Changing The Industry Podcast

Cecil Bullard [00:00:02]:
Welcome to WKRP in Cincinnati.

Lucas Underwood [00:00:04]:
That's right. That's right. Excuse me.

David Roman [00:00:10]:
That's gonna be my key, my cue.

Lucas Underwood [00:00:15]:
Okay, so, Cecil, everybody knows you, Michael. I think most people know you. We're sitting here talking about what differentiates the Institute. We're talking about our businesses, how David sucks and I'm great. It's not exactly true, is it? I think we must suck at this point.

Cecil Bullard [00:00:34]:
I think you're taking us off to the side already and I think we want to stay more in the middle. Right, right.

Lucas Underwood [00:00:40]:
No, I am. David started a new business. It's a medical device and additive company. He says it's going to be way better than auto repair.

David Roman [00:00:55]:
Anyway. Don't tell Cecil that. You can yell at me.

Lucas Underwood [00:01:00]:
That's what he's been doing all day, is he's like over here looking up all of these drugs he's going to sell. Like a legal drug dealer.

David Roman [00:01:06]:
No, no, no. I got to go on a 30 day cut. And I'm just looking at like ancillaries that I'm going to be adding to my protocol, that's all.

Lucas Underwood [00:01:15]:
Okay. So yesterday.

Cecil Bullard [00:01:19]:
For most of the people that are going to be listening, they have to live in the automotive world and make their living in the automotive world and be successful in the automotive world. So.

Lucas Underwood [00:01:29]:
Well, here's the thing.

Cecil Bullard [00:01:30]:
For those of us that are not going to go and sell drugs or additives or whatever, then let's talk about.

Lucas Underwood [00:01:40]:
David has a sugar mama. Okay? He's got it figured out. She pays the bills. You know, I have shared a lot about leadership intensive after I went because it was very impactful for me. It was very impactful for Chris.

David Roman [00:01:55]:
You must have used two or three big words because he's like, I don't understand this. And then that was the end of that.

Lucas Underwood [00:02:04]:
It's okay.

David Roman [00:02:05]:
Sorry. So you gotta, like, step down. The vocabulary. Whatever word it is that you threw.

Lucas Underwood [00:02:13]:
Out there, gotta draw it out with.

Cecil Bullard [00:02:15]:
Like no more than two syllables.

Michael Smith [00:02:16]:
Yeah.

David Roman [00:02:17]:
Keep it to two syllables. The minute you threw some kind of concept or some word out there, he's.

Lucas Underwood [00:02:22]:
Like, Dory came in yesterday and she said, David said, can you analyze Lucas? And she started to say something and by the end of it, I think she realized that who needed to be analyzed was far beyond being analyzed. At this point. At this point, there's nothing we can do about it. So we, we've, you know, I'm coaching with you. Y. David is coaching with you? Yeah, we're both working with you.

Cecil Bullard [00:02:47]:
He's actually coachable. So this is the amazing part.

David Roman [00:02:51]:
You know what, Cecil? I'm going to throw this there. I'm not saying. Saying that because it's. It's you. The reason why I completely stayed away from coaching for so long is that I just could not see myself listening to and abiding by most people. And it's not like I didn't respect them. Like, I. There's a lot of people in the industry that I respect, and I appreciate them.

David Roman [00:03:17]:
I respect their. Their knowledge and their intelligence and stuff like that. I don't know. It's different with you. I'm just telling you, it's different with you. I don't, like, I sort of don't want to disappoint you. It's very weird for. It's a weird dynamic for me because normally, like, I don't care.

David Roman [00:03:34]:
Like, I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do. And even when I was coaching with other companies, I kind of just did whatever the hell I wanted to and I would take them into account, but I'm like, you didn't give me enough information. And I would go, like, I would go digging down some rabbit hole to try to find some solution that I felt like, well, based on what they told me, there's more out there. I'm gonna keep digging until I find the answer, and then I'm gonna try to implement. And so I would. Eventually, I would got to the point where I'm like, they're not really helping me.

Lucas Underwood [00:04:06]:
Yeah.

David Roman [00:04:07]:
Like, I'm finding the solutions myself. And this is worth not. It's entirely worthless. It's just.

Lucas Underwood [00:04:13]:
And so it comes off as arrogant when you say that. It's not arrogance. It's like, hey, did that sound arrogant?

David Roman [00:04:19]:
I wasn't trying to be arrogant.

Cecil Bullard [00:04:20]:
Well, I don't think that's what Lucas meant in that situation.

Lucas Underwood [00:04:24]:
Almost sound that way. It's just that, like, you get to that point that you've learned and, like, you feel like you're in a stalemate. You know what I'm saying? Like, I've learned and I've learned and I've learned. You've taught me all these things, and the numbers are where they're supposed to be. And now it's like, we're on cruise control. I feel like I'm paying for cruise control. Right. I feel like I'm not driving, I'm not pushing.

David Roman [00:04:43]:
I'm not in cruise control. That's not at all. But I do, like, cruise cycles. Well, yeah, but I go through cycles of, like, everything's great and then, oh, everything's terrible and everything's great and everything's terrible and just that kind of thing. But it's not even that. It's when there's a problem, I tend to like, I can buckle down, I can put my head down. I'm going to find the solution. We're going to implement some whatever and we're going to fix this.

David Roman [00:05:09]:
I know I can fix this. There's very little that I encounter and that I don't feel that I can fix. Yeah, okay. But when Cecil sits down and, you know, a lot of times you're not giving me information that I don't already know, but it's more like, hey, let's, let's not focus on that. Let's focus on this. Put your head down towards this direction.

Lucas Underwood [00:05:37]:
Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:05:37]:
And then that accountability.

David Roman [00:05:39]:
Yeah, yeah. It's a. And then whatever it is you're telling me to do, it's like, I really don't want to get on this phone call and tell Cecil I didn't do what you told me to do. And so the conversation with Juan is like, hey, this is what me and Cecil talked about. I got a call with him in a couple of weeks. Let's make sure we get this done. And then that's it. And then he's like, okay, all right, well, let's make this happen.

David Roman [00:06:02]:
And then that, that's sort of like, which I'm just telling you, like, I don't know. I don't know that I could sit with anybody and have the same dynamic. It's very weird. I'm just telling you, it's very weird.

Michael Smith [00:06:12]:
For me, I've seen him do two things that I see stand out, and one of them is he pushes his clients.

Cecil Bullard [00:06:18]:
Yeah, yeah.

Michael Smith [00:06:19]:
It's not okay to stay stuck. Right. And I'm not saying you're stuck. I'm just saying it's like, so where are you going to go next? Where are you going to go next? Yeah, it's this natural forward moving pressure on it.

David Roman [00:06:28]:
Sure.

Lucas Underwood [00:06:28]:
Right.

Michael Smith [00:06:28]:
Not blowing. The second thing is he actually cares.

David Roman [00:06:31]:
Yeah, for sure.

Cecil Bullard [00:06:32]:
Actually cares. I think too, that you have to be challenged and you can't be challenged by just anybody. So it depends on, you know, there are. There. I don't know. I don't have any magic. I learned what I learned from somebody else, but I've been doing it very, very long. And I think when I talk to David, as opposed to Lucas, I'm having two different conversations.

Cecil Bullard [00:07:00]:
We may even be talking about the same thing.

Lucas Underwood [00:07:02]:
But it's very.

Cecil Bullard [00:07:02]:
But I'm having two different conversations because, you know, I just. I love what I do. I mean, I love to have those conversations. And I really do enjoy the fact that probably most of my clients, they don't want to, quote, unquote, disappoint me because I am saying, okay, we're going to do these three things, and I'm going to talk to you about this in two weeks. And then in two weeks, it's going to be, okay, what did we do and what were the results? And. Okay, oh, we got great results. Okay, now we have two, three more things to do. Right.

Cecil Bullard [00:07:33]:
And I. For your comment just a minute ago, I have a coach. I have a coach. Right, Right. Michael has a coach. I have mentors in my life, people that I listen to. I constantly look for people that know more than I do in areas. And whatever it costs, I've never been disappointed in the return.

Lucas Underwood [00:07:58]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:07:59]:
Okay. And if I did have a. A coach that wasn't.

Lucas Underwood [00:08:02]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:08:03]:
I didn't keep them long.

Lucas Underwood [00:08:04]:
Right.

Cecil Bullard [00:08:05]:
Okay. And there are point. I think there are points in time where you look at, like, whoever's coaching you. So right now we've got people coaching with, I don't know, there's five or six companies that you and I could name, maybe seven or eight.

Lucas Underwood [00:08:19]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:08:20]:
And then there's a bunch of small coaches that are like, they've got singular kind of deal or whatever.

Lucas Underwood [00:08:25]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:08:26]:
And. And if you're there and they're helping your business and you're happy with that, then stay there and get everything you can get. Right. But if you're at a point where you're like, okay, I'm not sure that this is going anywhere, I feel stagnant. First of all, let them know that you feel stagnant. And then if they can't make whatever that adjustment is, then you need to go find someone that can take you to. That can take you to whatever the next levels are.

Lucas Underwood [00:08:57]:
I think that for me, I tend to get myself into a situation where I don't feel like I can see a pathway forward. Like, I really want to be successful and I really want to get the shop where it needs to be, and I really want to do the things. And when I was in the three bays, like, I had it on cruise control to a degree, and I could, like, make it do what it needed to do.

Cecil Bullard [00:09:20]:
It was simple.

