize it and compartment can talk again. And we think it's it's us, but it's really everybody. So, you know, I do say it's really important because we're there long hours. We're with people that if you weren't working together, chances are we wouldn't be friends we wouldn't be together. We're eating together. Were walking together were going to battle for lack of a better word together and you need to get away. You need to have your physical well being you need to work those hours and as I get older, I feel like you are more you have to be in shape. You have to eat right you have to get your rest time you have to have your your little pocket and you know what after, and I'm gonna get a little wordy. Now what I've noticed is post COVID In fact, I did a post about at least and they were post COVID When it first ended. It was like a year of compassion. I call it people were grateful people who are compassionate towards others. This year has become the year of life acity and it's become even more entitled and people are more and more aggressive and more and more aggressive. So you need that break time you need to get away. That also drives you crazy

Automotive management lessons from the Dallas Cowboys

and it will bring up COVID which was you talked we talked a couple of rules about managing change and one of my favorite sayings, Mike Tyson, you know, everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the mouth. And you said Don't Don't don't build such plans. Because you don't know what you don't know. And there's something coming around the corner that you don't know about in the car business or something new coming around the corner every day every day. It seems like for the last who knows how long that's been on the ground. How is the change? Looking at the dealerships now and kind of what do you see? How do you have to keep everybody on their toes? Well, we bring

serve. So let me back up a little when I wrote this book. I was still director for the dealerships right now. I'm going to sales position to dealerships. I've been there we started the dealerships in 1989. In fact, congratulations to Roy green mannequins in Washington just bought he's kind of retired his sons are taken over and they just opened another dealership today as part of your ship. I'm not retired but kind of retired I only deal with my customers. And I just took a step back from driving the dealership to dealership to dealership the dealership and Anytime he's been trying to write up time to focus on my health, income and work on my car, business, insurance business and so expensive that I'm not a manager anymore. Greg's in management. I see him there. I'm strictly a salesperson. I'm really a consigliere now. So everybody seems to come to me and say how to have this. What do we do with this where they become the school psychologist service?

Well, you can do that because of what you talked about in the book is that you never stopped prospecting. You never stopped even as the boss building your own network and creating your own web, right?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Listen at the end. Of The Day. We're all salespeople. You know, I it was a great conversation. I know it's probably 25 Maybe 30 years ago, I saw an interview with Jerry Jones from the Dallas Cowboys. Not a fan of the Cowboys by any stretch of the imagination. Go Giants Go Giants, no offense to the fight. But Jerry Jones is a dynamic man and he told the story of how he knew about the Cowboys. 10 years before he bought the Cowboys. He went to take his kids to a football game. I think the interview still on YouTube, but he went to it was a 60 Minutes interview he wants to take his kids to Dallas How was able to pay this credit card to the ticket office. They cut his credit cards and go pay your bills and embarrassments from his kids. He vowed that day to buy the Dallas Cowboy. He's an insurance salesman as well. Now he worked your butt off he ended up buying the Dallas Cowboys. What was it that stitches thing below it? You're interesting about it is probably the most valuable franchise in in all sports at this point. The guy's a genius. I don't know if you know or not. He also owns the rights that we sweep in every NFL stadium. He is he's in charge. He has a piece of every suite and every stadium in the United States. I did the interview at develop supervisors. But anyway, here's what happens if you lose it all tomorrow. And he said, You know what, I've got my smile. I've got my ability to sell and I'll grab my briefcase. I'll go back on the road and sort of selling again. So in a roundabout way. It's kind of what I did. I can always sell no matter what you take away from me I'll always have that ability that's a skill and I only have a skill I practice it and I can more managers in the car business need to do that. Just as times change and things change. You have to be able to sell you have to be able to roll up your sleeves, you have to be able to have a conversation. It's easy to survive with us and say go tell us at a hotel, a customer list or call us through this but can you do it?

Well, and I think I think that that confidence that you have gone from knowing what your abilities are. I think that's the that's the ugly underbelly of something that's in the car business, the lack that of it. And that's the hustle culture that everybody's got to work available. And it's 60 hours and you got to you got to call on your people today. And everyone said Do you know just the entire over the top Beaudry is because everyone wants to right now and I'm not sure they're confident that they can get it in the futures and Andy right now,

again, that's that's another thing for life. Develop patients you know, you just if you know, I'm friendly with Franklin, Indiana, if you're familiar with him, I'll interview Frank. Yeah. Okay. So, again, over time, he was patient. He built his business over time he built his business over time he kept really, instead of being transactional, which our business is facing is a very transactional business, especially now. That we code the times where we charge over sticker for cars and things like that. It all goes back to relationships when things change, and you can't be transactional anymore. A lot of dealers I feel that when we left our show, what do we do now? We destroyed all our relationships. And that's one thing I'm very proud of, and we're gonna try to hold on to relationships.

