Give and Give: Training Aspiring Leaders to Help Their Teams Win (with David Rogers)

[Music] Welcome to the Nolan Podcast, I'm National Oil and Loot Nunes Editor Tom Valentino. Recently I spoke with David Rogers, co-founder of Auto Profit Masters in Shop 4D for an upcoming feature on the topic of developing future shop managers. Our conversation ended up extending well beyond what was planned and David shared a lot more insights that we could fit into the article. So for today's episode, we're going to share some portions of that interview. Here, David will tell us how his military background and time spent in the fine-dining industry helped to shape his outlook on leadership and the automotive fast maintenance sector. And it will also offer up some management best practices and some lessons that he's learned throughout his career. Let's hear from David Rogers. [Music] You mentioned you're in Kentucky now, tell me a little bit about your background in the industry, both as a shop owner as well as what you're dealing with leadership training. Sure, so Tom, I got an industry kind of accidentally, I guess. We adopted a child and I was running fine hotels and private fine dining clubs and private clubs and things of that nature. So it was a little bit of a culture shock, but I needed some place to be where I could be home on the weekends and at nights. And I got involved and started service advising. And I was shocked. I walked out, probably day three, I went to the owner and said, "You know, I don't know this for me. I'm not accustomed to people yelling at me. I'm not accustomed to people viewing me as an adversary. And I don't know why you guys put up with all this chaos. This is insane. I'm not sure this for me." And I was right-o'-leave. And he looked at me and he's like, "Man, we'll come here and sit down for a minute and teach me about this." And I said, "What do you mean?" And he said, "Well, this is just how it's been. This is how the industry is." He said, "I grew up in this industry since I was 17. I've owned this shop for 28 years. This is just the way it works." So that's a shame, man. You guys deserve better than this. You're a good man. I can tell you're honest. I know you're trying to do right by these people, but they don't realize that because the way things are being handled. And that was kind of the beginning of something that I didn't know that I was about to get in the middle of. And that was taking a look at the experience, right? Yeah. And not just the experience of the customer because when you think about the customer experience, okay, that stems from the experience of the employee, right? You can force behavior. You know, I grew up in a military background military school military academy, all that sort of thing. I grew up understanding what it was like to look across the room and understand who was in charge because of the brass on their shoulder, okay, or the stripes. And it was really, really clear in that world who was in control and why and what was up. And you didn't even get a question not anyway. You just didn't what you were told, but in the civilian world is a very different thing and going into fine dining and things that made total sense to me because everyone just very respectful, very polite on the going both ways, going both ways. But you loved it. You wanted to be in those finest places because you got to eat the finest foods, you got to travel, you got to drink the finest wine, you got to serve the kindest, wealthiest people and all sorts of of neat opportunities that a young person like myself wouldn't have, but they're coming into this industry and seeing that, you know, everybody viewed it when I told people that I was in auto care now, I literally had one cat put his hands up at a dinner party one night and back up from you know, I understand I was a meter D. I mean, these people walking up to me and being very happy to get sucked to me and shake my hand to get my best table. And now all of a sudden people are looking at me like I'm a bank robber. And I'm like, man, I don't that's weird. I didn't have any idea. You know, I mean, I guess I never really thought about it. So combining that kind of experience socially with my experience inside the shop, it all just seemed to me that it just was a mess and I didn't want to be in it. But the truth is, my friend, looking at what my now partner former employer had going on as he was his, his sins worked that he was trying to take advantage of people or anything. But like so many people, he'd been taught that you hire people for as little as you can pay him. And that you try to please everybody and be all things to all people, you know, when you're single operator trying to do the cheapest job in town, isn't going to hurt. And that's probably make you broke. Okay. So he didn't understand some of those things that are that are just some business and financial concepts that go right along with branding and marketing and go right along with messaging and then get right back into employee behavior. Do you like how it's trying to all that together real quick? Because it's all tied together, Tom. And so what I realized was that a lot of the employees, you know, starting out being hired for as little as you could get him to come in the door for back then you put an ad out for a tech and we'd have 70 80 resumes over a month. It was crazy. This is before fuel injection, my friend. And as fuel injection came in that thinned out a little bit. We still got lots of resumes. A lot different than today. But what we found was it doesn't matter so much, but what happens is when you bring people in on the idea that their worth is little to you as possible. You've started out the entire relationship at a huge deficit. Then we move into the whole let's conduct ourselves in a in a manner that's sometimes to the employees. Obviously not correct either obviously not profitable. And I know you don't think about the fact that you've got some young folks may be working for you over there that are changing oil and perhaps they're. You know just out of high school and stuff or mixed in high school and age, but you look at that group and