Lucas Underwood [00:09:21]:
And then we went to ten bays, and it's a very, very different monster. And then I wanted to bring in a manager. Well, when I went to Leadership Intensive. I real, like, hey, I don't have the skills that I need to be able to do this at the level that I want to do it at, right? Like, I'm not afraid to say that. Like, I don't. I don't know everything I need to know to be able to run this shop, but I can't find that pathway forward.

Cecil Bullard [00:09:43]:
Right?

Lucas Underwood [00:09:43]:
I'm ready to go to that kind of next level. And, you know, one of the things when we started coaching with you that. That I found frustration a little bit with the manager at the time is that that I feel like when that manager came in and he's a fantastic manager, like, and he took a lot away from Leadership Intensive. Like, we're on the plane back and he looks at me and he's just, like, got tears streaming down his face. He's like, dude. He's like, I've spent my entire life and my only goal was the company goal. And he's like, whatever that was, I internalized that and that's what I was going to accomplish. But I realized I've never set a goal for myself, and I've never set a goal for my family, and I've never decided, like, who do I want my children to be and what do I want to pass on to them? So they.

Lucas Underwood [00:10:22]:
And he's like, it's not that I didn't think about those things. It's just like, what I did was get up and go to work. And that was everything about my life. I never really focused on any other aspect of it. I never developed any other aspect of it. And I thought, well, you know, two years ago, three years ago, before I got enamored with building this new shop and put all of my effort into building this new shop, and my mom got sick and all these things, that's what my shop was, right? Like, we focus on developing people and understanding who they were and what they wanted and where they wanted to go. And then life happened, and I lost so much of that, like, vision of, how do we want to do that? And then I had more people. It's like, holy sh.

Lucas Underwood [00:11:00]:
How am I going to do that? Because I can't even do that for myself right now.

Michael Smith [00:11:05]:
This industry is a little quirky this way, too. And I'll say this right, I've been in 60 industry verticals, and this is my last stop. I love this industry. I love the people that are in it. I'll say this. We are all problem solvers who really don't like to ask for help. And we'd like to do it ourselves and if we can't, we get stuck. Then we maybe ask for help and then at some point, maybe it grows to the point where there's a lot in front of us and it's like, maybe a coach can step in and help.

Michael Smith [00:11:36]:
What I see a lot is that there are. I say all the time to my clients, I stood up there in front of the Summit crowd and I said, do not reinvent the wheel.

Lucas Underwood [00:11:45]:
Yeah, right.

Lucas Underwood [00:11:45]:
For sure.

Michael Smith [00:11:46]:
As you get better and bigger and move faster and you add locations and you go high performance and all that, it's like, that's all. Some of it's new territory. That's language that we don't even have in this industry. Right. You get into the psychology of high performance, like a championship team, then you decide to go into multi shop. And it's not multi shop if you do it right, it's becoming a consolidator, right? That's private equity language. That's, you know, so there's, it's like being trilingual by the time you're done. And we're such problem solvers, we even if we can get through the shop part of it, we start to get stuck on the people part.

Michael Smith [00:12:20]:
It's like, I don't know what to do with this. And I spend all my time with these troublesome scenarios with humans and all that. And we're just big advocates for saying, okay, stop, don't learn the hard way. There are peer groups for each of these levels, if you will. And the lessons you're about to learn, guys, they've been learned in 60 other for sure verticals. And the solutions are laying here. And you can get there in a month or you can get there in two years. What do you want to do?

Cecil Bullard [00:12:44]:
So we just, we just had three high powered speakers come in. Right, right.

Lucas Underwood [00:12:49]:
Amazing.

Cecil Bullard [00:12:50]:
And so. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:12:52]:
When you're wise. Bigger than your. Why not?

Cecil Bullard [00:12:54]:
Holy smokes.

Lucas Underwood [00:12:54]:
Right?

Cecil Bullard [00:12:55]:
So. So I'm sitting there listening to all three of them, right? And I'm going, okay, that's not new. Yeah, right.

Lucas Underwood [00:13:04]:
And you hear that all the time.

Cecil Bullard [00:13:06]:
Like Dr. Kriegel yesterday, she's going, these four things, she simplified it. But it's. I learned that when I read the Oz principle, I don't know, 25 years, 30 years ago. And we also, I think in this industry we tend to like really over complicate it. We think it's this huge, unbelievable. Oh my God. When it's really, here's some pretty basic principles that if you follow them and you do them, you're probably going to be successful, right?

Michael Smith [00:13:43]:
Can I say, too, the hardest thing on those three layers I talked about is the running of a good shop. Can I tell you, there's less difficulty in the psychology of high performance. There are fewer moving parts. It's easier to be a championship team and coach than it is to run a good shop. I'm not kidding. Well, and then you add to that the merger and acquisition stuff. That stuff's, I kid you not, even easier. Again, it's just, do you know the language? Do you know the models? Do you know the principles?

Lucas Underwood [00:14:10]:
The first meeting I was ever at that you were in that turned me off a little bit, and I was. I was bothered by the mergers and acquisitions talk. And then you said something, and the more I've listened to you and the more I've actually, because I'm not going to lie, I kind of shut myself down. And I wasn't really listening to you because I was like, oh, he's just trying to get us all to sell our shops. The more I talked to you, the more I realized you were saying something completely different. You were saying, this is the space you're going to be in whether you want to be in this space or not. And I'm not saying sell your shot, but you damn well better be ready to deal with those people, because that's the space you will be in in five years. And so if you don't know how to work with them and you don't know how they're going to work, you're going to be in trouble because they're going to be surrounding you.

Michael Smith [00:14:53]:
It's always been the principle behind our approach to the acquisition component. That third layer is to say, listen, even if you don't want to be a growth engine, which a handful of people will, some people want to grow a little bit, right? If you're going to sell into that system, the best price you're going to get for your company is presenting your company to them in their terms, right? So if they expect to come talk to a shop owner who talks shop, and then they have to kind of analyze what they have. Imagine you have two proposals you can look at, right? Cecil's and mine. Cecil runs a hell of a great shop. I've put together a private equity project. You're the private equity guys. You show up and you look at the two projects and you go, if I buy his, I have to come and add it to mine and turn it into a growable Entity. With me, I have a growable entity.

Lucas Underwood [00:15:42]:
It's already there.

Michael Smith [00:15:43]:
It's already there. And all I have is a single shop. I have a handful of bays. I've optimized this thing. But even in the presentation of it, the way we think about it. And I say to all my clients, I'll stop talking in a minute because I love to get on a roll here. Right. But I say, everybody, it's like at some point if, if you really get this pipeline built, you'll, you'll start to think of yourself not as a shop operator.

Cecil Bullard [00:16:04]:
Right.

Michael Smith [00:16:04]:
But as a private equity investor in your own company.

Lucas Underwood [00:16:08]:
Yeah.

Michael Smith [00:16:08]:
And you happen to fix cars, and that's not a small mindset. Shift.

Cecil Bullard [00:16:12]:
Yeah.

Michael Smith [00:16:13]:
Right.

Cecil Bullard [00:16:13]:
And we have a problem. We have multiple problems in this industry. Okay. And so I guess you could say a lot of what I do, I do through fear. My fears are just different than yours.

Lucas Underwood [00:16:24]:
Right.

Cecil Bullard [00:16:24]:
My fears are not, you know, can I find that good tech? My fear is, are there going to be enough good techs in this industry to support our industry? You know, we have the average age of, I think 58, 59 shop owners. You and I could sit down here, David. We could say, oh, there's this guy, he's 72, he's still running his shop. And by the way, he's not running his shop in a let's get acquired for 5x or 6x way. He's running his shop. And you might get 2x out of. And I'm, I'm testifying in court almost routinely now on values of shops between divorces and partnership disagreements and stuff like that. And these shops are only worth 2x2 and a half x.

Cecil Bullard [00:17:12]:
Yeah. You know, EBITDA earnings. And we're not, we. If we want to, as an industry really progress into the future, we got to be more professional.

Lucas Underwood [00:17:28]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:17:28]:
We have to think about how the world's going to change around us. And we can't be thinking like we're 1970s mechanics anymore. We just can't.

Lucas Underwood [00:17:39]:
Well, you know, you said something to me when we first started talking about the concept of coaching, and I'm going to paraphrase, but I was basically saying I had no intentions of ever selling. I had no intentions of ever retiring. And you basically told me that I was full of piss and vinegar right now, but one day that you had seen what happens in the end run to somebody like that, and that sooner or later we all are either going to have to sell, we're going to have to put somebody else in it to Run it. Like, life changes. That's not where you're going to be forever. And if you don't start thinking about where you're going to be 10 years from now, like, I don't need you thinking about where you're at right now. Like, yeah, we need to fix some things right now.

Cecil Bullard [00:18:15]:
But.

Lucas Underwood [00:18:15]:
But where does this go? And I was like, oh, shit.

Cecil Bullard [00:18:19]:
Everything's about where it goes because.

Lucas Underwood [00:18:22]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:18:22]:
Whether you are. I like it or not, we're gonna get older, Our bodies are gonna break down, our minds are gonna break down, and. And there are so many guys that everything they get is out of the shop.

Lucas Underwood [00:18:36]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:18:37]:
Okay. I come in and I fix cars and that's what. What makes me happy. And that's what, you know, rings my bell, etc. Except there's a point in time where I can't fix cars anymore now, either physically or mentally. And if I haven't set up myself and my business for those next steps. There are no next steps. My father's biggest fear.

Lucas Underwood [00:18:58]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:18:58]:
Was that when he retired, he wouldn't have anything to do and he would die. And you want to know what happened?