Well, that's it because eventually it's gonna, it's gonna come down to if it's just a transaction, there's gonna be a robot that can do the transaction and you ain't needed for that. But if you if you want to do it, if you if you're a person who wants to be in the business, you better connect with some people. Absolutely. So let's talk about the people. A big lump in his in that book specifically was is the onboarding and hiring and training of people in the car business or lack thereof. Right? And then and then the the kind of convoluted way that we get better at everything. Everything kind of just rolls up here. So tell us how that's going on. And how we go again,

just I look at sports, you know, just because you're a great player doesn't make you a manager and you could be very average player but your coach you know, I think in the car business, what we do is look at who are leaders. And it doesn't necessarily have to be a guy that was a 20 car salesman, the car business as long as I can remember Yeah, back in the 60s said I was made in the father was and it was always the guys that got promoted. Were your best salespeople. So you think your best salespeople off the floor, make the managers and maybe they weren't. They weren't comfortable leaders. They didn't hold their leadership skills. They as far as I'm concerned, a great salesperson, a really great salesperson, for lack of a better term and selfish they worried about themselves that did it ever relationships that get it building building rapport and bringing people into CNN? Well, how do you do how does that translate into leading a team so it comes back to training just trained, trained, you're just like, again, go back to the sports analogy. You know, the car business, what we do is we take somebody and we throw them out of gametime, everyday thing when I go handle that customer baptism by fire and go handle that customer. Oh, this is what you did wrong. This is what you did wrong and this is what you did wrong ground but we have all this time to practice you have all day to practice you should be practicing, practicing practicing because when you're following a customer that game plan, I don't want you to practice on my customers. Executing

Yeah, that's it. That's everything. We're practicing our customers and you talked a lot about about managing the downtime because you do have some downtime in the dealership where you could be doing doing training or doing one on ones or working on rejections. And there's plenty of time in the dealership, you know, to do the prospecting and to do the stuff instead of being bringing people in instead of instead of just sitting there arguing about arguing and fighting in water. Well,

I have heard a quote for tonight because

she's me Yeah. Oh, I got my only dialogue. Working not

about the hours you put in it's about what you put in those hours. Yeah. That was Gary Vaynerchuk quote.

Oh, you know, I've been I've been trying for years here's my thing we all want so bad to not mine very manager. He's just you know, he's he's always got something to say. And he's always bounded up and I'm really deep in our heart want to dislike Gary Vaynerchuk but he keeps saying the smartest stuff. You know

what, if you really dig in that bravado that comes across, it's just it's from New Jersey. From New Jersey, so he crosses curves and he's loud. He's got bravado and really a humble humble we are in 2018 before Gary got to where he is now. I would follow him very for years and I actually my bar is reached by liquor from him so he knew where we did a marketing meeting with we paid him at the time it was $20,000 we had two hours and we just had a manager session where we just sat really with everything over marketing ideas. And the guy is everything he said he is he says he's a super humble but he's super passionate and the passion comes across in bravado and I love the

theories. of our age, and he's a big lever right now that always stick to your guns. That's one of the things that empowered me all these 50 year old sitting around thinking that they're about done. Maybe it's time to just get started.

I don't know Terry worry about that. Yeah,

I'm not even close to it. That was rubbish. Yeah, we got a little time here. Greg, do you have something you want to answer? You know,

enjoying the conversation. It's very good input. And I'm agreement so everything you guys are saying I think there's, you know, some of the stuff we have to deal with the basics, but we also have to realize the times have changed and we have to change with the times. So we have to be acclimated to what's going on in our environment. And sometimes I think some of the old heads, they don't, they don't have the ability to get acclimated. And some of the new people don't have the ability to get to the basics. So I think there just needs to be a collaboration of the two are the basics and acclamation especially in this business and I guess for any business because every business is changing because the atmosphere in retail changes daily. We used to teach stuff you know generationally in this business. And now we have to teach stuff almost weekly, daily, monthly, because things change so quickly. And Kobe and I talked about that an awful lot. We talked about how we did things in the past and what we can take from that, and ultimately make it useful for today without really being that old pet for lack of better terms. But enough, I'll just sit back and watch it. I'm enjoying it. Thank you.

Thank you. Let's let's let's let's jump in the Wayback Machine and business in the late 80s Writing go run radio ads, the first radio ad or Pontiac store, they started selling cars about that same what did we know then? We don't know that.

That's a great question.

You have an answer for them. Um, I do actually I actually I think what we knew that we did was was value ever network because every store ever walked in in. The leading salespeople had a big Greek recipe box on their desk full of index cards with it with their people who moved to Florida, Mississippi. Put a grandma's recipe card box in great condition. Yeah. Yeah. So that I think that's what those people were. They were pretty sure from that card that the birthday that when they were encouraging they think they knew where they were the world. I'm not sure if

I'm so I again to jump to another Gary Vaynerchuk is Gary Vee is says yesterday's work ethic with today's technology. So, you know if you took that that you know work ethic you have filling out a Rolodex, fill filling out that little composition book or recipe book. And now we have all the power exactly right here. We have everything known to mankind over the last 10,000 years like I'm talking to my phone and get you the answer.