you don't think that those young kids are sizing you up as an operator. But you know what youth does not equal stupidity. And young people, old people, middle-aged people, we all need to survive and we all have bills to pay and we all have futures and lots of those young folks are hoping to have a family in a career. So if I start out treating them like they're not very valuable and then they come in and witness me running all over the place not doing a lot of stupid things and not caring about things. And I'm not saying Mr. Keller was doing everything wrong, but in multiple shops now after having been in thousands of them as a coach and a consultant and a trainer, I can tell you that those folks on the front line know if you're not a good manager, a good leader, they know if you don't pay attention to the things that are going to add up to a win. And they know if you don't really care if they win. And so one of the most important things I can tell you, my friend, is for us, it's always about coming in and understanding a concept I've been sharing with people for a few years now called the management triangle. And if we each no matter what our position is inside the business, understand that at any given moment, we are making management decisions, whether you are a porter, a shop janitor, a loob tech in the very beginning of your career or someone who's managing a quick loop operation with multiple tax and base and lots going on or even a full service center with a quick loop in it. You are making management decisions multiple times a day. You have to decide exactly how to approach lots of situations. And if we all understand that, and that's why sometimes the walls come fallen down or somebody comes and barks at us and we're like, well, what in the heck, I was just trying to do my job. Well, here's the way it works. It's so much easier. There are three sides to the triangle. There's customers. There's the employees, my fellow employees. And then there's the company, including ownership and the company itself, the entity. If I understand those three sides are all critical to my survival and my future as an employee or as manager or as an owner, it doesn't matter. The rules are same for everybody. And I got some bad news for owners who want to be high mighty. Your ego is in a way and you think you're better or more important to those people that are working for you. You are a story mistake of my friend. The fact of the matter is is that every side of that triangle must be equally as strong, equally as supported and equally as protected throughout every transaction. If we approach it that way, it's really easy to know. know what for making a good decision, whether that's a small decision about whether or not to open that door for that lady right there when I'm my hands are full, I have to set some stuff down. Or whether I should go ahead and complete the rest of that inspection, even though it's Friday at 442 and my girlfriend's out for waiting. And we've all been there. I'm no better new. I've been in a hurry too. But here's the point. If I am just take that extra few minutes and complete my job, my role at this moment and whatever position I'm in, I might be the owner but I might be changing all of the day. It doesn't matter. My job, whatever I'm going to undertake. If I understand that all three sides of that triangle must be honored, protected and come out of that healthy. If I short one of those sides, if I take from one to make the other one happier or the other two work, it's going to implode on me. You see an equal, an equal lateral triangle is one of the strongest structures in construction. Why? Because all three sides are equal. So as an owner, if I'm in there saying, gee, what can I take from my business this week? I need to squeeze my employees and I need to squeeze my customers because I'm not making enough money. And you lose. Now both parties are not interested you're going to have less of both. All in a minute, right? We can do better. All right, so where we start to look, my friend, is first of all, we say let's flip the cart back over and look at the wheels before we put a bunch of weight in it. Okay? So if the wheels are not bolted on carefully, if we don't have good bearings in there, we're allowed to spill the load when it's heaviest. So what I like to share with you is the idea that those people at Workforce, my job is not to fix cars and make money. That's a result. My job is to develop people and help and show them how to win. Help them develop a passion for helping others for solving problems. Some of them want to fix puzzles. Some of them want to make it go faster or be more before some of them are just really, really deeply that human beings that want to help families. Each one of your people has a reason for why they're doing what they do every day. And you need to find out why. And if you get in there and figure out what that reason is and you construct your processes and your business model around helping those people win, I assure you that what you'll experience from them will be a heck of a lot more than somebody that comes in and takes a half baked wipe at filling out a checklist today. I assure you what you'll experience, brother, and in our own shop, I have multiple employees that started out with me over 20 years ago. Some of them were teenager with rosy little faces that didn't even have a little piece of peach fuzz yet to brag about. And some of them were 30 years old or 40 years old or now in retirement time. And brother, that's the thing I'm the most proud of. And don't think they're there because I'm easy going. The standards in our shop exceed those of almost anywhere I've seen. We're not the hardest place to work or the best shop you'll ever see, but I'll tell you something, they're pretty darn good. And they compare and they don't just care about making me happy, they're not afraid of me. Now, any more than they're afraid of a butterfly, these guys are competent. They believe in themselves. We've taught them that they're merit. They're desired to help and protect each other as well as the customer while ensuring that the business stays healthy and