Lucas Underwood [00:19:05]:
What?

Cecil Bullard [00:19:06]:
When he retired, he didn't have anything to do and he died. Okay. Now that could have been avoided if 20 years before he said, hey, there's going to come a point in time where I'm going to be at this place.

Lucas Underwood [00:19:21]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:19:21]:
And if I do this right, I'm going to have an empire. And an empire could be one really well running shop, or it could be 25 or 50. And I'm going to develop people and make people the. The what's centric about myself and my business.

Lucas Underwood [00:19:42]:
Right.

Cecil Bullard [00:19:42]:
And if I develop people in my business and they know how to run shops and they know how to get cars fixed.

Lucas Underwood [00:19:51]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:19:52]:
Then I'm. I'm done for life. Not only that, but I also brought a bunch of people up and along and helped them take care of their families and their lives.

Lucas Underwood [00:20:05]:
I've told this before, but at my mom's funeral, one of the old retired police captains from the town came in and he had tears streaming down his face. And he came up and he gave me a hug and he said, I'm so sorry. He said, you know, I would have committed suicide if it wasn't for your mom. And I said, why is that? He said, well, I had a terrible relationship with my dad. And he said my mom had just died when I went to work for your parents. He said I was 14 years old. And he said, she was my mom. For years.

Lucas Underwood [00:20:31]:
And I tell the employees of that business now, like, hey, this is not about where you're at right now. This is about where you're going. This is about the impact. And we want to raise you up as human beings. We want to help you develop as human beings. Maybe this is a dead end job, maybe this isn't where you want to be forever, but our job is to develop you as human beings and get you to a place where you have a better life because of your time here.

Cecil Bullard [00:20:53]:
And so how do I keep someone motivated? Right. To while they're here in this time, in this now, perform at their best and believe in a very bright future. Okay? For themselves, for the industry, everything I gotta tell you, man, every time somebody gets on and cuts down the industry or, you know, shops suck or we can't make any money in shops, part of me is just ready to throw up and part of me is smiling because I'm like, you obviously don't get it.

Lucas Underwood [00:21:30]:
Well, I'm ready to take things to the next level with the shop. You know, I hired the manager, right. And he's doing a good job. We've been back and forth on some things with that, right? Me and you have, and me and him. And part of me feels like he came in and not to do like a little live coaching session here. He came in and he had all these ideas of all these things that need to be changed. Okay, now for me, from the outside looking in, right, I'm sitting here saying, now wait a minute, we did that because, oh, and you had told me, back off, back off. Don't, don't go hands on too much.

Lucas Underwood [00:22:11]:
Let them do, let them learn. Let them see if they're going to come through this.

Cecil Bullard [00:22:15]:
So there's some, there's, there's some rules around all of this. Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:22:17]:
I didn't follow any of this.

Cecil Bullard [00:22:18]:
Okay, but what, what, what's the plan? Yeah, where's the risk? Yeah, what are you going to do about that risk? Okay, so you can't bring somebody in. I mean, there are rare people. You know, A friend of mine hired me 25 years ago, his shop was failing. I walked in the door, kicked the doors down, said, okay, we're gonna fire a bunch of people, we're gonna make a bunch of changes. But I could go to the front counter and sell 2 million a year. Yeah, okay. I could raise the average repair order. I'd already done that.

Cecil Bullard [00:22:56]:
I'd already been successful at that. And I was also someone who, I don't know, God's gift, whatever natural talent. I can look around and see the talent around me and. And know how to motivate or not motivate or, you know, get rid of, etc. But there. There aren't a lot of those people around. Okay. And so now what do I have to do? I have to find good people.

Lucas Underwood [00:23:19]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:23:20]:
Who then I can guide. And you become a coach for them. Not. Not the guy that holds them back.

Lucas Underwood [00:23:27]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:23:28]:
But also not the guy that says run like crazy and go, go, you know, head on into that wall because I'm strapped to your back. I don't want you in the wall.

Michael Smith [00:23:37]:
Let me. Let me back out of the final sale and into the human part just for a second to build on this. The highest price you'll get for your company, regardless of what it is. Single shop, optimized, 20 shops, whatever. Is when you can sell it to the next owner and you can hand them the keys and walk away.

Lucas Underwood [00:23:53]:
And it still does.

Michael Smith [00:23:54]:
And it does exactly what it's always done. Absolutely. Without you.

Lucas Underwood [00:23:58]:
Yeah.

Michael Smith [00:23:59]:
And then they buy it to add their magic to it, whether it's scaling with other shops or some. Something they bring to the table. This is what owners don't think about much is the fact that it's like. Oh, it's like just kind of what you're talking about. It's like, I got a new person in here. Everything looks the way it does because we built it and it works. And the truth of a super uber high performance championship culture is it's collaborative.

Lucas Underwood [00:24:21]:
Yeah.

Michael Smith [00:24:22]:
And the unicorns out there, rock stars, whatever we want to call them, the guys are top of the game that are the masters of their space come good. They don't come with the way of your company, but they come good at what they do. And the owner, naturally, it's like, well, number one, this is my baby. Number two, it's my investment. Number three, I design these systems.

Lucas Underwood [00:24:41]:
And that's. That's an emotional thing to let go.

Cecil Bullard [00:24:43]:
Of that mindset shift number number four. I've already been through that. Number five, you know, I. I've seen this before. I can't do that.

Michael Smith [00:24:52]:
Almost like the owner crosses their arms and they listening.

Lucas Underwood [00:24:54]:
Yeah, dude, I've done it. I have literally crossed my arms.

Michael Smith [00:24:57]:
Welcome to humanity.

Cecil Bullard [00:24:59]:
Right.

Michael Smith [00:24:59]:
Right.

Cecil Bullard [00:24:59]:
But.

Michael Smith [00:25:00]:
But that's the reality is when they, when you, when you collaborate with them.

Lucas Underwood [00:25:03]:
Yeah, yeah.

Michael Smith [00:25:04]:
And you can discipline yourself to zip it and listen. Not you, but because we all do this. Right. Invite them in and let them solve it.

Lucas Underwood [00:25:12]:
Yeah.

Michael Smith [00:25:13]:
And then all of a Sudden because. Because the end goal it. We always say this. Work on the business, don't work in it. It's like, what does that mean? Yeah, it means ultimately that you can sell the company, hand over the keys, take the check and put it in your bank, and you have nothing to do with the company. And it doesn't skip even a half a beat.

Lucas Underwood [00:25:31]:
Right.

Michael Smith [00:25:31]:
And so if you're not ready for that, you're not ready to sell it yet.

Cecil Bullard [00:25:34]:
So hang on. Yeah, you need an exercise.

Lucas Underwood [00:25:38]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:25:38]:
You need to go back and without anything else going on, sit down with your manager and say, I want us to sit here with the whiteboard and go through kind of a SWOT analysis about where we're at right now and what our current issues are and what our future issues are going to be. And I want us to discuss and come up with the plan that is going to take us from A to B to B to C. Right now, by the way, in the middle of that, I'm going to have another discussion with you, because what we thought we were going to do is not necessarily going to work the way that we want it. And one of the big problems is, so now I'm pissed off. You know, your guy came in, he terminated a few people. In your mind, you're saying, well, they need to be terminated, but did we have to terminate them now? And the answer. I don't know what the answer is. Yeah, but that's conversation you and he should have had because the guidelines were there about.

Lucas Underwood [00:26:40]:
Yeah, and we did.

Cecil Bullard [00:26:41]:
We did. And he. He.

Lucas Underwood [00:26:42]:
It was just. I. I guess what I'm saying is, is right, like, I take it back to bricking the wall. Right. What was the first thing you started coaching me on? You're like, hey, listen, these DVIs are taking too long.

Cecil Bullard [00:26:53]:
Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:26:53]:
And so I don't want you working on anything else. I want you to take one brick out of the wall. Because what we need is, is why are we not hitting 40 hours a week per technician? Let's. Let's start getting this figured out. So first brick in the wall I want you to work on is dvi. Now, life happened. It got busy. Things went sideways in a couple different areas of my life.

Lucas Underwood [00:27:10]:
I lost focus, but I kind of thought that they were still working on bricking the wall. How do we get DVI? Sub, 30 minutes. Right. Well, and I knew changes were happening, but I didn't realize that we had made a bunch of changes. And so we ended up in this wave. The change affected something that nobody thought about. That it was gonna affect. And now this happened.

Lucas Underwood [00:27:34]:
And then that happened. And then that happened. And they all compile top of each other to where now I'm like, at a $25,000 week. And I'm like, I can't. Bills.

Michael Smith [00:27:42]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:27:42]:
But why are we. Why, why, why, as those changes were happening, were we not talking about those changes? There's a couple of things. It even happens in my company. Our company. Yeah, right, the company. The institute, which is everybody. And that's involved, right?

Lucas Underwood [00:28:01]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:28:03]:
You'll go, oh, I want you to do X, Y or Z. Or we'll have a meeting. And, you know, Ken will be like, oh, we're gonna do this and this and this. And you're like, no, that's great. Okay, go ahead. Right. Go get it done. Right, yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:28:14]:
And then like a month later, you're like, I wonder what happened to. I wonder what happened to that. I wonder why our sales aren't what they need to be. I wonder why, you know, all of a sudden there isn't as much money in the bank as I need to have in the bank. Right. What happened? And it's because we didn't communicate along the way as things were happening, to keep that, you know, I didn't coach well enough.