He is the sum the sum the sum of all human knowledge exists in the palm of their hands, in addition to 24 hour access to every single customer on their phone, seven hours a day doing this and you can be who

I really is probably the greatest time for any business but especially in the car business because here's an opportunity to stay connected. Because there's all these companies coming out there trying to collaborate on robotized the car business and they said the younger generation doesn't want that experience but you know what the human touch will never ever ever go like that sponsoring that a little league team. You know, seeing the same people out in town, going to church going whatever your religious faith, synagogue, or mosque whatever your religion is, of being connected to people. That's what's going to help you survive in the car business transaction trend transactions are exactly when they are transactions and you don't build loyalty by doing transactions.

The community because you're good. Again, get far enough available on Amazon. You 100 lessons and 100 of the greatest leadership lessons and they're not all about the partnership. They all are business businesses that they apply to a lot of different things. But you part of what you're writing is you're doing it in conjunction with the community raising phones where someone dare

tell you and that's a great that's a passion of mine. I'm involved with quite a few charities on board of a few different charities but I love the Atlantic City boys and girls club. Atlantic City has like a 90% poverty rate. These kids really don't stand a chance. So they have places like the Boys and Girls Club to go where they're taught life's lessons. They're taught how to survive and survival skills. very good friend of mine and she ends up watching this as a chef Pam green. She's kind of retired. She's the executive first executive chef in a casino in the world. And she's kind of sandwiched in her 70s Now, but she's there every day teaching these kids ancient survival skills, how to save sir how to how to cook, how to survive and the new things. And you know, when I started doing this book and writing this book, I see you know, what are these kids that are future leaders? You know, what better than they were? I wasn't doing the box for profit. I said I was really doing this before for practice for another project that I'm working on. And then it came out I said, You know what, let's delete the money shot 50% of the profits of net proceeds and during through the ranks and Boys and Girls Club. So it's a really good cause.

Yeah, and I think one thing is you got the kids and you got your businesses. The car business is just just dripping with opportunity for the for these 78 year old kids coming out of school. Tell tell him tell him tell him why they're stupid.

This there's many reasons you can provide yourself with number one you can make executive level you know Doctor lawyer things like that with no education I look at leads that are getting out of school you know, my son not would you know as a sophomore in college is on a full ride so I'm not gonna have to worry about him. But I look at these kids going from major major Tech graduates from college when you got in the car business where you're at, you have a hands on knowledge and four years later, you know if you follow a system if you follow and build relationships starting at where you're at, right out of school, and you're 22 you're not chasing ops around a lot. You're dealing with people that are coming back, they're leasing, they're coming back to see you and you're making 100 162 or $2,000 as a 22 year old kid. When your friends are just graduated college and make 200,000 in debt and you're taking jobs for 50,000 a year for the most part. So the car business is a huge opportunity. I just wish more people would see that.

It was amazing.

Instead of a job that hey, it's just something I'm going to do because I don't like waiting tables. And that's it which is what we're getting now.

I talked to so many people who you know, I've talked to people making hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of dollars a year and I got into the car business. You know waiting tables this I will do this. Between gigs. We listen to someone taxes. Yours probably I appreciate you my friend. Thank you so much. I'll give you the last word. What's the what's the last thing people need to know?

Get fired up on Amazon or you can contact me through Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Tik Tok, everywhere, asked me questions, challenge me on anything. Have a conversation. Like I said Build a relationship and buy my book. It's cheap. It's $9.95 remember half the profits go to the boys and girls. Folks who do it. Yeah, that's a good thing that you're buying. It's a great cause. There's no bullshit in this book. It's straight to the point. It's small for reasons you stick it in your pocket or refer to it. I did that for a very particular reason because I didn't want to just throw a bunch of words together audio books out word after word after I made it real quick and to the point as possible, no fluff. And instead, I go back and read and I know I'm pretty smart. Myself. Yeah. But you know keep it if you're if you buy the book and you don't like it, contact me. I'll be more than happy to give me a call back. I'm not sure that you'll take something away from

your money's worth out. It is not not a good view of the $9 anyone said you

are just saying I should raise my prices.

I'm telling you prices are fine, and there's no problem.

There. I appreciate it. Sorry, we didn't hook up last week. I'm sure we would have had a much bigger audience. Hopefully this goes out and goes viral and people want to have me back and we can do something with this as well.

I'm willing to talk anytime so you might want to give me a call. I appreciate you showing up and everybody do well. I have not met you yet because I wanted I wanted to make sure we had this face to face acquisition so I understand the depth and complexity. Of yada yada. We're gonna get you on.

It's time for Nashville and

I got some hot chicken for you.

I appreciate

you next time. Evening. Evening. Is Right Evening Right

Transcribed by https://otter.ai