is profitable. It's not a bad thing to profit and it's not something that is an adversarial position against the employee winning. That's the whole stink and math problem that nobody taught us business owners early on, my friend. See, I was taught the same way Terry was, is it, you know, it's kind of give and take, give and take, but that's not correct. It's given give. It's let me help you see how to win. Let me explain my picture of a tomfife can. It feels like it does me one more minute of rambling here. In my mind, when your customer comes in the front and you start out asking them questions about their vehicle and their maintenance and what they're accustomed to doing and where it's at and you begin to share with them what the recommendations are in the vehicle and just kind of teach them. Not selling. It's not about selling guys. Everyone out there telling you, "add on this, sell that." It's out in left field. If you want a bigger average or parrorder, if you want to see that ticket go up, stop trying to be a salesman. When you're in that role, you're wrestling for a wallet that nobody wants to give you. Stop that. Educate them. Teach them the truth. Man, if you knew Tom, when you were 16 and first starting to get vehicles, if you knew what you know today about how to take care of it, would you have treated any of your vehicles differently, sir? Sure. I sure would. I particularly remember one trans am. It was very important to me to show this cute little girl just how fast it went after work. And I started smelling it before it went. When that rod went, now things filled up with smoke, I'll just let you know that her daddy had to come pick her up and I did not get to ever take her anywhere again. And that was all over stupidity and I knew I needed to get it in and get some work done before I did anything hard, but I was so needing to be such cool guys. Anyway, brother, here's one I'm here to tell you the truth is as maintenance works, planning maintenance works, education begins a process with the customer where we are partnering with them. And teach and arm employees how to become great educators with the customers and great caretakers by showing you the benefit and giving you that evidence and then helping you make the right decisions for your family without any pressure. They stop wrestling with the wallet and it quits being about the wallet. Now it's about what kind of relationship do I want to have with my vehicle. And if I'm in the same time I'm teaching my employee to do that, I'm helping my employee understand what kind of relationship were they like to have with the rest of the team with the business entity itself and with the customer. Because if they come down this path with me and they look at the process as trying to partner with my neighborhood to help them get the most miles out of every dollar that they're forced to spend on their vehicle. And learning that a few extra dollars preventatively speaking will prevent a whole lot of discomfort and a whole lot of expense on the unexpected side of things when the car's heaviest. You got the kids in it and you're trying to get to school. All those kind of things that's usually when it happens to my family, I don't know about yours. But as a result by helping them understand that, making better decisions, I'm protecting them. I'm protecting my time of my team, my technicians, because if I bring the car in and just do an oil change and don't educate the customer and give them the opportunity to take as good a care as they want to from an informed position, then if I'm doing that, I'm ensuring the relationship with them, I'm also going to see if I'm giving them those opportunities. I'm going to see that vehicle have more than one service, which makes the technicians time more worthwhile. It makes the shops engagement with them more worthwhile. It spreads the cost of the acquisition of the customer, of the training of the team, of purchasing the equipment. It spreads it a lot faster in a lot shorter time period, what makes us all more healthy. Now, at the same time, my employees are making more money because I'm properly incentivizing them. I'm giving them an opportunity to share in helping the customers and the business be more secure. You know the customer is better off if the maintenance done. You know the business is better off if the customer knows about the maintenance and can make that choice from an informed position and feel good about the choice they made. They don't make that from tricky sales tricks. They make that from a good education. So for the employees, my friend, this then brings them to a position where they feel something. They don't get to feel in a lot of different kinds of jobs, whether it's automotive or otherwise, the ethical basis of this approach. gives you an incredibly great feeling about what you're doing every day. And now I'm not being asked to go in and pound people for their wallet. So not being asked to squeeze little old ladies that can afford it. I'm going in and helping these people prepare for whatever situations that I've learned that they might encounter with their vehicles under their normal use. And I'm going to help make good decisions. As a result, they trust me more. They trust the shop more. They do more business with us and I get a win. And now instead of management having to run around and try to manage behavior and babysit, we're focused on helping these people figure out what they want to do. And in many, many of my client situations, that's learning how to manage the whole shop and helping them open new locations. Once you put this into play, it's really hard to keep it to one. Alright, as a reminder, if you enjoyed today's episode of the Nolan Podcast, we invite you to subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast listening platform. While you're there, leave us a five star review. All past episodes of our show are also available on our website, Nolan.net. That'll do it for today. I'm Nashville Oil and Loop News Editor Tom Valentino. We'll catch you next time on the Nolan Podcast. The Nolan Podcast is produced by Endeavor Business Media, the division of Endeavor B2B.