Lucas Underwood [00:28:39]:
Exactly. That's exactly what happened. And so what got me into trouble was, is like, I had in my head, I don't want to come in overbearing. I don't want to come in and say, no, don't do that. No, I don't want you to make that change. Because I wanted them to feel like, hey, you've got autonomy to make decisions and make things happen. And then what ended up happening is that autonomy that I thought I was giving because I gave too much autonomy, then end up in a spot where I look like a jackass because I have to pull the autonomy back. And that looks way worse than not giving it in the first place.

Cecil Bullard [00:29:08]:
But instead of giving, like, full autonomy, years and years and years ago, when my kids were little, they did this thing called Odyssey of the Mind. And you got a seven year old and a nine year old on a team, and they have to design a vehicle that's going to go through an obstacle course, going to turn on a light, make a balloon go up, blah, blah, blah.

Lucas Underwood [00:29:31]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:29:31]:
And they asked the parents, like, okay, we want you to. You have to coach them. Yeah, Right. And one rule. If we think you're the person that came up with the solutions, the team's disqualified. Instant disqualification. Right. So what I got good at back then was, well, if that doesn't work, what are you going to do?

Lucas Underwood [00:29:52]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:29:53]:
So think about it in familiar. Think about it in. Yeah. Think about it in these terms. Okay. You. I know you want to do that. In my head, I'm going, holy, no way.

Cecil Bullard [00:30:06]:
We're not doing that. But I can't say that.

Lucas Underwood [00:30:08]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:30:09]:
So what would be a better solution? Are there other solutions that we could do instead of that? If this happens now, what are you going to do? Right. And. And. And guide them to. The answer is really that you want. When you. When you're doing sales. Yeah, Right.

Cecil Bullard [00:30:27]:
A really good salesperson. Hey, how are you, Lucas? You know, how's your family? I care about you, you understand that. Build the relationship, etc. Oh, and also, while we're having that conversation, I want you to understand that the Institute is not like any other coaching or training company. Okay? And you may think, well, that's. That's, you know, maybe it is, maybe it isn't at that point. But I'm already helping you understand why that's not true. Right.

Cecil Bullard [00:30:58]:
And I'm building that relationship. And I'm also telling you that my product is different than someone else's product. Okay? Now, and what I'm trying to do throughout the whole sales process is to get you to do what I need you to do, which, by the way, in the case of automotive service and repair, our goals are aligned, because if they're not, you won't be my client. Right? So when you're bringing your car to me, what do you really want from me? Do you really want your water pump replaced, or do you want a vehicle that's going to be reliable, that you can trust, that your family can trust, et cetera? All right? So I'm telling you how Larry's Auto Works, does things that guarantees that result, and why that's different than in every other shop. That's my unique competitive advantage. That's everything. Right? And so as I'm going through it, and I'm going through the. Well, you know, it does need a water pump.

Cecil Bullard [00:32:02]:
Thank God you showed up because it was low on coolant, and, you know, it can cause these issues. And so, yeah, we got to do that, Lucas. Right? Boom, boom, boom. Oh, and by the way, in our digital vehicle inspection, we identified some issues, and some of those are really important, and some of those aren't as important, and I'd like to take a moment or so and go through those with you. Would you like to know what those are? Right.

Lucas Underwood [00:32:26]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:32:26]:
And you're gonna say yes. Why? Because I told you that we don't take care of the water pump. We take care of the car. Right. And so I've already, in a way, directed you to the place that you're gonna give me the answer that I need.

Lucas Underwood [00:32:41]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:32:41]:
Right.

Lucas Underwood [00:32:41]:
Yep.

Cecil Bullard [00:32:42]:
And so then I'm going to say, okay, here's safety issues, and these we got to take seriously. So it needs brakes. And you know what, Lucas? A lot of people, they want to do a cheap brake set, want to slap a set of pads on. That's not how we do it here.

Lucas Underwood [00:32:57]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:32:58]:
We use ceramic pads. We replace the rotors. Here's why we do all that, because it's a better deal for you and it's safer and blah, blah, blah.

Lucas Underwood [00:33:06]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:33:06]:
And while we're having that conversation, I'm helping answer every objection that you might have before you have the objection.

Lucas Underwood [00:33:15]:
Right.

Cecil Bullard [00:33:15]:
I'm guiding you to the place where you're going to be again, which is that promised land. That is the place that I want you to be. And it's a good place for you because it takes care of your car.

Lucas Underwood [00:33:28]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:33:28]:
Now, when you're talking about your staff. So I got a manager who by and large, is a. Is a good manager. He may not be able to. He may not be thinking 27 steps ahead. He may only be thinking three steps ahead, but I have to be thinking 27 steps ahead and then coaching. And if I see what's going on, like, I don't know, you and I might talk, or David and I might talk, and David might say, hey, I've been thinking about X, Y, and Z, and, you know, with David, I can't go. Well, David, you're full of shit.

Cecil Bullard [00:33:59]:
You can't do that. Right. Because David will close up.

Lucas Underwood [00:34:03]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:34:03]:
And, you know, and that's my only shot. Once he's locked me out, I'm stunned. Right. So instead of doing that, I have to say, you know. You know, David, I'm not sure that will give us the answer we want. I'm not sure that's the best thing. Have you thought about some other ways to do this? Right. Well, if that didn't ultimately give you the result you want, or if that created this problem, now what? Right.

Cecil Bullard [00:34:31]:
And so, again, I kind of know what the end result is. I want. I've already had that vision. I know. I want a shop that's got four great techs. I want to be doing 2.8 million out of it. I want two service advisors. I want 99% of my customers happy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Lucas Underwood [00:34:50]:
Right.

Cecil Bullard [00:34:51]:
And if you're going to do something that I think is. And I'm the owner and you're the manager, and you're going to do something that I think is probably not going to get us down that road, I can't just go, okay, go ahead. Yeah, but I also can't go, well, that's stupid. Don't do it.

Lucas Underwood [00:35:08]:
Right.

Cecil Bullard [00:35:08]:
I have to try to coach you through it in a positive, viable, good answer. And if I'm smart, when you're done, you go, that was my answer.

Lucas Underwood [00:35:19]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:35:20]:
Oh, Cecilia, that was a great answer. I mean, you do that, not me. Right, right.

David Roman [00:35:25]:
They come up with the answer.

Cecil Bullard [00:35:26]:
Yeah. And so I always say when you're going, like into a meeting, you never want to go into a meeting, especially like a discussion where you might be disciplining or working on changing behavior or something without an in game in mind. What is it? I want out of this thing because that's. I got to figure out what that path is. And I might have to make some adjustments during the meeting, but I already know what the end result is I want. Right, right. And so when I'm coming in, I'm not going into a meeting unprepared. I'm going into a meeting with a strategy that I may have to convince you otherwise.

Cecil Bullard [00:36:06]:
It's funny because if you talk about coaching David, which is different than coaching you, but like, David and I, I, I hit him in the head with something, you know, I think our second session or our third session, but I built the foundation for it first so that he had a hard time going. Well, Cecil, I think you're. I think you're lying or I don't think you're right. He went, you know, it could be all of a sudden now he's, he's opened his mind up a little bit so I can get a bigger pry bar in. Right.

Lucas Underwood [00:36:37]:
Did you, did you play the call for him? Did you ever play the call for him?

David Roman [00:36:40]:
I didn't. I did not. I said no. I, I did send it to him. I sent him a bunch or.

Lucas Underwood [00:36:45]:
He fell asleep.

David Roman [00:36:46]:
The guy? Yeah, that guy fell asleep.

Cecil Bullard [00:36:48]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:36:50]:
That's rough. I don't think I've ever had that.

Cecil Bullard [00:36:52]:
Oh, my God. What are you doing with your nights, baby? But in David's case.

Lucas Underwood [00:37:00]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:37:02]:
He needs to be positive, right. I can't have any of my, like.

Lucas Underwood [00:37:07]:
I mean, he was in here screaming a few minutes ago, like how much he hates auto repair and how much he hates the cars. And how much he hates everything about all of this.

Cecil Bullard [00:37:15]:
And you know what? If he does that in a closed room where nobody hears it.

David Roman [00:37:19]:
Little tongue in cheek, Lucas. It's a little tongue.

Cecil Bullard [00:37:23]:
Not much, I know. Not much. But. But your staff, like, they're. If my staff saw me sometimes, I mean, this hotel on Thursday said, okay, you owe us $1,000 last week. And we'd already paid them several hundred thousand dollars.

Lucas Underwood [00:37:40]:
Yeah, Right.

Cecil Bullard [00:37:42]:
On Wednesday, they said, oh, it's only $1,000 and there's a $75,000. We'll see what happens. Kind of what you might spend. And so you might owe us another 75 when we're all done. And so. Okay, write the thousand dollar. Okay, we're all set. On Thursday, I get a bill for $57,000.

Cecil Bullard [00:38:00]:
On Friday, I get a bill for $157,000. Okay. Now. And I'm having, you know, 200 shop owners show up at this hotel on Tuesday.

Lucas Underwood [00:38:15]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:38:15]:
The next week. Now, if my staff saw me, like, in my office drooling and crying. Right. Like, oh, my God. Holy shit.

Lucas Underwood [00:38:28]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:38:29]:
Okay, so. Oh, no, don't worry. This is going to be fine. We're going to get this all worked out. It's not an issue.

Lucas Underwood [00:38:35]:
Right.

Cecil Bullard [00:38:36]:
And behind the scenes in my head, I'm like, okay, where do I go get another 100 grand? Right? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, because you've been in that position too, right?

Lucas Underwood [00:38:47]:
Yeah, for sure.

Cecil Bullard [00:38:48]:
I can't have my staff see that part. Right. Because I need my staff to think and we can win. We're going to win that. We're going to win constantly, you know? Right. Because when the. When that. That crappy customer comes in, when one of my wonderful technicians that I absolutely love leaves the lug nuts loose on someone's car.

Lucas Underwood [00:39:09]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:39:10]:
And. And something happens. I can't be like, this effing business and this, you know, blah, blah, blah, and these tax all suck. And because I have to be positive. One of the things that I hate about changing the industry podcast. Not the podcast itself, but the group.

Lucas Underwood [00:39:31]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:39:32]:
Is that there are so many people in there that are negative just to be negative.

David Roman [00:39:36]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:39:37]:
Okay.

Lucas Underwood [00:39:37]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:39:38]:
And frankly, I know that we. Freedom of speech and I know what you guys think.

Lucas Underwood [00:39:43]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:39:43]:
And. But, man, can we just turn some of you people around? Because there is more opportunity in automotive right now than there has ever been for everyone. The tax are more in demand. They can earn more money. They can get more respect. Blah, blah, blah. The shop owners. I could sell my shop individual Shop, not the highest producing shop in the world, but a good shop that runs well for 5x instead of 2x.

Lucas Underwood [00:40:17]:
Right.

Cecil Bullard [00:40:17]:
Okay. And a well run shop I might get six out of. And if I want to build, go out and get 50 shops, I might get 12, 13, 14x.

Lucas Underwood [00:40:27]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:40:28]:
Out of it. And that opportunity was never there.

Lucas Underwood [00:40:31]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:40:32]:
Until after Covid.

Lucas Underwood [00:40:34]:
Right.

Cecil Bullard [00:40:35]:
Okay. And so I'm excited.

Michael Smith [00:40:37]:
Yeah, I'm excited too. And let me speak to the self talk concept for a second about what the owner is demonstrating in terms of language. Right.

Lucas Underwood [00:40:44]:
Yeah.

Michael Smith [00:40:45]:
We set the bar and we can have high expectations of being successful or we can have low expectations and what comes out of our mouth. People watch.

Lucas Underwood [00:40:55]:
Yeah.

Michael Smith [00:40:56]:
Excuse me. So if you say to most owners you want a high performance shop, they're like, sure, that would be great. How do you get there from here? Well, you know, and then we can teach them how to do it. But if the owner doesn't walk the talk. So you can say to your team in a team meeting, we're going to have a positive environment. We're going to build each other up. We're going to take care of each other and our customers. Customers.

Michael Smith [00:41:17]:
Great visionary stuff. Right. Then life goes on about by noon after the morning meeting.

Cecil Bullard [00:41:23]:
Right.

Michael Smith [00:41:23]:
The owner's in there going, each other, Customer comes in, guy, hey, how you do, you know, that kind of a thing? And we just had Dan Clark talking about that. Right. That what you set up here as your expectation is what you want, but what you tolerate at the bottom, the gap between those, and I'll say this.

Lucas Underwood [00:41:44]:
It'S about what you permit.

Michael Smith [00:41:45]:
It's about culture, guys. You get the culture that lives. What Dan didn't say was the culture is here. Because what you permit as an owner and what you lead as an owner shows them what you're going to permit. So you want this, but you are delivering this. And they all aspire down to this level.

Lucas Underwood [00:42:03]:
But that's really. Like, for instance, this week was a drag. Like I emptied accounts just to get them through the week. And I'm like, dude, what in the world? And so it's hard not to say that.

David Roman [00:42:14]:
Right?

Lucas Underwood [00:42:14]:
Like, when the pressure's on, I don't.

Cecil Bullard [00:42:16]:
Think you have to. I don't think you have to hide the struggle. Okay. But I think you have to be the ultimate, what they call a person who's very positive because not David, optimistic person. You have to be the ultimate optimist because.

Lucas Underwood [00:42:34]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:42:34]:
Because how long have you been in business? Okay, yeah, I mean, I've been doing automotive for 44 years now. And by the way, during that time, I lost a company, I had someone steal half a million dollars, I shattered my ankle and spent two years in a wheelchair. I, you know, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I'm not a smart guy because at least twice a year I like to take off my size 14 shoes and stuff one of them directly in my mouth. And so I say something to somebody that is probably somebody I shouldn't have said something to, that now I'm three weeks apologizing and trying to make up so I can fix that. But ultimately, what I know is that at the end of the day, we are gonna win and succeed.

Lucas Underwood [00:43:22]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:43:23]:
Okay. It's. And I don't have a problem like gathering everybody together and saying, hey, this is like an all hands moment. We gotta get our head together. We need to get a bunch of cars out. I need your help. Right?

Lucas Underwood [00:43:35]:
Yeah.

Michael Smith [00:43:35]:
And winners win and losers lose based on what they believe.

Lucas Underwood [00:43:39]:
Yeah.

Michael Smith [00:43:40]:
So if you believe you're going to win, but you talk like a loser.

Lucas Underwood [00:43:44]:
Yeah.

Michael Smith [00:43:44]:
You create a belief structure of loss.

Lucas Underwood [00:43:47]:
Right.

Michael Smith [00:43:47]:
So we have to be consistent.

Cecil Bullard [00:43:49]:
Right.

Michael Smith [00:43:49]:
Our belief structure matters. And then how we talk about and decide.

Lucas Underwood [00:43:54]:
Like what your parents always said, you get what you say.

Michael Smith [00:43:56]:
You get what you say.

Lucas Underwood [00:43:57]:
Right. And I mean, like you in that class, you went over the psychology of why that happens and what happens. And it's because it points you on a path and you follow that path because you said that's path you're going to follow whether you meant to do it or not.

Michael Smith [00:44:07]:
And I want to own owners to take away from this conversation. It's like it starts with you.

Lucas Underwood [00:44:11]:
Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:44:11]:
For sure.

Michael Smith [00:44:12]:
Can't be sitting. I'm not looking at you, brother. You take it for what it's worth. You can't sit here. You can't sit there.

Cecil Bullard [00:44:18]:
And by the way, and be negative. I know that flies. Right.

Michael Smith [00:44:21]:
Because they're looking in the window looking at you.

Cecil Bullard [00:44:22]:
I know that we're setting the pace. We kind of pick on David. This is a good guy. It is. Right. And. And this is a guy who cares. And this is a guy that ultimately at the end knows he can be successful.

Cecil Bullard [00:44:34]:
Right.

Lucas Underwood [00:44:35]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:44:35]:
So I just understand that the psychology of leading people is not about being negative. It's not about letting them run wild and free necessarily.

Lucas Underwood [00:44:49]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:44:49]:
It's about being positive and guiding them and coaching them to that success. And if you can do that, everybody will win.

Michael Smith [00:45:00]:
You know the secret of coaching what we do? In coaching, the idea is to light a person up on their own. Own path of excitement.

Cecil Bullard [00:45:07]:
Right.

Michael Smith [00:45:07]:
That's what coaching's about.

Lucas Underwood [00:45:08]:
Yeah.

Michael Smith [00:45:08]:
And when we do it with owners, we sit down with you guys and go, what do you want this thing to be when you grow up as a company and all that? And the point of it is to help the owner get tuned into something that they, here's it, here's the core. It means something to them and they believe in it.

Lucas Underwood [00:45:21]:
Yeah.

Michael Smith [00:45:22]:
And when they believe in it, then they start to put their energy into it.

Lucas Underwood [00:45:26]:
Yeah.

Michael Smith [00:45:26]:
And if the belief structure is this thing's going to win.

Lucas Underwood [00:45:29]:
Yeah.

Michael Smith [00:45:29]:
They will fight you, you leadership intensive. They find the way to win. There's no game plan for this.

Lucas Underwood [00:45:35]:
Right.

Michael Smith [00:45:36]:
They believe they're going to win and it means something important to them and they will find a way. The opposite is also true. Right, Right. So when we talk to owners and coaching, it's always like, what's your why? And what do you have in your hand? And if you want to talk high performance culture, we can do a swot and we can walk in and look at the culture and say, okay, you have one leader on your team that's terribly negative in their delivery. You have a leader that's incompetent, that's causing trouble. You have one toxic employee and you look at that stuff and you can either fix or not fix those things, but it's all about taking the negativity out of the expectations set to be able to go to the winning belief structure. And then you, the owner, have to walk the talk. When you go.

Michael Smith [00:46:20]:
When you fire a toxic employee who's negative and has a losing mentality, what you want to replace them with is another championship positive player that believes at the level you do. And so one negative one leaves, new one comes in higher level, it pulls everybody along with them. And it's like at a period of time, at some point, you look around, you go, wow, we're surrounded by champions and your team is winning every day. And then they're like, boss. And then they come to you with a question, should we turn left or right? And then you're like, well, what do you think you should do? It's not, oh, the ego of, oh, well, I think you should turn right. Right. It's like, what do you think you should do? And they're like, well, I think we might turn right, but what if you turn left? You say to them, well, I don't know that happens. And then you're like, well, on that right thing, what if you add this? They're going like this.

Michael Smith [00:47:02]:
You go, what do you want to do? I go. I want to go right, and you go, you know what? Go right. You have my blessing. Let's see how it works out. If it blows up, we'll go left. Right. All of a sudden, they don't need you anymore. You stop walking in and going, hey, boss, what do I do now? You're working your way out the front door on the business model.

Lucas Underwood [00:47:19]:
Right.

Michael Smith [00:47:20]:
And it's all about the psychology. The fixing cars part's the easy part.

Lucas Underwood [00:47:24]:
Yeah, for sure.

Michael Smith [00:47:25]:
Squishy.

Lucas Underwood [00:47:25]:
There's no. There's no doubt about that.

Cecil Bullard [00:47:27]:
You know what excites me the most?

Lucas Underwood [00:47:29]:
What's that?

Cecil Bullard [00:47:30]:
When the company is down.

Lucas Underwood [00:47:33]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:47:33]:
Okay. Because I know it's an opportunity for myself and my. My people to shine.

Lucas Underwood [00:47:39]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:47:40]:
Okay. And so I'm not. I'm not negative, because I know if I give my people the opportunity.

Lucas Underwood [00:47:47]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:47:48]:
They're going to shine. I know we can shine. Right. For sure. And so I would say if you're having, like, problems, cash flow problems, money problems, you don't have people. You can't just let it go wild.

Lucas Underwood [00:48:05]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:48:05]:
But there's a better way to guide people to a better. Better answers. Right?

Lucas Underwood [00:48:13]:
Right.

Cecil Bullard [00:48:13]:
And I know that ultimately the Institute is going to knock it out of the park no matter what.

Lucas Underwood [00:48:19]:
So I've missed my last, like, two or three coaching meetings.

Cecil Bullard [00:48:22]:
Yes, you have.

Lucas Underwood [00:48:25]:
One of them was Michael's fault because I was in San Diego. So let me ask you this. Let me paint a picture of where we're at right now and what we're struggling with, and you give me some suggestions, because there might be people listening who have some feedback or who have not necessarily feedback, but are in a similar situation. I've got $160,000 of work sitting there to be done. Some of the parts are there, some are not. Typically about $96,000 worth of parts and work. Ready to roll her there. Now, the thing that gets me and the thing that sends me into a little bit of a negative mindset is I say, okay, we've got techs turning 26 hours.

Cecil Bullard [00:49:03]:
Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [00:49:04]:
There's 1500 hours sitting here.

Cecil Bullard [00:49:08]:
So hang on.

Lucas Underwood [00:49:09]:
Why hang on.

Cecil Bullard [00:49:12]:
So if I go at it kind of that way, I'm already in a negative space.

Lucas Underwood [00:49:19]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:49:20]:
Okay. Because you can hear it in your voice.

Lucas Underwood [00:49:22]:
Right.

Cecil Bullard [00:49:23]:
Okay. I'm frustrated. I'm pissed. We have $160,000 sitting here. I got no money in the bank, and we're not finishing work.

Lucas Underwood [00:49:31]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:49:32]:
All right. And that's even a conversation to Sit down with the manager and go, you know, how would you feel if you're in my shoes?

Lucas Underwood [00:49:43]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:49:43]:
Okay. Now what are we going to do about it?

Lucas Underwood [00:49:46]:
Right.

Cecil Bullard [00:49:46]:
Ken has a great saying that I love and it's. It's what, what, what are we going to do tomorrow?

Lucas Underwood [00:49:55]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:49:56]:
Okay. I think that's it. I always screw these things up. Can't remember them exactly. But it's not okay. We're in. Yesterday we screwed this up. We sold too much work.

Cecil Bullard [00:50:06]:
We didn't get the parts here. Our guys are at 26 hours. Why are they at 26 hours? What's holding them back? What bricks are in the wall? How do I get rid of those bricks? That's where the energy and effort needs to be. And while I'm doing that, I need to sell another $160,000 worth of work and check out cars and make customers happy.

Lucas Underwood [00:50:28]:
Well, and so that was what freaked me out. And we kind of had a back and forth on that because what, what their strategy was is I'm going to turn off all the schedule. And I'm like, the problem is, is you're going to create another ripple. Right. We're already in this huge ripple right now.

Cecil Bullard [00:50:42]:
So. So again, my conversation is, okay, let's say you turn the schedule off, and for the next week, all we do is work on cars.

Lucas Underwood [00:50:49]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:50:50]:
What happens nine days from now?

Lucas Underwood [00:50:52]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:50:53]:
Okay. So that's probably not really an option.

Lucas Underwood [00:50:56]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:50:57]:
So if we know that we need to take care of people, bring more people in, sell more work.

Lucas Underwood [00:51:02]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:51:02]:
And we can't be doing 26 hours a week now. What do we do?

Lucas Underwood [00:51:09]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:51:09]:
All right. What are the bricks that we can remove? What are the things that we can do? And there's nothing wrong with going to the team and saying, guys, I need all of your efforts. We need to. We can't be at 26 hours. Right, right. And then you'll have people that will rise to the occasion who you, who you then know. These are the people that are gonna, like, be the ones. And you may have some that don't, and those aren't the ones.

Lucas Underwood [00:51:36]:
Yeah, for sure.

Cecil Bullard [00:51:37]:
And if they're not the ones, how do I replace them in the right time and manner as to not cripple the business.

Lucas Underwood [00:51:44]:
Yeah. And we're navigating through that right now.

Michael Smith [00:51:46]:
And so let me lay in a longer term strategic idea here. On top of the leveling the bumps in the short run is what you want, is the 26 hour guys to be turned on.

Lucas Underwood [00:51:58]:
Yeah.

Michael Smith [00:51:58]:
To want to do the best they can.

Cecil Bullard [00:52:00]:
Right.

Michael Smith [00:52:00]:
And that's an individual conversation about what matters to them.

Lucas Underwood [00:52:04]:
Yeah.

Michael Smith [00:52:05]:
And what means what. What their. What's in their life that means something to them that would cause them to want to put their best energy forward.

Lucas Underwood [00:52:13]:
Right.

Michael Smith [00:52:13]:
It's not like you're sucking the energy out of them. You make a vacuum in front of them and they move into it and they bring their energy with them. And so these are so, so, Lucas, these are conversations with every employee about what do you want to be when you grow up? And stay with me here a minute.

Lucas Underwood [00:52:28]:
Yeah, for sure.

Michael Smith [00:52:29]:
I don't know. I'm 22, I'm a low level technical specialist. Right. In CARMS language. Right. I don't know. It's like, okay, well how about you get in the ASE pipeline and we'll talk about this some more as you go talk to a 40 year old. And what do you want to be when you grow up? It's like, I'm starting to wear out.

Michael Smith [00:52:49]:
I would like maybe to become a foreman at some point. So they're beginning to get ideas about what they want to do in their life.

Lucas Underwood [00:52:55]:
Yeah.

Michael Smith [00:52:56]:
Your answer to them is, well, let's get you ready for your next promotion.

Cecil Bullard [00:52:59]:
Right.

Michael Smith [00:53:00]:
And what I'm saying is once they get turned on.

Lucas Underwood [00:53:03]:
Yeah.

Michael Smith [00:53:03]:
And take that 40 year old.

Cecil Bullard [00:53:05]:
Right.

Michael Smith [00:53:05]:
I want to be a foreman. It's like, okay, well, foreman can teach the apprentice, can teach the journey person, ideally as a master, who has most of the answers. Not that you're going to give them to them.

Lucas Underwood [00:53:16]:
Right.

Michael Smith [00:53:17]:
But your job as a foreman is A, to get the work out, but B, to develop the people. And frankly, I would flip them upside down. The main job is to develop people to be masters. But here's the point. It's like once an individual gets turned on and they're doing it for them, not for your metrics, what happens is they bring higher energy than you could have hoped they did. They perform higher than you think they did. And believe it or not, they're going to turn to you guys and go, can I have my performance numbers? And it's like, wow. I used to have to shove them down your throat and leave them on the toolbox and beg you to read them.

Michael Smith [00:53:48]:
They're like, nope. This is like going to the gym and I'm trying to see how I'm doing in my strength building. And I want the numbers, boss, can you help me? All of a sudden they're pulling themselves into the vacuum you created in front of them. And this is then what Takes care of that. We can sell more work than we can get done in the shop. And how do we light these guys up? They light themselves up. And then when they do, it's a different model.

Cecil Bullard [00:54:09]:
I would add, I gotta add at least to the fact that there is what you. What you allow and what you tolerate.

Lucas Underwood [00:54:17]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:54:18]:
Again, becomes your. Your standard.

Michael Smith [00:54:20]:
For sure.

Cecil Bullard [00:54:21]:
Right?

Lucas Underwood [00:54:21]:
For sure.

Cecil Bullard [00:54:22]:
So sitting down and saying, you know, is it acceptable.

Lucas Underwood [00:54:27]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:54:28]:
To get paid for 40 hours and. And do 26 hours worth of work in a week? And the answer.

Michael Smith [00:54:34]:
That's an active conversation.

Cecil Bullard [00:54:35]:
Again, that. But. But the answer will be, no, it's not acceptable. And say, okay, what's in your way, guys?

Lucas Underwood [00:54:43]:
Right.

Cecil Bullard [00:54:43]:
Why not 40 at this point?

Lucas Underwood [00:54:45]:
And so here's the thing is, like, through life, the past couple of. Really the past year, right. I became hardcore distracted. My mom died, and the family business stuff happened, and all this stuff goes on. And I'm going to tell you something. The class, the reason that I've attached to your class so much is because when I went back and I had to step into the family business, I realized that it was devoid of culture. Now, they thought they had an awesome culture. Right.

Lucas Underwood [00:55:12]:
But when I started asking questions and it comes back to what you just said, everybody said, I was told this was gonna happen, but it never did. Right. And as leaders, we have a responsibility that if we tell somebody we're gonna do something, we're gonna do it. And I think back to one particular employee. We had a dream sheet up on the wall behind his toolbox. And it was. He wanted a house. And so I always wanted to help him get a house.

Lucas Underwood [00:55:35]:
And we always wanted to work through that, but he always had production problems. And we worked and we worked and we worked. Eventually, I got tired of working on it. Right. So I didn't follow through. I didn't get there. I didn't want to have the conversation of like, well, you know, you're not really kind of like, pushing yourself. It's all me pushing and you're not doing anything.

Lucas Underwood [00:55:53]:
So what do I do? I got tired and I'm like, I'm just not gonna say anything about it. Right. And so what. What did that. In the end, it led me to this spot that I was trying to help somebody accomplish their goals and get where they want to go. But I let him down because I didn't have the hard conversations with them and direct that situation.

Michael Smith [00:56:11]:
Let me add this to it, too. Just real quick, Cecil, and then I'll flip it over. Remember some of the People that we work with. And I'm telling you guys all something you absolutely know. But I want to remind us in this moment, they don't all have good problem solving skills.

Lucas Underwood [00:56:24]:
Yeah.

Michael Smith [00:56:24]:
And I can see that house up there, and it costs X. And I look at my paycheck and, man, that's a long way away. So there's my dream sheet. But I don't. I don't have a belief that I'm going to get there. And I mean this. If I don't believe I can get there, That's a cute thing to hang on the wall. And guys.

Lucas Underwood [00:56:38]:
Yeah.

David Roman [00:56:38]:
For sure.

Michael Smith [00:56:39]:
It means something. That should be motivation for them. Right?

Lucas Underwood [00:56:42]:
Right.

Michael Smith [00:56:42]:
But you get up in the morning and you feel like it's a million miles away.

Lucas Underwood [00:56:46]:
Yeah.

Michael Smith [00:56:47]:
So stay with me for a minute then. Then they say, well, okay, so what's my motivation today if it's a million miles away? I just. I don't even know if I want to go 50 or 100 yards today. Who cares? Right?

Lucas Underwood [00:56:57]:
Right.

Michael Smith [00:56:58]:
If you guys sat down with them and said, let me give you a plan.

Lucas Underwood [00:57:01]:
Yeah.

Michael Smith [00:57:01]:
You can get that house 5% down. 5% down equates to this kind of money. If you don't mind me asking, how much money you got in the bank? I got, you know, 1%. Okay. How do we get you to 4%?

Lucas Underwood [00:57:12]:
Yeah.

Michael Smith [00:57:12]:
Well, how much? You know, and then you start breaking it down another.

Cecil Bullard [00:57:16]:
Another hour day. Right?

Lucas Underwood [00:57:17]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:57:18]:
It's like, so simple. Right.

Michael Smith [00:57:19]:
But then it becomes their goal, and they're like, oh, if I do this, so many hours, I got this much money, and blah, blah, blah. And then all of a sudden they're like, well, how can I get more hours? And you're like, oh, I was worried about the 26th thing. Now you want more. I got cars over here. I'm ready for you.

Lucas Underwood [00:57:33]:
Very true.

Michael Smith [00:57:33]:
But that's on us. Because they can't figure this out, maybe.

Lucas Underwood [00:57:36]:
Right. That's a very good point.

Cecil Bullard [00:57:38]:
You can't. Bill Haas has a great saying, and it's, why do we want it more for them than they want it for themselves?

Lucas Underwood [00:57:46]:
Yes.

Cecil Bullard [00:57:47]:
And so if you're not having the conversations with them that you need to have.

Lucas Underwood [00:57:52]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:57:53]:
Okay. Either to guide them or to determine that they're not going to fit on the. They can't be on the roster, whatever that is. Right.

Lucas Underwood [00:58:01]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:58:02]:
And you're letting them stay on the roster at 26 hours a week.

Lucas Underwood [00:58:08]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:58:08]:
Without any. You're kind of setting yourself up for anything. You're screwed. And they're Also going to blame it on you, not on them.

Lucas Underwood [00:58:16]:
Right.

Michael Smith [00:58:16]:
And that undermines everybody else's belief in the fact that anything other than 26 hours even matters to you guys.

Lucas Underwood [00:58:22]:
Yeah, you know, that's true. That's very true.

Cecil Bullard [00:58:24]:
I'll be in a class, like, and I'll say, you know, my shop, we did 120%, 119%, 9.7 hours, whatever it was, over six and a half years each of my tax. Okay. And somebody go, oh, you can't do more than 80%. There's no way you can get more than 80% productivity out of a technician. And I'll go, okay. Right, yeah. Your belief sets the ceiling, sets the barometer for you.

Lucas Underwood [00:58:53]:
That's very true. And then you look over here at compadre over here and like, he just had a screaming fit. I don't know what poor Carm thinks happens in our studios. We're always next door. And I guarantee that Carm thought that we were beating him or something. But, you know, David is so, like, he's so. And I remember this about myself. I was this way once upon a time as well.

Lucas Underwood [00:59:17]:
But he's so upset by the car, and the car doesn't want to be fixed, and I can't. Like, he's focused so much on that car. How do you get, like as an owner? Because if you're so focused on the car, you stop focusing on, like, what went wrong with the scenario and why did that scenario happen and how do I fix that scenario to, like, you're just so focused on the thing that happened, you're not focused on the solution.

Cecil Bullard [00:59:40]:
Well, you have to get. You almost have to remove anger from your life. I mean, so if. When I. When the hotel sends me a bill for $157,000 three days before an event.

Lucas Underwood [00:59:53]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [00:59:54]:
I could be angry as all get out and don't think I wasn't upset, mad, etc. And when I had certain conversations with certain hotel people, don't think that I didn't express myself a little.

Lucas Underwood [01:00:06]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [01:00:06]:
Okay.

Lucas Underwood [01:00:07]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [01:00:08]:
But that didn't solve the problem.

Lucas Underwood [01:00:10]:
Right.

Cecil Bullard [01:00:10]:
Okay. That didn't take care of the issue.

Lucas Underwood [01:00:14]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [01:00:15]:
And. And what I hate is wasting time on something that isn't gonna move us forward.

Lucas Underwood [01:00:22]:
Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [01:00:23]:
Because laser focused energy.

Cecil Bullard [01:00:25]:
Yeah. I. Well, I don't. I can't even say I have that. I mean, you know, I'm ADHD and I'm in 12 different directions all at the same time.

Lucas Underwood [01:00:33]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [01:00:33]:
One of the problems that Kent. Or Kent's gonna deal with or does. But I think that energy spent in anger is wasted for sure. Is not energy spent on solution. How do I get these people where they need to be? And if you're afraid to have conversations with your people, the hard conversations.

Lucas Underwood [01:00:57]:
How do you get him to the point, though? Because I'm disconnected from that. I know about some of the problem cars, and I might have to go in and deal with some of them, but they don't impact me. I don't feel them, they don't affect me.

Cecil Bullard [01:01:07]:
Go backwards to what I said earlier. What's the ultimate optimist know? Okay, I know I'm gonna have cars that are gonna kick my ass. I was a technician for years. If you think you're gonna be a technician in this industry and not have a car every once in a while, that's just gonna kick your ass.

Lucas Underwood [01:01:24]:
You're crazy.

Cecil Bullard [01:01:25]:
You're nuts. Okay?

Lucas Underwood [01:01:27]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [01:01:27]:
So this is an ass kicker. How do I get past it? Or do we even have to deal with it?

Michael Smith [01:01:33]:
Back to the psychology that's behind high performance, right? Why is it so frustrating? Because a particular car is difficult. Why? Not for you or me, but for that individual right there, they're having a visceral reaction to a bolt that won't come loose, right? And it's like, okay, that's not about the bolt, guys. That's not why they're upset. They're upset because, one, they're frustrated. But beyond that, it's like, where does that even come from? Because I get stuck with a bolt and I don't know. Cecil, could you loosen this? That doesn't drive me up a wall. Right? Yeah, you got to go. Some of the stuff we talk about, the leadership intensive, it's like, what was the nature of their confidence? Their belief structure in themselves that even comes up out of childhood.

Michael Smith [01:02:13]:
Their corporate experiences, their other places that they work. And we have this negative thing in the industry. We give each other a hard time. It's sarcasm, it's teasing. Maybe this young child all the way through. A young adult coming into our industry was highly criticized by parents and teachers and coaches. They show up at work. The first two places they work, it was just that negative toxic culture.

Michael Smith [01:02:37]:
You make one mistake, people pick on you. So the point is their self confidence is very low. Their self esteem isn't there.

Lucas Underwood [01:02:45]:
Right.

Michael Smith [01:02:45]:
And so then they're barely hanging on as a group member. And this sticking thing, they're like, they don't want you to know. They don't want their peers to know. They're afraid to be found out. To be incompetent. What if you start to judge and all of that's rushing out in the moment that they can't get that bolt loose? And it's like, this is not a big deal. It's like, not to you, but to them, this is a crisis. And I'm not saying you let it go, but I'm saying these are some of the things, too.

Lucas Underwood [01:03:10]:
It's just that are building up behind.

Michael Smith [01:03:11]:
The scenes behind it. And that's when we have an opportunity as their player, coach, right. Where we're in the business, where hopefully you're their head coach or working on the business, but walk up to them and say, hey, you know, can I. Not so much even. Can I help you get the bolt loose? But it's like, after it's over, say, hey, can I help you? Right. What were you feeling in that moment? And you don't have to be Mr. Amateur Psychologist, but the concept is, it's like, if you see aberrant behavior like that, where everybody else that gets stuck's okay to a point. They were losing it early.

Michael Smith [01:03:38]:
Like he said, everybody gets stuck at some point.

Lucas Underwood [01:03:41]:
Yeah.

Michael Smith [01:03:41]:
And a master. I'll tell you the difference between a journey person apprentice and a master. A master's been through so much success over the life of their journey person, part of the journey. They're good at what they do. The master wants the problems nobody else can solve. So they're way past being angry about the car that they got stuck on. The true masters are like, that's the one I want, by the way, when you give it to me, leave me alone and don't tell me how to do it, because I got this. Because I want to figure it out.

Michael Smith [01:04:11]:
I'm the one guy that got this.

Lucas Underwood [01:04:12]:
I resonate with that because it's like the shop, for me is the challenge. The struggle is what drives me to keep going. Because I like solving the problems, and I like pushing forward, and I like getting to the next level. And I did lose some of that. Right. Like, after. After we built the new shop, it was like, all of the things I'd put in front of myself as far as the goal were gone. Right.

Lucas Underwood [01:04:34]:
Like, so that's all gone. Cecil, where do I go now? I mean, I've thought about, do I take the manager and put him in a manager group with you? I mean, what's the next step for my shop? What do I do with the Institute to fix some of these things in my shop?

Cecil Bullard [01:04:46]:
So what I think we need to do at least the Next step is the three of us need to sit down.

Lucas Underwood [01:04:53]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [01:04:54]:
And talk about the situation and what the potential solutions are for the situation and how did we get ourselves here and why is this not a good place? And what do we need to move forward with now? Your manager probably needs training. I'm not sure yet he's ready for that piece. So I think that after we have that conversation, you and he both will be better prepared to face whatever challenges. And that's a point where. Okay, let's get him into management group manager training.

Lucas Underwood [01:05:34]:
Okay.

Cecil Bullard [01:05:34]:
Okay.

Lucas Underwood [01:05:35]:
All right.

Cecil Bullard [01:05:36]:
And that's what I would say.

Lucas Underwood [01:05:37]:
Okay. I love it.

Cecil Bullard [01:05:39]:
But I got one more comment, and then we're probably gonna need to end this, but.

Michael Smith [01:05:43]:
Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [01:05:44]:
Cause it's. Weren't you supposed to be somewhere past.

Cecil Bullard [01:05:46]:
Where we were supposed to be somewhere else? So.

Lucas Underwood [01:05:48]:
Yeah, no, it's actually 30 right now, so.

Cecil Bullard [01:05:51]:
So. But. But hopefully, like, we create these challenges for ourselves and we say, if and when I get this, then I'm going to be happy. Or if and when I get this, I'm going to. Then I'll do whatever the next thing is. What's the next challenge for Lucas?

Lucas Underwood [01:06:09]:
Right.

Cecil Bullard [01:06:10]:
Okay. And by the way, just like you can't stop working on bringing cars in your shop because you've got all this work. The challenge for Lucas can't be not the shop, because the shop has to be successful in order for Lucas to be able to do what Lucas wants to do. Yeah, for sure. And so what's the next goal? What's the next challenge? What's the next focus for you? In the meantime, I still have to coach my manager and make sure that my shop is successful. My manager has the tools he needs to.

Lucas Underwood [01:06:43]:
How do I define what that is? Right. Like, I've got so much going on in life. How do I define what the next step is?

Cecil Bullard [01:06:49]:
Well, again, that's a conversation certainly you and I could have and talk about what you think that might be and give you some ideas or some challenges. Let's do it. And we could do that. Whenever you're ready.

Lucas Underwood [01:07:03]:
Got it.

Michael Smith [01:07:04]:
You know what I'd say to that? You didn't ask me. I'm going to tell you anyway, because.

Lucas Underwood [01:07:06]:
I cannot do it.

Michael Smith [01:07:09]:
This fits into life. Our work is a part of our life and only a little part. So the bigger picture is, where are you in life? All of us. That question. And where are we going? And how does the work part fit into it? If we meet the goals in any of the areas of our life and then we go Cold on the energy because we met them and don't have a next step to take. We end up having to start from scratch again, energetically rebuild that, to rejuvenate that. So it's this discipline in life of having a picture for all of the areas of life and where you're headed and before you get to where you thought you were going to go, raise the bar again. Raise the bar.

Michael Smith [01:07:43]:
You keep it out in front of yourself. And for salespeople, it's like, oh, I'm about to make my goals. You're raising them again. You're playing a game with me. It's like, no, I know psychology. If I let you get to the annual goal in October, November and December, your sales are going to suck. Because all the energy of what it took that you were all excited to be as successful and you made your number. So you move and you're talking to them straight up front.

Michael Smith [01:08:03]:
It's like, listen, it's September, you're going to kill this thing in October. What can we do by the end of the year? Let's raise the bar and see how far we can go.

Lucas Underwood [01:08:12]:
Keep the momentum.

Michael Smith [01:08:13]:
Keep the momentum going. Exactly.

Cecil Bullard [01:08:15]:
Just like when we, we, we talk to a shop owner. I'm cecil, I'm a 30 year old shop owner and I start talking about, well, what's your exit strategy? Okay.

Lucas Underwood [01:08:24]:
Right there.

Cecil Bullard [01:08:25]:
What do you, what are you about? And if you're a 60 year old shop owner, what's your exit strategy? What are you about? Lucas. What? 25 years from now? Your mom passed away recently. Yeah, I'm, I'm sorry. I, I feel for you. All of that at your funeral.

Lucas Underwood [01:08:44]:
Right.

Cecil Bullard [01:08:45]:
What, what do you want people to do and say about Lucas?

Lucas Underwood [01:08:49]:
Yeah.

Lucas Underwood [01:08:50]:
For sure.

Cecil Bullard [01:08:50]:
Okay. Because that's ultimately will then guide what actions you take today.

Lucas Underwood [01:08:58]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [01:08:58]:
Okay.

Lucas Underwood [01:08:59]:
Amen.

Cecil Bullard [01:08:59]:
And, and so I want you to think 25 years ahead.

Lucas Underwood [01:09:03]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [01:09:04]:
To what my legacy is going to be.

Lucas Underwood [01:09:06]:
Right.

Cecil Bullard [01:09:06]:
Right.

Michael Smith [01:09:07]:
There's an old exercise in my industry where I come from, the human performance and, and all that, where it's called a tombstone exercise. And it's very simple. It's model and sounding, but it's not, it's like, it's a way to get to your legacy. It's like, okay, write your epitaph on your tombstone.

Lucas Underwood [01:09:21]:
Yeah.

Michael Smith [01:09:22]:
And it makes a person stop and go. It's kind of like what do you really want to be remembered for?

Lucas Underwood [01:09:26]:
Right.

Cecil Bullard [01:09:27]:
Right.

Lucas Underwood [01:09:27]:
Because the money gets to say he.

Cecil Bullard [01:09:28]:
Sucked.

Michael Smith [01:09:31]:
Nobody liked him and thank God he's gone. Right, right, right.

Lucas Underwood [01:09:34]:
Exactly. David. Is that what you wrote on your tinstock?

David Roman [01:09:38]:
I told you what you need to do. I told him he needs to get the shop operational and slide over to the business.

Cecil Bullard [01:09:44]:
Yeah.

David Roman [01:09:44]:
And get that thing fixed. Yeah. Because the family business, ultimately, for the Underwoods, is far more important than L and N. Yeah. It's far more important. That's a legacy that needs to be sustained. It needs to go past him to his children. Their children and onward.

Cecil Bullard [01:10:01]:
But. But ultimately, Lucas, it's not what David wants for you. It's not what Cecil wants for you. That's what Lucas wants for Lucas.

David Roman [01:10:09]:
This deep down. Because he's meddling in both. I'm just telling you, he wouldn't be meddling over here, phone calls, checking the website, if he didn't. Deep down, he knows. He knows what he needs to do.

Lucas Underwood [01:10:21]:
Yeah, I'm just. I've got to do both, though.

Michael Smith [01:10:23]:
Yep.

David Roman [01:10:24]:
Yeah, but you've got somebody in place.

Cecil Bullard [01:10:26]:
We just. All I need to do is coach that person and direct that person, execute.

David Roman [01:10:30]:
On that to get. To get that guy moving where you need it to go, and then slide over and start. Start managing the.

Cecil Bullard [01:10:37]:
At least.

David Roman [01:10:38]:
At least to get it operational.

Cecil Bullard [01:10:39]:
Sometimes I would ask my people, I said, if salespeople, especially if somebody kidnapped your child and said, you need to sell $10,000 today of XYZ, would you act differently than you do right now?

Lucas Underwood [01:10:57]:
Right.

Cecil Bullard [01:10:58]:
Okay. So I want to sit down with the manager and say, if this was everything and your life depended on it, what would you do differently than you're doing today?

Lucas Underwood [01:11:10]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [01:11:11]:
And that'll give us some direction for sure. And we can guide him through. Through that, and he can start directing and guiding. So you can draw your attention away and put it back on the family business, which is where you feel you need to be.

Lucas Underwood [01:11:24]:
Yeah.

Cecil Bullard [01:11:25]:
Okay.

Lucas Underwood [01:11:26]:
Let's do it.

Cecil Bullard [01:11:26]:
Let's do it. Yes, sir.